Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

is Ireland. A group calling itself La Raza had better mean the human race-the whole

human race-or they’ll get the same treatment from me as the Ku Klux Klan.

Amerindians looking for special favors will have just two choices: Either come out

and be Americans and accept the responsibilities of citizenship . . . or go back to

the reservation and shut up. Some of their ancestors got a rough deal. But so did

yours and so did mine. There are no Anglos left alive who were at Wounded Knee or

Little Big Horn, so it’s time to shut up about it.

“But race and skin color and national ancestry isn’t all that I mean. I

intend to refuse to see any splinter group claiming to deserve special treatment not

accorded other citizens and I will veto any legislation perverted to that end. Wheat

farmers. Bankrupt corporations. Bankrupt cities. Labor leaders claiming to represent

‘the workers’ . . . when most of the people they claim to represent repudiate any

such leadership.

Business leaders just as phony. Anyone who wants the deck stacked in his favor

because, somehow, he’s ‘special.'”

The President took a deep breath, went on: “Any such group gets thrown out.

But two groups will get

thrown out so hard they’ll bounce! I’m a woman and I’m Negro. We’ve wiped the

Jim-Crow laws off the books; I’ll veto any Crow-Jim bill that reaches this office.

Discrimination? Certainly there is still discrimination-but you can’t kill prejudice

by passing a law. We’ll make it by how we behave and what we produce-not by trick

laws.

“I feel even more strongly about women. We women are a majority, by so many

millions that in an election it would be called a landslide. And will be a

landslide, on anything, any time women really want it to be. So women don’t need

favors; they just need to make up their minds what they want-then take it.” The

President stood up again. “That’s all. I’m going to devote this term to those

‘unalienable rights’-for everybody. No splinter groups. Go tell people so. Now git..

. and don’t come back! Not as a splinter group. Come back as Americans.”

They moved toward the door. Their erstwhile leader muttered something. The

President demanded, “Mr. Chairman, what did you say?”

“I said,” he answered loudly, “you aren’t going to have a second term.”

She laughed at him. “I thought that’s what I heard. Burr head, I’m not

worrying about being reelected; I worry only about how much I can do in four years.”

(Editorial in the Springfield Eagle)

LIFE INSURANCE?

The President’s surprise nomination of the House Minority Leader for the

vacant vice-presidency has produced some snide theories, one of the nastiest

being the idea that she fears a plot on her life by the wheeler-dealers who put the

late President into office, so she is spiking their guns (literally!) by rigging

things to turn the presidency over to the opposition party should anything happen to

her….

prefer to take her at her word, that her objective is to get the country

unified again, and that a woman and a man, a Republican and a Democrat, a White and

a Black, could be the team to do it.

The Speaker of the House has still not commented, but his floor leader and

the nominated minority leader appeared with the President when she announced her

choice. The Senate President Pro Tempore said, “I see no reason why confirmation

should not go through quickly. I’ve known Don for thirty years; I trust that I am

not so narrow-minded that I can’t recognize presidential caliber in a man of another

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party.

customary to be of the same party, there is a custom just as long standing

(and more important) that a President have a Vice President he (she) trusts to carry

out his (her) policies.

Let’s back them to the limit! Let’s all be Americans again!

“Thanks for coming.”

“Madam President, any time you send a car for me, then scoot me across the

country in a hypersonic military jet, thanks should be the other way. My first

experience above the speed of sound-and my first time in the Oval Office. I never