The Constitution according to Texas
As goes the Lone Star, so goes America
Jeffrey Denny
On the stage, he held aloft his pocket copy of the Constitution and said it was time to “cowboy the hell up.” — The New York Times, quoting recent Texas GOP Chair Alan West at a Feb. 2021 legislative rally.
Ok, so, if “Texas is often a leading indicator of political trends in the [Republican] party,” as the Times said, and the GOP runs America thanks to statehouse dominance, rigged redistricting, and Senate filibustering, it’s important for America to ask: What does a cowboyed Constitution look like?
Here’s my simplistic take — amendment by amendment — based on what Texas says and does:
1st Amendment
This protects the right to spout and spread lies about Covid and vaccines and not be held accountable for spreading the pandemic and sickening and killing fellow Americans. You’re just expressing your opinion backed up by your internet research.
Same with spreading the Big Lie that incited the J6 deadly Capitol riot for the Trump coup attempt, where Texas was well represented.
2nd Amendment
This protects the right to amass arsenals and carry even if you’re murderously angry or insane, take the law into your own hands, and shoot first and ask questions later.
You’re also free of blame when your gun rights and flood of weapons result in children being slaughtered in their schools among the 40,000 gun deaths per year including from gun violence and suicide.
3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 14th Amendments
These “privacy Amendments” say the government needs to stay the hell out of our personal bidness, except for wombs.
6th, 7th, 8th Amendments
Along with the 5th, lawyers for the J6 insurrectionists rely on these due process Amendments to plead that their clients are innocent.
For example, “Your honor, my client is dumber than a barrel of hair, as they say in Texas. He was hornswoggled, brainwashed and incited by Trump, Fox and other official Trump media, deep web conspiracy sites, and Facebook friends. He didn’t mean to beat up cops, assault and ransack our citadel of democracy, and threaten lawmakers elected by his fellow Americans. Bless his heart — he didn’t know any better.”
10th and 11th Amendments
State’s rights! Don’t mess with Texas!
Forget that Texas depends on Washington for over 25% of its revenues, especially as state coffers suffered during Covid. That Texas slops at the federal trough is not unusual as Republican states take more federal dollars per capita than Democratic states.
12th Amendment
The Electoral College was wrong. College makes you stupid and Socialist. As Texas claimed to the Supreme Court to make justices laugh, the election results from four states were invalid. Also, seven states offered electors willing to rig the vote for Trump. Trump won! Stop the Steal!
13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
The post-Civil War amendments abolished slavery, forbids the president, vice president and Congress members from holding office if they engage in insurrection and rebellion, or gave aid and comfort to it, and protects voting rights for all citizens regardless of race.
But hey, slavery was a long time ago — stop tearing down America’s proud heritage and teaching White children to hate themselves and their country.
Insurrection and rebellion are ok when the President and his Congress give aid and comfort.
Suppressing the vote and redrawing district maps to disenfranchise Black and Hispanic residents who are driving Texas’s rapid population growth are the only ways to protect White Republican power.
16th Amendment
Federal income taxes? Over my dead body, even though Texas depends dearly on federal income taxes from all Americans — even liberals!
17th Amendment
Electing instead of appointing U.S. Senators is great because it means a Senate minority representing an even smaller share of Americans rules the nation.
18th and 21st Amendments
From Prohibition to Repeal to today, Texas loves Mexican tequila and cerveza, it’s the Mexicans they can’t stand even though we need them to take tough jobs at low pay we don’t want.
19th Amendment
In Texas, under God, men are men, and women are women, and that’s that. None of this LGBTQ stuff, at least not letting husbands come out or trans people using whatever restroom they want.
Most important, Texas men need our women to vote to reelect an anti-choice woman-grabbing man’s man like Trump.
20th Amendment
Sure, it sets the inauguration date for the new elected president at January 20th. But it doesn’t mean we can’t insurrect to stop the inauguration when our president loses.
22nd Amendment
Yes, it limits presidential terms in office. But Trump should be elected and reelected and reelected like a President for Life because his people know He is Great like Jesus.
Trump is not at all like what the Socialist Democrats say, that he’s like a Socialist tin-pot despot dictator.
23rd Amendment
Washington, DC’s 700,000 citizens finally got the right to vote for presidential electors in 1961, but they still have no vote in Congress in spite of having more Americans than Wyoming and Vermont and rivaling Alaska and North Dakota.
In Texas, citizen militias would arm up, revolt and insurrect, shouting “taxation without representation!” But they’re ok when DC’s majority Black and Democratic population is shut out.
24th Amendment
While you can’t levy a poll tax to keep non-White people from voting, Trump Republicans have a LOT of other ways to rig the vote for the dwindling number of Whites to stay in power under the naked spin of voter integrity.
25th Amendment
I don’t care if Trump was DSM-5 clinically crazed, out of control, raging like Lear, mounting a tyrant coup, and willing to destroy America to stay in power — he still didn’t meet the standards of removal for endangering our nation.
Even though members of his own cabinet and staff, and even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were terrified that Trump was so deranged he might provoke a wag-the-dog war against China or Iran to stay in power.
26th Amendment
The right to vote at 18 is great, but only if our youth are raised in Christianity instead of anti-Christian Judaism, 9–11 Taliban Muslimism, atheism, Socialism, feminism and critical race theory.
27th Amendment
Congress can’t vote to raise its pay. It shouldn’t! The $174,000 annual salary is chump change for millionaire Republicans that Texas sends to Congress, like Roger Williams (worth $67 million), so they can represent other millionaires.
Obviously, I’m no Constitutional scholar like y’all are.
So feel free to school me, especially if you’re a Texan.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
