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Let’s face it: constitutional conservatism looks doomed. Odds are the progressives, regardless of party, will sweep this election, taking the presidency, the Senate, the shortly thereafter the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court.
Across America, we conservatives are regarded as bigots and degenerates. We’ve been fingered as the sole cause of mass shootings and enablers of the impending climate apocalypse. Unless we act soon, we will be discarded into the dustbin of history.
Forget winning elections. It’s time to think of self-preservation. So here is the bold and daring plan that will save us from obsolescence: Concede everything. Send word far and wide that conservatives have vacated the battlefield.
But there is one catch. This is a one-time offer, open for a single week. In exchange for our unilateral submission, the nation’s progressives are required to convene a grand meeting and enact the end-state of “progress,” at which point they must retire the progressive movement and disband. When it’s over, we pass an amendment abolishing Congress and banning any future regulation and executive orders. The courts are required to strike down any action that deviates from the precise text of the new plan. Judges are chosen at random by Social Security number and rotated every other Thursday.
For conservatives, the plan may seem at first like a bitter pill to swallow, but think about it. Once in place, there will be no more agitation for bigger government, new social experiments, massive tax increases, and crippling regulation. No more protests, marches, placards, noisy chants, drum circles, pervasive smugness, elitist ridicule, media bias, and academic tyranny. By giving progressives a chance to actualize whatever it is they are after, peace and social harmony will reign supreme, and America can finally move on to the next chapter of its history, the one when “Progress” ends and everyone becomes a conservative guardian of the new Utopia!
The big downside, of course, is that today’s conservatives will have to live with the results, permanently. A recent computer simulation provides a projection of how this likely plays out.
Taxes
The downside: Top marginal tax rates are set at 105 percent of earnings, complemented by a new 250 percent value-added tax. Billionaires are executed, except for Warren Buffet, whose wealth is confiscated and handed to his secretary (who is promptly executed for being a billionaire).
Millionaires are jailed unless they pledge their entire estates to the Clinton Foundation, and their non-vital organs forcibly harvested for scientific research. Couples that make more than $250,000 are placed on the no-fly list for 25 years. All future descendants of the Koch brothers are taxed at 430 percent of their earnings, and must register as sex offenders from birth.
The upside: At long last, we finally solve the enduring mystery of just what, exactly, everyone’s “fair share” is.
Education
The downside: Private religious schools are abolished and home schooling outlawed. The public school system is nationalized and the curriculum set by a guy in DC with a gray ponytail and a PhD in “urban climatology.” School districts are ranked across the country, and the students at the best schools are swapped with those from the worst, a process that repeats daily. Exams are prohibited to avoid the discriminatory impact on the unprepared.
The federal government pays 100 percent of the tuition and living expenses associated with college, graduate school, professional school, post-doctorate fellowships, and adult cooking classes, and covers the fee for the new mandatory monthly membership in community “safe spaces,” thousands of which are built across the country by forced labor carried out by anyone previously associated with the now-banned sport of men’s lacrosse.
The upside: Since “knowledge is power,” the new and widespread dearth of the former will check against any attempt to amass the latter.
Environment
The downside: The Eighteenth Amendment is reinstated, but with the phrase “fossil fuels” replacing the term “intoxicating liquors.” All utility companies are ordered to convert to 100 percent renewable power within two weeks or the executives will be enslaved on a wind farm. Any attempt to drill in the Arctic is punishable by death, either by strangulation or stoning, as determined by the toss of an organic, soy-based coin minted at the Ben and Jerry’s factory.
Al Gore feeds Sen. Jim Inhofe into a wood chipper in a nationally televised ceremony, mandatory for all school children to watch. The federal government hires 500,000 new employees to drop ice cubes into the ocean eight hours a day to lower sea temperatures. A letter is sent to the leaders of China and India politely asking that they consider the possibility of someday adopting similar measures to help make sure the United States is not placed at a competitive disadvantage.
The upside: Leading climate scientists quickly reach consensus that within a few months of implementing this plan, sea levels will recede so dramatically as to expose the lost city of Atlantis, the riches of which will be donated to the Sierra Club to embark on a new campaign to preserve the now-dried out coral reefs that were exposed when ocean levels quickly dropped.
Immigration
The downside: The nation’s borders are abolished. The population of Syria is relocated to the Deep South, except for Syrian Christians and Yazidis, who are left behind with 18 boxes of novelty White House M&Ms and a “condolences” card signed by a State Department intern using the acting deputy assistant secretary’s autopen. Maps containing solid lines demarcating where the United States ends and Mexico begins are confiscated, shredded, and used as confetti for the inauguration party of President Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2020.
Anyone who speaks a language other than Spanish, Arabic, or New England-accented English is forcibly removed to ISIS-controlled territory by the new Department of Homeland Security, Social Justice, and Gender Equality. Possession of the American flag is prohibited, unless it is being carried to or from a public burning.
The upside: Sporting events are no longer preceded by the national anthem, thus allowing spectators an additional two minutes to consume the tofu treats now sold exclusively at every game or contest.
Defense and Foreign Affairs
The downside: The budget eliminates funding for weapons. Soldiers must arm themselves by confiscating guns from private citizens, as sanctioned by the repeal of the Second Amendment. The Navy is downsized to a single Disney cruise ship and its “Mickey’s Clubhouse Character” crew, with orders to patrol no further than Key West.
As a gesture of goodwill, Russia and China are granted 24/7 audiovisual access to the White House situation room and all classified networks they have not yet infiltrated. The nation’s nuclear arsenal is sent to North Korea for safekeeping, and the empty nuclear facilities are converted into a new government-run chain of eco-friendly vegan art studios named “Milo’s Silos.”
Palestine is declared the 51st state, and the U.S. embassy in Israel is relocated to the Mariana Trench. The ayatollah of Iran and all members of the Revolutionary Guard are granted U.S. citizenship and an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a peace memento, and sent a weekly cargo plane loaded with pallets of cash and sharia-compliant belly dancers. The commandant of NATO is instructed to send at least one letter per month to the head of ISIS respectfully requesting a voluntary cessation of hostilities.
The upside: In the small chance this plan does not convince our enemies to lay down their arms and make peace, at least the end for us will come swiftly and painlessly.
Set aside your initial reaction. This sounds bad, but remember the deal: if you can find a way to live within this utopia, you are guaranteed that it will never change. And that, my friends, is progress.