[fporretto]

O'Rourke continues to be both funny and penetrating. His quick analysis of these two families of belief is perfect. I've never heard it put better than he does here. It's the reason why I'm both a libertarian and a conservative.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[Lysander]

I believe I was created by God with a free will. Nobody has dominion over my life except me. The purpose of government is to protect other people from harm, and me from them. In matters that cause no real harm to anyone, government should butt out. That is why I am no longer a Republican but a Libertarian. Republicans would use big government in all kinds of programs to control behavior that they have no business controlling.

[mc5cents]

Some of my favorite P.J. quotes:

"You can't get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism."

"Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."

And probably my favorite:
"Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle." -- P.J. O'Rourke

[E Rocc]

Eventually "conservative" and "liberal" will be largely replaced as philosophical counterpoints by libertarianism and "communitarianism", which is basically statism with euphemisms.

Even as things stand O'Rourke, a "liberal" like Nat Hentoff, and even the philosophies of Ronald Reagan have more in common with each other than either has in common with Hildebeast, Donald Wildmon, or the new-version Bill O'Reilly.

-Eric

[truenospinzone]

Great quotes from one of my favorites, although I have a feeling that our favorite anti-libertarians will soon be here to take this:

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of "I hate strangers and anything that's different.",

completely out of context and say, "See - that's what ALL liberdopians think of ALL conservatives!".

[Black Agnes]

This might interest you ping!

[WyldKard]

A big ol' bump for this!

[Sam Cree]

"But in its better forms, conservatism simply says that the structures of society, both civil and political, religious and so on, are the result of a long series of trial-and-error experiments by millions of human beings, not only all over the world, but through time."

Hayek discourses about this at length in The Constitution of Liberty," though somehow I'm pretty sure you're conversant with it. It's one of the arguments against the "government will run everything," top down rationalism, of the Left. O'Rourke certainly has a talent for boiling things down, and humorously.

"It's the reason why I'm both a libertarian and a conservative. "

I consider libertarianism to be a form of conservatism, specifically the form that strives to conserve the values of individual freedom that our founding fathers envisioned for us. Too bad the "Libertarian" Party gets sidetracked into focusing on weird issues. I agree that the ideal of "individual" freedom that the Left so despises seems also to have been forgotten by many conservatives.

[beckett]

O'Rourke mentions Max Beerbohm, who is included in my favorite quote file for a remark he made about Freud's core theory of human psychology:

"A tense and peculiar family, the Oedipuses, were they not?"

[Kermit]

Only in America (possibly England and Iceland) can one be both a libertarian and a conservative. Everywhere else in the world, what you're conserving is not pro-liberty or pro-private property.

[weikel]

Bump

[Physicist]

"Never strike anyone so old, small, or weak that verbal abuse would have sufficed." -- P.J. O'Rourke

[bvw]

Molto Grazie!

[Wordsmith]

PJ bump

[mustapha mond]

"In its' worse forms, conservatism is a matter of I hate strangers". O'Rourke = Dumba$$ --MM