The “Texas Question” Answered

To the citizens of Texas:

WHEREAS, you have bitten the federal hand that feeds you, cursed it, and then gladly taken our money without shame;

WHEREAS, your Board of Education has decided to rewrite the history of Texas, the world, and science, including evolution;

WHEREAS, you are seeking to expunge from your school books the memory of our Founder Thomas Jefferson, just because he advanced the separation of church and state;

WHEREAS, you have declared the United States―a nation with a four-century tradition of religious tolerance―to be exclusively a Christian nation;

WHEREAS, you have given us a president (George “Dubya” Bush) who has bankrupted us, destroyed our economy, and exposed us to universal derision and scorn, to the perverted delight of late-night comics;

WHEREAS, you have given us the only White-House operative (Karl Rove) to install Soviet-style political commissars in our Department of Justice and other federal agencies;

WHEREAS, you have given us the only president (Lyndon Johnson) to involve us in a major losing war (our longest war yet);

WHEREAS, you have given us far more than your proportionate share of political hypocrites, losers and swindlers (Phil Gramm, Tom DeLay, Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay);

WHEREAS, you once atoned for your many sins and insufferable crudity by sending us plenty of crude oil, but now have no more to send us;

WHEREAS, your willingness to be governed by ideology, regardless of facts and evidence, properly places you in the old Soviet Union, but that nation is no more;

WHEREAS, asking the Soviet Union’s successor state to take you in would be an insult to its leader, Vladimir Putin, who can speak at least two foreign languages well, whereas you cannot speak your own language without constant grammatical errors, profanity and an accent that offends the ear;

WHEREAS, these United States admitted you under false pretences, to wit: (1) that you are reasonable; (2) that you are democratic; (3) that you believe in justice and fair play; and (4) that you are generally civilized men and women;

WHEREAS, General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón―an arrogant, incompetent, imperialistic, bombastic and vainglorious leader like those you have consistently sent us to represent you―is no longer alive to lead you forward;

NOW, THEREFORE,

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in cyberspace assembled, do hereby, forthwith and without further ado, expel you from these United States and return you to Mexico, from whence you came.

The following rules and regulations will govern your expulsion and your relationship henceforth with these United States:

1. Your predilection for governance by arbitrary caudillos should make you at home with your spiritual cousins, the Michoacán Drug Cartel. Differences of opinion will be amicably settled in accordance with Texas tradition, by automatic weapons fire.

2. Visas to these United States will be strictly limited. Michael Dell and other rare Texas business leaders, who created profitable enterprises independent of swindling, war profiteering and abuse of fossil fuels, will receive lifetime visas. Phil Gramm may apply for a three-month re-education visa upon receiving an undergraduate degree in economics from any university outside of Texas.

3. All other Texans will be granted 10-day limited visas after being searched at the border for concealed weapons. Visas will be renewable once only, on proof of good character.

4. Any Texan found carrying a concealed weapon at the border will be placed, nude, in solitary confinement for six months. Therein he or she will be required to eat fine French food daily and to listen to “Gansta Rap” eighteen hours per day. Any Texan surviving this treatment will be deported back to Texas.

5. Income from United States sources payable to citizens or residents of Texas will be taxed as follows: (1) capital gains 75%; (2) contributions to hypocritical religious “leaders” 95%; (3) political contributions generated by lies, 99%. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these taxes will balance our federal budget in two years.

6. After a transition period, Texas will adopt a new currency, whose value against the dollar will float, unless China takes pity on Texas and pegs it to the renminbi.

7. Texans applying for residence in the United States will be required to demonstrate proficiency in the English or Spanish language, without use of profanity, Spanglish, or flagrant abuse of grammar in either language. Those with a mellifluous accent will be given priority, as will those who know what “mellifluous” means.

8. All Texans applying for United States citizenship will be required to pass a comprehensive examination on the United States Constitution, the history of the United States, the history of the world, and especially the Enlightenment, as those of us who are already citizens understand them. Use of Texan textbooks to study for this examination is strongly discouraged. Texans who can define “Enlightenment,” with or without the capital “E,” will receive priority.

9. Texas may keep its many military bases, but all personnel stationed there will be given the option to relocate.

10. All nuclear weapons and nuclear material will be removed from Texas immediately for the safety and security of Homo sapiens.

11. As a condition of receiving a visa to enter the United States, all Texans under eighteen years of age will be required to write an essay explaining the differences between Christianity as practiced in Texas and Islam as practiced by the Taliban.

12. Effective immediately upon publication of textbooks based on the recent declarations of the Texas Board of Education, Texas’ high-school graduates will be ineligible to apply for admission to any college or university in the United States without first passing a high-school equivalency examination in any state of the United States.

We Americans wish you Texans well.  ¡Adios!  The Republic of Texas was a far better idea than the state: a people that demands its own versions of history and science deserves to live alone.

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