Converting to conservatism started simply enough – intellectually.

Personally? It was still a tough pill to swallow, growing up in what passed for a “liberal” home in rural North Dakota in the eighties. Conservatism made sense. Conservatives, as people, made sense – to the extent that stereotypes always do. . Conservatives looked and acted – in the stereotypes that drove much of my 20-ish year old mental model – with Jerry Falwell’s seeming smug sanctimony, with Pat Buchanan’s aggressive know-it-all-ism, the cloying certainty of some of the Young Republican crowd I’d met, with all the usual stereotypes that the media culture, then as now, made the official narrative.

The stereotypes, applied to the people I knew or knew of, made sense.

Me being one of those people did not.

Not until I found P.J. O’Rourke.

Reading the essays that led to his 1987 book Republican Party Reptile, in Rolling Stone and Car and Driver and the usual dog’s breakfast of magazines that paid the freelance journalist and humorist’s bills, O’Rourke told the tale of the “pants-down conservative” – the person who played their music too loud, liked a cocktail or two, had a liberarian outlook on day to day – with a caveat:

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty the duty to take the consequences”

The list of keeper quotes itself serves as a great guide to life, politics, and political life.

O’Rourke passed away earlier this week:

I just confirmed with PJ’s publicist that it’s true. RIP, my friend. You’ll be deeply, deeply missed. Damnit. pic.twitter.com/yN4wtkNdWK

— Drew Cline (@DrewHampshire) February 15, 2022

I never got to meet O’Rourke in person; I was always a day late and a dollar short. David Harsanyi was luckier.

After 30 years, A Parliament of Whores remains the single best satire/fact book about American government I’m aware of. Give War a Chance, some of the finest conflict journalism ever. As Harsanyi noted, many libertarian conservatives have aspired to O’Rourke’s style (Mitch bashfully raises his hand); none have ever come close to matching it. He’s been described as an HL Mencken – but without the misanthropy or unearned arrogance.

And if Mitch Berg ever become Secretary of State, the Foggy Bottom mission statement will be rewritten as follows:

“I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’ Hell can’t hold our sock-hops.

We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”

RIP, P.J. O’Rourke.

UPDATE: Mr D. had about the same idea, at about the same time.