WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republicans just took control of the Senate a couple of weeks ago, and already they are trying to set a conservative tone for the august body. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he wants the Senate and the White House to return the explosive CIA torture memo that rocked the world with revelations about just how much the line between interrogation and torture was deliberately crossed by agents of America’s premier intelligence gathering/extra-judicial drone execution agency. Some view that as an unprecedented and naked attempt to whitewash history, but some Senate Republicans don’t want to stop there.
“If we can wipe out all traces of our barbaric and morally bankrupt treatment of terror suspects, why can’t we do more,” asked Burr when he was approached recently at a Dunkin’ Doughnuts. “I want to set the record right on a whole number of things from our country’s past.” Burr was referring to a Republican idea being bandied about in leadership circles to even further revise history in a more patriotic, true-blue American way.
Republicans want to take white-out to the original Constitution and paint over the Three-Fifths Compromise. “It’s like this,” argued Republican State Representative Tom Thompaulsen, “racism in America is over, but for some reason people of color think that a few dozen incidents involving unarmed black men being shot summarily in the street without any trial for their alleged crimes is reason enough to believe racism isn’t dead. Republicans believe that slavery is the root cause of the race problems in America, well not so much slavery, but just the fact that blacks know it happened. So,” said Thompaulsen, “we’re going to just delete the Three-Fifths Compromise altogether from the Constitution.”
Thompaulsen insists that removing the Three-Fifths Compromise will make all the atrocities carried out against African slaves vanish, thereby making modern day black people “way less uppity about not being subjugated by law enforcement agents charged to serve and protect them,” according to Thompaulsen. But some Republicans feel that even removing the Three-Fifths compromise isn’t enough.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is one of those Republicans. Gohmert, when cornered at a Chik-Fil-A, was asked how he feels about his colleagues in the Senate trying to just erase one of America’s most tragic mistakes from history. “Hell, I think it’s a fine-dandy-idea. It’s like putting canine pepper on your sweet potato fries, or filling vanilla envelopes with copies of the Bible to ISIS. It just makes sense.” But, says Gohmert, “I’d take it one to the next logistical step. You can’t just excrete the Three-Fifths Compromise from the Constitution, you have to get all the remnants of slavery too.” Which, says the Texas Republican means, “you just gotta delete the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments too.”
Gohmert took a moment away from his chicken sandwich to further explain himself. “Now, let me explanate myself a bit here. If you just remove the Three-Fifths Compromise, you are left with three other amendacious articulations of the Constitution that specifically are tied to slavery. If we really want to remove any and all memory of slavery, we are going to have to discord the amendments that were put there as a response to ending slavery, aren’t we?”
Our reporter asked Gohmert, “But if you remove the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, doesn’t that effectively make slavery legal, remove the Equal Protection Clause from the Constitution, and strip black people of the right to vote?”
Gohmert took a brief moment to consider the question then answered, “Benghazi.” When pressed for a little more, “Sometimes you gotta disenfranchise some people of color to make an omelette. Also, again, Benghazi.”
We asked State Rep. Thompaulsen if he feels moving to strip away the very protections the government put in place to ensure slavery never took root in the country again would make his party look intolerant, and opposed to true equality under the law. “Republicans believe in equality just like everyone else. It’s just that like economics and social mores, we have our own antiquated, reality-deprived version of it that makes us feel less threatened by the natural course of human and societal evolution is all.”
Thompaulsen also sent us the following link to a video the RNC asked him to create for YouTube as a primer on “Republican Equality.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI438_MYkfQ
