The Constitutional Poets
The Constitutional Poets strive to elucidate the true (and sometimes deeply hidden) meaning of the American Constitution and the rights therein. Most often these Constitutional truths as seen through their highly creative minds bear little or no resemblance to that which we were taught in school and in universities. This is probably due to the deplorable state of legal education at major universities such as Harvard and Stanford, which have not graduated even one Constitutional Poet.
Michael Savage
b. 1942
Radio talk show host Michael Savage here marries the politically poetic with the eminently practical. What is the role of government in private matters? Note Savage’s deft use of the word fuck while addressing this topic, and his clever shift from verb to adverb.
The Role of the Government by a Lover of the Constitution of the United States of America
I’m not teaching my children how to
fuck.
There’s no need for that.
And I don’t want the government teaching my kids how to
fuck.
Do I want a bunch of wack jobs at school with
cucumbers
and dolls teaching it to our kids?
No fucking way!
Rand Paul
b. 1963
What are the basic rights of a citizen of the United States? Here, in this heartfelt poem, Sen. Rand Paul astutely homes in on the real question: What basic rights should be denied to a citizen of the United States?
Free Me, O Lord, from Government Health Care
With regard to the idea of whether you have
a right to health care,
you have to realize what that implies.
It’s not an abstraction.
I’m a physician.
That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.
IT MEANS YOU BELIEVE IN SLAVERY.
It means that you’re going to enslave not only
me, but
the janitor at my hospital,
the person who cleans my office,
the assistants who work in my office,
the nurses. . . .
You have a right to beat down my door with the
police,
escort me away and force me to take care of you?
That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.
Glen Urquhart*
b. 1948
Glen Urquhart (the Tea Party–backed Republican nominee for the Delaware House seat) takes the literary trope of opening a poem with a question. It is a question that has engaged legal scholars for years, but Urquhart has the—possibly surprising—answer.
A Poetic Discourse on the Separation of Church and State
Do you know, where does this phrase “separation of Church and State” come from?
It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. . . .
The exact phrase “separation of Church and State” came out of
Adolf Hitler’s mouth,
That’s where it comes from.
So the next time your liberal friends talk about
the separation of Church and State—
—ask them why they’re
Nazis.
* Note: Interestingly, Glen Urquhart is also a glen in the Highland Council area of Scotland.
Ted Nugent
b. 1948
Ted Nugent, a rocker and crossbow-hunting aficionado, takes aim for the jugular in this pithy, exhortative poem. It is said that his audience at his first reading of this—at an NRA convention—rose to their feet cheering. One can imagine why.
American Constitutional Values
Remember the Alamo!
Shoot ’em!
I want the bad guys dead.
No court case.
No parole.
No early release.
I want ’em dead.
Get a gun and when they attack you,
shoot ’em.
Giuseppe “Joey” Gambina
b. 1969
In this radiant tercet, mobster Joey Gambina takes on the ramifications of an intrusive unconstitutional government.
Why I Don’t Kiss My Consigliere No More
We don’t kiss in public
no more.
The government’s taking pictures.