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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

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Behind Bench Election House Official Seat Senate Chair Whole
Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I’ve been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Anticatalist Children Convince Example Occupy Thank Wall
Never fight an inanimate object.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Fight Inanimate never Object
Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Appeal Effective Itself Organization Powerful Response Right Social Sometimes
Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people – except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Book Elite English Except People Poor Speak Xenophobia
The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry – knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Billow Chivalry Dress Health Jerkin Knight Lady Sidesaddle Think Wimple
Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Difficult Discipline Parent Properly Size
The budget doesn’t have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn’t have much control over the budget.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Again Budget Control Government Much Over
If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Economic Hour Language People Place Political Seventy Social Spend Talk Two
The baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Baby Band Boomer Covered Great People Silliness Type Underground
Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Catch Contemporary Country English Flourish Phrase
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Archive Career Doubt Politics Profession Ridiculous Right Success
Everybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they’re right.
P. J. O'ROURKE

East Everybody Explain Middle Right
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
If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it’s a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also – to do the lawn and clean the gutters.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Ask Children Clean Cook Down Government Hold Problem Solve
No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Collapse Daily False Industry Journalism Memory Print
The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Classroom Problem Public School Underfund Union
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
Richard Nixon was the best thing that ever happened to journalism. I mean this guy was wonderful. Just when you thought he could get no worse, he got worse.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Best Bought Guy Happen Journalism People Person Popular Thing Wonderful
My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow… he wasn’t evil or anything, but he was worthless.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Anything Dad Die Fellow Haste Marry Mom Sense Young
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
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
Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Agriculture Business Dinner Fertilizer Grant Indian Overall Politics Thanksgiving
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
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
Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Good Make Nobody
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

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.

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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.

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