Nerd Notes + Nerd Fun: P.J. O'Rourke Gives a Commencement Address

Yes, gentle reader, it is now (or very soon will be, depending on your academic schedule) graduation season on campuses all over America!

With commencement ceremonies come the inevitable commencement speeches. I honestly don't remember much of these speeches during my own graduations. My only thoughts were something like: "*Zzzzzzzzzzzz*... Is that self-important bloviating windbag finished yet?... Give me my diploma, dang it!!!...I'm hungry!...Is that self-important bloviating windbag finished yet?...This mortarboard is giving me 'hat hair'...*Zzzzzzzzzzz*...My delightfully beautiful but completely impractical shoes are killing my feet...I really, really want a tall mocha frappuccino from Satan Coffee...Is that self-important bloviating windbag finished yet?"

This is just because the commencement speaker was boring. I would have SO MUCH PREFERRED a speech like this hypothetical one from the ever-witty P.J. O'Rourke! I give you an excerpt from P.J.'s advice for graduating students:

Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are living in the world's most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, "Go out and make a bunch of money." Instead, they tell you that money can't buy happiness. Maybe, but money can rent it.

There's nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.

Don't be an idealist!

Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you'll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That's $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You'll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, "I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can't eat. I can't sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."

Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.

Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway -- the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the "Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company" and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?

So make your contribution by getting rich. Don't be an idealist

The whole thing flies in the face of the usual sappy claptrap we hear at commencement ceremonies. Awesome.