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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Endless Foreigner God Lousy Politics Right Wrong
The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there’s a reason for that – the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent – No Child Left Behind.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Behind Civil Downfall Government Importance Local State Treat War
Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Benefit Divorce Good Long Married Stay Sympathy Ter
Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Business Cancer Country Nice Place Show Southern Spread
Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Black Church Classical English People Preach Scheme Speak Troop
Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Biological Child Each Fact Fatherhood Mother Requires Well
I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Again Anything Behaviour Done Experience Learn Sixties Stupid Think
Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Free Nokia Phone Plywood Rich
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Everybody Everything Happy Idea Insane Law Liberal
By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Car Country End Ernt Reliable Say Thousand
Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Actual City Country Give Kind Nearly Over Pretty Strik Top
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Carefully Child Children Concert Explain Inform Make Threaten Young
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Again Born Cow Dairy Hunt Make Scope
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Behaviour Drunk Ever Holiday New Proper Season Yera
Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Military People Revolution Rich Shoe Terrorism Uniform
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Atomic Bed Big Bomb Century Idea Test

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

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