A Parliament of Whores

GREAT book by P.J. O’Rourke, from which comes his classic quote:

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

Or Henry Louis Mencken’s take on it that I’ve posted here before:

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

James Rummel has a bit different take on it. They’re all whores, and we’re stuck with them, because that’s how our political system works. Our only choice is to look at the “partners” they are and have been sleeping with, and the ones they want to sleep with. Because we’ll be sleeping with them too.

He says it much more eloquently than that, but quoting it here would not be fair to the quality of the piece.

Read the whole thing.