We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and a good book. That to secure these rights, Governments and Presses (not to be confused with one-another)are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, and Presses, laying their foundations on such principles and organizing their powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, Deconstructionism, and Radical Feminism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and Commanders of afflicted Intellectual Institutions, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of our generation and American culture at large; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Publishing Industry in New York is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States, and the intellectual soul of my generation. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have refused to publish words that mean things, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have forbidden us to speak to the people in subtle terms, awakening and enhancing their rationale.

They have forbidden their presses to publish our works of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till their Assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, they have utterly neglected to attend to them. One of our manusciprts has been at St. Martin's press for over six months now, and the editor in charge of it, Suzie Greenberg, won't give us even a hint of an opinion. She seemed pretty annoyed when we called, like we were bothering her, but she talked with us for an hour when we said we were reporters from Details magazine. We have that on tape.

They have refused to publish books for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of reading words that mean things, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

They have called together legislative bodies and faculty meetings at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the heartland of America, and the citizens of my generation, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with their measures, like Slacker Handbooks.

They have disappeared conservatives in Creative Writing Classes repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness the cultural elite's invasions on the rights of the people to have good poetry written for them.

They have refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to let great texts be published; whereby the NEA powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the Creative Writing Teachers at large for their exercise; the State of our souls remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws established by common sense.

They have made Professors dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

They have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

They have kept among us, in times of cultural nihilism, Standing Armies of Liberal Novelists, without the consent of our desire to read anything they write.

They have affected to render the University independent of and superior to the Civil power.

They have combined with others to subject us to a nihilism and pornography foreign to Western Culture and unacknowledged by our higher sensibilities and common sense; giving their Assent to their Acts of pretended Intellectualism:

• For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders of which they should commit on the Great Texts, by devious interpretations:
• For cutting off our Thoughts from all parts of the University:
• For publishing books that say nothing, and calling them, "The Catcher in the Rye of the Grunge Generation."
• For imposing Tuition hikes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by a Jury of our peers, when we suggest the books that they market towards us suck:
• For transporting us beyond the context of our peers, and calling us out in the hallway before class, to be tried for pretended offences:
• For abolishing the free System of Western Culture, and Truth, and Objectivity in Creative Writing Departments, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into the New York Publishing Houses and the rest of the Cultural Elite Media Industry:
• For taking away the Rules of Higher Literature, abolishing our most valuable Laws of language, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Intellectual Institutions:
• For suspending the mind of this generation, and declaring themselves invested with power to publish literature for us in all cases whatsoever, waging War against our intellect and common sense.

They have plundered our Universities, ravaged our Heritage, burnt our Beliefs, and destroyed the Canon.

They are at this time transporting large Armies of Liberals to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of televised cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Heads of a civilized nation.

They have constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive in liberal institutions to bear Arms against their Heritage, to become the executioners of their Friend's ideals and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

They have excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and have endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our manuscripts have always included nice cover letters, printed on bonded paper. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An editor, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the editor of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Cultural Elite brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their electronic media industries to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the souls of children. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, to intellectual plains beyond MTV, and Douglas Copland's books. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the Mutineers of Meaning, in the offices of Beaconway Press, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the authority of the good People of our Generation, and all the Americans in fly-over country, too, solemnly publish and declare.

That our Generation is, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent People; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to Rolling Stone magazine, Cultural Elite Opinions, and any more Woodstocks.

and that all political connection between this Generation and the Cultural Elite is and ought to be totally dissolved, except for our Columbia House memberships, for those of us who have almost earned a bonus CD;

and that as Free and Independent People, this generation has full Power to levy Intellectual War, conclude Intellectual Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, think for itself,

and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent People may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, our future job prospects, and our sacred Honor.

The signers of the Declaration represent the new Intellectual Areas as follows:

Poetry and Physics:

Drake "Red Avenger" Raft