Life & Wisdom Quote by Dave Barry

Patriotism, in Dave Barry's hands, isn’t a flag-waving ideal; it’s a jail-avoidance strategy dressed up in civic virtue. The line hinges on a gleeful bait-and-switch: it starts with the respectable language of compliance and citizenship, then punctures it with the most unromantic motive imaginable. That collision is the point. Barry isn’t arguing that people never mean well, he’s reminding you how often public-spirited talk is just a socially acceptable cover for private fear.

The specific intent is to satirize the moral theater surrounding taxes and government authority. “Cooperate fully with the IRS” reads like a press release from a law-abiding company, the kind of statement meant to signal transparency and innocence. Then Barry yanks the curtain back: the real incentive is not duty but consequences. He turns “patriotic duty” into a punchline by attaching it to a primal American concern: staying out of trouble. The joke lands because it’s plausible; the IRS is one of the few institutions that can make even the most swaggering individualist speak in careful, submissive verbs.

The subtext skewers a broader habit: we launder self-interest through noble rhetoric. Barry’s cynicism isn’t bleak, it’s diagnostic. In a culture that romanticizes freedom and distrusts bureaucracy, taxes become a stage for performative righteousness and quiet panic. His wit reframes “good citizenship” as a bargain with power: we comply not because we’re virtuous, but because the state has receipts.