Why it's good to come from nowhere

I GREW UP IN TOLEDO, if up is the word. Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is under the impression that the direction hills go is down. Sledding is done from street level into creek beds and road cuts. In Toledo people grow out — out to the suburbs, out to the parts of America where the economy is more vigorous, and, all too often, out to a 48-inch waistband. But no Toledoan would ever say that he or she had “out-grown” Toledo. We are too level-headed for that.

Level being the operative term. The world of Toledo is as horizontal as the Great Plains but without the heroic vistas and infinite distances. There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees. Nor do those trees form the sylvan cathedrals of the North Woods. Dutch elm disease took care of that. Toledo's scenery is brushy and unsublime.

This lack of interesting geography should be offset by an exciting mix of cultures and peoples, but it isn't. Toledo is full of Irish, Poles, Hungarians, southern blacks and Appalachian whites. There is a large Jewish community and a large Arab community. There are so many Germans that a boy I knew, Don Eggenschwiler, went all the way through grade school and junior high without being teased about his name. But no matter what races, religions or ethnic groups came to Toledo, within months they had above-ground pools, riding lawnmowers and golf clubs. Toledoans are true Americans, and it is almost impossible to compel true Americans to be diverse.

Like tens of thousands of other Toledoans in the years since the rust belt corroded, I left Toledo. I've lived on the East Coast for 37 years. Yet I've never lost the sense of coming from the middle of nowhere. It's a good sense to have. Fifteen of those 37 years were spent writing about politics in Washington, D.C. Politicians, I've found, do not always know the difference between coming from nowhere and heading there.

People I've met in the East visit Toledo once in a while or, more often, pass through it. They remark on the featurelessness. They say, “It's so flat.” A Toledoan would tell them, “So we can see you coming.” I don't mind Easterners. But they think they're the best and brightest. In my opinion, Easterners have their best and brightest and we Toledoans have ours. Their best and brightest come up with things like FEMA, the budget deficit and Iraq. Our best and brightest start a successful chain of muffler shops. From the East Coast's brightest, we get taxes and chaos. From the brightest of Toledo we get quiet cars.

I may be making Toledo sound dull, and it is. That's a godsend. When a teenager tells you, “There's nothing to do around here. Nothing ever happens,” you know you're in the right historical time and place.

Toledo is better than fun, it's happy. Nothing is more conducive to sadness than taking yourself seriously. And taking yourself seriously is difficult when your baseball team is the Mud Hens. There's not much envy among Toledoans. No matter how successful someone becomes, he's still from Toledo. And no land development pressures or geological barriers have kept Toledo from spreading out in that great leveling of lifestyles that snooty urbanites call suburban sprawl and that Toledoans call space for the rider mower in the garage.

But mostly Toledoans are happy because they are busy. People who live in places where there's nothing to do usually are busy. The Toledo area has 38 public golf courses, and there are all those Dutch elm-diseased leaves to get out of the above-ground pool. It's in places that are overloaded with exotic diversions, like London, Paris and New York, that people sit around doing nothing in restaurants and cafes.

Continue here (Toledo Free Press, dated 13 April 2007)

First Chapter: On "The Wealth of Nations"

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS IS, without doubt, a book that changed the world. But it has been taking its time. Two hundred thirty-one years after publication, Adam Smith's practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. And where practical truths are most important-amid counsels of the European Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, British Parliament, and American Congress-the lessons of Adam Smith end up as often sunk as sinking in.

Adam Smith's Simple Principles. Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." There is no mystery. Smith took the meta out of the physics. Economics is our livelihood and just that.

The Wealth of Nations argues three basic principles and, by plain thinking and plentiful examples, proves them. Even intellectuals should have no trouble understanding Smith's ideas. Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of self-interest. That was Smith's best insight. To a twenty-first-century reader this hardly sounds like news. Or, rather, it sounds like everything that's in the news. These days, altruism itself is proclaimed at the top of the altruist's lungs. Certainly it's of interest to the self to be a celebrity. Bob Geldof has found a way to remain one. But for most of history, wisdom, beliefs, and mores demanded subjugation of ego, bridling of aspiration, and sacrifice of self (and, per Abraham with Isaac, of family members, if you could catch them).

This meekness, like Adam Smith's production, had an end and purpose. Most people enjoyed no control over their material circumstances or even-if they were slaves or serfs-their material persons. In the doghouse of ancient and medieval existence, asceticism made us feel less like dogs.

But Adam Smith lived in a place and time when ordinary individuals were beginning to have some power to pursue their self-interest. In the chapter "Of the Wages of Labour," in book 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Smith remarked in a tone approaching modern irony, "Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society?"

If, in the eighteenth century, prosperity was not yet considered a self-evidently good thing for the lower ranks of people, it was because nobody had bothered to ask them. In many places nobody has bothered to ask them yet. But it is never a question of folly, sacrilege, or vulgarity to better our circumstances. The question is how to do it.

The answer is division of labor. It was an obvious answer-except to most of the scholars who had theorized about economics prior to Adam Smith. Division of labor has existed since mankind has. When the original Adam delved and his Eve span, the division of labor may be said to have been painfully obvious. Women endured the agonies of childbirth while men fiddled around in the garden.

The Adam under present consideration was not the first philosopher to notice specialization or to see that divisions are as innate as labors. But Smith was arguably the first to understand the manifold implications of the division of labor. In fact he seems to have invented the term.

The little fellow with the big ideas chips the spear points. The courageous oaf spears the mammoth. And the artistic type does a lovely cave painting of it all. One person makes a thing, and another person makes another thing, and everyone wants everything.

Hence trade. Trade may be theoretically good, or self-sufficiency may be theoretically better, but to even think about such theories is a waste of that intermittently useful specialization, thought. Trade is a fact.

Adam Smith saw that all trades, when freely conducted, are mutually beneficial by definition. A person with this got that, which he wanted more, from a person who wanted this more than that. It may have been a stupid trade. Viewing a cave painting cannot be worth three hundred pounds of mammoth ham. The mutuality may be lopsided. A starving artist gorges himself for months while a courageous oaf of a new art patron stands bemused in the Grotte de Lascaux. And what about that wily spear point chipper? He doubtless took his mammoth slice. But they didn't ask us. It's none of our business.

Continue here (The New York Times, dated 7 January 2007)

O'Rourke interviewed by Joseph Rago

WHO'S FUNNIER, ON THE WHOLE, liberals or conservatives? It's an old question, but a terrible one. Even to inquire after it reduces the whole curve of human comedy to politics; and besides--sad to contemplate--perhaps the most accurate answer is that they're both humorless. On the liberal side of the register, you can hardly be funny if you're constantly feeling guilty about things; many conservatives meanwhile believe that everything is going to pieces, and there's nothing funny about that.

P.J. O'Rourke, the political satirist, neither hesitates nor hedges. "Conservatives generally tend to be funnier in their private lives," he explains, "because of the hypocrisy factor. I am of course a big fan of hypocrisy, because hypocrites at least know the difference between right and wrong--at any rate, know enough to lie about what they're doing. Liberals are not nearly as hypocritical as conservatives, because they don't know the difference between right and wrong. But anyways the personal lives of conservatives tend to be funnier: They've always got the embarrassing gay daughter, and so on."

In public policy, Mr. O'Rourke claims, "liberals are always much more hilarious. Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid. Having conservatives in government is like having a stern talk with your dad in the den about what your allowance will be. . . . Of course, the Republicans always end up giving in: You know, giving you more money than you should have in your pocket, and the keys to the car, and then also a bottle of whiskey."

Continue here (Opinion Journal, 6 January 2007)

From The Editor's Chair

I WAS OUT ON THE PATIO the other day wondering (as writers of conservative opinion pieces constantly do) what's wrong with America. I noticed a tag affixed to my collapsible canvas deck chair, and my wondering ceased. What's wrong with America was printed on the tag: Do not attempt to lift the front end of the chair while sitting down on it.

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that chair manufacturers feel compelled to tell Americans this. You'd flip over and whack your head on the concrete. Yet millions of Americans must sit themselves down, spread their knees, grasp their seats, and give themselves a tremendous backwards yank. How else but whacked heads to explain myspace.com, Hillary Clinton's positive poll ratings, US Weekly magazine, or the congressional debate on immigration? I had thought the chairs in the House of Representatives were firmly attached to the floor. Apparently not.

The tag continued with other stern admonishments to avoid obvious dangers: Do not stand on this product. Do not sit on the back support or arm support of this product.

It's a cheap, flimsy collapsible chair. Standing on it would be like standing on moral principle while voicing the Democratic party position on Iraq. The "back support" is a thin sheet of cloth. The "arm support" is likewise. Cautioning Americans against sitting on them is as pathetic - and probably as necessary - as cautioning Americans against sitting Jeffrey Skilling on a corporate board.

I was on the edge of my seat guessing what mindless American behavior the tag would warn of next. Do not sit on the edge of seat.

Furthermore the tag declared: Be careful not to trap fingers when folding.

Also: Weight limit of this chair is 240 lbs.

If current body mass index trends continue, everyone in America over the age of six will be enjoined from relaxing on my patio. The company that makes this chair is announcing that Americans are too fat and stupid for furniture. The company is, of course, Chinese.

That perhaps explains the awkward phrasing in another warning: Keep clear of all obstacle children, people when folding and unfolding this product.

I take the point, people - especially you two-career yuppie couple people who are setting the tone in America today. You have your busy professional and social schedules plus your need for time for yourselves so you can practice yoga, attend An Inconvenient Truth screenings, and grow as persons. What should we call your one (or occasionally two) offspring except "obstacle children"? The nannies, the daycare, the preschools, the tutoring, the lessons and classes and play groups to which you subject your kids certainly indicate a desire to keep clear of them.

I assumed that the tag had a legal reason for existence. Doubtless, even with America's ridiculous liability laws, a company can avoid some trial lawyer depredations by publishing every conceivable risk entailed in using what it sells. I got out the cell phone that I feel compelled to carry even while lolling in the backyard (another thing that's wrong with America) and called a law firm specializing in such matters. I told the receptionist at O'Shyster, Tortberg and Scammington that I seemed likely to be injured by a folding chair ...

Continue here (The Weekly Standard, dated 31 July 2006).

Adan Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments: essential companion to The Wealth of Nations

AS USUAL, FREE ENTERPRISE is under attack. Assaults on laissez-faire are being made by petro-commie Hugo Chávez, by the EU's dirigisme regime, by Vladimir Putin's reassertion of nationalism and socialism - call it National Socialism? - in Russia. Congress thought Dubai had bought Newark and was going to move it to the Persian Gulf. The Treasury Department is having a neo-mercantilist fit over the current acc ount deficit with China. And President Bush, in his last State of the Union address, made the shameful statement that "America is addicted to oil."

But Americans don't get sick and shaky when they're deprived of oil; they get sick and shaky when they pay for it. And the price they pay is artificially inflated by our government's taxes, acquiescence to a monopoly cartel, and restrictions on exploration, drilling, and refinery construction.

The world's political leaders need to be frog-marched back to The Wealth of Nations for a refresher course. The principles therein are straightforward enough. Even politicians should be able to grasp them. Economic growth depends on division of labor. Division of labor depends on freedom of trade. Freedom of trade depends on, in the words of Adam Smith, "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

What politicians are incapable of comprehending is the moral underpinning of free enterprise, that "system of natural liberty." Even many of free enterprise's advocates see market freedoms solely in terms of practical economics. The government of China comes to mind. But Adam Smith was not an economist. The discipline hadn't been invented. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher.

The Wealth of Nations was part of a larger enterprise in moral philosophy. The first installment of Adam Smith's great undertaking was The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published 17 years before Wealth. Smith finished an extensive revision of Moral Sentiments the year before he died. He considered it his most important work. The book is not much read or referred to nowadays, but his theories in The Wealth of Nations cannot be understood without The Theory of Moral Sentiments ...

Continue here (The Weekly Standard, dated 17 July 2006).

Trading with the Enemy? China wants to sell to us. We should be happy!

I JUST GOT BACK from three weeks in China. So I'm a China expert--by Bush administration standards. Of course, by Bush administration standards, I'm an expert on Iraq strategy, Social Security privatization, and hurricane relief. But even a fellow with a Bush administration level of expertise can take a quick trip to the Mainland and see that America's China policy is ignorant. In the great American tradition of foreign policy bipartisanship, it's stupid too. Howard Dean thinks Hu Jintao wants to steal all of America's jobs and industries. And George Bush can't figure out why his speechwriters keep making him ask, "Who Jintao?" He knows the guy, he just met with him.

The problem with America's China policy is not ideological. True, there is the difficulty of dealing with a single-party state where the entire governmental apparatus is under the control of a small, doctrinaire political elite. But the Republicans are going to lose the House this fall. The problem is that America is wrong about economic principles. And not fancy economic principles such as Income Velocity of Money, which caused some of us to get a D on our Econ 101 midterm. America is wrong about economic principles so basic that even a doddering old Commie with a high school education like Deng Xiaoping understood them.

Economic progress requires division of labor, freedom of trade, and pursuit of self-interest. One person produces one sort of thing - a sack of rice, perhaps. Another person produces another sort of thing - transformation to an ownership society, maybe.

Being self-interested, both people want both things, so they trade. The trade may not be a wise one. When Americans traded their rice sack of votes for George Bush's transformation to an ownership society, they got bungled pension and Medicare reforms and a 2006 budget deficit equal to 80 percent of the Chinese government's annual budget. But freedom of trade must be allowed. Taking the sack of rice by force destroys the pursuit of self-interest, which destroys the division of labor, which keeps anybody from doing anything about economic progress. The best minds of the nation join the Red Guards and run wild through the countryside trying to grow rice with Mao Thought while the fat, crazy peasant who had those thoughts in the first place controls the nation's minds.

Trapped in the theater of Maoism, the Chinese finally noticed the emergency exit marked "Adam Smith." China's economy barged though Deng Xiaoping's Open Door. The door smacked American policymakers in the head and they've been wandering around in a daze mumbling nonsense about the unfairness of our trade deficit with China ever since ...

Continue here (The Weekly Standard, dated 29 May 2006).

Laugh Riot : Fun and games in Europe

I AM JUST NOW CHOPPING up my Danish modern coffee table and throwing the pieces into the fireplace. I want to show my support for Muslims outraged by publication of Prophet Muhammad caricatures in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper. All over the Muslim world there are riots and boycotts of Danish products. And I join the Muslims in solidarity (although, come on, you're Muslims, you shouldn't be drinking Carlsberg anyway). Next into the flames go my kids' Legos, invented in Denmark. They'll be followed by the satisfying smash of my wife's Royal Copenhagen dinner plates.

I haven't actually looked at the satirical drawings. Mainstream American media, recognizing that the First Amendment encompasses the right to shut up, have left them unpublished. I guess I could find them on the Internet except our computer was attached to Bang & Olufsen speakers. I seem to have crashed the system while yanking wires. But I'm sure these depictions of Muhammad will infuriate me as much as they infuriate Muslims, if for somewhat different reasons. The cartoons are badly drawn and not very funny. I know that sight unseen, because the cartoons are European.

I feel sorry for the angry mobs setting fire to the embassies. They should at least have gotten a good chuckle before they set out with their matches and gas cans. However, on a personal and professional note, I want to thank the angry mobs for showing up. I've put in some time as a satirist myself. It is the fondest dream of every wiseacre ...

Continue here (The Weekly Standard, 11 February 2006).

I'd love to hear a politician say: 'We'll get the second-best minds together on this'

THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE Party is looking for a saviour, which is understandable - it needs one. But can either of the two Davids, Cameron or Davis, save the Tories? Personally, I'm a Davis man. He's my kind of guy. He's the one who educated himself. It doesn't take much to do what Cameron did, which is to get a good education at the best private school in the country. Davis managed to get himself educated at a lousy state school. That takes commitment.

Cameron appeared on Today and answered the usual question about what he was going to do about some terrible social problem with: "We're going to bring the best minds to solve this one." That was the moment when he lost me. The guy obviously doesn't understand the fundamental truth about politics, which is that the best minds only produce disasters. Scientists, for example, are famously idiots when it comes to politics. I agree with Friedrich Hayek, who said in The Road to Serfdom that the "worst imaginable world would be one in which the leading expert in each field had total control over it".

Just once, I'd love to hear a politician say: "We're going to bring the second-best minds together to work on this." The second-best minds are all much more practical people than the first-class guys. More importantly, they are not going to try to do anything very much. They'll fix lunch or take the dog for a walk before they get on to pressing political problems of the day - and by the time lunch is over, it's time to take the dog for another walk and prepare dinner. That's the right order of political priorities. The greatest danger in politics is people who try to do things.

The Conservative Party used to be the party of not doing very much, or at most of only doing things which scaled back government programmes. Conservatives wanted to take government out of people's lives and reduce how much government took from their pockets. But recently, under the influence of Tony Blair, they have started saying that they're no longer the party of cutting back on government: they're really the party of using government to give people things.

This is a mistake.

Continue here (The Telegraph, 13 November 2005).

Two, Three, Many Katrinas ...

Chief among the marvelous qualities of liberalism is its ability to see the good in human suffering--and make a good thing of it. How like the early Christians, if the early Christians had been in politics.

Hurricane Katrina was a blessing to liberals, a consecrated opportunity to make advocates of small government look small, to enlarge largess with a public dole of private goods, to expand the elemental purview of politics to include earth, water, air, and (with gas at $3) fire, and to shrink the reputation of a despised president.

Hurricane Rita, with its sensible actions by state and city officials, orderly evacuations, lack of looting and minimal loss of life, was not a blessing. One's heart went out to liberals, watching their disappointment as Rita failed to destroy Galveston, flood Houston, or wipe Crawford off the map. How can liberals make sure that America never experiences another Rita?

Onward and upward is the maxim of the politically progressive. Liberals need to go straight to the top if they want more Katrina disasters. Where conservatives perceive only molehills of individual responsibility, liberals can make mountains of government accountability. Disasters are fostered by moving the responsibility for things up and away, as far from the things themselves as possible. Look what the Soviet Union's Himalaya of a government was able to do with atomic power at Chernobyl.

To elevate government, add layers of bureaucracy. Bush's creation of the Department of Homeland Security helped ensure FEMA's high-altitude performance--cold, remote, and oxygen-deprived. But FEMA, it must be proudly remembered, was a brainchild of the Carter administration ... Continue here (The Weekly Standard, 10 October 2005).

My E.U. vacation

What I learned reading the European constitution on a French beach in the Caribbean:

Guadeloupe

The French referendum on the E.U. constitution was a story that demanded to be viewed and understood from a thoroughly European perspective, so I went on vacation. Guadeloupe, in the Caribbean, is a full-fledged departement of France. Here the European Union could be contemplated as the socio-politico-economic masterwork of a civilization, an edifice of human hope. And never mind that previous attempts to unify Europe by Hitler, Napoleon, and Attila the Hun didn't work out, it had been a cold, rainy spring in New England.

At passport control there were two lines. One official sat complacently in a booth doing nothing until all the E.U. citizens had been processed at another booth by a second official who, in turn, sat complacently doing nothing until the first official had finished. When, at last, the first official examined a non-E.U. passport he walked across the aisle to the second official's booth, borrowed the visa stamp, walked back, stamped the passport, and returned the stamp to his colleague. He did the same thing for each subsequent passport. At Customs, on the other hand, there were no officials.

All around the island billboards read "OUI" or "NON." They were equal in number and identical in color and typography. The fairness doctrine debates of America must have hit home in the E.U. Obviously rigorous, uniform rules on campaign media had been instituted. I mentally composed several indignant paragraphs about how John McCain will be advocating this soon in the United States before I noticed the billboards were advertising a cell phone company. Say "NON" to service charges, "OUI" to free minutes.

Real pro and con referendum posters had to be looked for. They were on special hoardings outside of schools and municipal offices where pasting up of expressions of free speech was officially sanctioned. Campaign rhetoric had a certain subtle, European sophistication. At least I guess so. The slogan on one "Oui" poster was "L'Europe--a besoin de notre."

According to the dictionary I bought for high school French, this translates as "The Europe--to, at, in, on, by or for need, want or necessity of ours." Continue here (The Weekly Standard, 13 June 2005).

Here's a Tax We Can All Agree On

The greatest pleasure of running a country (although no politician will admit it) is getting to tax people. We Republicans decry exactions and imposts and espouse minimal outlay by the sovereign power. But we control all three branches of government. This won't last forever. Let's have some fun while we can. Moreover, the federal deficit is--contrary to all Republican principles--huge. Even the most spending-averse among us wouldn't mind additional revenue.

America's media and entertainment industry has a gross (as it were) revenue of $316.8 billion a year. If we subtract the income derived from worthy journalism and the publishing of serious books, that leaves $316.8 billion. Surely this money can be put to a more socially useful purpose than reportage on the going forth and multiplying of Britney Spears.

What is the least damaging way to tax the media and entertainment industry? The first response that comes to mind is "Who cares?" Everybody in this business hates us except Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editors, and Bruce Willis. Private bills in Congress having to do with Bermuda incorporation can take care of that. Still, we don't want to tax profits. After all we're Republicans. And as that great Republican think tank, the Bible, puts it, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose" . . . the next election.

An indirect tax is best, being proportional in its effects and producing "flat tax" outcomes. I propose a tax on raw materials. Continue here (The Weekly Standard, 30 May 2005)

Freedom, Responsibility ... and What? Social Security Reform - An Explanation

Social Security funding, as a plot device, makes for a languidly paced political thriller. The president discovers a ticking time bomb that's been sitting in plain view for seventy years. It must be disarmed, either with mildly risky partial privatization or with somewhat hazardous tax and benefit adjustments. Cut the blue-state wire? Cut the red-state wire? Only thirteen years to decide before Social Security starts paying out more than it takes in. Or thirty-seven years, if you wait until the accumulated surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund runs out. Then the damp squib goes off, giving ever querulous Generation X something else to complain about.

The pundits who deny that the crisis exists are as shrill as the prophets of doom. The liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claims, "The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now trying another bum's rush. If they succeed, we will dismantle Social Security, a program that is in much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government."

In thirteen years every aspect of the universe can change — ask a thirteen-year-old. And "much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government" is hardly a reassuring statement. But the political side-taking on reforming Social Security is suddenly, urgently bitter. Maybe this is a sign of health (not to mention longevity) in our democratic system. Politics is — once in a while — a forum for serious debate about political philosophy.

The disputation so far ... Continue here [Cato Institute, 25 April 2005]

Mass Transit Hysteria - Take the plunge, save the planet

The new transportation bill, currently working its way through Congress, will provide more than $52 billion for mass transit. Mass transit is a wonderful thing, all right-thinking people agree. It stops pollution "in its tracks" (a little ecology-conscious light-rail advocacy joke). Mass transit doesn't burn climate-warming, Iraq-war-causing hydrocarbons. Mass transit can operate with nonpolluting sustainable energy sources such as electricity. Electricity can be produced by solar panels, and geothermal generators. Electricity can be produced by right-thinking people themselves, if they talk about it enough near wind farms.

Mass transit helps preserve nature in places like Yellowstone Park, the Everglades and the Arctic wilderness, because mass transit doesn't go there. Mass transit curtails urban sprawl. When you get to the end of the trolley tracks, you may want to move farther out into the suburbs, but you're going to need a lot of rails and ties and Irishmen with pickaxes. Plus there's something romantic about mass transit. Think Tony Bennett singing "Where little cable cars / Climb halfway to the stars." (And people say mass transit doesn't provide flexibility in travel plans!) Or the Kingston Trio and their impassioned protest of the five-cent Boston "T" fare increase, "The Man Who Never Returned." No doubt some lovely songs will be written about the Washington County, Ore., Wilsonville-to-Beaverton commuter rail line to be funded by the new transportation bill.

There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don't do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it's far less--9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America--all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.--1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit. Continue here [Opinion Journal, 16 March 2005]

An Alternative Inaugural Address

My fellow Americans, I had intended to reach out to all of you and bring a divided nation together. But I changed my mind. America isn't divided by political ethos or ethnic origin. America isn't divided by region or religion. America is divided by jerks. Who wants to bring a bunch of jerks together with the rest of us? Let them stew in Berkeley, Boston, and Ann Arbor.

The media say that I won the election on the strength of moral values. If the other fellow had become president, would the media have said that he won the election on the strength of immoral values? For once the media would have been right.

We are all sinners. But jerks revel in their sins. You can tell by their reaction to the Ten Commandments. Post those Ten Commandments in a courthouse or a statehouse, in a public school or a public park, and the jerks go crazy. Why is that? Christians believe in the Ten Commandments. So do Muslims. Jews, too, obviously. Show the Ten Commandments to Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, or to people with just good will and common sense and nobody says, "Whoa! That's all wrong!"

But jerks take issue with every one of the Ten Commandments ... Continue here. (The Weekly Standard, Cover Date: 24 January 2005).

Putting Words in the President's Mouth

Sixteen obvious points that George W. Bush should make during the Wednesday night debate. Continue Here. (Daily Standard, 12 October 2004)

O'Rourke interviewed by Christopher Cox

P.J. O'Rourke, the Republican Party reptile, has a secret. Last year, the man who never met a liberal he didn't like mocking actually hosted a house party for Howard Dean. Yes, the governor from the boutique state of Vermont stood on the un-P.C. zebra-skin rug of O'Rourke's cigar-scented study and stumped for votes. Continue here. (Boston Herald, 12 June 2004).

America, Recuse Thyself!

John Kerry says America shouldn't cut and run. George Bush says America mustn't. But we don't have to retreat ignominiously from the war on terrorism and from our other international responsibilities and commitments; we can recuse ourselves. We can explain to the court of global public opinion that, because America possesses the largest economy, the widest network of business relationships, and the only effective military force on earth, we have too great a vested interest in world events to render fair and impartial judgment. Continue Here. (Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2004)

John Kerry's 1986 wimp-out in the Philippines

I was in the Philippines working on an article for Rolling Stone. The elections proceeded predictably with, as I wrote at the time, "voter-registration records being destroyed, ballot boxes stolen, opposition poll watchers barred from their stations, and army trucks full of 'flying voters' moved from one spot to another." And worse. Continue Here. (Weekly Standard, 12 April 2004).

New York in the 70s

People taking their clothes off, that was the important part of the 1970s. From 1969 to 1980, everything - art, music, literature, politics and (as we now know from lawsuits against the Catholic Church) religion - involved people takiing their clothes off. Given the clothes of the era, this was the modest alternative. Embarrassment began with people getting dressed. Continue Here. (Foreword, Feierabend Verlag, February 2004)

The Backside of War

How I saved Iraq's modern art, and other confessions. A noncombatant's diary by P. J. O'Rourke: Why is Iraq so easy to harm and so hard to help? After eight days of war U.S. troops were approaching Karbala, sixty miles from Baghdad. Misery had arrived everywhere. But humanitarian relief had gotten only as far as Safwan and Umm Qasr, just across the border from Kuwait. Continue here. (The Atlantic Monthly, December 2003)

Hillary's History

If you plan not to read this summer, "Living History" is just the book. Hillary Clinton's new memoir is more than 100,000 pages long. At least I think it is. There are only 562 page numbers, but you know how those Clintons lie. A mere ream of paper could not contain the padding that has gone into this tome. Hillary--with the help of at least six ghostwriters--nails the goose of a manuscript to the barn floor and force-feeds it with lint. Continue Here. (Weekly Standard, 30 June 2003).

Letter From Egypt

Hatred between Palestinians and Israelis abides. Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines. The threat of terrorist attacks by al Qaeda continues. Also, our car needs gas. It is important to understand Arab culture. Egypt seems a good place to start. Continue Here. (The Atlantic, 22 September 2002)

The Mideast Press Process

War, unlike politics, can go on without reporters: Israel banned journalists from covering military operations in the West Bank. The Committee to Protect Journalists called this "unacceptable." The International Federation of Journalists stated, "Censorship will not bring peace." Margaret Engel, managing editor of the Freedom Forum's Newseum, said, "It's an outrage." Continue Here. (Wall Street Journal, 16 April 2002).

O’Rourke interviewed by Jessica Ruiz

In preparation for my interview of the American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke, I poured over stacks of Rolling Stone magazine, reviewed many speeches and articles written by O’Rourke, and whatever I could find that had been written about O’Rourke. For someone who has been a Democrat since before becoming a citizen, I viewed this task with a great deal of skepticism. Of course the man is funny, but I was concerned that all of this Democrat bashing could get old quick. Continue here (pdf. Association of Defense Counsel of Northern California and Nevada)

1997 in Review: O'Rourke, Hitchens, O'Beirne

When The American Enterprise invited three of the country's most caustic wits to look back over the year 1997, eyes rolled, stilettos flashed, and axes swung all around the table. Conservative humorist P. J. O'Rourke (foreign affairs correspondent for Rolling Stone) was joined by British radical Christopher Hitchens(columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair) and commentator Kate O'Beirne (Washington editor of National Review). Senior editor Scott Walter supplied the questions. Continue Here. (The American Enterprise, January 1998)

A Message to Redistributionists

Cato is about ideas. We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about ideas, but not just good ideas. Bad ideas are important, too. In fact, a lot of life operates on bad ideas. And I thought I'd like to talk about a bad idea: closing the global wealth gap. That is a very bad idea. Continue Here. (Cato Institute, 1 May 1997)

The Liberty Manifesto

The Cato Institute has an unusual political cause -- which is no political cause whatsoever. We are here tonight to dedicate ourselves to that cause, to dedicate ourselves, in other words, to . . . nothing. We have no ideology, no agenda, no catechism, no dialectic, no plan for humanity. We have no "vision thing," as our ex-president would say, or, as our current president would say, we have no Hillary. Continue Here (Cato Institute, 6 May 1993)