Free Republic

R.I.P. P.J. O’Rourke, who died yesterday at 74. He was a clever and entertaining writer who started out as the typical 60’s hippie into drugs, sex and rock and roll. But like many of us he got hijacked by taxes when he started making decent money as a Gonzo journalist for National Lampoon. He became Rolling Stone’s token conservative voice and was considered “conservative” for much of his career but later in life he converted to libertarianism. He had strong opinions, but his deeply held beliefs continued to evolve.I’m still a bit irked with him for not supporting Trump –...

Legendary journalist and political satirist P.J. O’Rourke has died from lung cancer complications at the age of 74.The news was confirmed by his publisher Grove Atlantic in a statement released on Tuesday afternoon.

P.J. O’Rourke, who has died at the age of 74, once hosted a small New Year’s party at his apartment in Washington. The year was 1990. He’d just returned from Germany, where he had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall. I expressed my sorrow that I hadn’t been there to see it. He went into his bedroom and returned with a small tin of mints. He’d emptied it — and he’d put a shard of the wall he’d pickaxed himself with his own hands inside it. “Happy New Year,” he said. That was P.J. Though he and I liked...

P.J. O'Rourke, the prolific author and satirist who re-fashioned the irreverence and “Gonzo” journalism of the 1960s counterculture into a distinctive brand of conservative and libertarian commentary, has died at age 74. O'Rourke died Tuesday morning, according to Grove Atlantic Inc. Books publisher and president Morgan Entrekin. He did not cite a specific cause, but said O'Rourke had been ill in recent months. O'Rourke was a Toledo, Ohio, native who evolved from long-haired student activist to wavy-haired scourge of his old liberal ideals, with some of his more widely read take downs appearing in a founding counterculture publication, Rolling Stone....

The great American journalist and satirist PJ O’Rourke has died. He contributed a number of articles to The Spectator over the years.

Adam Smith wasn't a flawless man, but it's intellectually dishonest to associate Smith with slavery and oppression while ignoring his actual writings.Today’s cancel culture won’t let death set anyone free from condemnation. News from Scotland reports the Edinburgh City Council added Adam Smith’s gravesite to a database of sites linked to “slavery and colonialism.” The Telegraph relays the council took this drastic action after it “launched a review of sites which ‘perpetuated racism and oppression’ following last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, with the option of ‘removal or re-interpretation’ for problematic monuments.” Sir Geoff Palmer, a professor emeritus at Heriot-Watt...

Just when you think that wokeness could not become more absurd, it surpasses itself. A leaked document from the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group recently revealed that the grave of Adam Smith—author of one of the most important books written in history, the Wealth of Nations (1776)—has been listed as a potential site to investigate on the basis that Smith allegedly accepted slavery as “inevitable.”

America’s young people have veered to the left. Opinion pollsters tell us so. According to a November 2019 Gallup poll, “Since 2010, young adults’ positive ratings of socialism have hovered near 50 percent.” A March 2019 Axios poll concurs, saying that 49 percent of millennials would “Prefer living in a socialist country.” And The Hill puts it more strongly, citing an October 2019 YouGov Internet survey in a story headed, “7 in 10 Millennials Say They’d Vote for a Socialist.” SNIP What’s the matter with kids today? Nothing new. A large portion of the brats, the squirts, the fuzz-faced, the...

“The US-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet, and that relationship, if it is successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist."

I was thinking of starting a ping list for a weekly Quote thread regarding the government and other topics. Please let me know if this will be useful for this forum and please add your own quotes.

“We have excellent theoretical and philosophical reasons to think we live in a multiverse.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson Do parallel universes exist? I have proof that one does. I confirmed the hypothesis in a manner very like that of the young Isaac Newton, who was sitting in a garden when an apple dropped on his head. I was standing in a convenience store when a Sunday New York Times dropped on my foot. Newton, in a stroke of brilliant insight, comprehended gravity. I, in a throb of bruised toe, opened the April 22, 2018, Sunday Review section. It had long been...

Do parallel universes exist? I have proof that one does. I confirmed the hypothesis in a manner very like that of the young Isaac Newton, who was sitting in a garden when an apple dropped on his head. I was standing in a convenience store when a Sunday New York Times dropped on my foot. Newton, in a stroke of brilliant insight, comprehended gravity. I, in a throb of bruised toe, opened the April 22, 2018, Sunday Review section. It had long been my opinion that the writers and editors of the New York Times and, by extension, their readers...

Hillary Clinton snagged another endorsement over the weekend, but don't expect her to trumpet it on the campaign trail. "I have a little announcement to make ... I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary," noted conservative author P.J. O'Rourke said on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. The episode aired over the weekend. If the Clinton campaign wants to tout O'Rourke's support as it tries to woo moderate Republicans who supported Jeb Bush and George W. Bush, it might want to end the quote there. "I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises,"...

"I have a little announcement to make ... I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary," noted conservative author P.J. O'Rourke said on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. The episode aired over the weekend.

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." "You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money." "It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money." "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to...

Author and political satirist P.J. O’Rourke stated Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “will finally be exposed as a double agent,” criticized GOP presidential candidate Texas Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for “dragging in all these tired, sick, old social issues” and said of Cruz and Trump, “I really do hate it with this immigration stuff” on Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight.”O’Rourke said, “Cruz could actually get…nominated. I’m assuming that Trump will finally be exposed as a double agent, and will have to be stuck in a Chappaqua safe house, or wherever Hillary has got Bill stashed. But Cruz could actually...

Christmas has been about excess since Jesus was in the manger. So why stop now? The sanctimonious, the puritans of all stripes, and the killjoys in general raise the issue annually. Knock it off. Christmas has been commercialized since year one of the “Current Era.” Blame it on the Three Kings. They started the gift-giving right in the manger. Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar “presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” And that’s the way it’s been ever since. In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge has been visited by Marley’s ghost and undergoes a magnificent change of heart,...

<p>This coming Thursday the Scots will vote on whether to make Scotland an independent nation. And I hope they do because it will be a disaster.</p> <p>I don’t say this as a prejudiced Irishman. Even though the thistle-arse sheep-shagger Scots swiped Ulster and sent a herd of Presbyterian proddy dogs and porridge wogs to squat on our land and won the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 by using unfair—indeed, unheard of —- organization, discipline, and tactics on an Irish battlefield. We Micks only hold a grudge about such things for 300 years or so.</p>

In the first paragraph of the prologue to his new book, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way... And It Wasn't My Fault... And I'll Never Do It Again, political humor writer P.J. O'Rourke declares in no uncertain terms that he is "full of crap." Similarly, in the introduction to his upcoming book You Can Date Boys When You're Forty, humor columnist Dave Barry explains that his book, despite its subtitle "Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About," is not about parenting. It's easy to imagine that when these two bestselling authors and longtime pals get together,...

<p>So the international sanctions aren’t working—don’t worry! If 1,000 years of Russian screw-ups are anything to go by, it won’t be long before Vladimir Putin brings himself down.</p> <p>Now that we’ve failed to use Russia’s corrupt and degenerating economy, subservience to the international banking system, and vulnerability to falling energy prices to pop Vladimir Putin like a zit, we’re going to have sit on our NATO, E.U., and OSCE duffs and take the long view of Russian imperialism.</p>