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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.'

-P. J. O'Rourke

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The Greenpeace Booth At

P. J. O'Rourke

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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.'

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More From P. J. O'Rourke

[t]he Clinton Administration Launched An Attack On People In Texas Because Those People Were Religious Nuts With Guns. Hell, This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns. Who Does Bill Clinton Think Stepped Ashore On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers? Or Maybe The People In Texas Were Attacked Because Of Child Abuse. But, If Child Abuse Was The Issue, Why Didn't Janet Reno Tear-gas Woody Allen?

There's A Certain Kind Of Behavior In The Arab World That, To Me, Resembles The Way Young Men Behave When There Is No Significant Influence From Women In Their Lives.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Longa As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

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.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look.

African Famine Is Not A Visitation Of Fate. It Is Largely Man-made, And The Men Who Made It Are Largely Africans.

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Egalitarians, To People Obsessed With Fairness, To American Presidential Candidates In The Year 2000 - To Everyone Who Believes That Wealth Should Be Redistributed. And That Message Is Clear And Concise: Go To Hell.

There Are A Number Of Mechanical Devices Which Increase Sexual Arousal, Particularly In Women. Chief Among These Is The Mercedes-benz 380sl Convertible.

Politics Doesn't Work. Look At The Parts Of America Where Government Has Had The Most Power, Where Government Has Spent The Most Money. Look At The Housing Projects We've Got The Poor People In.

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

So-called Western Civilization, As Practised In Half Of Europe, Some Of Asia And A Few Parts Of North America, Is Better Than Anything Else Available. Western Civilization Not Only Provides A Bit Of Life, A Pinch Of Liberty And The Occasional Pursuance Of Happiness, It's Also The Only Thing That's Ever Tried To. Our Civilization Is The First In History To Show Even The Slightest Concern For Average, Undistinguished, None-too-commendable People Like Us.

Anyway, No Drug, Not Even Alcohol, Causes The Fundamental Ills Of Society. If We're Looking For The Source Of Our Troubles, We Shouldn't Test People For Drugs, We Should Test Them For Stupidity, Ignorance, Greed And Love Of Power.

Christmas Begins About The First Of December With An Office Party And Ends When You Finally Realize What You Spent, Around April Fifteenth Of The Next Year.

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.

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

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.

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

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

It Had Never Occurred To Us That The Kremlin's New Anti-booze Campaign Would Apply To Journalists. Now, That's A Human-rights Violation.

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

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

I Like The Fact That They Still Run Substantive Pieces. I'm Not Sure I Like The Pieces, But It's Nice That They Do That. Anyway, It Was Always Sort Of Ridiculous, Me Having Anything To Do With The Youth Culture, But Now That I'm In My 50s, It's Extra-double-ridiculous. They Were Losing Interest In Me, And I Was Losing Interest In Them. When I Went To Renegotiate My Contract At Rolling Stone, I Kind Of Halfheartedly Asked If I Could Do Half The Work For Half The Money, And They Asked If I Could Do Two-thirds Of The Work For Half The Money. I Ran That By My Agent, Since He Can Do Math.

We Are A Nation That Worships Speed And Power. And For Good Reason. Without Power We Would Still Be Part Of England And Everybody Would Be Out Of Work... Bicycles Are Too Slow And Impuissant For A Nation Like Ours. They Belong In Czechoslovakia.

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.

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

It Was To Be A Short Visit For The G-shevs. More Than Four Days In The U.s. And Raisa's Visa Card Bill Would Shatter The Fragile Soviet Economy.

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.

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.

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

The Real Truth About Children Is They Don't Speak The Language Very Well. They're Physically Uncoordinated. And They Are Ignorant Of Our Elaborate Ideas About Right And Wrong.

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.

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

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.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

Any Person Who Has Spent Time Outdoors Actually Doing Something, Such As Hunting And Fishing As Opposed To Standing There With A Doobie In His Mouth, Knows Nature Is Not Intrinsically Healthy.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

I Am A Journalist And, Under The Modern Journalist's Code Of Olympian Objectivity (and Total Purity Of Motive), I Am Absolved Of Responsibility. We Journalists Don't Have To Step On Roaches. All We Have To Do Is Turn On The Kitchen Light And Watch The Critters Scurry.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Commies Are The Only People On Earth Who Think Star Wars Will Work. If They're That Gullible, Maybe We Should Have Held The Summit At Atlantic City And Let Them Lose All Their Missiles Playing Keno.

Men Generally Pay For All Expenses On A Date ... Either Sex, However, May Bring A Little Gift, Its Value To Be Determined By The Bizarrness Of The Sexual Request To Be Made Later That Evening.

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

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.

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

Bill Maher Can Be Pretty Good, Except When He Gets "important." Maher's All Over The Place Politically.

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

People Think The Free Market Is A Philosophy, They Think That It Is A Creed. It Is None Of Those Things. Free Market Is A Bathroom Scale, It Is A Measuring Tape, It's Simply A Measurement.

I Do Have To Travel A Lot For Speaking Engagements.

Never Refuse Wine. It Is An Odd But Universally Held Opinion That Anyone Who Doesn't Drink Must Be An Alcoholic.

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 .

Cats Are To Dogs What Modern People Are To The People We Used To Have. Cats Are Slimmer, Cleaner, More Attractive, Disloyal, And Lazy. It's Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Poet. People Like Poets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do.

Abstract Anger Is Great For Rhetorical Carrying On. You Can Go On Endlessly About The Post Office, But It Doesn't Mean You're Mad At Your Mailman.

This Country Is So Urbanized We Think Low-fat Milk Comes From Cows On Nutri/system Weight-loss Plans.

There Isn't Much Room For An Outsider Point Of View In Print Any More.

Because Of Their Cuisine, Germans Don't Consider Farting Rude. They'd Certainly Be Out Of Luck If They Did.

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.

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

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

Remember, Your Body Needs 6 To 8 Glasses Of Fluid Daily. Straight Up Or On The Rocks.

Cleanliness Becomes More Important When Godliness Is Unlikely.

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

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.

I Can Think Of A Number Of Areas In New York Where Three Acres Of Nuclear Waste Would Make The Neighborhood Safer To Walk Around In Than It Is Now, And Better Lit.

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

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."

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

There's A Whiff Of The Lynch Mob Or The Lemming Migration About Any Overlarge Concentration Of Like-thinking Individuals, No Matter How Virtuous Their Cause.

Civilization Is An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof.

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

Australia Is Not Very Exclusive. On The Visa Application They Still Ask If You've Been Convicted Of A Felony - Although They Are Willing To Give You A Visa Even If You Haven't Been.

These Were People Who Believed Everything About The Soviet Union Was Perfect, But They Were Bringing Their Own Toilet Paper.

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.

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.'

I Arrived In The Middle Of A Press Conference - As Boring A Thing To Sit Through If You Don't Know The Language As It Is If You Do.

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.

That Doesn't Mean That You Should Just Sit Back And Just Let Accidents Happen To You. No, You Have To Go Out And Cause Them Yourself. That Way You're In Control Of The Situation.

Liberals Have A Quaint And Touching Faith That Truth Is On Their Side And An Even Quainter Faith That Journalists Are On The Side Of Truth.

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything That's Fun In Life Is Dangerous. And Everything That Isn't Fun Is Dangerous Too. It's Impossible To Be Alive And Safe.

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.

The Purpose Of The Senate Is To Keep 100 Middle Aged Knuckleheads Out Of The Private Sector Where They Can Do Real Harm.

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

When [george W.] Bush Was Elected, I Think They Thought I Would Have Some Sort Of Special "in" With That Administration, To Provide Some Sort Of Inside Poop. Which Is Not Something I'd Be Interested In Doing, And Anyway, I Didn't. I Actually Knew More People In His Dad's Administration. So It Was Obviously Winding Down At Rolling Stone, And They Were Having Financial Troubles, Too. They Weren't Getting The Advertising, And The Issues Were Getting Thin. They Fired Bob Love, Who'd Been My Editor There For A Long Time.

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

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

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

When A Thing Defies Physical Law, There's Usually Politics Involved.

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

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.

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

Basic Human Rights

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?

It Was Ronald Reagan Who Used To Say That The 10 Most Frightening Words In The English Language Are, "i'm From The Federal Government, And I'm Here To Help."

When Politics Are Used To Allocate Resources, The Resources All End Up Being Allocated To Politics.

The Mystery Of Government Is Not How Washington Works But How To Make It Stop.

In Western Australia They Don't Even Know How To Make That Vital Piece Of Sailboating Equipment, The Gin And Tonic.

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.

Apparently Bolivia Is The Key Source Of Lithium In The World. So We're Gonna Trade The Saudis For The Bolivians.

I Think Michael O'donoghue Felt He'd Said What He Wanted To Say. In Fact, Nobody Thought We Could Spin It Out Long Enough To Make A Book.

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.

There's Something About Marxism That Brings Out Warts; The Only Kind Of Growth This Economic System Encourages.

Everything On A Boat Has A Different Name Than It Would Have If It Weren't On A Boat. Either This Is Ancient Seafaring Tradition Or It's How People Who Mess Around With Boats Try To Impress The Rest Of Us Who Actually Finished College.

The American Political System Is Like Fast Food - Mushy, Insipid, Made Out Of Disgusting Parts Of Things And Everybody Wants Some.

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.

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

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

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

Imagine If All Of Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza. Every Pair Of Pants, Even Those In A Brooks Brothers Suit, Would Be Stone-washed Denim. Celebrity Diet And Exercise Books Would Be The Only Thing On The Shelves At The Library. And - Since Women Are A Majority Of The Population - We'd All Be Married To Mel Gibson.

Every Pleasure You Forgoe On Earth Is A Pleasure You Won't Get In Heaven.

It Is A Popular Delusion That The Government Wastes Vast Amounts Of Money Through Inefficiency And Sloth. Enormous Effort And Elaborate Planning Are Required To Waste This Much Money.

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

Mysterious Things

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

Your Money Does Not Cause My Poverty. Refusal To Believe This Is At The Bottom Of Most Bad Economic Thinking.

This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns.

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Fortunately, I'm Married To Someone Who's A Pretty Excellent Parent!

Farm Policy, Although It's Complex, Can Be Explained. What It Can't Be Is Believed. No Cheating Spouse, No Teen With A Wrecked Family Car, No Mayor Of Washington, D.c., Videotaped In Flagrante Delicto Has Ever Come Up With Anything As Farfetched As U.s. Farm Policy.

Taxi Drivers All Over The World, By The Way, Are Under Newspaper Guild Contract To Give Easy Quotes To Foreign Correspondents.

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.

No One Has Ever Had A Fantasy About Being Tied To A Bed And Sexually Ravished By Someone Dressed As A Liberal

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.

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.

Finally, One Night We Were Smoking Pot [with Michael O'donoghue] And Talking About The People That Are Invariably In High School, Whether You Go To Prep School Or Public School Or Ghetto School Or Rich Suburban School. And Actually, It Spun Off From A Kurt Vonnegut Quote.

Rich White Protestant Men Have Held On To Some Measure Of Power In America Almost Solely By Getting Women, Blacks, And Other Disadvantaged Groups To Wear Crippling Foot Fashions. This Keeps Them Too Busy With Corns And Bunions To Compete In The Job Market.

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.

Stay Away From Girls Who Cry A Lot Or Who Look Like They Get Pregnant Easily Or Have Careers.

Generally It's Not A Good Idea To Wear Banana Republic - Type Khaki Journalist Clothes In A War Zone. You Might Look Too Much Like Something That's Supposed To Be Shot, Such As A Journalist.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Lot Of Things Work Better In A Locomotive.

Fish Is The Only Food That Is Considered Spoiled Once It Smells Like What It Is.

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

It Is Important To Remember When Making Jokes About Women, That They Are Not A Minority. They Weren't Captured On Another Continent And Brought Here In Leg-irons (funny Shoes, Yes, But Not Leg-irons) And Hitler Didn't Blame Them For Germany's Loss In Wwi. Therefore, You Can Make Any Kind Of Fun Of Them You Want.

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

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.

Moscow Has Changed. I Was Here In 1982, During The Brezhnev Twilight, And Things Are Better Now. For Instance, They've Got Litter. In 1982 There Was Nothing To Litter With.

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.

The Typical Old-fashioned Diet (in The Nineteenth Century) Was So Bad It Almost Assembled Modern Dieting.

I Didn't See Any Nra Officials Killing Babies In Waco.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Satire Doesn't Effect Change.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Whenever People Tell You They Are Going To Wipe The Slate Clean, It's Your Slate They Mean To Wipe.

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

Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Wants To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

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.

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.

Just As Some Things Are Too Strange For Fiction, Others Are Too True For Journalism.

Veal Is A Very Young Beef And, Like A Very Young Girlfriend, It's Cute But Boring And Expensive.

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.

Government Isn't A Good Way To Solve Problems ... [g]overnment Is Concerned Mostly With Self-perpetuation And Is Subject To Fantastic Ideas About Its Own Capabilities. ... [g]overnment Is Wasteful Of The Nation's Resources, Immune To Common Sense And Subject To Pressure From Every Half-organized Bouquet Of Assholes. ... [g]overnment Is Distrustful Of And Disrespectful Toward Average Americans While Being Easily Gulled By Americans With Money, Influence Or Fame.

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.

Smoking Cigarettes Seems To Alarm Peace Activists Much More Than Voting For Reagan Does.

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.

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

Mind Your Own Business

It Is Important To Remember When Reading Adam Smith Or Even When Just Thinking About Smith That The Era That He Lived In, We're Not Talking About Poverty In A Day When It Meant Not Enough Bedrooms For The Kids, An Old Car, A Black And White Television. We're Talking About A Whole World Where Poverty Meant Not Enough To Eat.

Black And White

Liberalism Is Just Communism Sold By The Drink.

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.

Maybe A Nation That Consumes As Much Booze And Dope As We Do And Has Our Kind Of Divorce Statistics Should Pipe Down About "character Issues."

Never Fight An Inanimate Object.

I'm A Political Conservative.

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.

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.

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

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

The Difference Between Corporations And Governments Is Governments Have A Monopoly On Force. It's A Lot Easier To Vote With Your Feet Or Your Wallet Than It Is To Change A Government With Your Vote.

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

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

How A Peaceful, Uncrowded Place With Ample Wherewithal Stays Poor Is Hard To Explain. How A Conflict-ridden, Grossly Over-populated Place With No Resources Whatsoever Gets Rich Is Simple. The British Colonial Government Turned Hong Kong Into An Economic Miracle By Doing Nothing.

If I Bring Anything To The Table, It's The Fact That Not Everybody Realizes They're Funny. So I Just Point A Finger.

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

I Covered The Lebanese Civil War. I Could See A Place That Had Once Been Prosperous And Now Was Impoverished. I'm Not Seeing That In America.

[al] Franken Is Left-wing And Funny. He's A Pretty Good Political Humorist.

Worshiping The Earth Is More Fun Than Going To Church. It's Also Closer.

Going To Church

Don't Send Funny Greeting Cards On Birthdays Or At Christmas. Save Them For Funerals When Their Cheery Effect Is Needed.

Of Course, The Humans In Haiti Have Hope. They Hope To Leave.

.......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.

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