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The Preamble To The Constitution States: "we, The People Of The United States, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union, Establish Justice, Insure Domestic Tranquillity, Provide For The Common Defence, Promote The General Welfare..." It Doesn't Say "guarantee The General Welfare." And It Certainly Doesn't Say "give Welfare Benefits To All The People In The Country Who Aren't Doing So Well Even If The Reason They Aren't Doing So Well Is Because They're Sitting On Their Butts In Front Of The Tv".

-P. J. O'Rourke

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The Preamble To The

P. J. O'Rourke

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The Preamble To The Constitution States: "we, The People Of The United States, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union, Establish Justice, Insure Domestic Tranquillity, Provide For The Common Defence, Promote The General Welfare..." It Doesn't Say "guarantee The General Welfare." And It Certainly Doesn't Say "give Welfare Benefits To All The People In The Country Who Aren't Doing So Well Even If The Reason They Aren't Doing So Well Is Because They're Sitting On Their Butts In Front Of The Tv".

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

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.

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

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

Democracies Have

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.

The Harvard Lampoon Itself, Which Had A Pretty Stellar Run In The '60s.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

B Students Work For C Students - A Students Teach.

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.

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

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.

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?

Satan Probably Wouldn't Have Talked So Big If God Had Been His Wife.

One Thing Talk Can't Accomplish Is Communication. This Is Because Everybody's Talking Too Much To Pay Attention To What Anyone Is Saying

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.

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

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

Because Of Their Size, Parents May Be Difficult To Discipline Properly.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

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

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.

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.

Family Love Is Messy, Clinging, And Of An Annoying And Repetitive Pattern, Like Bad Wallpaper.

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.

You Can't Get Good Chinese Takeout In China And Cuban Cigars Are Rationed In Cuba. That's All You Need To Know About Communism.

A Girl Who Is Really Pretty - Whether She Wraps Herself In An Abayah, A Nun's Habit, Or The Front Hall Rug - Never Wraps Herself So That The World Can't Tell.

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

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?

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.

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

Even A Band Of Angels Can Turn Ugly And Start Looting If Enough Angels Are Unemployed And Hanging Around The Pearly Gates Convinced That All The Succubi Own All The Liquor Stores In Heaven.

War Will Exist As Long As There's A Food Chain.

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

Zero-sum Thinking Is An Obsession Of Mine, But Mostly In Economics.

How Did An Allegedly Free People Spawn A Vast, Rampant Cuttlefish Of Dominion With Its Tentacles In Every Orifice Of The Body Politic?

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.

Then There Was Communism's Weak-tea Sister, Socialism. Socialists Maintained That We Shouldn't Take All The Money Away From All The People Since All The People Don't Have Money. We Should Take All The Money Away From Only The People Who Make Money. Then, When We Run Out Of That, We Could Take More Money From The People Who...hey, Wait! Where'd You People Go? What Do You Mean You're "tax Exiles In Monaco?"

There Aren't Many Political Humorists. Dave Barry Is Excellent, But He Doesn't Do It Much.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race. All Through History, Mankind Has Been Bullied By Scum. Those Who Lord It Over Their Fellows And Toss Commands In Every Direction And Would Boss The Grass In The Meadow About Which Way To Bend In The Wind Are The Most Depraved Kind Of Prostitutes. They Will Submit To Any Indignity, Perform Any Vile Act, Do Anything To Achieve Power. The Worst Off-sloughings Of The Planet Are The Ingredients Of Sovereignty. Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy The Whores Are Us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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Let's Reintroduce Corporal Punishment In The Schools - And Use It On The Teachers.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

[michael] Moore Doesn't Really Use His Sense Of Humor That Much.

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

Drugs Have Taught An Entire Generation Of Kids The Metric System

Never Strike Anyone So Old, Small Or Weak That Verbal Abuse Would Have Sufficed.

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

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

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 .

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.

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Golf Combines Two Favorite American Pastimes: Taking Long Walks And Hitting Things With A Stick.

I'm A Political Conservative.

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.

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.

After All, What Is Your Host's Purpose In Having A Party? Surely Not For You To Enjoy Yourself; If That Were Their Sole Purpose, They'd Have Simply Sent Champagne And Women Over To Your Place By Taxi.

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.

Iran And Iraq Have Been At War For Five Years Now. The Traditional Present For A Fifth Anniversary Is Wood. Here's A Gift Suggestion: A Big Stick To Beat Some Goddamned Sense Into Their Heads.

A Charity Ball Is Like A Dance Except It's Tax Deductible.

What Would Be A Road Hazard Anywhere Else, In The Third World Is Probably The Road.

Masochists Are People That Have Pleasure Confused With Pain. In A World That Has Television Confused With Entertainment, Doritoes Confused With Food, And Dan Quayle Confused With A National Political Leader, Masochists Are Clearly Less Mixed-up Than The Rest Of Us.

The Complexity Of Economics Can Be Calculated Mathematically. Write Out The Algebraic Equation That Is The Human Heart And Multiply Each Unknown By The Population Of The World.

Civilization Is An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof.

Mike Kelly [from The Atlantic] Called Me Up And Said He Could Pay Me Less Money.

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.

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?

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

Nothing Bad Is Going To Happen To Us. If We Get Fired, It's Not Failure; Its A Midlife Vocational Reassessment.

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.

Cleanliness Becomes More Important When Godliness Is Unlikely.

[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.

We Need A Government, Alas, Because Of The Nature Of Humans.

Remember, Fda Employees Are Serious About Fear. We Pay These People To Panic About An Iota Of Rodent Hair In Our Chili, Even When The Recipe Calls For It. Fda Employees Are First-class Agonizers, World Champions At Losing Sleep. When Meryl Streep Got Hysterical About Alar, They Actually Checked The Apples Instead Of Meryl's Head.

The Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By The 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.

Wealth Is, For Most People, The Only Honest And Likely Path To Liberty. With Money Comes Power Over The World. Men Are Freed From Drudgery, Women From Exploitation. Businesses Can Be Started, Homes Built, Communities Formed, Religions Practiced, Educations Pursued. But Liberals Aren't Very Interested In Such Real And Material Freedoms. They Have A More Innocent - Not To Say Toddlerlike - Idea Of Freedom. Liberals Want The Freedom To Put Anything Into Their Mouths, To Say Bad Words And To Expose Their Private Parts In Art Museums.

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

The Young Are Adept At Learning, But Even More Adept At Avoiding It.

Never Do Anything To A Clitoris With Your Teeth That You Wouldn't Do To An Expensive Waterproof Wristwatch.

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.

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

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

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

If A Journalist Shows A Facility For Praise He's Liable To Be Offered A Job In Public Relations Or Advertising And The Next Thing You Know He's Got A Big Office, A Huge Salary And Is Living In A Fine Home With A Lovely Wife And Swell Kids - Another Career Blown To Hell.

There Are Twenty-seven Specific Complaints Against The British Crown Set Forth In The Declaration Of Independence. To Modern Ears They Still Sound Reasonable. They Still Sound Reasonable, In Large Part, Because So Many Of Them Can Be Leveled Against The Federal Government Of The United States.

America Is The World's Policeman, All Right -- A Big, Dumb, Mick Flatfoot In The Middle Of The One Thing Cops Dread Most, A "domestic Disturbance.

Idealism Is Based On Big Ideas. And, As Anybody Who Has Ever Been Asked "what's The Big Idea?" Knows, Most Big Ideas Are Bad Ones.

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.

A Little Government And A Little Luck Are Necessary In Life, But Only A Fool Trusts Either Of Them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Nothing About Economic Growth In The United States Over The Course Of The Past 40, 50 Years, During Which Time This Has Been Continually Happening, Would Indicate That We Are Being Harmed In An Overall Sense By This.

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.

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

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.

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 Have, Of All The Inglorious Things, A Malignant Hemorrhoid. What Color Bracelet Does One Wear For That? And Where Does One Wear It? And What Slogan Is Apropos? Perhaps That Slogan Can Be Sewn In Needlepoint Around The Ruffle On A Cover For My Embarrassing Little Doughnut Buttocks Pillow.

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

There Is Parody, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Smarter Than You; Satire, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Richer Than You; And Burlesque, When You Make Fun Of Both While Taking Your Clothes Off.

You Can Always Reason With A German. You Can Always Reason With A Barnyard Animal, Too, For All The Good It Does.

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.

Lust, Pride, Sloth, And Gluttony, Or, As We Call Them These Days, "getting In Touch With Your Sexuality," "raising Your Self-esteem," "relaxation Therapy," And "being A Recovered Bulimic."

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."

The Problem Isn't A Congress That Won't Cut Spending Or A President Who Won't Raise Taxes. The Problem Is An American Public With A Bottomless Sense Of Entitlement To Federal Money.

If I Give Up Drinking, Smoking, And Fatty Foods, I Can Add Ten Years To My Life. Trouble Is, I'll Add It To The Wrong End.

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.

Each American Embassy Comes With Two Permanent Features - A Giant Anti-american Demonstration And A Giant Line For American Visas. Most Demonstrators Spend Half Their Time Burning Old Glory And The Other Half Waiting For Green Cards.

Watching Republicans In Washington Is Like Watching Lemmings, If Lemmings Jumped Into Cesspools Instead Of Off Cliffs. Splash! There Goes Mark Foley!

My Wife And I Both Come From Irish Families. There Are Two Kinds Of Irish Families: The Hitting Kind And The Kidding Kind. If You're Fortunate - And Both Of Us Are - You Come From The Kidding Kind Of Irish Family.

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.

There's A Very Good Reason That Governments Aren't Supposed To Compete With Private-enterprise Companies. Governments Have Monopolies On Certain Things, Like Eminent Domain And Deadly Force.

Russian Cars Are Silly. They Look Like Imports Drawn By A Cartoonist For A Uaw Newsletter.

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.

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

The Idea Of A News Broadcast Once Was To Find Someone With Information And Broadcast It. The Idea Now Is To Find Someone With Ignorance And Spread It Around.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Purpose Of A Funeral Service Is To Comfort The Living. It Is Important At A Funeral To Display Excessive Grief. This Will Show Others How Kind-hearted And Loving You Are And Their Improved Opinion Of You Will Be Very Comforting.

As A Libertarian I Believe We Should Have A Federal Government Simple And Circumscribed Enough To Be Run By An Average, Dull, Normal American. With George W. Bush We Have Half The Equation In Place.

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 Didn't Realize What Fun It Was [ Been A Reporter].

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

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

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

There's Not A Woman In The Book, The Plot Hinges On Unkindness To Animals, And The Black Characters Mostly Drown By Chapter 29.

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.

The Preamble To The Constitution States: "we, The People Of The United States, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union, Establish Justice, Insure Domestic Tranquillity, Provide For The Common Defence, Promote The General Welfare..." It Doesn't Say "guarantee The General Welfare." And It Certainly Doesn't Say "give Welfare Benefits To All The People In The Country Who Aren't Doing So Well Even If The Reason They Aren't Doing So Well Is Because They're Sitting On Their Butts In Front Of The Tv".

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

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

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

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.

Cars Would Be Safer On Rails!

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.

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.

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.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

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.

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

The Italians Have Had 2,000 Years To Fix Up The Forum And Just Look At The Place!

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

Whatever It Is That The Government Does, Sensible Americans Would Prefer That The Government Does It To Somebody Else. This Is The Idea Behind Foreign Policy.

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

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 Sport Of Skiing Consists Of Wearing Three Thousand Dollars Worth Of Clothes And Equipment And Driving Two Hundred Miles In The Snow In Order To Stand Around At A Bar And Get Drunk.

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.

First And Foremost: Feed People.

It Remains To Be Seen Which Program Will Cause Greater Societal Damage: China's One-child Policy Or America's One-parent Policy.

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

[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?

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

Fretting About Overpopulation, Is A Perfect Guilt-free - Indeed, Sanctimonious - Way For "progressives" To Be Racists.

The Great Thing About Being A Print Journalist Is That You Are Permitted To Duck. Cameramen Get Killed While The Writers Are Flat On The Floor. A War Correspondent For The Bbc Dedicated His Memoir To 50 Fallen Colleagues, And I Guarantee You They Were All Taking Pictures. I Am Only Alive Because I Am Such A Chicken.

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.

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

If The Dollar Weakens, Then Presumably All The Things That We Make In The United States - Buicks, For Instance - Can Be Sold Cheap All Over The World, And Everyone Will Be Buying Our Goods, And We'll Get All Sorts Of Yen-denominated, Or Yuan-denominated, Or Euro-denominated Securities, And Then Everybody Else Will Be Worried.

.......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.

Guns Are Always The Best Method For A Private Suicide. They Are More Stylish Looking Than Single-edged Razor Blades And Natural Gas Has Got So Expensive. Drugs Are Too Chancy. You Might Miscalculate The Dosage And Just Have A Good Time.

I Realised The Bohemian Life Was Not For Me. I Would Look Around At My Friends, Living Like Starving Artists, And Wonder, 'where's The Art?' They Weren't Doing Anything. And There Was So Much Interesting Stuff To Do, So Much Fun To Be Had... Maybe I Could Even Quit Renting.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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