{"id":5650,"date":"2010-10-04T08:39:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T12:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5650"},"modified":"2010-10-04T08:39:41","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T12:39:41","slug":"the-war-hecklers-latest-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/04\/the-war-hecklers-latest-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The war heckler’s latest book"},"content":{"rendered":"

P.J. O’Rourke<\/a> has a new book coming out soon:<\/p>\n

\n

O\u2019Rourke, the reformed ex-radical, editor of National Lampoon<\/em> during the “Animal House” era, war correspondent and, lately, target of what he calls “ass cancer,” continues the anti-statist argument in his new book, “Don\u2019t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards” (Atlantic Monthly Press). References to Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Adam Smith (to whose “Wealth of Nations” he once devoted an entire volume) prove O\u2019Rourke can do the philosophical heavy lifting — yet make it all float on a fluffy cloud of wit. Among his best one-liners:<\/p>\n

* “The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can\u2019t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.”<\/p>\n

* “We\u2019re 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, \u2018Please bring me and a bunch of kids I don\u2019t know a pony and we\u2019ll share.\u2019 “<\/p>\n

* “The most sensible request of government we make is not, \u2018Do something!\u2019 But \u2018Quit it!\u2019 “<\/p>\n

* “Conservatism is a flight from ideas. As in, \u2018Don\u2019t get any ideas,\u2019 \u2018What\u2019s the big idea?\u2019 and \u2018Whose idea was that?\u2019 “<\/p>\n

O\u2019Rourke, 62, is a cool Republican. It\u2019s a lonely job. What can the rest of the party do to join him?<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t think Republicans have ever been cool,” he says. “Abraham Lincoln tried growing a beard.”<\/p>\n

Yes, and look what happened to him.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s always going to be cooler to have wild visionary ideas for society and the future. All we can really do is see that we\u2019ve got a society where as many people grow out of cool as fast as they possibly can.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Paul Davis<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.J. O’Rourke has a new book coming out soon: O\u2019Rourke, the reformed ex-radical, editor of National Lampoon during the “Animal House” era, war correspondent and, lately, target of what he calls “ass cancer,” continues the anti-statist argument in his new book, “Don\u2019t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards” (Atlantic Monthly Press). References to Milton Friedman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,84,10,28,53,13],"tags":[431,322],"class_list":["post-5650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-government","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-conservatism","tag-nannystate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1t8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5653,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650\/revisions\/5653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}