MURCHISON

them in the U.S., by recent count — would free students to consult their Facebook pages during lectures as opposed to entertaining unapproved ideas. The approved ideas of all the other faculty — e.g., donate oil profits to Zimbabwe's cashstarved government, establish Bernie Sanders University as a refuge for students resistant to class attendance — could then make their various and much-desired impacts on public opinion.

The committee would be a useful arbiter of disputes in Congress. In fact, thanks to its determinations we would know in advance — certainly The New York Times would advertise the fact — that Republican proposals aimed at rationalizing failed or failing programs were heartless and quite likely racist. Page 767 of the approvedthought manual would show that Republicans hate poor people, especially poor nonwhite people, whereas Democrats would do anything for them, especially with other people's money.

House Speaker Paul Ryan's speeches could be vetted in advance for excision of references to the rights of ordinary people to live more

or less according to their own unmediated desires. As is well-known, ordinary people — witness the election of Donald Trump — sometimes display tendencies at odds with approved thought. They are wont to assert their desire to pocket in large measure the fruits of their labor rather than hand those fruits to the government for forced redistribution.

Don't you see? If there are no forced redistributions, there's no budget for the Committee on Approved Thought to go around looking over our shoulders, instructing us what we're to think and not think. And allowing unapproved thoughts in the land of The New York Shut-Up-and-Listen Times and the Dallas How-Dare-You-DisagreeWith-Us City Council — we wouldn't want anything like that to happen!

Would we? Well... would we?

William Murchison's latest book is "The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson." To find out more about William Murchison, and to see features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.