"24 POLITICAL TRUTHS"

Submitted by Al Anders
Juneau, AK
Dec. 3, 2002

1. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
   --George Bernard Shaw
2. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
   --G. Gordon Liddy
3. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
   --James Bovard (1994)
4. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
   --Douglas Casey (1992)
5. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
   --P.J. O'Rourke
6. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
   --Frederic Bastia
7. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
   -- Ronald Reagan (1986)
8. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
   --Will Rogers
9. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
   --P.J. O'Rourke
10. If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
    If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative.
    If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
    If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
    --Joseph Sobran (1995)
11. In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
    --Voltaire (1764)
12. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
    --Pericles (430 B.C.)
13. No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
    --Mark Twain (1866)
14. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
    --Mark Twain
15. Talk is cheap-except when Congress does it.
    --Author Unk.
16. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
    --Ronald Reagan
17. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
    --Winston Churchill
18. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
    --Mark Twain
19. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
    --Herbert Spencer (1891)
20. There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
    --Mark Twain
21. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
    --P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
22. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
    --Winston Churchill
23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
    --Edward Langley O'Rourke
24. When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
    --P.J. O'Rourke (Jack Carey)