Every so often, a particular meme makes its way through the right-wing internet ecosystem. It features a picture of a prominent Democrat, usually Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, alongside a scathing quote. One such meme includes a quote from the late political satirist P.J. O’Rourke.
“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child—miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
The quote is real. It’s from his 1991 book, Parliament of Whores. And for the MAGA supporters who share it, it is a perfect, concise own. It is proof that a smart, witty guy once eviscerated their enemies. The problem, of course, is that they have absolutely no idea who P.J. O’Rourke was, what he was critiquing, or the fact that he held their own political movement in absolute contempt.
It’s a historical artifact that reveals the profound intellectual decay of the American right.
Who Was P.J. O’Rourke?
For the uninitiated, P.J. O’Rourke was a giant of political commentary, a libertarian-conservative who wielded cynicism and a razor-sharp wit. He was a product of the “Gonzo” journalism era, a former hippie who pivoted hard to the right and spent decades satirizing what he saw as the absurdities of big government and the sanctimony of modern American liberalism.
His critique of the left was not that it was evil, but that it was juvenile, and a philosophy of endless, unaccountable grievance. He was a classical liberal at heart. He was a believer in the rugged, sometimes brutal, individualism that says you have the right to do as you damn well please, but you also have the duty to face the consequences.
But here is the crucial, inconvenient fact that the MAGA meme-makers choose to ignore, and that is P.J. O’Rourke was quite the critic of Donald Trump.
He did not see Trump as the savior of the Republic. He saw him as an unstable, dangerous charlatan. In 2016, in a move that baffled many of his followers, O’Rourke reluctantly endorsed Hillary Clinton, delivering one of the most devastating lines of the entire election cycle, “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
He understood that Trump was not a normal politician. He understood Trump was a threat to the constitutional order that, for all its flaws, O’Rourke still believed in.
The Weaponization of Wit
This context makes the sharing of his quote by MAGA influencers so deeply ironic. They are borrowing the intellectual capital of a man who would have been their sworn enemy. They are using his witty, crafted insult as a blunt instrument in a political war that has no room for wit, craft, or intellect.
O’Rourke’s style was to win an argument, and to dismantle his opponent’s logic with satire. The modern MAGA style is not to win an argument, but to destroy the arguer. It has traded O’Rourke’s cynical humor for raw, emotional resentment. The critique is no longer that liberals are “sniveling brats,” but that they are “enemies of the people,” “groomers,” and “vermin” who must be eradicated.
The meme strips his words of their philosophical context and turns them into a context-free signifier of tribal allegiance. It’s the intellectual equivalent of putting a “God Bless America” bumper sticker on a stolen car.
The Ghost in the Machine
Ultimately, the meme says far more about the people who share it than it does about liberalism. It reveals a movement so intellectually hollow, one that is unaware that those same thinkers would have seen them as the very thing they were fighting against.
P.J. O’Rourke spent his career mocking the “parliament of whores” in Washington. He recognized the transactional, principle-free grift of the MAGA movement. The fact that his words are now being used to prop it is wildly ironic. It is a perfect illustration of how far the American right has fallen from a movement that could produce a P.J. O’Rourke to one that can only shamelessly appropriate his words.