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The war of The We Against the Me. (The Final Word).

Article Excerpt
At the Cato Institute's 25th anniversary gala last May 9, P.J. O'Rourke offered some after-dinner comments on both the state of the institute and human liberty. We have chosen to reprint those comments for this issue's "Final Word."

ED CRANE TOLD ME TO BE UPBEAT TONIGHT. Everything's going great. We're a successful think tank. We've got a big building. We get quoted in the newspapers. And when we get quoted, the newspapers hardly ever refer to us anymore as the "nutty Ayn Rand disciples who want dope and machine guns legalized."

So I'm supposed to be upbeat. No. Upbeat is for sissy do-gooder organizations like Brookings, the U.N., and the Democratic Party. Cato is not a do-gooder organization. We're libertarians. We're not here to do good. We're here to do anything we damn well please -- and take the consequences -- because we are real advocates of freedom.

And freedom has consequences. Freedom, as we real advocates of it know, is mostly about responsibility. I speak to you as a man who freely contracted to pay a very large mortgage, who freely got married, who freely fathered kids, and who -- of my own free will -- bought an SUV that has to go to the gas station every 11 miles.

There are times when it seems that freedom is all consequences. And if Ed Crane would care to come to the podium and give a joyous, rousing accolade to house payments, private school tuition...