Llegó el momento de cambiar la Declaración de Derechos de EE.UU.

No se lo pierdan, lo copio todo porque no tiene desperdicio:

It’s time to fix the Bill of Rights

Frank J. Fleming

So the Senate has voted down the effort to undo President Obama's quite reasonable mandate that all employers have to pay for their employees' contraception. I was shocked that there was a dispute about this — especially because of “religious objections.” Who knew that was still a thing?

Even worse, when I dug out a copy of the revered Bill of Rights to show someone how it guarantees everyone a right to contraception, I found no mention of that right!

In fact, the Bill of Rights doesn’t guarantee anything people need — not food, shelter or even broadband internet. The only things it mentions are a few nebulous rights of absolutely no market value. It's rather pointless, really.

Why was the Bill of Rights thought out so poorly? It turns out it was written by these “Founding Fathers” long, long ago, in a much more primitive time. I'm pretty sure their first meeting to draft it was broken up by a woolly mammoth attack.

So it’s no wonder the Bill of Rights looks like it was written by a crazed, right-wing militia member living in an isolated compound. It’s all “Government can't tell me to do this” and “Government can't make me do that” and “I want to have guns.”

Obviously, we’re much more sophisticated now. We aren't like the Founding Fathers, with their primitive fear of government and thunder. We need to update this silly, archaic Bill of Rights, which puts all this emphasis on “freedom” with no mention of the much more important “free stuff.” If we don’t act, other countries will make fun of us for it — and who wants to be tittered at by Belgium?



We want a strong government that guarantees us all the things we need, and we should have a new Bill of Rights that reflects that.

I propose that we have a meeting of all the great minds (college professors, A-list Hollywood actors, people who watch “Downton Abbey”) to list everything people need — basics like food, transportation, and smart phones.

The first section — the “free stuff” section — of the new Bill of Rights will guarantee that everyone gets all these essentials. After that can come the “freedom” section of less useful rights that don't actually give you anything, like freedom of speech (but let’s leave out the one about guns — they're dangerous; people will shoot their eyes out).

And the brain trust will make it clear that if the “freedom” section ever conflicts with the “free stuff” part, then “free stuff” wins out.

We should also have a big blank space between the two sections, so we can fill in more things as we realize people need them (as happened with modern contraceptives; those didn’t used to exist, and now we know everyone needs those). For instance, maybe in the future there will be great robot butlers, and we’ll want to make sure everyone can have them.

And if we fill up the blanks but need to add more “free stuff,” we can always erase some of the “freedoms” to make more room. Goodbye, freedom of religion — hello, free hoverboards!

This way we’ll have some real, tangible rights. And if we ever have a shortage of anything people have a right to, we can force some of those silly “religious objectors” to go to work and manufacture whatever we need.

There certainly won’t be anything in the new Bill of Rights to keep people from being forced to do what they don't want — especially if it's to protect someone else's rights.

Frank J. Fleming is a political humorist.