The Quotable PJ O'Rourke

A brilliant political Satirist, Mr. O'Rourke got his start as Editor of National Lampoon back when it was funny (and dirty).  Now a recovered Liberal, PJ mocks the poses that made him such a poseur long, long ago.  Here are some of his best lines:

Giving money and power to Congress is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.


The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can."

 "We’re individuals — unique, disparate, and willful, as anyone raising a household of little individuals knows. And not one of those children has ever written a letter to Santa Claus saying, ‘Please bring me and a bunch of kids I don’t know a pony and we’ll share.’ "

"The most sensible request of government we make is not, ‘Do something!’ But ‘Quit it!’ "

 "Conservatism is a flight from ideas. As in, ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ ‘What’s the big idea?’ and ‘Whose idea was that?’ "

"It’s always going to be cooler to have wild visionary ideas for society and the future. All we can really do is see that we’ve got a society where as many people grow out of cool as fast as they possibly can."

But far and away his best thought from this article is:

The progressive mindset, O’Rourke thinks, amounts to a faith that "if you could just get the smartest people in the world together in a room, then by golly you can figure out a health care program. It’s this kind of contempt for the ordinary person’s expertise and what is best for him or her — contempt for the fundamental principle interest of self-interest that the world rests on — that [Obama] took away from the 1960s in large bags and cartons."

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/conversation_with_rourke_5aLOK4Ts2lTfDAQX4z07OO#ixzz11LuJg3lw