So Why Not at P.J. O'Rourke's Expense?
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.
“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.
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 rented 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 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.
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?
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.
In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.
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’.”
Spend money here: Grove Atlantic: P. J. O’Rourke
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