Summary of P. J. O'Rourke & Andrew Ferguson's Parliament of Whores

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The American government takes away between a fifth and a quarter of all our money every year. It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars, and dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow.

#2 Government is boring because political careers are based on the most tepid form of lie: I’ll balance the budget, sort of. In a democracy, government is determined by majority rule, which means that most of us will end up getting nothing out of it.

#3 American ignorance of government is well developed. We know very little about the workings of Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and so forth. We learn about these things in a high-school civics course and one spring vacation when dad took the family to Washington, DC.

#4 American Civics is a textbook that teaches students about American government. It is extremely boring, and it assumes that its readers are as ignorant of everything as it is of government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669368847

IRB Media

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Insights on P. J. O'Rourke & Andrew Ferguson's Parliament of Whores

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The American government takes away between a fifth and a quarter of all our money every year. It checks the amount of tropical oils in our snack foods, tells us what kind of gasoline we can buy for our cars, and dictates what we can sniff, smoke, and swallow.

#2

Government is boring because political careers are based on the most tepid form of lie: I’ll balance the budget, sort of. In a democracy, government is determined by majority rule, which means that most of us will end up getting nothing out of it.

#3

American ignorance of government is well developed. We know very little about the workings of Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and so forth. We learn about these things in a high-school civics course and one spring vacation when dad took the family to Washington, DC.

#4

American Civics is a textbook that teaches students about American government. It is extremely boring, and it assumes that its readers are as ignorant of everything as it is of government.

#5

The Declaration of Independence is a list of complaints against the British Crown, and it can be applied to the current federal government of the United States.

#6

The U. S. Constitution is not hard to understand. It is very concise, giving the complete operating instructions for a nation of 250 million people. The First Amendment forbids any law abridging the freedom of speech, and there is no mention of abortion whatsoever in the Constitution.

#7

The first objective of the Constitution was to create a more perfect union. However, we have not achieved this yet. We have established about as much justice as the country can stand,