The Holy Constitution
Read ye here the song as sung
By a chief named, briefly, Ung.
In the days when arguments were manly axes:
'O my people, this my Law
Is without defect or flaw,
And it governs ways and means and rates and taxes.
To amend it were unwise;
And if any tribesman tries,
He will meet with swift unerring retribution.
'Tis omnipotent, infallible, as all may recognise;
In short, it is out Noble Constitution.'
When this Neolithic man
Gave the world his early plan
Of tribal laws to bind his nascent nation,
He opined, with fine conceit,
That his System was complete,
And the acme of all human legislation.
'For all time this Law shall stand!'
He decreed with manner grand
And a splendid disregard for evolution;
And the Tory crowd that followed, bore this tenet in its hand:
'You must never touch the Sacred Constitution.'
So the Party then in power,
To improve the shining hour,
Contracted quite a pleasing little habit:
Safely guarded in their 'right,'
If they fancied aught in sight,
Being 'constitutionally safe,' they'd grab it.
And they told the rank and file,
With a patronising smile,
When the People talked of 'wrongs' and 'persecution,'
'It is very, very sad, and, no doubt, your case is bad;
But we cannot tamper with the Constitution.'
But meat-winners of the day
(Rabid Socialists were they)
By slow degrees arrived at this conclusion:
That the hide-bound Tory joss
Totalled mainly bluff and dross,
And its 'sacredness' was wholly an illusion.
Then with yells and growlings vile,
In their quaint primeval style
They planned a prehistoric revolution;
And with bits of tertiary rock they wrecked the Torries' smile
And, incidentally, the Constitution.
All this happened, as you know,
Quite a long, long time ago;
And the world has since known Greece and Rome and Sparta,
Medes and Persians and such fools
Who were bound by cast-iron rules
Which reminds us of Old England's Magna Charta.
There's no doubt when England pressed
Hard to have her wrongs redressed,
And 'persuaded' John to sign the resolution,
That hard-shell old Tory King thought it quite a shocking thing
To meddle with the Holy constitution.
So on, ever since King John,
As the world moves surely on,
And the People cry for reformation drastic,
You can hear right down the line
E'er the same old Tory whine
Protesting, 'It is most iconoclastic!'
'Tis the same old Tory way,
Same old 'everlasting nay.'
'Tis the same reactionary elocution.
But, who stood for 'Progress' yesterday is 'Retrograde' today;
And we've got to meddle with the Constitution.
While the Fatman waxes fat,
He's content to stop at that;
He will bless the Constitution and defend it;
But whene'er it needs repair.
'Tis the man who works his share
That uprises, patriotic, to amend it.
Oh, it's not the slightest use
When your 'right' becomes 'abuse'.
'Tis the law of legislative evolution
That every Great Reform is won, 'spite arguments abuse
By altering the blessed Constitution.
Gentle Tory, prithee hark
Back to Ung of ages dark,
And defend his blessed code with sandstone axes.
Mayhap in that murky bourne
You'll escape a fate forlorn,
Full of New Protection and Progressive Taxes.
And you won't be sorely missed,
If you fall beneath some fist,
For young Progress shouts for men of execution.
And, as regards reform and such, WE'LL DO JUST AS WE LIST,
For it's Ours, this High and Holy Constitution.
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.
quote by Glenn Beck
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The constitution exists to protect minorities like us from majority votes. We need the constitution to stand up for us. We need politicians and like-minded, fair-minded people to stand up and insist that the constitution protect us the way it's designed to do.
quote by Chad Allen
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Constitution Visits
Things would be made much more explicit,
If those of leadership made constitution visits.
And saw and read and comprehend
What that doctrine says
To a nation of men and women!
No one needs to be Christian, Black or Jew
To uphold those rights for me or you!
No one needs to be Catholic, Baptist or 'Witness'
To live a life on this land that was not created for this!
Somehow somewhere someone thought of greed.
And represented the constitution for this purpose to feed!
Someone made it Christian and began to use a Bible.
Someone began making laws that from our constitution...
Was not viable!
We are fighting for the right to change thoughts of others,
When the understanding of what exists...
Has been twisted to make liable to stir up others' troubles!
Nothing that is done today,
Is from a constitution much abused that is reliable to use,
In the hands of those who choose it to confuse!
And where do the Puritans and Quakers fit in?
Believers and founders who arrived without documentation!
Things would be made much more explicit...
If those in roles of position,
Made a few more constitution visits!
Instead of surpressing realities in distress!
Creating not unity...
But a world in a conflicting mess!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
quote by John Adams
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.
quote by Charles Evans Hughes
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As Members of Congress, we swear an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. It means something to be an American because we believe in our country, we believe in our people, and we believe in our constitution.
quote by Todd Tiahrt
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I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.
quote by Eliot Spitzer
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We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.
quote by Barbara Boxer
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They will sustain the constitution and laws and institutions of the United States, and be the champions of liberty and of that constitution when its integrity shall be threatened.
quote by Lorenzo Snow
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If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.
quote by Antonin Scalia
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I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.
quote by Robert Bork
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Arabs Please Pay Heed Feb 24th,2011
The Arabs have a choice: accept the next dictator or change,
Usually a general from the army, who then becomes deranged,
No matter who he/she is, they should be there no more than four years,
Because after that they go power mad or so it appears.
Someone has to sit down and write a constitution for all,
Go to Switzerland, read their’s because they are on the ball,
You have to elect a president by name – not party or rank,
And not someone standing on top of a big orange army tank.
Then put the constitution to the people for a yes or no,
Your first referendum with luck and several more to go,
Getting rid of a dictator is one but starting up is two,
You follow my instructions though everything is new.
FEB 24TH,2011
poem by James Bredin
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We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
quote by Abraham Lincoln
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This revision of the Constitution will not be perfect. But at least the Constitution will not be inflexible. It will be a step towards the Social Europe which we wish.
quote by Laurent Fabius
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Back In Town
Wheels turn - smoke rise
Chrome wings - low ride
Freeway - red line
To city lights electric I glide
If theres escape from your illusion
You gotta break the whole constitution
Concrete - touch sky
Main street - dogs lie
Steel bird - black tie
Is this what they call the freedom you buy?
Look at him behind the delusion
All you hear is the voice of confusion
The bad boys back
The bad boys back in town
The bad boys back
Dont you shoot him down
Wheels spin - ace high
No win - no life
One world - truth lies
Loves just a word on a red neon sign
If theres escape from the conclusion
You gotta shake the whole institution
If theres escape from your illusion
You gotta break the whole constitution
song performed by by Asia
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I really think the Patriot Act violates our Constitution. It was, it is, an illegal act. The Congress, the Senate and the president cannot change the Constitution.
quote by Peter Camejo
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I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.
quote by Michael Newdow
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Ida Chicken
After I had attended lectures
At our Chautauqua, and studied French
For twenty years, committing the grammar
Almost by heart,
I thought I'd take a trip to Paris
To give my culture a final polish.
So I went to Peoria for a passport --
(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)
And there the clerk of the district Court
Made me swear to support and defend
The constitution -- yes, even me --
Who couldn't defend or support it at all!
And what do you think? That very morning
The Federal Judge, in the very next room
To the room where I took the oath,
Decided the constitution
Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes
For the water works of Spoon River!
poem by Edgar Lee Masters
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The March
In early, prehistoric days, before the reign of Man,
When neolithic Nature fashioned things upon a plan
That was large as it was rugged, and, in truth, a trifle crude,
There arose a dusky human who was positively rude.
Now, this was in the days when lived the monster kangaroo;
When the mammoth bunyip gambolled in the hills of Beetaloo;
They'd owned the land for centuries, and reckoned it their own;
For might was right, and such a thing as 'law' was quite unknown.
But this dusky old reformer in the ages long ago,
One morning in the Eocene discovered how to 'throw';
He studied well and practised hard until he learned the art;
Then, having planned his Great Campaign, went forth to make a start.
'See here,' he said - and hurled a piece of tertiary rock,
That struck a Tory bunyip with a most unpleasant shock -
'See here, my name is Progress, and your methods are too slow,
This land that you are fooling with must be cut up. Now go!'
They gazed at him in wonder, then they slowly backed away;
For 'throwing' things was novel in that neolithic day;
'Twas the prehistoric 'argument,' the first faint gleam of 'art.'
Yet those mammoths seemed to take it in exceedingly bad part.
Then a hoary, agéd bunyip rose, and spluttered loud and long;
He said the balck man's arguments were very, very wrong;
'You forget,' he said, indignantly 'the land is ours by right,
And to seek to wrest it from us would be - well, most impolite.'
But the savage shook his woolly head and smiled a savage smile,
And went on hurling prehistoric missiles all the while,
Till the bunyip and the others couldn't bear the argument,
And they said, 'You are a Socialist.' But, all the same - they went.
Some centuries - or, maybe, it was aeons - later on,
When the bunyip and the mammoth kangaroo had passed and gone;
While the black man slowly profited by what his fathers saw,
While he learned to fashion weapons and establish tribal law.
There came a band of pale-faced men in ships, from oversea,
Who viewed the land, then shook their heads and sadly said, 'Dear me!'
Then they landed with some rum and Bibles and a gun or two,
And started out to 'civilize,' as whites are apt to do.
They interviewed the black man and remarked, 'It's very sad,
But the use you make of this great land is postively bad;
Why, you haven't got a sheep or cow about the blessed place!
Considering the price of wool, it's simply a disgrace!'
Then they started with the Bibles and the rum - also the guns;
And some began to look for gold and others 'took up runs,'
For, they said, 'This land must be cut up it's simply useless so:
Our name is Progress, and you're out of date, so you must go!'
But the black was most indignant, and he said it was a shame;
For he'd been full and satisfied before the white man came,
And he used that awful word, 'Bowowgong,' in his argument,
Which is native for 'A blanky Socialist.' And yet - he went.
It's the same old 'march unceasing.' We are getting down the list,
And yesterday's 'Reformer' is tomorrow's 'Monopolist,'
For Hist'ry will repeat itself in this annoying way:
Who stood for 'Progress' yesterday is 'Retrograde' to-day.
To-day we view the land, as did those men for oversea,
And, like them, slowly shake our heads and sadly say, 'Dear me!
This land will have to be cut up; your methods are too slow;
Our name is Progress; you are out of date, so you must go.'
They mutter Tory Platitudes, and call the land their land;
For, like the bunyip and the black, they do not understand.
Like bunyip and like black they hark to days of long ago;
And, like them, murmur 'Socialist!' But, all the same - they'll go.
poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I rise in support of the separation of powers as established by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution. The Constitution clearly delegates the power to deal with criminal matters, like the use of drugs, to the States.
quote by Dana Rohrabacher
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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