Host intro: commentator Pete du Pont of the National Center for Policy Analysis has noticed something about a sense of humor when it comes to politics: liberals don't have one.
The left has no Bill Buckley, who can make an audience laugh at his opponent as they write the guy off as an intellectual lightweight.
Rush Limbaugh's successful in part for his talent to amuse. His critics hate to admit it, but Gordon Liddy can be a barrel of laughs.
Then there's the right's not-so-secret weapon. It must gall the left it doesn't have P.J. O'Rourke, because he ought to be one of them: a free-living, fast-driving, slightly crazed child of the '60s whose devotion to personal freedom turned him right after an early dalliance with radical politics.
His mistrust of government inspired perhaps the most trenchant analysis of Washington ever penned, that giving money and power to congress was like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. He hilariously punctures liberal explanations of famine, overpopulation and poverty. On the environment, he writes, "fervent ecologists argue that we should be nice to the earth because animals, plants and rocks have as much right to be here as we do. This is exactly wrong. We are endowed with a moral capacity that animals, plants, rocks — and many fervent ecologists — lack."
Even liberals have to laugh.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA, we know ideas, and a few laughs, can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont, and I'll see you tomorrow.
Host outro: coming up Monday, Pete du Pont has some clear ideas on how to spend foreign aid.