Book review: "The Jewish War" + BONUS VIDEO

Yesterday was the day fixed by President Trump by which Hamas had to accept his plan to bring an end to the unpleasantness in Gaza... or else! 

While we wait for all hell to break loose. let us consider the words of Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus ben Matthias, in The Jewish War. 

1950 years ago, Josephus wrote his contemporary account of the great Jewish rebellion against Rome. The insurrection began in 66 A.D. and lasted seven years.

The Middle East described by Josephus is perfectly familiar -- a politically fractionalized land populated with a humble of ethnic and religious groups, including Jews, Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Italians and a tiny community of Christians.

Each detests the others. Extreme political and theological views prevail. Terrorism and assassination are commonplace. Alliances are momentary. Grudges, personal. And neither colonial subjugation nor local autonomy suffices to keep the peace.

The political events are familiar too. Rome first intervened in the region as a peace keeper, brokering a dispute between Seleucid Mesopotamia and Ptolemaic Egypt. Later the Middle East appeared vital to Rome because Roman trade routes passed through the region and because of the Parthian threat to the empire's eastern frontier. The Romans were lured into deeper military and political involvement, and this triggered continual insurrections.

The rebellion of 66 A.D., however, did not begin as a war of national liberation. It began as communal rioting in the seaport town of Caesarea -- Greeks verus Jews over an empty lot next to a synagogue. This inspired sympathetic rioting in Jerusalem, and a ham-handed Roman attempt to quell the disturbances worsened them instead. The result was one of those great wallows siege, massacre, treachery, persecution, revenge, plunder, and self-destruction to which the Middle East is so often host. 

The rising in Jerusalem set off a reaction among the non-Jewish inhabitants of the region, who indulged themselves in wild pogroms, with killings taking place as far away as Damascus and Alexandria. Roman forces were not sufficient to quash the rebellion. Jewish forces were not sufficient to defeat the Romans in open combat. Guerilla warfare ensured, with predictable consequences to the populace.

The Romans were noted for vigorous foreign policy responses. The Emperor Nero sent Vespasian and three legions to pacify Judea. Using a great deal of slaughter and some tactics, Vespasian drove the rebels back to the environs of Jerusalem. He was prevented from ending the war, however, by political confusion at home. Sound familiar? Nero was ousted and three worthless and short-lived emperors followed within the year.

The Jews made use of this breathing space by engaging in urban warfare with themselves and committing all conceivable and some inconceivable atrocities upon their co-religionists. Vespasian himself was finally proclaimed emperor by the Roman army, and the war was resumed under the direction of his son Titus.

After a prolonged and disgusting siege, Jerusalem was taken. And after another prolonged and even more disgusting siege, Masada, the last rebel stronghold fell. The Temple was destroyed, the Jewish upper classes were dispersed, and a Roman army was permanently stationed in Judea. Even then the peace did not hold, and rebellion would break out anew during the reign of Hadrian. 

Normally the patterns of history are reassuring. But in The Jewish War, the shock of recognition is just a shock. Here, sixty generations ago, is nearly the same cast of characters engaged in exactly the same obsessive, vicious, and fatal behaviour for the same terrifying reasons on the same cursed, reeking, ugly chunk of land.

Who fails to learn history is doomed to repeat it. But was seemed doomed to repeat this history anyway. 

This review is adapted from "The Two-Thousand-Year-Old U.S. Middle East Policy Expert", by the late, great P.J. O'Rourke, in a little-known libertarian magazine called Inquiry, c. 1979. While you're letting that sink it, here's a very à propos musical interlude.

The Holy Land: plus ça change...

Two reports from Jerusalem, a holy city to Jews, Christians and Muslims. The first, datelined today (22/4/22), is from Al-Jazeera. 

A new Israeli raid at Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem this [Friday] morning left 31 Palestinians injured, including three journalists. Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades as they entered the compound of the Muslim holy site.

Palestinians threw stones at the Israeli police, who were dressed in full riot gear (see photo below). A small fire was also reported at the compound, with Palestinians blaming Israeli police for setting a tree alight, while the police said that the fire was the result of Palestinians throwing fireworks. Israeli police blamed Palestinians for throwing rocks, and said that they waited until early morning prayers ended before entering the compound. 

The Muslim holy site has been the centre of days of violence amid heightened tensions following a series of attacks inside Israel and police raids in the West Bank, which Israel is illegally occupying.In a meeting with a United States State Department delegation on Thursday, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel was responsible for the escalation in the occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. 

Tens of thousands of Muslims are expected at Al-Aqsa later in the day [today. Ed.] for Friday prayers. Visits by Jewish groups were suspended from Friday for the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This year, the fasting month has coincided with the Jewish Passover and major Christian holidays, with tens of thousands of people from all three faiths flocking to Jerusalem's Old City. 

The second report is from P.J. O'Rourke's excellent book, Holidays in Hell.

The dim interior of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was the size of a large suburban house lot. There were no furnishing at all except luminous antique carpets spread two and three deep across the entire floor. Scores of columns, thick as automobiles, supported a roof so high it was nearly invisislbe. A few of the slippered worshipopers knelt alone on prayer rugs; others gathered in small groups along the walls. For the next four hours,...I hid in these majestic shadows.... 

There was, in fact, a demonstration after prayers, though not a very exciting one.Men came out ofr Al-Aqsa and yelled; women came out of the Dome of the Rock and shrieked. An imam...was hoisted upon shoulders and carried around the Dome. Dozens of pocket-sized Qu'rans were waved in the air.

True to Arab form, the demonstration immediately broke into two quarrelling factions: the group hoisting the imam wanted to keep a strictly religious tone of outrage to the proceedings; the other group wanted to wave a small, homemade Palestinian flag and scream at the Israelis.

The soldiers along the walls looked tense, and one platoon moved into the enclosure and stood along the edge of the Dome's platform with weapons in array. But they didn't interfere. A few young Muslims made feints at collecting stones to throw but didn't follow through. With nothing to oppose it, the demonstration died down in half an hour.

P.J.'s account, dated January 1988, is from the chapter entitled "The Holy Land -- God's monkey house". Nuff said.

Tired of fake news? Check this out!

I'm talking about fake news from the lamestream meeja, of course. Everything you read here on WWW is accurate, factual and true... except when I say I'm lying. I do that sometimes. And sometimes, someone else is lying and I just report what I (gullible old fool that I am) believed to be true because a liar told me.

Anyhoo... if you want some True Facts, you'll find dozens of pages of them in the August 1988 ish of National Lampoon, on sale in our dear sponsor's little store.

National Lampoon, once billed as "The humor magazine for adults", jumped the shark four or five years before this issue was published, when the Simmons gang took over publishing and editing, and funny people like Doug Kenney, P.J. O'Rourke, Tony Hendra et al. stopped writing for them. 

OK, Kenney died but my point is the writing got pretty lame and repetitive in the mid-80s. By the time they went bimonthly -- a sure sign of trouble -- in 1987, things had got to the point that the True Section (true stories, true signs, true headlines and true truth) was the most-read part of the mag. The August 1988 issue proves that truth is, indeed, funnier than fiction.

Note from Ed., added at 1930. I asked Walt how he could just leave it there, without giving a couple of examples of the funny facts. He contacted our sponsor who sent these....

Jordache, the designer-jeans manufacturers, lost its laawsuit against an Albuquerque NM company which sells designer jeans for hefty women under the name Lardashe. According to Insight magazine, "The Denver-based Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Jorache's argument that the Larashe name was an attempt to confuse the public.

Lardashe jeans are made by Oink Inc., which considered a number of names before deciding on Lardashe in 1984. Among the other names considered were Vidal Sowsoon, Calvin Swine, and Seambusters.

A north Philadelphia man, Harold Askin, was accussed of first-degree murder after stabbing his robbery victim, Eli Reeves, to death. Despite the fifty-eight stab wounds on Reeves' body, Askin claimed that he had acted in self-defense and that Reeves "fell on the knife."

Like those? True Facts `88 has hundreds of `em, so our sponsor sez.

We welcome our first guest columnist

 Ed. here. Walt is indisposed, so has, for the first time in the nearly 12-year history of WWW, invited a guest columnist to contribute a post. Our guest is David Frump, a self-described conservative and contributor to The Atlantic & Pacific magazine, which no longer has much use for his anti-Trump articles.

Thank you, Ed. Being asked to write a column in Walt Whiteman's World would be a daunting enough prospect at the best of times. But when one has to be not just a guest columnist, but the first, one is reduced to total speechlessness.

Staring at my face in the mirror this morning, I asked myself: what do you believe? Do you really have any opinions? Are you essentially conservative or, as some would have it, merely a cuckservative? Who are you?

Is this 1000 words yet? [No, it isn't. Keep going. Ed.]

Such profound questions have no easy answers. Yet answer must be found, if I am to fill up the remainder of the space allotted to me. And filled it must be, or there will be a good deal of white space on this web page. 

Was it not Anton Chekhov, that great prophet of our age, who foesaw a world in which men were grey shadows, who said "the act of writing is in essence a destructive act, turning what began as nothing into what ends as nothing."?

From Chekhov it is only a short stop to Czechoslovakia, which P.J. O'Rourke, in his epic All The Trouble in the World, held up as an example of the ecological disaster which comes in the wake of laissez-faire environmental policies of the sort espoused by Donald Trump, whose re-election last November virtually guarantees the further rape and pillage of America's grasslands, forests, lakes, rivers, wetlands and... [That's close enough to 1000. Your cheque is in the mail. Ed.]

True laws (à la National Lampoon)

Remember National Lampoon, "The Humor Magazine for Adults"? In its heyday, from the beginning in 1970 through the mid-1980s, it had some excellent writing -- humour in a jugular vein [That was MAD. Ed.] -- by such fine funny fellows as Chris Beard, Doug Kenney, and the inimitable P.J. O'Rourke (my favourite).

Regular features included Letters from the Editor, Funny Pages (excellent comix by the likes of Charles Rodrigues, B.K. Taylor and Shary Flenniken), Photo Phunnies, and another of my favourites, the True Section. The True Section comprised True Facts and True Photos, real-life stuff proving that the truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn't make such stuff up!

Included in the True Facts, from time to time were examples, contributed by readers, of actual laws which were either badly written or just plain stupid in and of themselves. For example: In Massachusetts it is illegal for a goat to wear trousers.

I don't know if that's true now, or ever was true. In fact it doesn't come from the NatLamp True Section, but from a book by Leland Gregory called S Is For Stupid (Andrews McMeel, 2011). Mr Gregory says these are true (and stupid/funny) laws, and I'll take his word for it. They sure made me laugh!

Cats are forbidden to ride on public buses in Seattle if there is a dog already on board. Also, any dog weighing more than 25 pounds must pay the full adult fare.

No person shall knowingly keep or harbor at his house or her house within the city any woman of ill-repute, lewd character, or a common prostitute...other than wife, mother, or sister. (Ashland KY ordinance)

Burglars are prohibited from entering or leaving the scene of a crime by the front door. (Lincoln NE ordinance)

Whoever operates an automobile or motorcycle on any public way -- laid out under authority of law recklessly or while under the influence of liquor shall be punished. (Massachusetts state ordinance. The absence of a second em-dash would seem to impose on the motorist the duty of finding out at his peril whether certain highways had been laid our recklessly or while under the influence of liquor, before driving his car over them.)

No dog shall be in public without its master on a leash. (Belvedere CA ordinance)

In Alaska it is against the laws to disturb a grizzly bear in order to take its picture. (A crime with its own unique punishment?)

Speed upon country roads will be limited to 10 miles an hour unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days, then the driver will be permitted to make what he can. (??? El Dorado County CA law)

Mississippi common law states that every citizen has a right to shoot to kill if necessary when escorting a woman home from a quilting party and another man interferes and threatens to shoot him.

That's enough stupid/funny laws for one day. Ed. Anyone who collects National Lampoon magazines is recommended to search eBay this month. One of our assiduous readers has dozens of them on sale (by auction) at reasonable prices.

Adam Smith says POTUS is wrong on tariffs and trade

Who dares to take issue with President Trump's desire to raise tariffs on steel, aluminum and a wide range of goods America imports from its friends and allies, and thus provoke a trade war? Adam Smith, that's who!

Mr Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment era. He is best known for two classic works: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). The former, usually abbreviated to The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics.

Adam Smith was a classical liberal -- the good kind -- and a firm believer in free trade. In The Wealth of Nations, he argues for three foundations of modern economics, viz.:

1. pursuit of self-interest - It's OK to look out for Number One
2. division of labour - It's folly to have everyone build his own house when different people can be employed to dig the foundation, do the framing and put the roof on
3. freedom of trade - I give you something you want, and I get something I want, which goes back to the first principle. 

The Wealth of Nations is a huge book -- huge in its impact on political thought and, unfortunately, huge in size -- over 900 pages even in an abridged edition. Everyone who fancies himself [or herself! Ed.] a thinker refers to Adam Smith, but few actually quote him because few have read this literally magnum opus. P.J. O'Rourke has done so, or skimmed through it at least, and has produced a remarkably slim "Best of Adam Smith" book called On the Wealth of Nations (Douglas & McIntyre, 2007), from which I've drawn this passage (from Book 4 of the original work). The words of Adam Smith, himself, are shown in italics.

Smith disdained trade retaliation: "Those workmen...who suffered by our neighbours' prohibition will not be benefited by ours. On the contrary, they and almost all the other classes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods."

And Smith gave the lie to claims that tariffs protect working stiffs: "To lay a new tax upon them...and because they already pay too dear for the necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends."

As for all our money going overseas, Smith had shown in book 2 of Wealth why this doesn't harm an economy: "we must not imagine that it is sent abroad for nothing." And Smith was referring to gold bullion. Gold always has some value.... The American money that the Chinese are getting is fiat currency that could turn into wastepaper at any time.

By holding dollars and dollar-denominated securities, China is buying our debt. Smith had declared, "A man must be perfectly crazy who...does not employ all the stock which he commands, whether it be his own or borrowed." If Americans think they're using all the capital they can get their hands on "in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves," they'd be crazy not to be in debt.

As I pointed out in "MAGA to MAAA - Walt explains President Trump's 'trade war' strategy", WWW 1/6/18, Making America Great Again doesn't necessarily involve Making America Alone Again. Reverting to the protectionism of a hundred years ago will almost certainly be counter-productive. If POTUS persists in making war on America's allies (no matter how irritating their leaders may be), it will not end well. Lifetime pct .986.

Kerry for State Secy? Really??!!

Yesterday, the Prez nominated Sen. John Kerry to replace the departing Secretary of State, Hellery Clinton. Another triumph for political correctness and the Democratic Party.

Of course Obama could have done better. Kerry was not his first choice. He really wanted to appoint a black woman, viz. Susan Rice. If Ms Rice had only been disabled or a lesbian, the Prez could have hit the Trifecta there.

Sadly, Ms Rice blotted her copybook by her inept handling of State's reaction to the Benghazi "incident" -- the terrorist attack that she tried to pass off as a protest against an insensitive video. If she had told the truth, Obama wouldn't have had to tell a lie -- so goes the reasoning -- thus she must walk the plank.

That leaves us with Kerry, the former Democratic presidential candidate who couldn't manage to defeat the most-reviled Republican since Herbert Hoover.

Kerry's chief qualification, according to Obama, is that he won't need "much" on-the-job training. That's because he's been doing dippy [= diplomatic. Ed.] stuff for decades, and knows how all that unpleasantness should be handled. Right?

Errr, maybe not. Did John Kerry learn anything from his OTJ training in the Philippines in 1986? Then and there, Senator Kerry was a member of the US Congressional observer team sent to monitor the country's presidential election, in which Corazon Aquino was trying to oust the thoroughly corrupt orifice, Ferdinand Marcos.

P.J. O'Rourke happened to be present at the Thrilla in Manila. [Wasn't that something else? Ed.] Here's what he wrote in Rolling Stone.
Most of the Potomac Parakeets were a big disappointment. Massachusetts senator John Kerry was a founding member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, but he was a bath toy in this fray.

On Sunday night...thirty of the computer operators from [the elections oversight commission] walked off the job, protesting that vote figures were being juggled. Aquino supporters...took the operators, most of them young women, to a church, and hundreds of people formed a protective barrier around them. One of Cory Aquino's top aides [went] to the Manila Hotel.... She came back with Kerry, who did nothing.

Kerry later said that he didn't talk to the COMELEC employees then because he wasn't allowed to. This is ridiculous. He was ushered into an area that had been cordoned off from the press and the crowd and where the computer operators were stitting. To talk to the women, all he would have had to do was raise his voice.... But all Kerry did was walk around like a male model in a concerned and thoughtful pose.

Aha! Exactly the kind of posturing required of a Secretary of State! What O'Rourke condemns is what Obama sees as the best of all qualifications -- the ability to look concerned but do nothing.
Not much on-the-job training required. Indeed. Just the guy we want!

Footnote: P.J. O'Rourke's assessment of Kerry (as he was 26 years ago) was excerpted from "Goons, Guns and Gold", which originally appeared in Rolling Stone, and was reprinted in Republican Party Reptile, reviewed here on November 22nd.

Where to find P.J. O'Rourke's best stuff

When I became a man, I put away the things of a child. St. Paul: I Corinthians 13:11

Me too. And one of the childish things I put away -- in a hermetically sealed container under the front porch -- was a complete collection of National Lampoon, right from Number 1 until it went bi-monthly and stopped being funny.

At that time (latter part of the 1970s) the editor of NatLamp was P.J. O'Rourke, possibly the funniest reactionary and humorist of the entire 20th century. (He stopped being funny about the 1st of January 2001, but I've said that before.)

A conservative with a sense of humour is rare but not unique. Walt always admired William F. Buckley Jr. and chuckled at his wry comments, albeit understanding them with the help of Funk and Wagnall. Ron Paul often seems to me to have his tongue stuck firmly in his cheek, although there's always the possibility that he's 100% serious 100% of the time. It's hard to tell.

But the quality O'Rourke stirs into the mix -- a quality seemingly lacking in Buckley and Paul -- is a healthy dose of depravity. In that, P.J. more closely resembles the late great (but not conservative) Hunter S. Thompson, Doctor of Gonzo Journalism.

The resemblance is best seen in what Walt considers O'Rourke's piece: "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink". Reading it -- even for the umpteenth time -- puts me in mind of my misspent youth. [Last year? Ed.]

So do HST's descriptions, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, of driving across the desert in the shark, but Thompson's narrative discloses a certain unhealthy depravity, compared with P.J.'s behaviour, which seems to me pretty much normal for a young man of our generation. A judge might disagree with me -- at least one judge has taken serious issue with my views on what's "normal" -- but whether you agree or not, you can't help but LOL at O'Rourke's recipe for a cocktail of hedonistic, reckless fun. A small sample:

Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject -- about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car.

Yeah, sure. I can hear all the progressive thinkers say that's totally irresponsible, no social conscience, yada yada yada. But my experience -- and I have had some -- is that you have to go through that verging-on-the-insane phase before you can truly understand the meaning of sanity or even normality. Show me someone who's "normal", and I'll ask him (or her) if he (or she) has always been that way. Chances are the answer will be "Oh no. Back in the day I used to..." Etc.

Hold that thought. What I really wanted to tell you was where -- outside of my complete set of National Lampoons -- to find a selection of P.J. O'Rourke's better articles and essays. Walt recommends Republican Party Reptile (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), which contains half a dozen from NatLamp plus a number of pieces which previously appeared in Rolling Stone, House and Garden [Really?! Ed.] and Car and Driver.

One of the C&D items is "High-Speed Performance Characteristics of Pickup Trucks", which all those who have never deviated from "normal" can skip, because you won't understand it. No. Read it so you'll understand those of us who have on occasion broken the confines of conformity.

Footnote: Walt's collection of National Lampoons is for sale. Condition is fine to very fine. If you pay enough I'll throw in the Harvard Lampoon parodies of Time and Life, and the famous High School Yearbook. Exchange of cash and a treasury of humour to be made under the UN flag at the border. E-mail your offer to the usual address.

"Homage to a government"

This poem, by Philip Larkin, is used by P.J. O'Rourke as a preface to Peace Kills, reviewed in Walt's previous post.

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers back home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Philip Larkin wrote that in England, not the USA. In 1969. 1969!

Book review: O'Rourke proves peace kills

I was pretty hard on P.J. O'Rourke in "P.J. disappoints", a review of Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010). I wondered when P.J. stopped writing and started stringing quotes together and calling it a book. I now know it happened sometime after 2004, since Peace Kills, published in that year, is one of his better efforts.

Perhaps I can be forgiven for missing Peace Kills when it first appeared. At the time, I was living on the other side of the world, in a place where the reading of books by Americans is discouraged. But all things happen for a reason, and to me, Peace Kills is more of a must-read now than it was then.

The book is about American foreign policy, or the lack thereof. Say's O'Rourke, "Americans hate foreign policy...because Americans hate foreigners.... Being foreigners ourselves, we know what foreigners are up to with their...lying alliances, greedy agreements, and trick-or-treaties."

And yet, he argues, Americans cannot ignore the world. He dips his pen in acid and looks at American involvement in such foreign policy triumphs as Kosovo, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq, not forgetting 9/11. He demonstrates the muddle-headedness of the Clinton administration's made-up-as-it-went-along policies. Then he shows how Dubya's administration did no better. Both administrations, he says, left the world a worse place than they found it.

Remember, this was written two elections ago. O'Rourke makes sport of the ignorance of the 2004 crop of contenders for the Democractic presidential nomination. Are the Republican hopefuls, this year, any smarter or better?

That's a rhetorical question. The only one who's making any sense, IMHO, is Ron Paul, and he's arguing for a policy of isolationism. Here's what O'Rourke has to say about that. "Our previous attempts at isolationism were successful. Unfortunately, they were successful for Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan."

Hm. Maybe P.J. is right. Maybe the USA can't just turn its back on the world. But if America must act as the world's policeman, if it must involve itself in the messes of the Middle East, Far East and Africa, it must have a coherent plan, and a vision of what should be done in the aftermath of conflict.

Walt welcomes the suggestions of ordinary Americans -- O'Rourke calls them the "dull normals" -- for a sensible foreign policy. Answers on a postcard, please, to the usual address.

Apology to P.J.

Ed. thinks I was too hard, in my review last week, on P.J. O'Rourke's new(ish) book, Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards. How could I pan someone who's Republican, Catholic and (mostly) libertarian in his political views? After all, that pretty much describes Walt.

What I said, in sum, was that you should give it a pass if you'd read O'Rourke's previous books such as Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance. I stand by my assertion Don't Vote is largely money for old rope, and not even O'Rourke's old rope but a pastiche of quotes from just about everyone who's said anything about politicis and politicians over the last two millennia.

That said, the stew of quotes, aphorisms and witticisms is rich enough. There are some good chunks of beef floating amidst the lentils. Here's one about foreign aid:

I hope we're not expecting our distant relations [in the family of nations] to be grateful. A hundred years ago when foreign aid was unthought of (except as tribute or bribe) we were a respected and admired country. After a century of philanthrophy everyone hates our guts.

In the same chapter on American foreign policy -- or lack thereof -- O'Rourke makes a pretty good case that Al O'Bama should read Kipling, particularly the short story, The Man Who Would Be King. (The movie version, starring Sirs Sean Connery and Michael Caine, is one of Walt's Top Ten Movies of All Time.)

Why? Because Kipling was a believer in the White Man's Burden -- to bring the Western concepts of political liberty and human dignity to the benighted nations of the east and south. This civilizing mission -- hopeless un-PC these days -- has been in the minds of European political leaders going all the way back to Alexander the Great.

What Kipling added to the debate, in the eponymous poem and in The Man Who Would Be King, is the prophecy that all the Western goodwill and striving to make the world a better place is doomed to failure. O'Rourke quotes bits of the poem:

To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride...
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need...
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease...
[And] Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to naught.

As we look at the mess that is today's Middle East, we must admit that Kipling was right. But for a 21-st century writer to quote Kipling's dicta, to remind us of the folly of our liberal "we're all one big family" policies... that takes not a little courage. And you have to have read Kipling! So I haven't "unfriended" P.J. O'Rourke. Neither should you.

Footnote: The "Kafiristan" of which Kipling wrote in The Man Who Would Be King is a real place, by the way, in the northeast corner of what is today Afghanistan! You could look it up!

Book review: P.J. disappoints

At one time, I was a big fan of P.J. O'Rourke. His writing for National Lampoon -- particularly the 1964 High School Yearbook -- was both highly satirical and hugely funny. His earlier books, notably Holidays in Hell and All the Trouble in the World, made me LOL. They served up of humour, with a side of political commentary. Good stuff, with lots of fun poked at American society and American culture for relish.

At about that time -- the 1980s -- someone called P.J. a "Gonzo journalist", so he started trying to live up [or down? Ed.] to Hunter Stockton Thompson's image. Perhaps the person who hung the tag on P.J. was thinking of "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink", a March 1979 National Lampoon article, since republished twice. But that piece was derivative, clearly inspired by HST's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Being inspired by someone is one thing. Emulating the source of your inspiration is another.

[Get to the new book, please! Ed.] OK OK! My point is that when O'Rourke was trying to be funny, with political and social commentary a secondary goal, he usually succeeded. But when he decided to make political and economic analysis the main point, with humour used as a polemical device, he didn't fare so well.

Parliament of Whores and, more recently, On the Wealth of Nations, were neither funny nor politically effective. Sort of like when Norman Lear got the religion of political correctness. All in the Family was never the same afterwards.

Now we have Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010). I only chanced on it at my local library this week. I don't recall seeing it reviewed or even mentioned in passing in the lamestream media. Perhaps that's because there is very little to be said for or about it.

This latest opus is little more than a collection of quotes from other works on politics and economics, strung together at considerable length. O'Rourke helps himself liberally (in the sense of "freely") to the expressed thoughts of the great classical writers, such as John Locke (really!), Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen (more really!). Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) gets no fewer than nine citations in four pages, and that's just in one chapter.

So my first quarrel with this book is that a large part of it was written by others. P.J. must thank God that copyrights don't last forever. O'Rourke himself says, on the first page, that his book "is not too original, and I mean that in a good way. Nothing is worse than a too original political theory..." But Walt doesn't demand original thinking, only original writing.

It wasn't enough for P.J. to rehash the thoughts and words of others. Oh no. He quotes himself too, time and again, ad nauseam. To justify doing so, he quotes (will it never end?) Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, 'Know thyself', never alluding to that sentiment again." And, says O'Rourke, "I've used that before too, in The CEO of the Sofa".

So, gentle reader, if you've read Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, Eat the Rich, and/or On the Wealth of Nations, you can safely give P.J.'s latest "opus" -- and I use the word in its loosest sense -- a pass.

Don't read, let alone buy Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards. It will just encourage P.J. O'Rourke.