Rest In Peace
"What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?"--P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores - A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government"
Even his book titles were funny--Parliament of Whores, Republican Party Reptile, Holidays in Hell, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut.
It's too bad that O'Rourke lost the thread towards the end, unable to see past Donald Trump's bluster to the key principles of our liberty at stake. I hope its not true, but eportedly, the guy who once wrote this somehow came to cast a vote for Bribe Me-Granny:
"It takes a village to raise a child. The village is Washington. You are the child. There, I've spared you from reading the worst book to come out of the Clinton administration since -- let's be fair -- whatever the last one was. Nearly everything about It Takes a Village is objectionable, from the title -- an ancient African proverb that seems to have its origins in the ancient African kingdom of Hallmarkcardia -- to the acknowledgments page, where Mrs. Clinton fails to acknowledge that some poor journalism professor named Barbara Feinman did a lot of the work. Mrs. Clinton thereby unwisely violates the first rule of literary collaboration: Blame the co-author. And let us avert our eyes from the Kim I1-Sung-type dust- jacket photograph showing Mrs. Clinton surrounded by joyous-youth-of-many- nations."Ugh. As I recall, he once said "Hillary Clinton has the mind of a prison matron and the soul of an East German border guard." Which is unfair--to border guards.
Still, in his prime, he was a powerful voice for freedom, and certainly the funniest. Today, though, we'll recall his genius, such as this:
When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Our government gets more than thugs in a protection racket demand, more even than discarded first wives of famous rich men receive in divorce court. Then this government, swollen and arrogant with pelf, goes butting into our business. It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars and how fast we can drive them, bosses us around about retirement, education and what’s on TV; counts our noses and asks fresh questions about who’s still living at home and how many bathrooms we have; decides whether the door to our office or shop should have steps or a wheelchair ramp; decrees the gender and complexion of the people to be hired there; lectures us on safe sex; dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow; and waylays young men, ships them to distant places and tells them to shoot people they don’t even know.
Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers.
Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.
What I discovered in Somalia is a place where there was no shortage of food … There was a shortage of public order. There was a shortage of a social system to provide food for people who were powerless. Rice was selling in Mogadishu at 10 cents a kilo — the cheapest rice in the world because of all the rice that had been donated. The problem was that if you didn’t have a gun in Mogadishu you didn’t have 10 cents. It didn’t matter how cheap or readily available the rice was. There were people with guns taking it away from the people who didn’t have guns.
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is ‘Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.’ How did that make the top ten? What’s it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door? Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have — go get your own. The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.
Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rental car handles best.
Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.
Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
Liberals are the ditch carp of democracy.
My Grandmother wouldn’t even speak the word Democrat if there were children in the room. She’d say “Bastards” instead.
Wealth is, for most people, the only honest and likely path to liberty. With money comes power over the world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Businesses can be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations pursued. But liberals aren’t very interested in such real and material freedoms. They have a more innocent — not to say toddlerlike — idea of freedom. Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums. If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty, not the difference. Wealth is good. You know this about your own wealth. If you got rich, it would be a great thing. You'd improve your life. You'd improve your family's life. You'd purchase education, travel, knowledge about the world. You'd invest in worthwhile things. You'd give money to noble causes. You'd help your friends and neighbors. Your life would be better if you got rich. The lives of the people around you would be better. Your wealth is good. So why isn't everyone else's wealth good?"
Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
The great religions…teach salvation as an individual matter. There are no group discounts in the Ten Commandments, Christ was not a committee, and Allah does not welcome believers into Paradise saying, “You weren’t much good yourself, but you were standing near some good people.” That we are individuals-unique, disparate and willful – is something we understand instinctively from an early age. No child ever wrote to Santa: ‘Bring me — and a bunch of kids I’ve never met — a pony, and we’ll share.’
Q: ”Why are conservatives opposed to gun control?”
A: ”In case we have to shoot Democrats. It happened during the Civil War, and it could happen again.”
Just as some things are too strange for fiction, others are too true for journalism.
I have often been called a Nazi, and although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has *ever* had a sexual fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
It was Marxism nonetheless because the wildest hippie and the sternest member of the Politburo shared the same daydream, the daydream that underlies all Marxism : That a thing might somehow be worth other than what people will give for it.
Bringing the government in to run Wall Street is like saying, “Dad burned dinner, let’s get the dog to cook.” Now the government’s going to take over the auto industry. I can predict the result: a light-weight, compact, sustainable vehicle using alternative energy. When I was a kid we called it a ‘Schwinn’.”
“Overpopulation: Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You”
"Danny Ortega's speech was a long one. There are no brief excuses for communism."
Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
My grandmother knew how to say what she damn well pleased, not that she ever would have said "damn." As a boy I asked her what the difference was between Democrats and Republicans. She said, "Democrats rent."
"The decor was budget Mafia. ...There were little strips of disco lights around the dance floor, but they just flashed off and on; they didn't move around the room or change colors or anything.
A bored combo -- one singer, one guitar player and a guy on the electric organ doing the rhythm, bass and drum parts -- played a Ramada Inn lounge arrangement of "I Got You, Babe," lyrics in memorized English:
"Ugh gut you to told me height
Bucket jute tuchus god night"
A fat lady came out and sang "Feelings," also in 'English'. A dance team gave a disco exhibition more reminiscent of Saturday Night Live than Saturday Night Fever. There was a mild strip act, the stripper winding up in a kind of two-piece bathing suit worn by Baptist ministers' wives, but with sequins. To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.
The third night we went to Remont, Warsaw's only punk club. The kids didn't look very punky; more like it was a party game where everybody had to do a quick impression of Patti Smith.
I couldn't, off hand, think of anything to ask [the manager] Grzegorz. "Does the Polish punk movement have any political significance?" I said and realized I'd put my foot in it. In a Marxist country even a dank and stinky place like Remont needs some kind of official sanction, and Grzegorz must have some kind of official status. He looked miffed.
"I notice a certain regularity in questions from the West," said Grzegorz. "First, you're interested in punks. Usually your stories have two objectives, that punks are opposition to authority, breaking the rules that exist here. Also your articles show that there are no polar bears walking the streets." He gave me a condescending smile. "There are moments when our country is very normal."
"Hopelessly normal," I said. "I notice your punks don't go in much for spiked hair and face tattoos."
"They have some inhibitions," said Grzegorz. "Also we don't have the commercial products to do the hair styles." And then he sighed. "There are contradictions within the Polish punk scene. Remont is the only place they can come to express their rebellion against institutions. The root problem is boredom."
"That's what made my generation rebel in the sixties in America," I said, trying to be nice. "You know, we were bored with commercialism, bored with materialism...."
Grzegorz sighed again. "They're rebelling here from lack of this."
Some of the punks began slam-dancing, or trying to. They were so drunk they kept missing each other. Communism doesn't really starve or execute that many people. Mostly it just bores them to death. Life behind the Iron Curtain is like living with your parents forever. There are a million do's and dont's. It's a hassle getting the car keys."--P.J. O'Rourke, "Holidays In Hell"
"I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged mate, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God's heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's nonthreatening. He's always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he's famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus."
I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a "learning experience." Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a "learning experience." It makes me feel less stupid.
If Europeans didn't discover North America then how'd we all get here?
I really didn't understand before that moment, I didn't realize until just then - we won. The Free World won the Cold War. All the people who had been sent to gulags, who'd been crushed in the streets of Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, the soldiers who'd died in Korea and my friends and classmates who had been killed in Vietnam - it meant something now. All the treasure that we in America had poured into guns, planes, Star Wars and all the terrifying A-bombs we'd had to build and keep - it wasn't for nothing. And the best thing about our victory is the way we did it - not just with ICBMs and Green Berets and aid to the Contras. Those things were important, but in the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system with all its tanks and guns, gulag camps, and secret police has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes. They may have had the soldiers and the warheads and the fine-sounding ideology that suckered the college students and nitwit Third Worlders, but we had all the fun. Now they're lunch, and we're number one on the planet.
If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.
The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things - war and hunger and date rape - liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
Liberals are the ditch carp of democracy.
In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.
Even bad music has gotten better because it's gotten shorter. One of Wagner's pieces took four days to play. Now the latest single from Hootie and the Blowfish clocks in at just over three minutes.Terrible danger lurks in the idea that the government should do more to protect people and give them more of the things they need. France shows you what happens when you base politics on the idea that the government has to give ever-greater protection and benefits to people: the economy simply gets asphyxiated. France's official unemployment rate is 10 per cent; its real rate is probably closer to 40 per cent. Government regulations ensure that business-people can't fire anyone in France. They respond by not hiring anyone.
The whole idea of government is this: if enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
'Government conspiracy'? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!
That liberals aren't enamored of real freedom may have something to do with responsibility - that cumbersome backpack which all free men have to lug on life's aerobic nature hike. The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors - psychology, sociology, women's studies - to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion AND capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal point of view.
It was Marxism nonetheless because the wildest hippie and the sternest member of the Politburo shared the same daydream, the daydream that underlies all Marxism : That a thing might somehow be worth other than what people will give for it.
Note that the drug testing hubbub began with testing professional athletes. True, children look up to pro athletes. But children are short and look up to everything.
Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor's letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I'd abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist who, at the end of a forty-five minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting, "You're fucked up! You don't belong in the Army!" He was certainly right on the first count and possibly right on the second. Anyway, I didn't have to go. But that, of course, meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you were more use to your platoon mates than I would have been. I hope you're rich and happy now. And in 1971, when somebody punched me in the face for being a long-haired peace creep, I hope it was you.
I loved this car (Jaguar XJ12). I loved the other cars. I love all cars, if the truth be known. We're told cars are dangerous. It's safer to drive through South Central LA than to walk there. We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. ...and we're told cars cause pollution. A 100 years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine? Cars have made us richer, freer, happer people. Life is better because of cars. Cars are good.
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head.
Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.
Schneider has made a career of telling the public that the climate is going to change drastically any time now, and indeed every spring and fall he's been right.
If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.
A pleasant natural environment is a good - a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.
It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow then to spend tonight like there's no money.
It's easier and more fun to take a tragic view of life. It's a better method of self-dramatizing. Everybody would rather star in Hamlet than in 'Three's Company'. If you want to understand the psychology of politics, just look at teen-agers. I mean, teen-agers are expert at self-dramatization. And so of course they're picking problems. You can't self-dramatize a joy or a joke or a good mood. Nothing cures anomie, whatever that may be - we have no idea what that word means: we might as well say we suffer from "brigadoon". We don't know what it means, and neither do the French - nothing cures that sort of unfocused upsetness like duty, responsibility, hard work. If you've got places you've got to be, things you've got to do, and people you've got to take care of, you don't have time for that sort of adolescent mewling. You find very few Kurt Cobain fans among the starving people of the world.
These issues are excellent springboards for collectivism. You can use these issues as an excuse to expand the powers of government or international organizations or bureaucracy. And who runs the state? It turns out to be the same people who are so worried about overpopulation, famine, poverty, injustice and so on: the Al Gores, the Bill Clintons. And isn't this a marvellous excuse, because who can possibly say 'No, no, no, I'm in favour of famine?'
If the government, or some international bureaucracy or some sort of authority should be consulted about whether you have kids, then where shouldn't authority be consulted? My contention is that liberals hate people. People are not an asset in the liberal world view.
Now notice that they don't try it on us. It's always on people who look different than us. Worry about overpopulation is an acceptable liberal form of racism. It always has to do with yellow, black or brown people. They're never worried about the slew of Swedes, who are all over the place, or the mass of French people who wind up on the Riviera every August. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez.
"I don't like our money being used for these things. Not that I don't want to see these car companies survive. But that's a big part of freedom, is failure. Everybody thinks that freedom is all about success, that capitalism is all about success. It's not; it's about failure.
When a company quits making products that people want at a price people want to pay for them, it's time for that company to go away. If you keep that company around with government infusions, what you get is everything they had east of the Berlin Wall before the Berlin Wall fell over.
I spent a lot of time as a foreign correspondent and spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and people ask me sometimes "What do you think caused the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall?" Was it Star Wars? Was it Reagan's foreign policy? Was it the [Russian] war in Afghanistan? Was it this, was it that?
It was Bulgarian blue jeans. They couldn't get anything but Bulgarian blue jeans over there. Big, old, baggy...they weren't even blue. They were whatever color they felt like making that day 'cause they were Government Blue Jeans. One Size Fits All Bulgarian blue jeans.
And finally, people east of the Berlin Wall, east of the Iron Curtain, said "We ain't wearin' Bulgarian blue jeans anymore!" Finally, they came out in the streets and said "You can SHOOT us and we won't wear Bulgarian blue jeans anymore! We don't care. We've had it. We ain't wearin' that stuff anymore. We want a pair of Levis 501s...open up that Wall!" And it happened. The pressure was too great.
So you just don't want government running industry, even if it seems like...I hate to see those jobs lost out in Detroit. I hate to see the, especially the secondary companies who made the parts and the fasteners and stuff. It's not their fault, they didn't do anything wrong. I hate to see them go under, but I hate to see the government involved even more than I hate to see that.
You can come back. That's the thing about money and freedom; when your freedom's taken and your money...when you lose your money, you can make more money. When your freedom's taken away, you can't make more freedom.
Money's not Zero Sum. Your getting rich does not make me poor. Just because you have too many slices of pizza doesn't mean I have to eat the Domino's box. Money's not Zero Sum, but freedom is Zero Sum. The freedom you take from me is freedom I don't have; you can't go out and make more freedom."
If we don't perform the difficult tasks that imagination requires, we put ourselves into what Smith called "the vilest and most abject of all states, a complete insensibility to honour and infamy, to vice and virtue." It is a state that Smith might also have described as "running for political office."
If fairness is important, what is really fair? We may say something like, "People have a right to food, a right to housing, and a right to a good job for decent pay." But from an economist's perspective, all those rights involve making finite goods meet infinite wants. Unless the fair society generates tremendous economic growth--which societies that put fairness first have trouble doing--the goods will come from redistribution. Try rephrasing the rights statement thus: "People have a right to my food, a right to my housing, and a right to my good job for my decent pay."
Why do political bien-pensants automatically roll "dispossessed," "poor," and "disenfranchised" together, as if they have a natural correlation—like "ice," "cold," and "beer"? The Dalai Lama...is dispossessed. My parish priest is poor. And Alan Greenspan, as a resident of the District of Columbia, is ineligible to vote in congressional elections.
I hate political correctness because it's founded on the idea that by means of language you can escape truth -- that if you simply give a different name to something you've somehow changed it. It is a very childlike idea.
"Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, "getting in touch with your sexuality," "raising your self-esteem," "relaxation therapy," and "being a recovered bulimic."
"Liberal" is, of course, one of those fine English words, like lady, gay and welfare, which has been spoiled by special pleading. When I say liberals I certainly don't mean openhanded individuals or tolerant persons or even Big Government Democrats. I mean people who are excited that one percent of the profits of Ben & Jerry's ice cream goes to promote world peace. Any rich man does more for society than all the jerks pasting 'Visualize World Peace' bumper stickers on their cars. The worst leech of a merger and acquisitions lawyer making $500,000 a year will, even if he cheats on his taxes, put $100,000 into the public coffers. That's $100,000 worth of education, charity or US Marines. And the Marine Corps does more to promote world peace than all the Ben & Jerry's ice-cream ever made.
"The Greenpeace booth at all the rock and roll shows nowadays are akin to the old sorcerers who used to stand in the middle of villages warning of danger, 'When night wolf swallows mother moon, there will be great famine.' "
We won. And let's not anybody forget that. We the people, the free and equal citizens of democracies, we living exemplars of the Rights of Man tore a new asshole in International Communism. Their wall is breached. Their gut-string is busted. The rot of their dead body politic fills the nostrils of the earth with a glorious stink. We cleaned the clock of Marxism. We mopped the floor with them. We ran the Reds through the wringer and hung them out to dry. The privileges of liberty and the sanctity of the individual went out and whipped butt.
O’ROURKE: I can’t remember... "
When those who are against conservative policies don't have sufficient opposition arguments, they call love of freedom 'selfish.' Of course it is - in the sense that breathing is selfish. But because you want to breathe doesn't mean you want to suck the breath out of every person you encounter.
.......................................
His work is found here: Grove Atlantic: P. J. O’Rourke
P.J. O’Rourke, RIP - The American Spectator; From 1993. "Brickbats and Broomsticks,” a gem of a speech by the great satirist with WLADY PLESZCZYNSKI
Remembering P.J.’s New McCarthyism - Paul Kengor
P. J. O’Rourke: A Free Soul and the Funniest Writer in America - The American Spectator
P.J. O'Rourke, legendary political satirist, dead at 74 (nypost.com)
Peter Sagal: “I’m afraid it’s true. Our panelist and my dear friend P.J. O’Rourke has passed away. It is very rare in life to be a fan of someone and then become their friend, but it happened to me with PJ, and I discovered something remarkable. He told the best stories. He had the most remarkable friends. And he devoted himself to them and his family in a way that would have totally ruined his shtick had anyone ever found out."
Requiescat In Pace
which is Latin for "Are you going to finish that?"
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