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.
P. J. O'RourkeI'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.
P. J. O'RourkeIf you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
P. J. O'RourkeGovernment conspiracy? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!
P. J. O'RourkeI 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.
P. J. O'RourkeFretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free - indeed, sanctimonious - way for "progressives" to be racists.
P. J. O'RourkeA 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.
P. J. O'RourkeGovernment 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.
P. J. O'RourkeI was managing editor for a while [in National Lampoon ], and it does cause business problems when your circulation goes up.
P. J. O'RourkeIt's much better to have your arguments dismissed because you might be joking than to have your arguments dismissed because you're not telling the truth.
P. J. O'RourkeNever Refuse Wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic.
P. J. O'RourkeIf 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.
P. J. O'RourkeIf 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.
P. J. O'RourkeThe 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.
P. J. O'RourkeThere 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.
P. J. O'RourkePolitical systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don't draft people; it's not jury duty.
P. J. O'RourkePeople love to be told what they know already. It's not so much that what they say is wrong, though Ann Coulter does seem to be completely crazy.
P. J. O'RourkeAustralia 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.
P. J. O'RourkeEach child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
P. J. O'RourkeIn 1970 or '71, early in the magazine, Michael O'Donoghue did maybe eight pages of a 1958 yearbook, from Ezra Taft Benson High School. But by the time the [book-length] high-school yearbook came around, he didn't want to be involved.
P. J. O'RourkeThere 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.
P. J. O'RourkeAll lies are told with a straight face. It is truth that's said with a dismissive giggle.
P. J. O'RourkeWhere self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.
P. J. O'RourkeThere's a lot of debate on this subject - about what kind of car handles best. Some say a a front-engined car, some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind.
P. J. O'RourkeIt 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.
P. J. O'RourkeAfter 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.
P. J. O'RourkeThe three branches of government number considerably more than three and are not, in any sense, 'branches' since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks. ... Government is not a machine with parts; it's an organism. When does an intestine quit being an intestine and start becoming an asshole?
P. J. O'RourkeMaybe it's understandable what a history of failures America's foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America's miniature schnauzer -- a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.
P. J. O'RourkeIn 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.
P. J. O'RourkeThe idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.
P. J. O'RourkeEast Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.
P. J. O'RourkeLittle 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.
P. J. O'RourkeIf 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.
P. J. O'RourkeWe 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.
P. J. O'RourkeSmoking 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.
P. J. O'RourkePolitical systems must love poverty-they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
P. J. O'RourkeThose who do not know history are probably also not doing well in English or math. P.J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'RourkeWhen 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?
P. J. O'RourkeA politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.
P. J. O'RourkeBob Wallace was my editor at Rolling Stone when I first started writing there, and he's a wonderful editor. I was in the Philippines during the Marcos overthrow, and I was up on what was called Smokey Mountain. I think it's gone now, but it was a garbage dump with a bunch of people living on it. I was talking to Bob on the phone, and I told him, "I'm a humorist. I can't write about this." And Bob told me to let my style be dictated by the subject, to take what I saw and write about it in the tone that it requires.
P. J. O'Rourke