Amending the second

From Robert Anton Wilson's universe-hopping quantum thriller "Schrödingers cat trilogy":

One of the most insidious things the CIA Communists did when they took over Unistat was to change the Constitution.

The original Constitution, having been written by a group of intellectual libertines and Freemasons in the eighteenth century, included an amendment which declared:

A self-regulated sex life being necessary to the happiness of a citizen, the right of people to keep and enjoy pornography shall not be abridged.

This amendment had been suggested by Thomas Jefferson, who had over nine hundred Black concubines, and Benjamin Franklin, a member of the Hell Fire Club, which had the largest collection of erotic books and art in the Western world at that time.

The Communists changed the amendment to read:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.

All documents and textbooks were changed, so that nobody would be able to find out what the amendment had originally said. Then the Communists set up a front organisation, the National Rifle Association, to encourage the wide usage of guns of all sorts and to battle any attempt to control guns as "unconstitutional."

Thus, they guaranteed that the murder rate in Unistat would always be
the highest in the world. This kept the citizens in perpetual anxiety
about their safety both on the streets and in their homes. The citizens
then tolerated the rapid growth of the Police State, which controlled
almost everything, except the sale of guns, the chief cause of crime.

At least people dying as a result of the first incarnation would go out with a smile on their face. Perhaps it's time to swap universes.

Categories: Robert Anton Wilson, Fiction