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.

Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.

The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.

Detroits industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

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.