Often I'm asked, "Why, if I punch a hippy, would I be arrested for assault? Are we supposed to believe that the Founding Fathers wanted hippies to walk around un-punched?"

<---- He's practically begging for me to punch him. Why can't I?

First off, the Founding Fathers hated hippies as much as you and in no way intended America to be a place hippies could feel safe. What they knew, though, is that allowing people to punch hippies could lead to abuse of the law where someone would punch a non-hippy and claim he thought he was a hippy. So the reason we can't punch hippies is to protect non-hippies from being punched.

I would support a change in the law, though, where it is legal to punch hippies, but the punched can afterwards legally challenging the punching by claiming to not be a hippy. If the punched was found to in fact be of the non-hippy persuasion, then there will be severe penalties against the puncher for abuse of the hippy punching law.

Some fear this would cause the hippies to overwork our courts by fraudulently claiming after being punched to not be a hippy. I think this shouldn't be too much of a problem. First, there are people who are very obviously hippies, and an officer arriving on the scene would pronounce it a clean hippy punch and congratulate the puncher for his service to the country. For slightly less obvious hippies, if they claimed to a court to not be a hippy but were then determined to be lying, you can expect the hippy will then be punched by everyone in the courtroom.

Now, I'm not saying these legal changes in the area of hippy punching won't cause some problems, I'm just saying it will be worth it to put forth the clear message that if you're a hippy and dare walk the street in America, you will be punched.

This satire was used with the permission of IMAO.