{"id":8059,"date":"2022-04-07T17:01:46","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T17:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8059"},"modified":"2022-04-07T17:01:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T17:01:46","slug":"reading-more-pj-orouke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/04\/07\/reading-more-pj-orouke\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading more PJ O'Rouke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You'll recall that PJ O'Rourke died in the New Year. \u00a0I've not read much O'Rourke which I feel I ought to rectify given that he was witty, outspoken, insightful and irreverent.<\/p>\n<p>Take this from <em>Peace Kills:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerica is not a wily, sneaky nation. \u00a0We don\u2019t think that way. \u00a0We don\u2019t think much at all, thank God. \u00a0Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you\u2019ve got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags. \u00a0A fundamental American question is \u201cWhat\u2019s the big idea?\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"ContentPageBody-module__body__content--drop-cap\">\n<p class=\"ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--block ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--size-medium--spacing-normal\">As someone who occasionally remembers that I'm supposed to be liberal-minded, that is ...<\/p>\n<p class=\"ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--block ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--size-medium--spacing-normal\">\"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. \u00a0And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.\"<\/p>\n<p>... it's good to be faced with comments such as:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<footer class=\"ContentPageFooter-module__footer\">\n<div class=\"ContentPageFooterAuthor-module__author\">\n<p class=\"ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--block ContentPageBodyParagraph-module__paragraph--size-medium--spacing-normal\"><span class=\"ContentPageBodyQuote-module__quotemark__outer\"><span class=\"ContentPageBodyQuote-module__quotemark__inner\">\u201c<\/span><\/span><span class=\"ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text--size-medium\">At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child \u2014 miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. \u00a0Liberalism is a philosophy of snivelling brats. \u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text--size-medium\">Liberals have a quaint and touching faith that truth is on their side and an even quainter faith that journalists are on the side of truth. \u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text ContentPageBodyQuote-module__text--size-medium\">Consider how much you\u2019d have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. \u00a0A callous pragmatist might favour abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal point of view.\"<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ouch ...<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/footer>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You'll recall that PJ O'Rourke died in the New Year. \u00a0I've not read much O'Rourke which I feel I ought to rectify given that he was witty, outspoken, insightful and irreverent. Take this from Peace Kills: \u201cAmerica is not a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}