[WP] In the near future, America has had a revolution. You were on the winning side, and have been told to rewrite the constitution.

"Now that we've won this splendid little war, we must rewrite the constitution."

"Don't we need two-thirds a-"

"Nonesense, friend, we've done away with all that bureaucratic nonsense, simply do a rewrite. Not too hard crossing some lines off a page."

"I'd need a team of constitutional lawyers, a dozen PhDs and an elected assembly to even start."

"No, you have all the power to rewrite it as you seem fit."

"Can I at least consult-"

"No. We didn't fight the government, only to bring it back. All that trust in 'experts' and 'elected officials' led to our collapse. No, you are more than fit to start our new society from scratch."

"Might as well. Let's start with Article 1 of the-"

"Skip all the articles, no one cares. It's all about governing. Bureaucratic nonsense, like I said, simply cross it all out and say, 'Every man is his own ruler, and I will make all the rules,' and so on."

"That won't accomplish much."

"This meritocratic obsession with 'accomplishment' is what got us into this mess, you start making imaginary ladders for people to climb and all of society collapses, thank God we've done away with all that."

"Article 2? It's about presidential-"

"Again, nonsense. Simply write, 'I', as in me, not you, 'am your leader, and will grant you the privilege of your freedom'. Skip to the amendments. Go through them all. I've got a culling to attend in half an hour."

"First?"

"Keep it, but add, 'although you have rights, this does not protect you from the consequences of your speech.' So if they hang they can't complain."

"Isn't the point of free speech to-"

"Overrated, speech is all fine until they say something wrong. Next."

"Freedom to own guns or something."

"Ehh, get to it later, reply hazy."

"Three?"

"Keep."

"Four?"

"Nah."

"Fifth?"

"This has become boring. Cross out all the ten amendments, simply write, 'write down all I say for posterity,' very simple."

"There's more."

"More what?"

"Amendments, more amendments."

"They added more? Why would they do that?"

"It's a living document, sir. It changes based on-"

"Based on what I say, scratch out all those other amendments, I'm sure none of it was important, nonsense, I'm sure of it."

"But slavery..."

"Oh yes, of course, keep, property is 9/10ths of the law. Write that down too."

"And all the amendments dealing with civil rights?"

"Cross them out and put, 'civil privileges', instead. So it means, if you're civil, you get privileges. Privileges from me. Is that all?"

"What with all that you've skipped, have you read the constitution at all?"

"Of course I have, one must know the enemy to defeat it, all that nonsense about, 'courses of human events' and 'four score and seven years ago'. Written by complete illiterates."

"Those are from the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address, respectively."

"I don't care what parts of the constitution my quotes are from, I'm sure you've been crossing them out as instructed. Read what you have so far."

"Well, let's see here: 'Write down everything I say, uh... no escape from consequences, slavery is nice, property and that's all I have so far."

"I expected something substantial."

"I simply wrote what you told me, sir."

"I also expected you to show some initiative."

"If it were truly my decision, I'd simply keep the constitution and leave the issue of changing it to vote. It may be an imperfect document, but-"

"We are starting from scratch here, this collapse has left us with a blank slate where we can start anew. The old must be done away, and the new will take its place. That is why we had the day of the rope, and why we had our revolution. Everything is anew."

"We are clearly not starting off with a blank slate. Millions are starving and dead, and our infrastructure is-"

"Those are temporal problems, society will fix them all by itself, what is truly permanent and of utmost importance is the ideological, and the philosophical."

"And what is your ideology?"

"Freedom. Freedom is my ideology. Write that down. Put it in bold, and change the font to something nice, like 'Impact' or 'Papryus'. And be careful with that computer, we don't know how to repair them anymore."

"Got it, sir."

/r/WritingPrompts Thread