{"id":7233,"date":"2011-01-17T09:03:20","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T13:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=7233"},"modified":"2011-01-17T10:22:17","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T14:22:17","slug":"modern-updates-to-bierces-devils-dictionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/17\/modern-updates-to-bierces-devils-dictionary\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern updates to Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always been a big fan of Ambrose Bierce’s collection of definitions, The Devil’s Dictionary<\/em>. Many of his definitions ended up in various places in my original quotations website<\/a>, as more than a century later, they were still both funny and true.<\/p>\n

Paul Bonneau<\/a> has a list of updates in the Bierce tradition:<\/p>\n

\n

A Cynic’s Political Dictionary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Democracy: Mob rule.<\/p>\n

Republic: A euphemism for “police state”. See “Police State”. Also, a geographical region in which representative government is practiced. See “Representative Government”.<\/p>\n

Representative Government: A refinement in Democracy in which a mob of people select the least moral among them, to police their morals.<\/p>\n

Representative: A politician who claims to be able to simultaneously<\/strong> represent two other people who hate each other’s guts. See “Politician”.<\/p>\n

Senator: A politician who spends more time drunk. See “Politician”.<\/p>\n

Election: A type of circus, provided for entertainment and for giving a veneer of legitimacy to politicians. See “Politician”.<\/p>\n

Politician: A euphemism for “liar”.<\/p>\n

Public Servant: A euphemism for “master”.<\/p>\n

Voter: A euphemism for “slave”.<\/p>\n

Media: People whose job it is to propagate politicians’ lies far and wide.<\/p>\n

Political party: A collection of people who participate in mindless team sports in an election. See “Election”.<\/p>\n

Democrat: A Republican who claims to care. See “Republican”.<\/p>\n

Republican: A Democrat who claims to support liberty. See “Democrat”.<\/p>\n

Minarchist: An Anarchist in training. See “Anarchist”.<\/p>\n

Anarchist: A slave suffering slavery burn-out.<\/p>\n

Government: An amalgamation of masters.<\/p>\n

State (or Country): An amalgamation of masters and slaves. Also, a plantation.<\/p>\n

Police: Overseers on the plantation; also, tax collectors.<\/p>\n

Taxes: A euphemism for “plunder”.<\/p>\n

Police State: Typically refers to a country other than the one you happen to be a slave in. Also, a place where other people mind your business.<\/p>\n

Jail: A jobs program for jailers.<\/p>\n

School: A jobs program for teachers.<\/p>\n

Teacher: One who turns children into voters for the government. See “Voter”. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always been a big fan of Ambrose Bierce’s collection of definitions, The Devil’s Dictionary. Many of his definitions ended up in various places in my original quotations website, as more than a century later, they were still both funny and true. Paul Bonneau has a list of updates in the Bierce tradition: A Cynic’s […]<\/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":[84,57,10,53,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-humour","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1SF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7233","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=7233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7236,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7233\/revisions\/7236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}