P. J. O'Rourke - Parliament of Whores (1991)

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Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

P. J. O'Rourke
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

P. J. O'Rourke
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

P. J. O'Rourke
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

P. J. O'Rourke
Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
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?'

P. J. O'Rourke
So what if I don't agree with the Democrats? What's to disagree with? They believe everything. And what they don't believe, the Republicans do. Neither of them stands for anything they believe in, anyway.

P. J. O'Rourke
Worship of nature may be ancient, but seeing nature as cuddlesome, hug-a-bear and too cute for words is strictly a modern fashion.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
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

P. J. O'Rourke
The Democrats said, "We don't know what's wrong with America, but we can fix it." The Republicans said, "There's nothing wrong with America, and we can fix that."

P. J. O'Rourke
We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it...

P. J. O'Rourke
I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat.

P. J. O'Rourke
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

P. J. O'Rourke
Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who's out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
There's nothing more oily and cynical in politics than telling the truth.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
Maybe a vague president and an incompetent and somewhat corrupt administration is what the nation needs.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.

P. J. O'Rourke
This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on Nutri/System weight-loss plans.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Republican convention, an event with the intellectual content of a Guns'n'Roses lyric attended by every ofay insurance brokerin America who owns a pair of white shoes.

P. J. O'Rourke
Maybe 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'Rourke