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Fiscal Conservatism Is Just An Easy Way To Express Something That Is A Bit More Difficult, Which Is That The Size And Scope Of Government, And Really The Size And Scope Of Politics In Our Lives, Has Grown Uncomfortable, Unwieldy, Intrusive And Inefficient.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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Fiscal Conservatism Is Just

P. J. O'Rourke

...

Fiscal Conservatism Is Just An Easy Way To Express Something That Is A Bit More Difficult, Which Is That The Size And Scope Of Government, And Really The Size And Scope Of Politics In Our Lives, Has Grown Uncomfortable, Unwieldy, Intrusive And Inefficient.

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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.

Staying Married May Have Long-term Benefits. You Can Elicit Much More Sympathy From Friends Over A Bad Marriage Than You Ever Can From A Good Divorce.

The Principal 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.

Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty.

I Spent Almost 25 Years As A Foreign Correspondent, And The World's Primary Problem Is Poverty.

I'll Be 56 This Year, I've Got Two Kids, And I Think It's Probably Time To Go Back To Writing One-glove Jokes.

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.

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.

Social Security Is A Government Program With A Constituency Made Up Of The Old, The Near Old And Those Who Hope Or Fear To Grow Old. After 215 Years Of Trying, We Have Finally Discovered A Special Interest That Includes 100 Percent Of The Population. Now We Can Vote Ourselves Rich.

Detroits Industrial Ruins Are Picturesque, Like Crumbling Rome In An 18th-century Etching.

When You Think Of The Good Old Days, Think One Word: Dentistry.

Dates Used To Be Made Days Or Even Weeks In Advance. Now Dates Tend To Be Made The Day After. That Is, You Get A Phone Call From Someone Who Says, "if Anyone Asks, I Was Out To Dinner With You Last Night, Okay?"

Everybody In 15th Century Spain Was Wrong About Where China Was And As A Result, Columbus Discovered Caribbean Vacations.

The Morning Meal Was Served In Traditional Socialist Fashion - Very Slowly, With The Courses Out Of Order So That The Jelly Arrived Half An Hour After The Toast And The Coffee Didn't Come Until We'd Called For The Check. However, It Was Hard To Be Angry At A Place That Had Ice Cream, Beer, And Cigarettes On Its Breakfast Menu.

If I Do, I Say So. That's The Only Way Out Of That. If There Are Three Words That Need To Be Used More In American Journalism, Commentary, Politics, Personal Life... It's The Magic Words "i Don't Know." I Mean, There Are Certain Basic Principles, Like The Dignity Of The Individual And The Individual's Responsibility, And Certain Basic Economic Principles, Like How When Something Costs Less, More Of It Will Be Consumed... There Are Certain Things That I Feel Pretty Confident About.

If You Spend Seventy-two Hours In A Place You've Never Been, Talking To People Whose Language You Don't Speak About Social, Political, And Economic Complexities You Don't Understand, And You Come Back As The World's Biggest Know-it-all, You're A Reporter.

I Wonder If It Changes The Nature Of A Society For Beauty To Be So Common. Maybe In Vietnam "she Has A Wonderful Personality" Really Means Something. But I Couldnt Figure Out A Polite Way To Ask.

When Are The World's Political Parties Going To Get Appropriate Symbols: Snake, Louse, Jackal, ... Trash Can, Clown Face, ... Dollar Bill With Bat Wings On It?

I Write Because I Like To Make Things And The Only Things I Am Good At Making Things With Are Words.

You Can't Get Rid Of Poverty By Giving People Money.

The Dominant Type Of Humor In The '60s Was Essentially Defensive And Self-deprecating, Using Humor As A Shield.

That Is The Really Great Thing About Being An Adult Male, Once You Get Married And Have Children The Whole Decision-making Process Is Taken Out Of Your Hands, And I For One Am Extremely Grateful.

Political Systems Must Love Poverty-they Produce So Much Of It. Poor People Make Easier Targets For A Demagogue. No Mao Or Even Jiang Zemin Is Likely To Arise On The New York Stock Exchange Floor. And Politicians In Democracies Benefit From Destitution, Too. The Us Has Had A Broad Range Of Poverty Programs For 30 Years. Those Programs Have Failed. Millions Of People Are Still Poor. And Those People Vote For Politicians Who Favor Keeping The Poverty Programs In Place. There's A Conspiracy Theory In There Somewhere.

All Change Is Bad. But Sometimes It Has To Be Done.

Politics Are For Foreigners With Their Endless Wrongs And Paltry Rights. Politics Are A Lousy Way To Get Things Done. Politics Are, Like God's Infinite Mercy, A Last Resort.

Sloths Move At The Speed Of Congressional Debate But With Greater Deliberation And Less Noise.

So What If I Don't Agree With The Democrats? What's To Disagree With? They Believe Everything. And What They Don't Believe, The Republicans Do. Neither Of Them Stands For Anything They Believe In, Anyway.

I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

Writing This Book Required An Enormous Amount Of Help From Friends. To Them Goes The Credit. I'll Take The Money.

Whereas Rolling Stone, I Just Never Had Anything To Do With Them. I'd Stop By The Office Maybe Twice A Year.

Money Is Preferable To Politics. It Is The Difference Between Being Free To Be Anybody You Want And To Vote For Anybody You Want. And Money Is More Effective Than Politics Both In Solving Problems And In Providing Individual Independence. To Rid Ourselves Of All The Trouble In The World, We Need To Make Money. And To Make Money, We Need To Be Free.

One Of These Suburbs Is Actually Named Stalingrad, Which Goes To Show That The French Have Learned Nothing About Politics Since They Guillotined All The Smart People In 1793.

The Key Ingredient Of Politics Is The Idea That All Of Society's Ills Can Be Cured Politically. It's Like A Cookbook Where The Recipe For Everything Is To Fry It. The Fruit Cocktail Is Fried.

Politicians Are Always Interested In People. Not That This Is Always A Virtue. Fleas Are Interested In Dogs.

I Don't Even Know Which End Of A Computer One Is Supposed To Gaze Into. I've Never Used A Computer.

Good Manners Are A Combination Of Intelligence, Education, Taste And Style Mixed Together So That You Don't Need Any Of Those Things.

There Is Only One Basic Human Right, The Right To Do As You Damn Well Please.

Basic Human Rights

The Vietnamese Hoa Were Merchants And Manufacturers. They Were Very Successful And Thus, According To The Logic Of Marxism, Responsible For Society's Failures. The Hoa Suffered The Same Fate As The Pizza Parlour In Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing Except At The Hands Of The World's Fourth Largest Army Instead Of A Small, Petulant Movie Director.

I Am No Stranger To Loud Music. I've Been To A Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels Concert. I Once Dated A Woman With Two Kids.

Automobiles Are Free Of Egotism, Passion, Prejudice And Stupid Ideas About Where To Have Dinner. They Are, Literally, Selfless. A World Designed For Automobiles Instead Of People Would Have Wider Streets, Larger Dining Rooms, Fewer Stairs To Climb And No Smelly, Dangerous Subway Stations.

The Middle Eastern States Aren't Nations; They're Quarrels With Borders.

Self-interest Leads To Honing Your Skills, The Better To Trade With.

Germans Respond Well To Lies. At Least, They Always Have Historically.

Mike Had Called Me And Said He Could Offer Me Less, And I Said, "you're On!" Because I Was Really Excited With What Mike Kelly Was Doing, And Now What Cullen Murphy Is Doing With Atlantic. It's A Really Cool Magazine.

Little Islands Of Human Happiness, Peace, And Prosperity Are So Exceptional At This Point In History That I'm Not Even Sure We Can Draw Lessons From Them.

To Really Enjoy Drugs You've Got To Want To Get Out Of Where You Are. But There Are Some Wheres That Are Harder To Get Out Of Than Others. This Is The Drug-taking Problem For Adults. Teenage Weltscbmerz Is Easy To Escape. But What Drug Will Get A Grown-up Out Of, For Instance, Debt?

Bachelors Know All About Parties. In Fact, A Good Bachelor Is A Living, Breathing Party All By Himself. At Least That Is What My Girlfriend Said When She Found The Gin Bottles Under The Couch. I Believe Her Exact Words Were, "you're A Disgusting, Drunken Mess." And That's A Good Description Of A Party, If It's Done Right.

Some Women Want The Strong Silent Type, So They Can Tell Him To Shut Up And Rearrange The Furniture.

I Believe That Western Civilization, After Some Disgusting Glitches, Has Become Almost Civilized. I Believe It Is Our First Duty To Protect That Civilization. I Believe It Is Our Second Duty To Improve It. I Believe It Is Our Third Duty To Extend It If We Can.

I Remember Thinking Cocaine Was Subtle Until I Noticed I'd Been Awake For Three Weeks And Didn't Know Any Of The Naked People Passed Out Around Me.

If Disney Still Wants To Make Epcot Center Futuristic, They Could Do So By Blowing The Place Up With An Atom Bomb.

Then Saturday Night Live Spawns... Well, Everything Right Down To American Pie 9, Where All Humor Has To Be Irrelevant, Which Can Get A Little Tiring.

The Political Process Consists Entirely Of Politicians Talking Out Of Their Butts.

The Old Woman Was Not Only Ugly With The Ugliness Age Brings Us All But Showed Signs Of Formidable Ugliness By Birth - Pickle-jar Chin, Mainsail Ears And A Nose Like A Trigonometry Problem. What's More, She Had The Deep Frown And Snit Wrinkles That Come From A Lifetime Of Bad Character.

Giving Money And Power To Government Is Like Giving Whiskey And Car Keys To Teenage Boys.

The Road To Serfdom Was Written During Wwii, And Basically It's An Anti-nazi, Anti-communist Thing, But Also It's An Anti-conservative And Anti-labor-party Thing Aimed At The British. He Was An Austrian, Writing In Britain. And I Feel Like Now, I Guess, Everybody Pays Lip Service To Libertarian - And, Indeed, Many Conservative - Ideas, And Yet They Keep Moving Forward With An Increasingly Bureaucratic State. It Shows Itself In All Sorts Of Little Ways.

Politics Is The Art Of Achieving Prestige And Power Without Merit.

There Are Just Two Rules Of Governance In A Free Society: Mind Your Own Business. Keep Your Hands To Yourself.

Mind Your Own Business

Political Stuff Is All About His [hunter S. Thompson] Reaction To A Situation. And My Stuff Is Much More Externally Driven.

Something Is Worth What Somebody Will Pay For It. Nothing Else, Nothing More, Nothing Less.

You Know Your Children Are Growing Up When They Stop Asking You Where They Came From And Refuse To Tell You Where They're Going.

In The Wake Of Animal House, All Of Us At The Lampoon Had A Lot Of Hollywood Opportunities. We Could Definitely Get People To Return Phone Calls.

.......the Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By Redistribution Of Wealth. Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty, Taking Their Money And Giving It As A Reward To People Who Have Failed To Escape. Economic Leveling Doesn't Work. Whether We Call It Marxism, Progressive Reform, Or Clintonomics, The Result Is The Same Slide Into The Stygian Pit. Communists Worship Satan; Socialists Think Perdition Is A Good System Run By Bad Men; And Liberals Want Us To Go To Hell Because It's Warm There In The Winter.

If You're Doing A Column, You Kind Of Have To. Like In The Back Of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly Has To Find Something To Be Mad About. It's Not Really The Way I Approach Things.

Children From The Age Of Five To Ten Should Watch More Television. Television Depicts Adults As Rotten Sob's Given To Fistfights, Gunplay, And Other Mayhem. Kids Who Believe This About Grownups Aren't Likely To Argue About Bedtime.

There Was An Austerely Dignified Award Ceremony. By That I Mean We Had To Buy Our Own Drinks - In Clear Violation Of The International Journalists'code Of Truth, Fairness And An Open Bar.

Like Rick In Casablanca: "we'll Always Have Paris." When What We'll Always Have Is, Like, Brooklyn And Arguments About [lev] Trotsky.

Think About Last Time You Were Broke ... Now How Well Did It Go With Spending Your Way Out Of It? Did That Work?

You Know, If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal. Government Is A Health Hazard. Governments Have Killed Many More People Than Cigarettes Or Unbuckled Seat Belts Ever Have.

East Germany Was So Total In Its Totalitarianism That Everything Was Banned Which Wasn't Compulsory.

Health Care Is Too Expensive, So The Clinton Administration Is Putting A High-powered Coporate Lawyer - Hillary - In Charge Of Making It Cheaper. (this Is What I Always Do When I Want To Spend Less Money - Hire A Lawyer From Yale.) If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

The Real Alternative To Power Of The Rich Is Not Power Of The Poor. It's Just Plain Power.

A Careful Reading Of 50 Simple Things Leaves You Wondering Whether You're Going To Die From Environmental Disaster Or Intellectual Annoyance. Failing Either, You Can Worry Yourself To Death.

The Constitution Is An Equally Forthright Piece Of Work And Quite Succinct ... Giving The Complete Operating Instructions For A Nation Of 250 Million People. The Manual For A Toyota Camry, Which Only Seats Five, Is Four Times As Long.

What About Snipers?" I Once Asked Someone. He Said, "oh, Most Of The Snipers Have Automatic Weapon. They Arent Very Accurate.

Human Problems Are Complex. If Something Isn't Complex It Doesn't Qualify As Problematic. Very Simple Bad Things Are Not Worth Troubling Ourselves About.

Hunter S. Thompson And I Are Old Friends, But What We Do Is So Different. There Are Surface Similarities That Really Have To Do With Us Being Frustrated Poets.

We'll Run This Planet As We Please, And If You Don't Like It, Go Back Where We Came From.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

The Wise Traveler [to Beirut] Will Pack Shirts Or Blouses With Ample Breast Pockets. Reaching Inside A Jacket For Your Passport Looks Too Much Like Going For The Draw And Puts Armed Men Out Of Countinence

The Chinese Had Gunpowder, But It Didn't Occur To Them To Put It In A Gun. They Possessed The Compass But Didn't Go Anywhere. They Invented Paper, Printing, And A Written Form Of Their Language, But Hardly Anyone In China Was Taught To Read.

Now Majority Rule Is A Precious, Sacred Thing Worth Dying For. But Like Other Precious, Sacred Things .... It's Not Only Worth Dying For; It Can Make You Wish You Were Dead. Imagine If All Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza.

Wearing A Hat Implies That You Are Bald If You Are A Man And That Your Hair Is Dirty If You Are A Woman.

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

And Worrying Is Less Work Than Doing Something To Fix The Worry. This Is Especially True If We're Careful To Pick The Biggest Possible Problems To Worry About. Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Want To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

Then There Was Lsd, Which Was Supposed To Make You Think You Could Fly. I Remember It Made You Think You Couldn't Stand Up, And Mostly It Was Right.

Iraq's Invasion Of Kuwait Is A Case Of Bad Men Doing Wrong Things For Wicked Reasons. This Is The Full-sized Or Standard Purebred Evil And Is Easily Recognized Even By Moral Neophytes. Other Malignities-drugs In America, Famine In Africa And Everything In The Middle East-are More Complex. When Combating Those Evils People Sometimes Have Trouble Deciding Whom To Shoot.

There's Nothing More Oily And Cynical In Politics Than Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

There's A Lot Of Debate On This Subject - About What Kind Of Car Handles Best. Some Say A A Front-engined Car, Some Say A Rear-engined Car. I Say A Rented Car. Nothing Handles Better Than A Rented Car. You Can Go Faster, Turn Corners Sharper, And Put The Transmission Into Reverse While Going Forward At A Higher Rate Of Speed In A Rented Car Than In Any Other Kind.

Although Computer-generated Artificial Intelligence Eludes Us, Artificial Stupidity Has Been Perfected.

Smoking Is Very Bad For You And Should Only Be Done Because It Looks So Good. People Who Don't Smoke Have A Terrible Time Finding Something Polite To Do With Their Lips.

Keeping House Is As Unpleasant And Filthy As Coal Mining, And The Pay's A Lot Worse.

One Of The Annoying Things About Believing In Free Will And Individual Responsibility Is The Difficulty Of Finding Somebody To Blame Your Problems On. And When You Do Find Somebody, It's Remarkable How Often His Picture Turns Up On Your Driver's License.

The Founding Fathers, In Their Wisdom, Devised A Method By Which Our Republic Can Take One Hundred Of Its Most Prominent Numbskulls And Keep Them Out Of The Private Sector Where They Might Do Actual Harm.

Mankind Has Invested More Than Four Million Years Of Evolution In The Attempt To Avoid Physical Exertion. Now A Group Of Backward-thinking Atavists Mounted On Foot-powered Pairs Of Hula-hoops Would Have Us Pumping Our Legs, Gritting Our Teeth, And Searing Our Lungs As Though We Were Being Chased Across The Pleistocene Savanna By Saber-toothed Tigers. Think Of The Hopes, The Dreams, The Effort, The Brilliance, The Pure Force Of Will That, Over The Eons, Has Gone Into The Creation Of The Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Bicycle Riders Would Have Us Throw All This On The Ash Heap Of History.

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.'

That Happy Sense Of Purpose People Have When Standing Up For A Principle They Haven't Really Been Knocked Down For Yet.

There Are Artists With Palettes And Easels Selling The Kind Of Modern Art That Soviet Art Critics Used To Critique With Bulldozers. Judging By The Paintings I Saw, The Soviets Were Right The First Time.

I Always Thought There Was Some Romance To That '30s Leftist Stuff, Even Though I'm A Republican.

Seriously. It Was Running Out At Rolling Stone. First Of All, They Didn't Feel The Need For A Dissident Conservative Voice In A World Where Certain Conservative Aspects Had Become Intellectually Dominant. I Would Actually Argue Against That, But On The Surface Of It, In The [bill] Clinton Years The Market Economy Triumphed, Certain Libertarian Ideas Became Ordinary, And Certain Early-20th-century Ideas About Centralization Of Government And Economic Planning And Socialism With A Small "s" Had Obviously Gone Out The Window. The Cold War Was Over, Blah Blah Blah.

Bureaucrats Want Bigger Bureaus. Special Interests Are Interested In Whatever's Special To Them. These Two Groups Bring Great Pressure To Bear Upon Politicians Who Have Another Agenda Yet: To Cater To The Temporary Whims And Fads Of The Public And The Press.

I've Always Figured That If God Wanted Us To Go To Church A Lot He'd Have Given Us Bigger Behinds To Sit On And Smaller Heads To Think With.

There Are A Lot Of Mysterious Things About Boats, Such As Why Anyone Would Get On One Voluntarily.

Mysterious Things

What Would Annoy The Most People Most Often? That Is The True Left-wing Test Of Government Intervention.

The Number Of American Presidential Candidates Varies With The Sunspot Cycle And The Phases Of The Moon. Being A Republican, I'm Backing Hillary Clinton. Because She Could Lose. The Reason Is Not That She's A Woman. The Reason Is That She's The Particular Woman Who Taught The 4th Grade Class That Every Man In America Wished He Were Dead In. Hillary Clinton Is Lucy Holding The Football For Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton Is "america's Ex-wife."

In Theory, Taxes Should Be Like Shopping. What I Buy Is Government Services. What I Pay Are My Taxes.

People Are Always Angry At America. They're Absolutely Certain That America Either Caused Their Problems Or Is Deliberately Not Fixing Their Problems. But The Anger Is Always Directed At America And Never At Americans.

Southern California Is A Nice Place, If You Could Cut Out The Show-business Cancer. It Just Keeps Spreading.

You Don't Despair About Something Like The Middle East, You Just Do The Best You Can.

I Suspect The Soviets Never Did Want To Use Those Bombs. The Most Stalinist Of Soviet Hard-liners - Stalin, For Example - Must Have Realized A Nuclear War Would Be A Hard Thing To Clean Up After.

Passover Is My Idea Of A Perfect Holiday. Dear God, When You're Handing Out Plagues Of Darkness, Locusts, Hail, Boils, Flies, Lice, Frogs, And Cattle Murrain, And Turning The Nile To Blood, And Smiting Firstborn, Give Me A Pass, And Tell Me When It's Over.

From National Lampoon, You Go Directly To Saturday Night Live, Because It's A Lot Of The Same People.

No Humorist Is Under Any Obligation To Provide Answers And Probably If You Were To Delve Into The Literary History Of Humour It's Probably All About Not Providing Answers Because The Humorist Essentially Says: This Is The Way Things Are.

The Neo-hippie-dips, The Sentimentality-crazed Iguana Anthropomorphizers, The Chicken Littles, The Three-bong-hit William Blakes- Thank God These People Don't Actually Go Outdoors Much, Or The Environment Would Be Even Worse Than It Is Already.

The Inherent Purpose Of American Government Is Let People Seek Their Own Goals And To Encourage Them To Be Responsible On The Various Adventures They Have On Their Way To Those Goals, Good, Bad, And Otherwise.

Some People Are Worried About The Difference Between Right And Wrong. I'm Worried About The Difference Between Wrong And Fun.

Fashionably Amusing Table Manners Are A Matter Of Breaking The Right Rule At The Right Time.

The Day Was Warm And Clear. Kids Were Playing Soccer In The Parking Lots And Women Were Sunning Their Babies And Having Their Tea All Over The Lawns. The Scene Was Entirely Too Cheery For Journalism.

Adam Smith Pointed Out That There Were Three Things That Make Us More Prosperous, In A General Sort Of Way: Freedom To Pursue Our Own Self-interest; Specialization, Which He Called Division Of Labor; And Freedom Of Trade.

Division Of Labor

To Mistrust Science And Deny The Validity Of The Scientific Method Is To Resign Your Job As A Human. You'd Better Go Look For Work As A Plant Or Wild Animal.

Humor Is, By Its Nature, More Truthful Than Factual.

They Don't Like Anyone Who Isn't Korean, And They Don't Like Each Other All That Much, Either. They're Hardheaded, Hard-drinking, Tough Little Bastards, 'the Irish Of Asia'.

Good Manners Consist Of Doing Precisely What Everyone Thinks Should Be Done, Especially When No One Knows Quite What That Is.

Our Democracy, Our Culture, Our Whole Way Of Life Is A Spectacular Triumph Of The Blah. Why Not Have A Political Convention Without Politics To Nominate A Leader Who's Out In Front Of Nobody? Maybe Our National Mindlessness Is The Very Thing That Keeps Us From Turning Into One Of Those Smelly European Countries Full Of Pseudo-reds And Crypto-fascists And Greens Who Dress Like Forest Elves.

Dating Is The Social Engagement With The Threat Of Sex At Its Conclusion.

Whatever The Occasion, Do Not Neglect Alcohol. No Other Refreshment Will Do. Yes, Alcohol Kills Brain Cells, But It's Very Selective. It Only Kills The Brain Cells That Contain Good Sense, Shame, Embarrassment, And Restraint.

Actually, There Is No Way Of Making Vomiting Courteous. You Have To Do The Next Best Thing, Which Is To Vomit In Such A Way That The Story You Tell About It Later Will Be Amusing.

A Very Quiet And Tasteful Way To Be Famous Is To Have A Famous Relative. Then You Can Not Only Be Nothing, You Can Do Nothing Too.

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.

Women Are Successful In The Business World Because The Business World Was Created By Men. Men Are Babies. And Women Aregood With Kids.

Globalization Is Simply Opening The Free Marketplace To Encompass The Entire World.

Creative Writing Teachers Should Be Purged Until Every Last Instructor Who Has Uttered The Words 'write What You Know' Is Confined To A Labor Camp. Please, Talented Scribblers, Write What You Don't. The Blind Guy With The Funny Little Harp Who Composed The Iliad, How Much Combat Do You Think He Saw?

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.

When I Get In Deep Water, I Prefer To Announce That I'm In Over My Head.

If You Say A Modern Celebrity Is An Adulterer, A Pervert And A Drug Addict, All It Means Is That You've Read His Autobiography.

As A Result Of That, And As A Result Of Friendship, I Don't Think We've Ever Been Competitive. I Mean, There's Probably A Very Good Reason Hunter [s. Thompson] Isn't Jealous Of Me.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Is The Archetypal Extremely Smart Person Who Went Into Politics Anyway Instead Of Doing Something Worthwhile For His Country.

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Collectivists, To People Who Believe That Wealth Is Best Obtained By Redistribution, And That Message Is Clear And Concise . . . Egalitarianism Is Sinful; It's Also Cowardly.

Commies Love Concrete.

The U.s. Constitution Is Less Than A Quarter The Length Of The Owner's Manual For A 1998 Toyota Camry, And Yet It Has Managed To Keep 300 Million Of The World's Most Unruly, Passionate And Energetic People Safe, Prosperous And Free.

I Don't Think I'll Ever Be A Real Boat Reporter. My Rolex Isn't Big Enough.

You Can't Shame Or Humiliate Modern Celebrities. What Used To Be Called Shame And Humiliation Is Now Called Publicity.

Government Does Not Cause Affluence. Citizens Of Totalitarian Countries Have Plenty Of Government And Nothing Of Anything Else.

Zen Martini: A Martini With No Vermouth At All. And No Gin, Either.

I Couldn't Have Gotten Into Harvard With A Crowbar.

On Michael Moore Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

Government Usually Doesn't Work. It Doesn't Work Because It Is Political. People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs. The Difference Between The Political Process And An Honest Life Is The Difference Between Parading Around Waving Picket Signs While Hollering Catcalls In Front Of The White House And Getting Up In The Morning To Go Make A Living.

People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs.

To Grasp The True Meaning Of Socialism, Imagine A World Where Everything Is Designed By The Post Office, Even The Sleaze.

Pollution Is A Problem, And There's The Whole Problem Of The Spoiling Of The Commons, But We've Addressed The Pollution Problem On A Variety Of Different Levels In A Variety Of Ways, And It's Worked Pretty Well.

My Grandmother Wouldn't Even Speak The Word Democrat If There Were Children In The Room, She'd Say Bastards Instead.

Political Systems Are Run By Self-selecting Politicians. We Don't Draft People; It's Not Jury Duty.

The Australian Language Is Easier To Learn Than Boat Talk. It Has A Vocabulary Of About Six Words.

In Washington Journalists Can Afford To Live Almost As Well As People Who Work For A Living.

Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As Some Poeple That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

Some Jobs Are Worse Than Actual Wives. Ad Agency Vs. Matrimony, For Instance: Even The Most Capricious And Demanding Spouse Is Not Going To Divorce You For Refusing To Spend Forty Hours A Week Making Up Lies About Toilet Paper.

Anyone Who Thinks He Has A Better Idea Of What's Good For People Than People Do Is A Swine.

I'm Not Guaranteeing What We Come Up With Will Be Better For The Planet. There Is Ethanol, For Instance, Which Actually Nets Out With More Pollution At Greater Expense, And More Harm To The Environment Than Petroleum, But We'll Come Up With Something.

When I Left The Lampoon, I Went West To Try That Out, And Discovered That I Hated It.they Were Awful People Turning Out Awful Product .

Each Child Is Biologically Required To Have A Mother. Fatherhood Is A Well-regarded Theory, But Motherhood Is A Fact.

Predicting Innovation Is Something Of A Self-canceling Exercise: The Most Probable Innovations Are Probably The Least Innovative.

The Only Really Firm Rule Of Taste About Cross Dressing Is That Neither Sex Should Ever Wear Anything They Haven't Yet Figured Out How To Go To The Bathroom In.

Name Me, If You Can, A Better Feeling Than The One You Get When You've Half A Bottle Of Chivas In The Bag With A Gram Of Coke Up Your Nose And A Teenage Lovely Pulling Off Her Tube Top In The Next Seat Over While You're Doing A Hundred Miles An Hour In A Suburban Side Street.

I've Decided That My Motto In Life Is "get Off My Lawn." It's The Right Answer To Everything.

Ideology, Politics And Journalism, Which Luxuriate In Failure, Are Impotent In The Face Of Hope And Joy.

Most Of Us Had Never Seen A Sober Redneck Before, And We Have The Reagan Landslide To Testify That None Of Us Ever Wants To See One Again. It Was A Horrifying Apparition. And Ever Since Jimmy Carter, All Of Us Rednecks Have Had To Be Very Careful To Be Drunk Rednecks Lest We Turn Into Some Kind Of Awful Creature With Big Buck Teeth And A State Department Full Of Human-rights Yahoos.

This Going On And On About How Terrible A Carbon-based Economy Is, These People Are Full Of Crap. They Don't Know What They're Talking About. Their Motives Are Not Necessarily Good Just Because They Say They Are Being Good. It's Peace, Love, And Understanding. To Which I Can Just Say, "shut Up." Human Liberty, Rule Of Law, And Free Markets Fix This Stuff. It Isn't Necessary To Go Around Being The Mia Farrow Of The Ecosphere.

Adam Smith's Huge Failure Was The Fact That He Did Not Foresee The Industrial Revolution.

I'd Known The People At Rolling Stone For A While. I'd Gone To Them With A Piece I'd Done On Beirut For Vanity Fair That Vanity Fair Didn't Want To Publish, Because They Said I Was Making Fun Of Death... This Was Tina Brown.but They Paid Me For It. So I've Got This Big Chunk Of A Piece, And Rolling Stone Liked It, But They Thought It Was A Little Dated. But Then They Called Me Back And Asked Me To Do A Similar Piece About The Turks And Caicos Islands, Where The Whole Government Had Been Arrested For Dope Smuggling. That Was Fun.

I'm A Member Of The Working Press; You'd Think I'd Know Better Than To Listen To Journalists.

Politics Should Be Limited In Scope To Ware, Protection Of Property, And The Occasional Precautionary Beheading Of A Member Of The Ruling Class.

We're Told Cars Are Wasteful. Wasteful Of What? Oil Did A Lot Of Good Sitting In The Ground For Millions Of Years. We're Told Cars Should Be Replaced With Mass Transportation. But It's Hard To Reach The Drive-through Window At Mcdonald's From A Speeding Train. And We're Told Cars Cause Pollution. A Hundred 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?

Journalists Aren't Supposed To Praise Things. It's A Violation Of Work Rules Almost As Serious As Buying Drinks With Our Own Money Or Absolving The Cia Of Something.

I Suppose I Should Get A Vcr, But The Only Thing I Like About Television Is Its Ephemerality.

The Wonder Is That Communism Lasted So Long. But Then Again, Modern Poetry Lasted A Long Time, Too.

Finland Is A Rich Country. What Have They Got? They Got Nokia Phones And Plywood. How'd They Get So Rich? Because They're Free.

One Of The Problems With Being A Writer Is That All Of Your Idiocies Are Still In Print Somewhere. I Strongly Support Paper Recycling.

Cockfighting Has Always Been My Idea Of A Great Sport -- Two Armed Entrées Battling To See Who'll Be Dinner.

The Collegiate Idealists Who Fill The Ranks Of The Environmental Movement Seem Willing To Do Absolutely Anything To Save The Biosphere, Except Take Science Courses And Learn Something About It.

If We Do Our Deficit Spending On Weapons, At Least We Get Weapons. Then If We Need Weapons, We Have Them. If We Don't Need Them, No Harm Is Done.

You Can't Get Something For Nothing. Everybody Remembers This Except Politicians.

In General, Life Is Better Than It Has Ever Been, And If You Think That, In The Past, There Was Some Golden Age Of Pleasure And Plenty To Which You Would, If You Were Able, Transport Yourself, Let Me Say One Single Word : Dentistry.

Freedom Is Not Empowerment. Empowerment Is What The Serbs Have In Bosnia. Anybody Can Grab A Gun And Be Empowered. It's Not Entitlement. An Entitlement Is What People On Welfare Get, And How Free Are They? It's Not An Endlessly Expanding List Of Rights - The "right" To Education, The "right" To Food And Housing. That's Not Freedom, That's Dependency. Those Aren't Rights, Those Are The Rations Of Slavery - Hay And A Barn For Human Cattle.

In Japan People Drive On The Left. In China People Drive On The Right. In Vietnam It Doesn't Matter.

Everything That's Fun In Life Is Dangerous. Horse Races, For Instance, Are Very Dangerous. But Attempt To Design A Safe Horse And The Result Is A Cow ... It Is Impossible To Be Alive And Safe.

As I Get Older, All Sorts Of Things Become Less Funny. Once One Has Children, Any Cruelty Involving Children Becomes Far Less Amusing Than When One Was At The Mercy Of One's Friends' And Relatives' Children.

There's No Such Thing As A Trade Deficit.

Where Self-interest Is Violently Suppressed, It Is Replaced By A Burdensome System Of Bureaucratic Control Which Dries Up The Wellsprings Of Initiative And Creativity.

Never Fight An Inanimate Object.

In The End We Beat Them With Levi's 501 Jeans. Seventy-two Years Of Communist Indoctrination And Propaganda Was Drowned Out By A Three-ounce Sony Walkman. A Huge Totalitarian System...has Been Brought To Its Knees Because Nobody Wants To Wear Bulgarian Shoes. Now They're Lunch, And We're Number One On The Planet.

A U.s. Dollar Is An Iou From The Federal Reserve Bank. It's A Promissory Note That Doesn't Actually Promise Anything. It's Not Backed By Gold Or Silver.

I Had Really Not Been Out Of The United States Much, Except For Mexico. I Thought, "jesus Christ, This [russia] Is Like A Whole New World." Instead Of Writing Michael Jackson One-glove Jokes, All I Had To Do Was Go To These Weird Places And Keep My Eyes And Ears Open.

I Like Michael Moore, But I Think Of Him More As A Rabble-rouser.

Rich Parents Are Famous Both For Miserliness And Astonishing Longevity. And, When They Finally Do Die, You'll Find They've Left Their Estate In Inviolate Trust To The Golden Retrievers.

Golden Retrievers

The Democrats Planned To Fiddle While Rome Burned. The Republicans Were Going To Burn Rome, Then Fiddle.

Only One Way To Cover A Story Like This, And Make That A Double, Bartender, Please.

There's Nothing Inherently Lame About Electricity. I've Got A Basement Full Of Power Tools That All Operate With Electricity, And They're Manly Items. And When You See A Great Big Locomotive Hauling A Mile Of Freight Cars, That's A Hybrid. A Lot Of People Don't Understand That.

Making Fun Of Born-again Christians Is Like Hunting Dairy Cows With A High Powered Rifle And Scope.

If The Japanese Want To Be Taken Seriously As World Financial Powers, They'd Better Quit Using The Same Tailor As Variety Show Chimps.

When A Government Controls Both The Economic Power Of Individuals And The Coercive Power Of The State ... This Violates A Fundamental Rule Of Happy Living: Never Let The People With All The Money And The People With All The Guns Be The Same People.

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