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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.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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If I Do, I

P. J. O'Rourke

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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.

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Children Must Be Considered In A Divorce Considered Valuable Pawns In The Nasty Legal And Financial Contest That Is About To Ensue.

Industrialization Came To England But Has Since Left.

Industrialization

There Is That Kind Of Happiness. There Is The Love And Marriage And Family Kind Of Happiness, Which Is Exceedingly Boring To Describe But Nonetheless Is Important To Have And Dreadful Not To Have.

Love And Marriage

Summing It Up..."where's A Good Place For Dinner?" I Asked. "there's The Brasserie Lipp On The Avenue St. Germaine," She Said, "or La Coupole In Montmartre." "not La Coupole," I Said. "i've Been There Before. That's The Place That's Crowded And Noisy And Smells Bad And Everybody's Rude As Hell, Isn't It?" "i Think You Just Described France," She Said.

Who, Other Than A Crazy Person, Does Anything Besides Hang Up On A Robo-call? Any Call, Any Person, Anywhere, Under Any Circumstances.

Haitians Weren't Screwed-up, But Everything Political, Intellectual, And Material Around Them Is.

With The War In Iraq, I Had The Cooperation Of The Department Of Defense. Kuwait Was Pretty Eager To Get American Journalists In There, To Show Us What A Wonderful Place They Are, And What Great Allies They Are To America, Even Though They Didn't Actually Fight In The War.

I Started Reading Hunter S. Thompson When I Was In College.

Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin.

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.

At Epcot Center The Disney Corporation Has Focused Its Attention On Two Things Greatly In Need Of Disneyfication: The Tedious Future And The Annoying Whole Wide World.

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

Mind Your Own Business

Intelligence Collection Has Been Given An Additional Bureaucracy To Correct The Problems Created By Too Much Bureaucracy In Intelligence Collection.

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

Never Steal Anything So Small That You'll Have To Go To An Unpleasant City Jail For It Instead Of A Minimum-security Federal Tennis Prison.

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

How Much Fame, Money And Power Does A Woman Have To Achieve On Her Own Before You Can Punch Her In The Face?

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

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

West Germans Are Tall, Pink, Pert And Orthodontically Corrected, With Hands, Teeth And Hair As Clean As Their Clothes And Clothes As Sharp As Their Looks. Except For The Fact That They All Speak English Pretty Well, They're Indistinguishable From Americans.

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.

Even Very Young Children Need To Be Informed About Dying. Explain The Concept Of Death Very Carefully To Your Child. This Will Make Threatening Him With It Much More Effective.

Liberalism Is Just Communism Sold By The Drink.

I Figured If I Could Put Together Being Funny About Stuff And Actual Events, Maybe I Could Do Something That Wasn't Being Done Much. Because The Reporters That I Met Out There Were Funny, And They Had Hilarious Stories That Just Didn't Fit In The Ap/upi/new York Times Foreign-correspondent Style. They Couldn't Use The Things They Had. But I Could.

There Are Plenty Of Problems In The World, And Doubtless Climate Change - Or Whatever The Currently Voguish Phrase For It All Is - Certainly Is One Of Them. But It's Low On My List.

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.

Feeling Good About Government Is Like Looking On The Bright Side Of Any Catastrophe. When You Quit Looking On The Bright Side, The Catastrophe Is Still There.

Very Little Is Known Of The Canadian Country Since It Is Rarely Visited By Anyone But The Queen And Illiterate Sport Fishermen.

Gossip Is What You Say About The Objects Of Flattery When They Aren't Present.

The French Are A Smallish, Monkey-looking Bunch And Not Dressed Any Better, On Average, Than The Citizens Of Baltimore. True, You Can Sit Outside In Paris And Drink Little Cups Of Coffee, But Why This Is More Stylish Than Sitting Inside And Drinking Large Glasses Of Whiskey I Don't Know.

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

Marijuana Is Self-punishing. It Makes You Acutely Sensitive, And In This World, What Worse Punishment Could There Be?

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

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

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.

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.

It Doesn't Matter How Many Televisions And Computers And Pieces Of Stereo Equipment The Chinese Send To Us, Even If They're Sending Them To Us Only In Return For Some Funny, Little, Green Pieces Of Paper. That Is A Balanced Trade. They Got What They Wanted: The Green Pieces Of Paper. We Got What We Wanted: The Plush Toys, The Computers, The Stereo Components.

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

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.

In Case We Have To Shoot Democrats. It Happened During The Civil War, And It Could Happen Again.

In The Third World, Honk Your Horn Only Under The Following Circumstances: 1. When Anything Blocks The Road. 2. When Anything Doesn't. 3. When Anything Might. 4. At Red Lights. 5. At Green Lights. 6. At All Other Times.

Positive Rights Are The Right To Shelter, The Right To Education, The Right To Health Care, The Right To A Living Wage. These Things Are - These Are, I Would Call Them, More Properly, Political Rights Rather Than Positive Rights. And They Are Extremely Tricky, Because Now We Are Dealing With Things That Are Zero Sum.

Neither Conservatives Nor Humorists Believe Man Is Good. But Left-wingers Do.

The Good News Is That, According To The Obama Administration, The Rich Will Pay For Everything. The Bad News Is That, According To The Obama Administration, You're Rich.

The Main Reason To Be Opposed To Political Control Of Smoking Is To Keep Power -even The Smallest And Silliest Kind Of Power - Out Of The Hands Of ... Members Of A Dangerous Class -the Class That Knows What's Good For Us Better Than We Do.

Ann Coulter To Me Is Someone Who Says Things That I Say All The Time, But I Say Them At Three In The Morning When I'm Drunk As A Monkey. She Says Them At Three In The Afternoon Stone Sober In Bright Daylight.

I Went Back To Bumming Around New York, Writing Freelance Stuff For Car & Driver And Such.

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.

God Has No Role To Play In Politics Except To Make Sure Politicians Go Where They Belong. To Hell.

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.'

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

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now. You've Probably Never Woken Up Early On A Winter Morning To The Acid Stink Of Coal Smoke In The Air, Which Was Everywhere When I Was A Little Kid. My Grade School Was Heated With Coal. Not Only Was Coal Used To Generate Electricity, It Was Without Any Scrubbers In The Stacks.

It Is Very Hard Now To Shock People Into Thinking About Government Regulation And The Extent Of Government Involvement In Life.

I Think It's Been Hard For People To Understand How Islam Can Be A Good Religion, And Yet The Islamists Are Evil. Those Of Us Who Have Had Experience With Islam Understand This, Just As We Understand The Difference Between Snake Handlers And People Going To Church On Sunday Morning.

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

Michael O'donoghue Was A Very Close Friend Of Mine - Very Encouraging With My Stuff, And Really A Great Guy - But He Was A No-kidding Difficult Person.

Microeconomics Is About Money You Don't Have, And Macroeconomics Is About Money The Government Is Out Of.

America Is Not A Wily, Sneaky Nation. We Don't Think That Way. We Don't Think Much At All, Thank God. Start Thinking And Pretty Soon You Get Ideas, And Then You Get Idealism, And The Next Thing You Know You've Got Ideology, With Millions Dead In Concentration Camps And Gulags.

When I Became A Man, I Put Away Childish Things And Got More Elaborate And Expensive Childish Things From France And Japan.

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.

People Have A Right To My Food, A Right To My Housing, And A Right To My Good Job For My Decent Pay.

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

Telling The Truth

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now.

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.

If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

In Comparative Terms, There's No Poverty In America By A Long Shot. Heritage Foundation Political Scientist Robert Rector Has Worked Up Figures Showing That When The Official U.s. Measure Of Poverty Was Developed In 1963, A Poor American Family Had An Income Twenty-nine Times Greater Than The Average Per Capita Income In The Rest Of The World. An Individual American Could Make More Money Than 93 Percent Of The Other People On The Planet And Still Be Considered Poor.

I Think In The [bill] Clinton Era, If People Hadn't Been Spending Vast Amounts Of Time Attacking Clinton, They Would Have Found That They Had Essentially The Same Problems As They Do Now.

We Had A Choice Between Democrats Who Couldn't Learn From The Past And Republicans Who Couldn't Stop Living In It.

The Lampoon Started In 1970, And I Began Writing Freelance For Them Around The End Of 1971, And Then All Through '72. They Hired Me In '73, And I Left Early In '81. I Did Everything From Low Puns To Being Editor-in-chief.

.......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.

Vegetables Are Something God Invented To Let Women Get Even With Their Children.

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

We Have No One To Blame For The Kennedys But Ourselves. We Took The Kennedys To Heart Of Our Own Accord. And It Is My Opinion That We Did It Not Because We Respected Them Or Thought What They Proposed Was Good, But Because They Were Pretty. We, The Electorate, Were Smitten By This Handsome, Vivacious Family. . . . We Wanted To Hug Their Golden Tousled Heads To Our Dumpy Breasts.

The Body Is Forever Teaching Us Lessons. There Are All Sorts Of Things That We Can't Do, Shouldn't Do, Had Better Not Do Very Often Or Do For Too Long As We Get Older. The Body Makes Its Presence Known.

When A Private Entity Does Not Produce The Desired Results, It Is (certain Body Parts Excepted) Done Away With. But A Public Entity Gets Bigger.

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

It Is A Law Of Governance That Democracies Have To Spend Themselves Dizzy. Citizens Of Democracies Can, After All, Tell Their Government To Give Them Things.

Democracies Have

Armenians And Azerbaijanis In Stepanakert, Capital Of The Nagorno-karabakh Autonomous Region, Rioted Over Much Needed Spelling Reform In The Soviet Union.

Soldiers Are Not Policemen, And It's Very Unfair, Even For Those Soldiers Who Have Some Police Training, To Burden Them With Police Duties. It's Not What They're Trained For, Or Equipped For.

Those Who Do Not Know History Are Probably Also Not Doing Well In English Or Math. P.j. O'rourke

Coffee And Cigarettes Are Much Better If You Want An Instant Breakfast.

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

Basic Human Rights

Republicans Are The Party That Says Government Doesn't Work, And Then They Get Elected And Prove It.

For Toddlers I Suggest Leaving Their Mittens On Year-round, Indoors And Out. That Way They Can't Get Into Aspirin Bottles, Liquor Cabinets, Or Boxes Of Kitchen Matches.

When Buying And Selling Are Controlled By Legislation, The First Things To Be Bought And Sold Are Legislators.

Funny Inspirational

Good Manners Can Replace Morals. It May Be Years Before Anyone Knows If What You Are Doing Is Right. But If What You Are Doing Is Nice, It Will Be Immediately Evident.

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.

The Average Iq In America Is—and This Can Be Proven Mathematically—average.

One Nice Thing About The Third World, You Don't Have To Fasten Your Seat Belt. (or Stop Smoking. Or Cut Down On Saturated Fats.) It Takes A Lot Off Your Mind When Average Life Expectancy Is Forty-five Minutes.

Smoking Crack Is A Way For People Who Couldn't Afford College To Study The Works Of Charles Darwin.

I Don't Watch Much Television. Yeah, That's Pretty Funny. I Don't Know Where The Daily Show Stand Politically, Do You?

Off They Go On This Sort Of Camping Trip To Iwo Jima, Where They're Taken Around And Shown Where All The Battles Took Place. It's Very Moving. Disgusting Little Island, Though. Still An Active Volcano. Stinks Of Sulfur. There Are Dead Japanese Everywhere Under That Island. It's Icky. But I Knew I Would Never Have Another Chance To Go, So I Took The Job.

Lampoon Was Exactly The Opposite. The Work Was A Lot Of Fun, But The Office Environment Was Hell. You Cannot Put 20 Humorists Together.

A Nation With A Goofy Foreign Policy Needs A Very Serious Policy Of Defense.

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

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

It Is Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Pet. People Like Pets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do. Cats Are Irresponsible And Recognize No Authority, Yet Are Completely Dependent On Others For Their Material Needs. Cats Cannot Be Made To Do Anything Useful. Cats Are Mean For The Fun Of It. In Fact, Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As People That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

There Was Also A Hunger Strike In Front Of The National Press Club, Which Seemed An Odd Place To Have A Hunger Strike (a Cocktail Fast, Maybe). Although The Bangladeshis Were Savvy Enough To Know To Know That If You're Going To Pester Journalists, Don't Go To Where They Work: You'll Never Find Them There.

If You Get Outside The World Of Show Business And Its Satellites, There's A Whole World Of Car Nuts In The Los Angeles Area.

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.

And, By The Way, How Come All The People Who Were So In Favor Of Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Are So Opposed To Unilateral Protection Against Nukes?

Nuclear Disarmament

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

With Epcot Center, The Disney Corporation Has Accomplished Something I Didn't Think Possible In Today's World. They Have Created A Land Of Make-believe That's Worse Than Regular Life.

Remember That All Tax Revenue Is The Result Of Holding A Gun To Somebody's Head. Not Paying Taxes Is Against The Law. If You Don't Pay Your Taxes, You'll Be Fined. If You Don't Pay The Fine, You'll Be Jailed. If You Try To Escape From Jail, You'll Be Shot. ... Therefore, Every Time The Government Spends Money On Anything, You Have To Ask Yourself, 'would I Kill My Kindly, Gray-haired Mother For This?'

[friedrich] Hayek Is Not Protesting That Things Like Child Labor And Stuff Are Good. He's Just Trying To Show That When Government Undertakes To Make Everything Good For Everybody, This Is What Happens. And He Addresses It To Socialists Of All Parties.

Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy, The Whores Are Us.

Democracies Have

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.

A Humorist Doesn't Really Do That Much Note-taking.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

[kurt] Vonnegut Once Said, If You Ever Want To Know Who Somebody Is... Like You Look At Richard Nixon, Or Adolf Hitler, Or Ralph Nader, Or Anybody Who Seems Like A Difficult Person To Understand, And Is Therefore Not Part Of The Pattern Of Human Behavior. Think About Who They Were In High School, And They Will Explain Themselves To You. So We Got A Hold Of, Like, 50 High-school Yearbooks, Including My Mom's From 1925 Or Something, And We Discovered That They're All The Same.

I Buy A Tractor Two Years Ago, And Four-fifths Of The Tractor Manual Is About Not Tipping Over, Not Raising The Bucket High Enough To Hit High-tension Wire... Not Killing Yourself, Basically. And In That Manual, I Found Out - And It Cost Me A Thousand Dollars - That When The Tractor Is New, 10 Hours Into Use Of The Tractor, You Have To Re-torque The Lug Nuts. If You Don't, You Will Oval The Holes. This Is Buried Between The Moron Warnings. I Never Found It. I Take The Tractor In For Its Regular Servicing, And They Say My Wheels Are Gone. How Am I Supposed To Know That? "it's In The Manual."

The French Are Sawed-off Sissies Who Eat Snails And Slugs And Cheese That Smells Like People's Feet. Utter Cowards Who Force Their Own Children To Drink Wine, They Gibber Like Baboons Even When You Try To Speak To Them In Their Own Wimpy Language.

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

Journalists Are Notoriously Easy To Kid. All You Have To Do Is Speak To A Journalist In A Very Serious Tone Of Voice, And He Will Be Certain That You Are Either Telling The Truth Or A Big, Important Lie.

People Are All Exactly Alike. There's No Such Thing As A Race And Barely Such A Thing As An Ethnic Group. If We Were Dogs, We'd Be The Same Breed. George Bush And An Australian Aborigine Have Fewer Differences Than A Lhasa Apso And A Toy Fox Terrier. A Japanese Raised In Riyadh Would Be An Arab. A Zulu Raised In New Rochelle Would Be An Orthodontist. People Are All The Same, Though Their Circumstances Differ Terribly.

In England, All The English Car Companies Were Beginning To Circle The Drain In A Series Of Well-deserved Failures And Bankruptcies, Earned By Making Lousy Products With Very Poor Production At High Prices. So, The Government, Back In The '70s, Nationalized All The British Car Companies. The Result Was British Leyland, A Name That Perhaps Doesn't Resonate Much With You.

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.

At The Core Of Liberalism Is The Spoiled Child — Miserable, As All Spoiled Children Are, Unsatisfied, Demanding, Ill-disciplined, Despotic And Useless. Liberalism Is A Philosophy Of Sniveling Brats.

Visiting Future World Is Like Opening A Chinese Fortune Cookie To Read, "soon You'll Be Finished With Dinner."

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.

Some People Are Better Imagined In One's Bed Than Found There In The Morning.

There Is Only One Basic Human Right: The Right To Do As You Please, Without Causing Others Harm. With It Comes Our Only Basic Human Duty: The Duty To Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

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.

I Have Three Children And Three Dogs. You Put Them In A Prius, You Know? People Who Have A Prius Obviously Have No Life! No Wife, No Kids, No Pets - There's No Room In There For Anything!

Commies Love Concrete.

The Very Existence Of The Bicycle Is An Offense To Reason And Wisdom.

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

I Was Managing Editor For A While [in National Lampoon ], And It Does Cause Business Problems When Your Circulation Goes Up.

I Try To Only Ridicule People Who's Efforts Are Sincere. Very Little Trouble Has Been Caused In The World By Insincere Efforts. An Occasional Seduction Maybe. There Were Very Few Insincere Stalinists Or Nazis.

[wave Of Bestselling Conservative Commentators] It's Kind Of Like Reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, Or Any Other Advice Or How-to Book. All They Do Is Reassure People Of Their Basic Opinions, And Then They Can Continue To Act Like They've Always Acted. I'd Say It's Time To Move On To Something Else, But I Don't Know What It Would Be.

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.

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.

A Good Bachelor Drinks His Dessert (and Sometimes The Rest Of His Meals). A Sweet Tooth Is A Danger Signal That You're Getting Too Much Exercise And Not Enough Cocktails.

Never Be Unfaithful To A Lover, Except With Your Wife.

If The Wind Is Blowing Like Stink And Everything Is Working Right, A Twelve-meter Sailboat Can Go Eleven And A Half Or Twelve Miles An Hour, The Same Speed At Which A Bond Lawyer Runs Around The Cental Park Reservoir.

A Firm, Hearty Handshake Gives A Good First Impression, And You'll Never Be Forgiven If You Don't Live Up To It.

First Impression

The Free Market Is Ugly And Stupid, Like Going To The Mall; The Unfree Market Is Just As Ugly And Just As Stupid, Except There Is Nothing In The Mall And If You Don't Go There They Shoot You.

Happy Hour Is Slightly Different In The Soviet Union. There Are No Ice Cubes Or Orange-peel Twists In The Vodka. Also, It Lasts All Day.

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.

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

There Is One Thing Women Can Never Take Away From Men. We Die Sooner.

The Sky Was So Clear That The Starlight Cast Shadows, And So Many Sparkles And Glitters And Glints Appeared Above Us That It Looked Like Something Really Expensive Had Been Dropped And Shattered In Heaven - God's Steuben Ashtray, Maybe.

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.

Italy Is Not Technically Part Of The Third World, But No One Has Told The Italians.

Feminism Is The Result Of A Few Ignorant And Literal-minded Women Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag About Which Is The Superior Sex. Once Women Made It Public That They Could Do Things Better Than Men, They Were, Of Course, Forced To Do Them.

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

There's Such A Self-conscious Balance That Goes Into Television. Also, These Are Not People That Think Things Through.

You'll Note That Politicians No Longer Spend Money, They Invest It. Don't Worry About Paying More To The [irs]. You Aren't Being Taxed; You're Taking A Plunge On A Fly-by-night Stock Issue.

Everybody Knows How To Raise Children, Except The People Who Have Them.

I'm 61 Years Old. I'm Not That Fearful Of The Future, Period. I'm Not Going To See That Much Of It.

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

What Use Is It To Endure The Dutch Rubs And Indian Rope Burns That Are Politics If You Can't Obtain Mastery Over People And Give Them Noogies Back?

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.

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

In The American Political System, You're Only Allowed To Have Real Ideas If It's Absolutely Guaranteed That You Can't Win An Election

Never Serve Oysters In A Month That Has No Paycheck In It.

There Is No Virtue In Compulsory Government Charity, And There Is No Virtue In Advocating It. A Politician Who Portrays Himself As "caring" And "sensitive" Because He Wants To Expand The Government's Charitable Programs Is Merely Saying That He's Willing To Try To Do Good With Other People's Money. Well, Who Isn't? And A Voter Who Takes Pride In Supporting Such Programs Is Telling Us That He'll Do Good With His Own Money - If A Gun Is Held To His Head.

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.

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

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

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.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look. It Works In Reverse, Too. When I See A Kid With Three Or Four Rings In His Nose, I Know There Is Absolutely Nothing Extraordinary About That Person.

In The Past A Man Was Expected To Give His Seat On A Bus To A Woman. Today It Would Be Much More Courteous For That Man To Give Her His Job.

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.

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.

We Like To Pile Language On Language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] Was An Influence On Me, No Doubt About It.

Nobody Likes Insurance Companies, Especially Health Insurance Companies.

Insurance Companies

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.

It's The Squares Who Know How To Fly The Fighter Planes And Operate The Missiles And The Bombs And Work The M-16s. Liberals Would Still Be Fumbling With The Federally Mandated Trigger Locks.

The Arab Peoples Possess An Ancient And Highly Developed Civilization That Is In Many Ways More Sophisticated Than Our Own. For Instance, They Invented Algebra. And This Is Why We Have To Go To War With Saddam Hussein This Minute And Bomb The Shish Kebab Out Of Him Before He Invents Trig And Chemistry And The Whole Of America Flunks High School.

We Also Have A Lot Of The Same Influences - We Both Read A Lot Of The Beatniks. And Yet What We Actually Do Is Almost Exactly The Opposite. His [ Hunter S. Thompson] Political Stuff Is Just Wonderful, But Basically Nothing Happens.

You Read [bill ] Maher's Book, And He Didn't Take Econ 101. All His Arguments About Gasoline, It's Not That They're Right Or Wrong - They're Just Not Informed.

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

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

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.

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

There Is A Fine Line In The Third World Between Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe And Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe So They Can Throw You In Jail.

The Whole Idea Of Our Government Is This: If Enough People Get Together And Act In Concert, They Can Take Something And Not Pay For It.

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.

Lampoon Was A Very Collegial Operation, Though "collegial" Usually Means "friendly" And It Wasn't That Friendly. But We Were Tight, Like A Family.

It Takes A Lot Of Weapons To Do Good Works (as Richard The Lionhearted Could Have Told Us). And This Is Not Just A Somali Problem. We Have Poverty And Deprivation In Our Own Country. Try Standing Unarmed On A Street Corner In Compton Handing Out Twenty-dollar Bills And See How Long You Last.

Then There's Politics. Just Imagine Politics With Its Dumbbell Element Subtracted. There Would Be No Republican Candidates. There Would Be No Democratic Voters. The Whole System Would Collapse.

I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

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

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

Government Conspiracy? They Can't Even Deliver Our Mail And It's Got Our Address On It And Everything!

Newsmen Believe That News Is A Tacitly Acknowledged Fourth Branch Of The Federal System. This Is Why Most News About Government Sounds As If It Were Federally Mandated -- Serious, Bulky And Blandly Worthwhile, Like A High-fiber Diet Set In Type.

Humor Is A Terrific Tool For Explaining Things, Especially When What You're Explaining Is Frightening Or Dull And Complicated.

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

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 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.

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

When A Couple Decides To Divorce, They Should Inform Both Sets Of Parents Before Having A Party And Telling All Their Friends. This Is Not Only Courteous But Practical. Parents May Be Very Willing To Pitch In With Comments, Criticism, And Malicious Gossip Of Their Own To Help The Divorce Along.

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

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 View.

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

One Of The Things That Makes Me A Conservative, Or A Libertarian, Or Whatever The Heck It Is That I Am - A Person Who Doesn't Much Like Big Government - Is That I Do Not Like The Concentration Of The Power.

Who Does Bill Clinton Think Got Off The Boat And Stepped On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers?

Something That Comes To Us, Some Gym Shoe That Comes To Us As A Result Of Child Labor From A Brutal Dictatorship, Where People Do Not Have Basic Freedoms, It Wouldn't Bug Me To Tax The Living Dickens Out Of That Thing Or Even To Forbid Its Importation Whatsoever. But That's A Moral Question, Not An Economic Question.

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