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Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.

P. J. O'Rourke

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
Call a man ‘ignorant,’ and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Call Him Ignorant Knowledge Licence Man Show Vast Wise
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Ant Bee Collective Live Love People Reason
Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Enough Jail Limit Need Term
The people who despise America are the editors of the ‘New Statesman.’ Their green-card applications must have been turned down.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Association Card Country Desire Down Editor Green People Turn
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Else Government Idea Prefer Sensible Somebody
Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Bit Difficult Express Fiction Government More Past Size Something
A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
P. J. O'ROURKE

Big Country Fundamental Ideas Question
Never fight an inanimate object.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Fight Inanimate never Object
A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Greet Hat Lady Nothing Off Stupid Taken
Regulation creates a moral hazard.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Create Hazard Morale Regulation
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
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Buy Control First Legislator Sell Sold
There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Beyond Business Certain Complexity Fraud Legislation Rule Simply Time
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
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

Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.

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Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.

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