"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else." [1]

And nobody was dressed better than anybody else.  Everybody, for years, had been following the guidelines suggested by the Department of Enlightened Justice (DEJ).  The department's Chief Moderator had seen the missing element in the push for universal equality: clothing.  How could people truly be equal if they all dressed the way they wanted?

And so the 214th amendment was passed, liberating people from the temptation of choice in what they wore.  Like all Beltway legislation it was a victory for Equality and Freedom.

It had been a long time in coming.  Nearly a century earlier, discipline in the country's schools had become such a problem that students were convinced to wear uniforms.  Though only a few schools adopted this policy at first, it caught on, and pretty soon all public schools were doing it.

Education officials noticed that theft, murder, and overt gang behavior decreased after asking students to wear uniforms.  [2]  Inspired by this trend, schools then asked students to maintain their hair the same length and same color.  Color depended on race: brown for whites, black for all others.  Students born with different hair color were allowed to purchase state-supplied dye to correct it.

Of course, there were the usual recalcitrants.  Over the ages it has been whispered that 41 high school students in Hurley, Mississippi showed up for school one day wearing a different sort of uniform.  Instead of the school-decreed attire, they voluntarily wore T-shirts bearing the uncooperative message, "School Uniform Laws are Unconstitutional."  When the school resorted to threats of suspension, some stood their ground.

"Our rights are being violated and there's always a price to pay," student Ryan Palmer said.  Protester Kristina King added: "You've got to stand up for what you believe in." [3]

No one knows what happened to these misfits.  Many believe the story was a fabrication by enemies of the people.  How would students in a state school even hear about the anachronism of individual rights, much less stand up for it?

Most parents were pushovers to convince.  Not only would their kids be more likely to arrive home from school alive and unmolested, the uniforms would cost less than regular clothes.  But again, there were a few grumblers.  One mother claimed the clothes her three kids had hanging in their closet would go to waste.  "The nicer things will be outgrown before they get much use of them," she said.  "That's money down the drain."  Schools offered retraining opportunities to the handful of parents unable to figure out the state was saving them money, as it always does.

In time, all resistance vanished.  No student dressed better than any other - at least, not within a given school.  That was okay for awhile, then the Great Court decided the country's school system was in violation of the Constitution for having unequal dress standards.  Under the Living Constitution, no one can be made to feel inferior.  So the Court ruled that all schools everywhere had to adopt the same standards for uniforms.  Instead of the uniform reflecting the spirit of a local school, it recognized the authority of the central state.

This was a fine improvement on the human condition, but it stopped dead as soon as students graduated and entered the work world.  Not only did corporate hiring policies steer away from thieves, murderers, and gang members, they actually focused on people who could help them beat their competitors.  If companies failed in that endeavor, they had a tendency to collapse.  Thus, most firms viewed uniforms as unnecessary and even detrimental.  They valued superiority, not equality.

To expunge this problem, Congress created the Department of Enlightened Justice.  The former Department of Justice was falling short of keeping business in line with social philosophy.  The Department of Education, on the other hand, was going great with its agenda of uniforms, minimum violence, drug avoidance, self-esteem support, and cooperation.

When Congress created the DEJ, it also assigned it legislative authority.  The DEJ's main function was to make business work like government schools.   A senior official at DEJ, a Harvard Business School graduate, pointed out that making education conform to business was putting that faceless monster, the market, before the sensitivities of social policy.  The values society had cherished for so long but never achieved - cooperation, equality; equality, cooperation - were being realized in the nation's schools.  It was up to the DEJ to see that business did the same.

For nearly two years, business practiced cooperation and equality.  Social workers replaced sales forces, psychologists became CEOs, R & D departments gave way to entertainment centers.  Then, as companies were going under for the last time, the DEJ magnanimously declared it would save business from itself.  It made business an official branch of the government.  No longer would individuals dictate, from their buying or abstention from buying, what was produced, in what quantity and at what price.  The government would.  State-employed experts would impose their will on others, to ensure equality of products and distribution.  Business became an indistinguishable part of the ooze within the Beltway.

This meant, of course, that ordinary Americans were dog-paddling in that ooze as it washed over the land.  This was a good thing, though.  Greed was out, cooperation was in.  Achievement was out, sensitivity was in.  Prosperity was out, sustenance survival was in.  We were no longer the target of envy.  Mediocrity, like the state, was everywhere.  Government had finally realized mankind's ultimate dream: equality.


1.  Vonnegut Jr., Kurt, Harrison Bergeron, originally published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October, 1961.  

2.  "School Uniforms: Where They Are and Why They Work,"  U.S. Department of Education

3.  Holmquist, Micah, "Dressing Alike: Uniforms Hit the Public School Arena"