Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

Everyone with any sense and experience in life would rather take his fellows one by one than in a crowd. Crowds are noisy, unreasonable and impatient. They can trample you easier than a single person can. And a crowd will never buy you lunch.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

The whole idea of government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.

Whenever I'm in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared. And when I find myself agreeing with everybody, too, I get terrified.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

…being specific is the essence of lawmaking and the whole difference between having a Congress and having a mom.

The three branches of government number considerably more than three and are not, in any sense, "branches" since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks.

on the back—like a VISA card but with no, that is, absolutely no, spending limit.

All the senators and representatives and all the citizens of the United States who voted for them are guilty of forgetting one basic rule of business and life: When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Democrats are also the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it. One philosophy is not necessarily an improvement on the other, but if you want the tooth fairy to come, you've got to have some teeth under your pillow.

Mass movements need what Eric Hoffer—in his book The True Believer, about the kind of creepy misfits who join mass movements—called a unifying agent. “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents,” said Hoffer. “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” Hoffer goes on to cite historian F. A. Voigt’s account of a Japanese mission sent to Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought. He replied, “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.

Government is so tedious that sometimes you wonder if the government isn’t being boring on purpose. Maybe they’re trying to put us to sleep so we won’t notice what they’re doing.

What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

Their view of government was O’Rourke’s: “this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense.

Nor did I ever determine any valuable rule for examining the branches of government, except one: If you want to know what an institution does, watch it when it's doing nothing.