updated event schedule. thank you, again, frank, everyone keep reading and have a good night. >> thank you. >> book tv continues now on c-span2. television for serious readers. >> and now on book tv, we would like to highlight programs from our archives with political pj o'rourke. in 2007 on our monthly call-in program in-depth pj o'rourke discusses politics and why he uses human in political social issues. >> is this picture on the left, is that a real picture of you? >> oh, yeah. [laughter] >> not a wig. >> not a wig. >> when was it taken? >> that was -- i would guess '71. i'm not quite positive. >> what were your politics in

1971? >> i think that a martian left would -- would be the easiest way to sum it up. i was a left-winger but i didn't make enough sense to actually be a communist or anything like that. >> when did the transformation occur? >> well, it was gradual. it took place over -- in fact, i just wrote about it. there's a book coming out from the hoover institution is backing this, why i turned right and it's the story of a bunch of us and why we became right. it actually is a long story and i won't tell it. ly give the short version. i was a radical leftist, very much in favor of some sort of marxist socialist thing in america. i got a job.

i got a job paying $150 a week. i was a messenger in new york. $150 was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. i was living in the lowers east side and i was broke. we got paid every two weeks. i was looking forward to that 300 bucks and so was my landlord, i might say and my drug dealer and a number of other people. and i got my first paycheck and i netted out at 178 or something like that. was supposed to be 300 bucks but after federal taxes, state tax, city tax, social security, retirement fund which i really cared about in those days, wait a minute, wait a minute. i've been advocating socialist, marxism, communism for years, screaming and yelling in the streets and we already have it, they just took half my pay, what's going on here?

i'm not rockfeller. we have socialism, that's why i start today snap out of it. took a while. >> somebody else who made a switch in their politics was christopher hitchins. >> much more recently. >> right, back in 1993 this is what he had to say about you. >> 60's, dropout, permanently stoned and dumbed out and paranoid in the 60's and republican and cashing in this chip ever since and has terrific following as humorist it's called republican party reptile and the next one, is called holidays in hell and more recent give war a chance. much better than my books ever

had. here is my revenge upon him. i met him, sure. i've reckoned that he was running on this joke, i know -- i know i've been there, i've been in the radical and now i see how wonderful it would be to be a completely buttoned up, buttoned down toy and the basically depends on political correctness, okay, so people try not the make jokes aid, pj would make funny about aids and not fun to make fun of cripples, he would make fun of cripples, it's funny, but not funny enough. >> christopher, christopher getting away with murder. i might get away with slander, verbal assault. i don't think i've even gotten away with just a little guy, i've never gotten away with physical assault. i think he overstates the case.

and also, of course, i'm long past the point where i can claim to be i'm republican buttoned down or not. i'm an old republican. now i'm like most middle-age white guys. we are all republicans if if we sometimes call ourselves something else like democrat. >> you didn't know this over here and get attacked, did you? [laughter] >> pj o'rourke, all the trouble in the world, modern manners, etiquette book for rude people. >> 1982. >> eat the rich, with what's was this about? >> identity the rich is what got me started what being adam smith. i didn't understand why some countries are rich and other countries are poor and i started

poking around and going to rich countries and poor countries and figuring why this country was rich and others were poor. it was from that experience, toby mandi editor in england, came up with the idea of series of books, books that changed the world, my book on adam smith and christopher hitchens has one on thomas payne and very good it is. it was adam smith, poking around adam smith that toby asked me to write on adam smith. >> you're on with pj o'rourke, go ahead? are you with us? >> hello, come in. >> new jersey, go ahead. >> yeah, i am not sure why mr. o'rourke deserves to be taken seriously or given all of this time on your show when a man who i suspect never wore the

uniform and i suspect from hearing about his politics in the vietnam era would have done his darnest to avoid the uniform can be slip about war which we would not not had and i happened to be a republican for 20 years voting 3 times for richard nixon and twice for ronald reagan, thousands of americans have been killed, tens if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis have been killed, no useful purpose is served by this war and i think it's infathommable about making fun of wars. does mr. o'rourke have conception why we have minimum wage laws and maximum hour laws, does he remember the condition before we had the laws and the way laborerrist were obliged to

work 12-hour days, 6-day weeks. is that what he thinks -- >> that one one odd republican. >> it was on the democratic line actually. >> i'm glad he came in on a democratic line. >> in your dedication to give war a chance, here is what you write. like many men of my generation i had an opportunity to give war a chance and i chickened out. i went to my draft physical with a doctor's letter about history of drug abuse. the letter was 4 and a half pages long with 3 and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs i'd abused. i was shoved into psychiatrist and pounding his desk and shouting you're fed up, you don't long on the army. i didn't have to go, but that, of course, meant somebody else had to go in my place. i would like to dedicate this book to him.

i hope you got back in one piece fellow. i hope that you were more use to platoon mates than i would have been. i hope that was you. >> i got a couple of nice letters because of the dedication from people who thought maybe they had punched me in the case and so they appreciated. to begin with the beginning of what the fellow on the phone said. i've never asked me to take anybody seriously. as to making fun of war, let's put it this way, a bad situation and war is a really rotten situation, like a bad disease, like death itself isn't changed by whether you make fun of it or you don't. we make fun of things not because we approve of them or love them, not because they're cuddly and cute, we make fun

things in order to cope with our own terriblor, or own unease, our unexistential horror, anger at god and disappoint at ourselves, disappointment and so forth. humor is a mechanism, you can drink and make a joke, you can take drugs and you can -- you can make yourself all pump on pias and you can do all of those things at once. so why do i make money of war or don't make fun of war is unfortunately not going make war better and -- nor is it going to make war worse. as to free market and minimum wage and people working in cold mines and working 49 hours a day, 9 days a week and so on and so forth, to -- it's interesting when you say you're in favor of free market you immediately get that response from lots of people, it's not, of course at

all what adam smith meant. what adam smith was talking about was keeping coerce out of life and marketplaces and it's only one aspect of keeping coercion out of life. adam smith's, the wealthy nations, the essays that he wrote, very important book that no one reads, theory of moral sentiments which is about morality, was all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up force. that's the core of morality. it's the core of a free society. it's the core of democracy even though adam smith didn't know that, he lived in a predemocratic era. he didn't quite understand how democracy could work, but he did understand that freedom could work. he was a moral and a practical and -- and just a plain sort of

sympathetic advocate of freedom and at the root of freedom is persuasion. the idea that you want free markets, does not mean that you want markets ruled by force, it does not mean that you want markets ruled by anarchy. it implies a rule of law and implies that we are all equal before that law. it is not prescriptive and doesn't tell us exactly how to conduct the free market. it doesn't give us exact rules. it tells us that there should be rules and we should obey the rules but doesn't say quite exactly what the rules are. in book 5 of the wealth of nations adam smith actually tries to lay down some rules. he tries to take theories and make them prescriptive, actually give us political policy, becomes the policy wonk and 5

books in wealth of nations, when adam smith turns into a policy wonk he becomes as foolish as the rest of us when we become policy wonks. like they had in the white house and like they'll have in the congress, so to the very angry caller, i would like to say this for a second. no idea why 3 hours should be wasted on me and i'm not going to claim there's a good idea. you know, because you have certain ideas about how freedom should be conducted and you may well be right and i respect those ideas and those ideas are worth arguing, it may not be the same ideas as i have but don't just because you want to limit certain freedoms in the market, you may be wise or correct

freedom but don't be smug about limiting freedom. everyone who wants to limit freedom, human slavery to taliban to people who are in favor of minimum wage laws, everybody is smug about their desire to -- to limit human freedoms. some human freedoms really do need to be limited but that doesn't make you a good person for recognizing that, make you a wise person or sensible person assuming your arguments are good but you're not a good person, you deserve smugness and you don't deserve to vent your angen foolish humorous just because you have some desire to limit, so there. [laughter] >> pj o'rourke has appeared on book tv close to 20 times in the

past years. up next tribute to american automobile in book driving like crazy. ..

it's been a great run since they built the first american automobile in springfield, massachusetts. and if the motor weighon company had ban success, springfield, massachusetts, might be today's motor city full of abandoned houses, unemployment, drug dealing, violent crime and racial tensions, which as it so happens springfield, massachusetts, is full of anyway. but we owe the american car a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of detroit's various felon mayors. many people my age, we owe our very existence to the car, or to the car's back seat.

where if you check our parent's wedding anniversary with our birth date and find them a little too close for comfort, that's where we were conceived. there was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. it's true. you couldn't sneak a girl into the rec room of your farm house because your mom and dad, they didn't have a car so couldn't commute so they were stuck home all day working on the farm. and your farmhouse didn't have a rec room because recreation had not been discovered due to all the farm work. on the odd saturday night you could table a girl nut in a bugout marred to get her into the mood to bust poo their coreset because you were haying the hindened of a horse. the car let us out of the barn and while the car was at it, the car destroyed the american nuclear family and anyone who has had an american nuclear family can tell you that was a

relief to all concerned. and cars caused america to be paved. not much worse you can do to a country than pave it. i wondered, we never hear a thank you, never hear a word of thanks for getting america paved from to the candidates in a bodycasts who skateboard all the time. not a word of thanks. cars provided america with an enviable standard of live. could not get a job with benefits working on the general livestock corporation assembly line puttingedders --eders on cows and the american car was pa source of intellectual stimulation, because you can think of innovation, the invention, the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 model-t ford into the 1968 shelby co-bra

gt500. in the course of one single human lifetime full of speeding tickets. compare this to the progress in the previous mode of mode of transportation. horse production, horse designed, unchanged for thousands of years. and when it comes to creativity with the horse issue did a little research on this. nobody thought to put a stirrup, to hang a stirrup from a saddle until 500a.d. the stirrup. people headline rising horses for 500 years and took them until 500a.t. where were they putting their feet? if unable design and engineering hat proceeded at the same pace as horse design and engineering, we would be powering ourselves down the road by running with both of the feet stuck the the

hole in the floor like fred flynnston but might come to that with the 010 obama mobile. most important or all was the car's filled e fulfilled the ideals of america's founding fathers. of all the truths we hold to be self-evident, of all of the unalienable rights with which we are endowed, which one is most important to the american dream? it is right there, front and center, flat in the name of the declaration of independence, freedom to leave. freedom to get out of town. freedom to get the hell another of here. king george can i have the keys and that's what the -- declaration of independence says. i got to tell you, the saga of the american car is not an abstract matter to me. this is no subject of fanciful

theories. nancy pelosi may shock she was transported home from the maternity ward on pink fluffy clouds supported by foam. low carbon. but i know it was the car that got me to where i am. my grandfather, jacob o'rourke, he was born in 1877. born on a farm about the size of this podium here. in lime city, ohio, which was not a city, and didn't even have any lime. he was one of ten kids. they grew in a one-room unpainted shack. have a photograph if, stairing at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes mitchell great-grandfather, barney, was a wood cutter in the midwest where there are no trees. unemployed quite a lot.

also, drunk, also illiterate. i've got a coup of his marriage certificate with barney's x right there. barney's only accomplishment aside from the ten prizes he won on the corn shuck stuffing of the poor man's roulette wheel, the only thing he ever accomplished was he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home, dead drunk. he would fool out of the tavern, pass out in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. he accomplished that. grandpa jake left home, armed with a fifth grade education, heading for the bright lights of to lead dough, ohio, and he went to work as a buggy mechanic. and then one day, a horseless buggy pulled up at the shop, and grandpa saw that and saw the future. he fixed that, too. and it didn't take grandpa long to realize that cleaner hand were to be chad more money to be made selling the things rather

than repairing them, and also my uncle arch's birth date and grandma and grandpa's wedding anniversary were a little too close for comfort. so anyway, he got in the car business, got in the car business and by the time i came along in the 1940s, we had o'rourke buick, and grandpa and my uncle arch owned the dealership and my dad was a salesman and my brother joe ran the used car lot and my baby brother, and all the aunts auntd girl cousins worked in the office and the boy cousins and me worked on the car lot, creeping and waxing cars and arch's so many would run the car dealers association and i went on to do whatever it is i do in this book, writing about cars and stuff. even in these dark days for the american automobile time it wished i'd stayed in toledo and

taken over the buick agency. just to be on the late night local tv car dealership ads. i wanted to pirate pat's treasure island buick, and come out with a parrot on me shoulder and an eye patch, mate questions, come down where prices walk the plank. free chocolate da balloons for the kiddies. dad died -- with honors with free lionses lionses and moose e mitchell -- my family -- without the car we couldn't read. wouldn't have food and stuff. our history begins with the beginning of the american car. and by now some o'rourkes have -- some of us have even gone to college. we didn't go far in college, didn't do very well but we went.

so, i take the demise of the american car. i take this personally. i'm looking around for somebody to blame. i'm mad. want to blame somebody like ralph nader. sun and i think we should definitely attack even though ralph is 75 and clearly insane. it took more than one man and his ignorant and ill written book, unsearch at any speed to wreck the most important industry in the nation, and that was the corvair that ralph was attacking and he was ongoing but the corvair, my high school girlfriendded a corvair and he was one of the worst drives and one of the fastest and if she couldn't get herself killed in the corvair it couldn't be done. ralph was wrong.

the pun dents are telling us there's plenty 0 blame to go round for the death of the american car and i'm not sure about that either. now, it's true that the car executives are knuckleheads but all executives are knuckleheads. look at bill gates. if you were word a god zillion dollars wouldn't you go to a barber college and get a decent five dollar haircut. labor union leadership is maddening but one thing to be mad at the labor union leaders and another thing to expect those labor union leaderred to be down the uaw hall standing on a chair yelling, we demand less money from in the bosses. that was just not going to happen. car workers make $600 an hour, or so i'm told. and -- but they get laid off every time a camel fares at an opec meeting. man their pay is too high but they're not getting that pay. i think to understand what

doomed the american automobile, we have to give up on economics and we have to turn to melodrama. politicians, journalists, financial analysts, the per per varies of the banal have been looking at car as if a con veryible were a business. fire the mbas and hire a photo. the fate of detroit is not a result of corporate greed, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprint in the carbon. it's a tragic romance. it's a tragic romance. up leashed passions, titanic classes, loves lost love and wild horses especially wild horses. >> we opened up the archives to look at awe their program width p.j. o'rourke. the author of 19 books in 2010 he appeared at the cato institute in washington, dc where he is also a senior

fellow, to offer hi thoughts on politicians and the federal government. >> i will not be satisfied until every seat in the house and senate is filled by a regular person, a regular person who quite reasonably hates being there. i want government to be like jury duty. and not jury duty for some exciting crime, like the oj simpson murder. i want government to be like jury duty for a long, boring, complex, confusing, trial, concerning tax law. in fact let me suggest indicting our federal tax code just for starts. which is nothing but fraud. i want government to be dull, a dull and onerous responsibility

like attending a parent-teacher conference, something to be untaken with weary lee luck tenant because good citizenship requires it. i want every congressman, every senator, every president, every supreme court justice to be wishing, longing, begging to go back to his or her real job in real life. i want them hoping and pleading to be allowed to return to their private interests and personal avocations. i want them yearning to be sitting in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose money on his world series bets. i want our elected officials to say that they intend to spend more time with their families and mean it. we will know when we have won an election. we will know when we have won an

election when every single candidate voted into office begins has or her victory speech by saying, oh, shit. now, i'm working on a -- in this new become on a new theory of political science. instead of basing my theory on the work of deach political thinkers, i'm basing my theory on a dumb game played at all-night giggle session in girls boarding schools. my wife told me about this. gamed called kill screw mary. what happens is the girls pick three men, and they go around the room and every girl has to decide which one of the three she would kill, which one she would screw and which one she would settle down and raise a

family. the exam my wife gave was -- her example was conan o'brien, david letterman and jalen no. the girls could -- jay leno. they could kill conan and screw lidarship and mary jay leno. kill screw marry. that's how we pick the president of the united states. take as example, 1992, presidential election. george h.w. bush, bill clinton, ross perot. we kill ross perot. we could hard live avoid a screw from become become and marry kindly old george h.w. bush. now, of course the outcome of the game is not always a forgone conclusion. witness our elopement with bill instead of of walk down the aisle. in 2004 we were undecideds on screwing george

bush-0 killed by al gore. won't give anymore examples -- kill screw marry. got me thinking, the game works on a parts of government, too. you kill the postal service, get in bet women fema housing, mary the armed forces, same for government policy. screw growingal subsidies, it's great cool of political analysis because in a free and democratic country, politics is sort of a three-legged stool. politics balanced upon a tripod of power, freedom and responsibility. kill, screw, marry. we live in a free and democratic country, a little let democratic than it was before last night, which was fine with me. also, kill, screw, marry, is a

great tool of political analysis because we're so passionate about our politics, and how do passionate affairs end? in a passion usually in a crime of passion sometimes. and occasionally they turn into stable, permanent, legal arrangements which is to say, the endless peevish quarrel known as marriage. so how do we approach the political institutions of our free do and democratic country? do we overthrow them with violence? screws around cheating on them or try to build something that is lasting and boring, worthy and annoying, virtually and stifling, marriage, power, freedom, responsibility, kill, screw, marry. when i first began to think about politics, when mastodons and nixon romeed the orth i was

on sedes with freedom. i had a messy idea of freedom, drinking bong water, but i had a tidy idea that freedom was the central issue of politics. i loved politics. many young people. do kids can spot a means of gain without merit. this may be the reason that professional politicians retain a certain youthful zest, ted kennedy was the boy right down to his last aged disease wrackedded moment. was wrong about the lovable nature of politics but was sure i was right about the preeminent place freedom should have in a political system, but there are a lot of definitions of free. 36 definitions of free in webster's third international dirks incarcerate. plenty or people are theoretically in favor of freedom. we are all but overrun with

theoretical allies in tree dom's cause. -- freedoms caution. we have co lane brateors in the fight for freedom we don't even want. the prolet tearans -- prolit tearans have nothing to lose by their chains and there's a creepy echo in the frame of "me and bobby mcgee: half a million people died in that definition of freedom in china. we should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word free in english is not in bondage. the most meaningful thing but freedom is mankind has a sickening history of slavery. here in america, we have freedom because we have rights. but the same way we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights.

there or two kinds of rights. political scientists call them positive rights and negative rights. sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. i call them get out of here rights and gimme rights. politics all tell us bolt the gimme rights especially the politician in the white house, as in gimme some health-care insurance. our bill of rights doesn't mention any gimme rights. our bill of rights is all about our freedom to say, i have got god, guns and a big damn ♪ ♪ jury finds my guilty my judge will go my bail. our right to be left alone, freedom from interference, usually from government and from our fellow citizens when is want to us sober up, quit yelling put the gun down and go back in the trailer. politicians don't like gimme.

they only like gimme rights. they do not like get out of here rights. they don't like get out of here rights because for one thing all slaters are being invite tote get of here and it would leave little scope for legislation, something that legislators love to do. gimp me rights more politically alluring and we find outfieldses temp evidence with the right to education fish right to housing are right to a living waning, to oil spill beach cleanup, high speed internet access, three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. politics have no signs of knowing debt difference between get out of here and gimme rights and blinded by the disaster of d dazzle of anything that makes them popular they may not be able to tell but there's evidence that a confusion about these rights was originally presented to the public with

malice aforethought. president 'franklin's roosts for a freedom papp to at the as natural and well-match as tidy of composition as norman rockwell illustrations, freedom of speech, freedom from religion, freedom from want, freedom from fear but notice how the beggar, number three, freedom from want has slipped in among the more respecialable members of the freedom family, want what? saying as roosevelt did that we look forward to a world founded upon four essential ham freedoms and one freedom is fro dom from want. this is not an expression of generosity from roosevelt. declarations like freedom from want are never expressions of generosity. there are were 6 million jews in europe who wanted nothing but a safe place to go and where was roosevelt there?

when rights consist of special privileges and positive benefited rights kill freedom. wrong rights are the source of abusive political power. years before i realized, years after i first got interested in poll tech before i realize the central issue of politics is power, not freedom. kill, not screw. only an idiot wouldn't have seen this and i was one. i wasn't alone. liberals, moderates, some conservatives consider the gimme rights to be extensions of freedom. in the opportunity right sense. people given the opportunity to not starve to death and that's not a purely evil way of looking at things. and not all the social welfare programs were bad. but the electorate, the candidates, and me, failed to properly scrutinize social welfare programs.

it's not that we failed to examine where the programs were needed or unneeded or well or poorly run. what we failed to look at was the enormous power being taken from people and given to politics. we let freedom be turned into power. f-off and die the politician told us. politics are careless about promising gimme rights and cynical about delivering them and gimme rights in turn are absurdly expandable. the government gives me the right to get married. this indicates i have a right to a good marriage, otherwise why bother getting that right to me. my marriage is made a lot better by my children's right to daycare so the brats aren't in my face all day. being deprived or their right to a nurturing, developmental environment. every child has the right to a happy childhood, so i have the right to happy children. richer children are happier, give me some of ang lena

jolie's. politicians are happy. they get to do the spending and get out of here rights are not free. they intel a military, judiciary, and a considerable expenditure by neighbors when they want us to sober up and put the gun down and go back in the trailer. but gimme rights require no end of money and money is the least of their cost. every one of such rights means the transfer of goods and services from one group of citizens to another. the first group of citizens loses those goods and services but all citizens lose the power that must be given to a political authority to enforce that transfer. and we didn't want to. understand that power and this is particularly true of people my age, of the baby-boom. it was obvious in the way we

racketed when politics attempted to use their power to limit our freedom by drafting us into the war in vietnam. we fought the establishment by greg our hair long and dressing like circus clowns, a pathetic bunch. >> you're watching booktv on c-span and we're taking a look at author program with political satirist p.j. o'rourke 0, former editor in chief of national lampoon. in 201 he off erred critique of the baby-boom generation as one of the over 70 million boomers and reflected on his relationships with his parents and children. >> we are the generation that changed everything. all the ear contracts -- eras and epics of americans ours made the biggest impression on ourselves. that's an important accomplishment because we are the generation that created the

self, made the firmment of the self, divided the a lot of the self from the darkness of self and said let there be self. if you were born between 1946 and 1964 you may have e have noticed this yourself. this is not to say we're selfish generation. selfish means too concerned with the self and we're not. self isn't something we're just concerned with. we are self. before self -- before us self was without form and void like our parents and their dummy clothe -- dumpy clothes and then we came along and now the personal is the political, the permanent its he socioeconomic, the personal is the religious and the secular, the science and the arts, the person is everything that creep on the earth after his and her kind, if the baby-boom has done one thing it to beget a personal universe

and our apologies for one who happens to personally be a jerk. self-is kind of like fish, proverbially speaking. give a man a fish and you fed him for a day, teach a man to fish and if he turns into a dry fly, catch and release, angling fanatic up to his liver in icy water, pesting are trout with a three pound test line and a graphite rod, at least his life partner is glad to have him out of the house. so here wear in baby-boom cosmos, formed in our image, personally tailored to our individual needs and predetermined to be eternally fresh and novel and we saw that it was good. or pretty good. should have had a cool are way, the way the lost generation did. good luck to anyone who tellses to us get lost. it's too late now. we're stuck with being described

as exploding. maybe it's time now that we have splattered of uses all over the place for the baby-boom to look back and think, what made us who we are? and what caused us to act the way we do and what the fuck? because the truth is is. i we hadn't depressedded to be young forever we'd be old. -- if we hadn't decided to be young forever, we'd be old. [applause] >> youngest baby-boomer born in the last year, when anybody thought it was hip to like lyndon johnson, are turning 50, and we'd be sad about getting old if we weren't busy remarrying younger wives and reviveing careers that hit glass ceilings when children arrived and renew prescriptions for drug that keep us from being sad. and we'll never retire we can't.

the mortgage is underwater. we're in debt up to the rogaine for the kids' college education and it's serves us right. we're the generation who insisted their passion for living should replace working for one. still, it's an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have wrought and tally what we have added to and subextracted from existence, we have reached the age of accountability. the world is our fault. we are the generation that has an excuse for everything, one of our greatest contributions to modern life. the world is still our fault. it's just a matter of power and privilege demography. whenever anything happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signed the bill for it. and the baby-boom seated as we are at the head of life's table is hearing generation x, generation y the millenials saying, check, please.

>> wonderful. [applause] >> i actually also chose another just a couple of paragraphs anded a. j. to read. do you need your reading glasses, dear? >> yes. i think i have big type. >> this is near the end of the book. it's a bit of a summing up and so you can see sort of where p.j. lands with this. >> just from there? >> from there to -- >> turn the page. >> got it. and yet we are the best generation in history which goes to show history stinks. but at least we are fabulous by historical standards of the baby-boom was a carefully conducted scientific experiment, empirical results are us. take the biggest generation in

the most important country and you put them all into access excessively happy family, freedoms plenty of money, modicum of peace if the dodged the draft, profusion of opportunity and a collapse of traditional social standards. and you get better people. well not better really. take it one by one we're as -- maddeningly smug. we're batter bay. we're withful, we're careless, rash, vain, indull emed, entitled it but we're still swell. >> love that. thank you. [applause] >> this book has a very interesting structure. the chapters are sort of essay

length and you blend in some real memoir stuff about your life, along with a lot of broader thinking about baby-boomers and how we got this way. you start by, as we all know i think the baby-boom started in 1946, lasted the last year of the baby-boom births were 1964. >> 64. >> so profession. j. you were born on one end of the spectrum. i on the other. it is a defining characteristic of baby-boomers we all look the same age. >> yes. >> so -- >> about 18. by rough estimation. >> but you describe the baby-boom experience as seniors -- how perfect -- high schools, seniors juniors, sophomores and freshman and you're in the senior class. >> i'm in the senior class. me, cher, hillary clinton, and

bill, they're seniors, teach. -- cheech. my thesis is seniors are like -- right at the bow wave of the voyage of exploration and also tethered closely behind our parents the greatest generation and we got keel hauled, dragged under the boat and if we wound up a little soggy, as a sort of -- as financial advisers tongue studs and peace prosted war forgiven. >> your senior class want as the van guard of so many things including vietnam and drug taking and sex and -- but the time the freshman class came along, i think -- well in my case, i'm in the youngest of four, i watch all my the older siblings do all of these things

and it scared me witless and i did none of those things so it's as if i grew up in the 50s. >> younger baby-boomers are more caution, or as i put in the book, they -- they embraced sex, drugs and rock and roll in the deep philosophical underpinnings but they seen i in action the older baby-boomers in action and what works in general doesn't always work when the bong sets fire to the beanbag chair. [laughter] >> baby-boom gets better behaved alves it goes along. >> actually, one delightful aspect of this book is that you start by describing what sounds like a very, very early memory in, dear toledo, ohio, where you are watching the world through the picture window of your brand new -- you family's brand new house. >> i'm standing there, the sill, the windows come up my chin, too young to go to school and

watching the big kid god to school. one of my very early memories and just -- the silent generation, they weren't silent out there. they were yelling and screaming. just seemed like -- i say there at this moment in the book that all generations of kids have wanted to be grownups except us. we wanted to be bigger kids. a vow we have kind of kept. >> actually make an observation but childhood that just really struck me. you say children -- the baby-boom children were in control of their own childhoods, our parents worked as children, our children worked like maniacs, and yet we were a generation, our generation of people who had childhoods. can you -- >> it was lake get out of the house. it's a beautiful day. mom, it's raining, it's 30.

they said it was a beautiful day. get out of the house. i've never quite figured out the parenting style. we take a lot of grief for being helicopter parents but our parents, they were strange. they could be like so cautious and so fearful of things, like don't get to know people who are not from europe. that would be scary. and yet on the other hand they would like -- the fourth of july would come rind and dad would hand out the m-80s. here's some explosives that have probably should take a license. everybody that's uncles. ung uncle mikey mike. that's a respecialable uncle, my businessman uncle. he would give is the fire crackers at his cottage at the

lake and give us each a lit cigarette. >> those were the day. >> not to smoke. not to smoke but because that was the safe way to light firecrackers. start to fiddle with matches we might hurt ourselves. then they drank. like, it was, like -- they were real strict all day long, until 6:30. and then -- i know i'm only ten but can i take the car? sure. what the -- >> in 2017, p.j. o'rourke publishinged a book on the 2016 election, and entitled how the hell did this happen? in march of that year he spoke at the commonwealth club in san francisco to provide his thoughts of president trump and his reason for his victory. >> how could a person like donald trump possibly become president? maybe it's just a matter of what

the great political satirist said, democracy is the theory that the common people know that they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. or, more luckily part of something larger because here in the united states, we're not alone in having a political awkward moment. we seem to be in the midst of a global revolt ghosn the political elites. the political elite's created post world war ii international order and who for the past 70 years have been running everything. running everything into the ground as far as a lot of ordinary voters are concerned. internationally we're seeing a rise in xenophobia and jingoism and author tarynism and the european union in shambles to the deeply sinister activities

of vladimir putin and xi jinping, taking measurements for the new iron curtain. you would think that this would seem worse to ordinary voters than a mere standard issue, political elitism of a jeb bush or hillary clinton but the plate al political elites did in part create their own problem. over the past four generations the hallmark of the political elites has been the expansion of political power. political power is expand in size and expense. one third of the world's gdp is now spent by the politics in governments around the world. one out of every three things you make is grabbed by government. if you're your cat has the kit 's one of them is a government agent. political power expanded in scope. politics casts its net over

every little aspect of life. nothing is so private that it isn't tangled up in politics. transgender bathrooms. we knew that politics is cra pennsylvania and now where we take one is a political issue and i have to say to the political elites, why are you guys going realize guys and gals going to realize that politics is just a two-way street the elite politicians have spend four generations creating a powerful, huge, heavy, unstoppable, monster truck of a government, and then those same elite politicians get all shocked and weepy when a horrible politician, whom they detest, gets behind the wheel, turnings the truck around and runs them over. we need to make the truck smaller, yank the engine and small foot pedals, make the government into a exity car so -- a kiddy car.

so people all over the world are saying, we're sick of the elites. we're tired of the experts to tell with the deep thinkers. and who, while they're at it are grabbing everything we've got. we see this in this revolt against the elites for example in the brexit vote. in the rise of alternative political parties in europe. on botheds then political spectrum, greens on the left and nationalists on the right. in brazil where almost every politician in the country, left right or middling, has been charged with corruption, for the simple reason they're guilty of it. now, in the case of brexit, britain's political elite, its business ecomplete its trade union elite were all opposed to brexit. and that is to say the people who supported the iraq war, plus the people who caused the 2008 global financial crisis, thus me

people who nationalized the british automobile industry, they were all in unprecedented agreement on one issue and the voters felt they couldn't go wrong voting against this trifecta. it was a latin america, very similar case in colombia. comey ya ease leads spend fie years negotiateed a peace treaty. a plebe side was held to -- asking colombia voters to discussion after 52 years of murder, kid nining, pillage, theft, and trafficking in narcotics the guerrillas are getting retirement benefit. even the dull politicked of australia have been in turmoil. they're so dull that the name of

the conservative party is the lab rat party but australia has had five prime ministers in six years and the last one almost ended in a hung parliament. must have been tempting. it's hanging charlottors is against the law, expense in queens lean if they're caught chasing seep. politics in canada, even duller than the politics of australia, and yet in canada they have a premier who is a completely inexperienced dashing young celebrity named justin. i haven't googled canadian politics because who would but i assume that justin is bieber. and of course here in america, obviously, we saw the revolt against the elites in the ridiculous rise of donald trump, and i'm thinking, okay issue i understand the desire to shake things one why trump? of all people?

well, trump may be a rich guy, maybe a member of the one percent like he says he is, but there's nothing elite about him. for sure. nothing elite about the way he sounds. sounds leak the rest of us except he sounds like the rest of us after we have had six drinks and he doesn't even drink. he's a jerk. the guy is a jerk, but you can imagine playing a round of golf with him. cheats but to do i. imagine a round of golf with hillary clinton. 20 harvard graduate caddies who have read all the book bowed golf but never been on the links and they spend the whole match telling you, not her but you, what club to use and secret service there is to make sure you take hillary's advisers suggestion you hate from the fair weapon witch a sand wedge, and the cup get moves more to

hilarys lie and the score card wind occupy on hilary's personal e-mail server. on the other hand i don't know if i could stand -- how long i'd last playing a round of golf with donald trump before i game into the temp television to walk a titleist in the back of skis soul while he is on the green nudging nudging the ball with his foot. but anyway, global revole re -- revolt against the elites. i didn't feel the power of this. myself while i was reporting on this, and in certain ways the beginning of the 21st century seems like an odd time to have a revolt against the elites specialfully country like ours where things going at least farley well. not desperate straits, they

great recession of 2008 was painful and a certain amount of wake up on friends couches after somebody took the house. these days practically everybody in america has had a divorce so we have been through that before. and if there were any breadlines during the great recession they weren't handing out loafs of love the taste low kearn thin skin. america's oobesity crisis. more than 7,000 american combatantses have died during the 15 years of the wore on terror but 7,800 combatants died the battle of gettysburg, hippize are not sticking daysies the drones. we're culturally and political polarized in america these days but it's not in way that would startle an old school history professor and jolt him awake from his national in the faculty lounge. the year 1861, that was

polarized. fort sumpter isn't taking any incoming as far as i know, and yet the american people are fearful. they blame their fears on the political elite, and one of the reasons for this, important reason is because the political elite have done a lousy job dealing with certain problems. the middle east, for example, demons have been unleashed in the middle east. elites failed to address the problems that called the demons to be unleashed. indeed elite seem to have been breeding demons in kempts of lee diploma, elite gentlemenow politics and elite military strategy and then the elites turned these demons lose in the middle east as if demons wasn't endangered species and one result has been murder all over the world. how much further away from the

quarrels and the hatreds of the middle east could a person get than to be at latin night in a gay nightclub in orlando, florida. and another result of course of this mishandling of the middle east is the refugee crisis in europe. and the europeans are going what did the elites care. the refugees are not crowding the stairway asks the corridors and jostle thing elites in the halls of the europen parliament in brussel, not building shanty town on the tennis court of the elites' private country club to. to elites immigration means unanimousies and household staff. elited don't seem to be able to see any similarity between the wall that donald trump has promised us and the gated communities in which the elites live. and another problem the elites caused for. thes is they've promised that

politics can fix everything. well, when you promise that you can fix everything, then everything that's broken is your fault. if political elite say that politics can fix climate change, then i want to see bill clinton shoveling my driveway. know he has tater trouble but thanks to global warming my driveway only hal had a few inches the elite are blamed for everything. whether or not it's their fault. including getting blamed nor fact we live in a time of rapid change. and never mind that much of that change goods change. number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty, living on less than a dollar a day, that has been reduced by half since the year 2000. amazing, marvelous project, and yet -- also, despite some recent

backsliding, there's been an overall growth from human lisch over the past 30 years, def since then 1989 fall of the berlin wall. and to be fair to the elites, rapid change creates problems for. the, too. speedy transformation, and storm more ray corks couldn't confused everybody. mankind no longer has to march in lock step. people are becoming individual persons instead of masses on review. and this is great but certain difficulties arise on the parade ground when the stride is broken, when the band breaks up it he ick leave the tuba to be turned bo a beer bong, the fellow with the bass drum on the curb, the trombonist using this

slide to dos the core net player and nobody left who can spell glocken spiel. she drum major is wearing a goofy hat and waving a stick. swift improvements in transport, in communication, and in technical capabilities have combined to produce this thing we call globalization, international trade, shrinking the earth to a plus to size planet. -- pluto size planet weapon love having everything brought to our door except when we adopt. we love going to yellowstone party but how much we love the herds of bison, the mountain and bears in our rec room. we need to clean the carpet. and then we good to work in the morning and find out bear ate your job. the world is a small are place now of did this make the political elites think the

smaller world would make everyone get along? try it with your kids. put them in a small place such as the back estate of your car. now take them to see the world. take them to, for example, yellowstone park from, say, new jersey. how are your kids getting along? i guess political elites don't take family car trips. i guess political elites don't even fly economy class. then there is a of course whatever it is that is going on with the internet about which i would be the wrong person to ask. i finally got myspace figured out only to discover the only person in my space is me. and incidentally, concerning the internet, whose bright idea was it to make sure that every idiot in the world is in communication with every other idiot. but i take it on trust that the

digital revolution will change everything and for all i know it's done so already, and i mean didn't there uses used to be a book store -- where did sears good, and i'm glad. if i'm glad i can comparison shop for a refrigerator online and buy any brand that exist tuesday have it delivered the next day with free shipping but the kenmore repairman at sears, he's now a foot soldier in american's opioid addiction attack and how die get my refrigerator into the ups drop box when the icemaker quits working. all change is disruptive, all change is scary. changing a diaper, change of life, any change in the -- frightening people asking for spare change on the street. a little of that here. when contemporary social and economic change are combined with contemporary distrust of political elites, a distrust

that in some cases has been earned, the results can be very disturbing. russia's ugly new nationalism comes from vladimir putin harnessing popular outrage at the incompetent help to mainage political elites that took's of russia. xi jinping makes use of all the tea in china scale of corruption among chinese elites and indeed there are antielite expects to jihad. isis terrorists have -- they hate elites so much that they have suicide squads of elites who go around killing themselves. modern world airs scary world, and fear is a bad school marm and we have a monster at the blackboard and how can people in

the democratic theories learn the one plus one fundamental ofs to the democracy. so what happens is the peoples in that class turn for help to the big stupid bully at the back of the classroom. and that is donald trump. >> and a look at p.j. orock's programs concludes with a discussion of his recent book. none of my business, which looks into the history of currency and his thoughts on finance. >> one reason that the concept of money so often violates common sense is that governments do so many nonsensical things with that money. another reason that money violates common sense is that we don't have to use real mods as money. we can use written promises to deliver real commodityies.

and to not be too quick to do so. trust but verify said one of the presidents that -- the only president we had that even possessed some libertarian inclinations. actually papp more has a libertarian origin. it's a free market invention. at least in europe. paper money was developed bills of exchange from italian merchants and reseats given from goldsmiths who whom appreciate metals had been entrust it but did nod take along for political authorities to steal the idea. government fiduciary money in the west was first printed in sweden, traditional swedish commodity money came in the form of copper plates and a large fortune was a large fortune. and in 1656, the stockholm bank began issuing more convenient

paper notes and the bank issued too many notes and the swedish government went broke. in 1716, scotsman john law help the french government establish the bank royale, issuing notes backed by the value of fran's lan holdings west of the mississippi, bank royale issued too many notes, the french government went broke. most extensive premodern experiment with fiduciary money happened in america in 1775. the second continental congress, created paper money, but passed a law against refusing to except it. continental congress issued to many notes and a pattern begins to emerge. awe fiduciary money is backed by commodity. the most common commodity has been gold.

by the 19th center the major currencies was backed by gold and the british pound. a period of monetary stability and not of great economic growth. some people think we should go back on the gold standard and not all of them live in armed compound inside idaho. ... >> this happened to the spanish when they conquered the new world they obtained tons of gold, melted it down and sent it to a mint. it never occurred to the spanish that they were creating more

money, not creating more things to buy with it. between 1500 and 1600 prices in spain went up by 400%. presented with the vast wealth of america's oceans, fields, forest, spain took the gold. if somebody robbed the bank and sold nothing but deposit slips. so gold is not an absolutely perfectly rational basis for a currency but the real problem with fiduciary money from a government standpoint it's not irrational but convenient. limits amount of currency that can be presented. government has to have some of the commodity or the world makes a laughing stock out of its bank notes, not worth the continental. with fiduciary money, governments lie about having precious metal to redeem paper currency and the governments do

worst than lie, people holding fiduciary money can wake up like they did in april 1953 where fdr signed executive order, 61 of 2, banning the ownership of gold. people can wake up and find out that redeeming paper currency for what the law says it's worth is against the law. so if a government can lie and steal about supporting currency, why can't they lie about everything, everything to the with currency and that's exactly what all governments have done. instead of passing the law saying one dollar equals x amount of gold, our government passed law saying one dollar equals one dollar. this is fiat money from the binding world, cheep and not reliable car. fiat money is backed by nothing

government won't keep printing money in place of something much more important such as toilet paper which is what things have come to in venezuela. it's not -- it's not just by my means venezuelan boulevard, intrinsic value involved in fiat money, it's a pronouncement of existentialism from government central banks. trillions and trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, yen, they are singing, we are here because we are here because we are here which was popular in the trenches in world war i and that's when fiat money came into use. all of the money in the world today is fiat money, we've got it because the government says we've got to. fiat money is supposed to be worth something for what i call the lousy parent reason, frustrated and inept government tells us like we frustrated an

inept tell our children because i said so. is crypto currency the answer. that's one of the i'm glad that you ask that question, what politicians always say and what they mean by that i have no idea what the answer is. as a libertarian, i want a medium of exchange kind of money that adheres to libertarian principles. actually, money that adheres to just one libertarian principle would suffice. what i do does not fiscally harm no one else, it's nobody else's business, period. business is conducted with money, crypto currency would be the private kind of money libertarian wants because it's private in the two most important senses of privacy.

first crypto currency is not public and therefore it is not subject to government public policy and government public policy with money is the issues as much as the government feels like issuing. government treats money like a stalker posting things on pagebook page -- facebook page and grants are increasingly worthless and worrying. unfriending the government, very difficult to do. [laughter] >> second crypto currency encrypts transactions, so what you're buying or selling is not revealed to a nosey snoop and that nosey snoop being once again the government. i'm a fair law abiding car, i wait for a street sign and i don't cheat my taxes other than

federally mandated allow me to do. maybe cuban cigars, but no matter how legal the purchases i make are, i don't like those private purchases being on the public record and sales receipt and credit card records available to who knows and who -- who knows what, nosey snoop government agency and i don't like other people's purchases being on the public record either. now somebody buys a plastic inflatable, atomically correct, i object mate relations in the privacy of the home. i don't want to know about it. [laughter] >> i don't want to know. maybe high-minded accusing me to peta and store to be vandalized and my car within paint-tossing

distance. so that's the case in favor of crypto currency, but to tell the truth, i don't own any, i don't own any. in fact, i have no use for crypto currency. price for bitcoin is down this morning. i checked. it's been hoovering lately around $7,000, okay, but if you -- if you we wanted to buy it, i have a banged up old station wagon that i got for my teenage kids to bang up some more. if you offered me a bitcoin for the volvo station wagon i would tell you to bite me and that's because i'm ignorant, i'm confused by the mathematical and i'm confused about a lot of

things, i'm confused about women, fly on airplanes, no idea how they take off or how they land but i'm particularly confused by the internet. i look at the internet and say whose bright idea was to make sure that every idiot in the world is in touch with every other idiot. hacking global industry connect bid mobile computer. i fear that somehow crypto currency is invention of outlaw nerds with weponized nerds and evil math club. right now some dateless 15-year-old wearing emoji pajamas is in his bedroom with floor covered with empty snickers wrappers, logging onto make himself a billionaire on the dark net. i hope walgreens accepts bitcoin

currency for acne cream. and the extra confusions of crypto currency probably are not the antipsychotic medication that is needed. we worry about money, we worry about our medium of exchange, we worry that if our medium of exchange collapses, our society will collapse. so back a number of years ago. i thought about this and i thought maybe the way to understand that worry about society collapsing is going some place where society has collapsed already. back in 1992i went to somalia to cover the u.s. u.s.-led military mission to save somalia, notionally from famine, actually from total anarchy and let me pause for a moment and talk a little bit about anarchy because when libertarian are often confused with or accused of being anarchist and this isn't true, libertarian believes in

social structure. we believe in a social structure that protects individual liberty, upholds dignity and ensures individual responsibility. this is very different from believe in no social structure at all and somalia had no social structure at all. some -- somalia was true anarchy. vicious dictatorship had been overthrown and the somalis celebrated by shooting each other, fighting broke out everywhere. it wasn't traditional african tribal warfare because the somalis all belong to the same tribe but that tribe had 6 clans and each sub clan is divide intoed infamous murder feuds. they fought each other with machine guns, cannons, wads of filth n. the old town not one stone stood upon another. in the new of the city

everything built out of concrete and the concrete had been blasted back into piles of aggregate portland cement. no water or electricity. at night the only i limb nation was from bullets, every tree and bush had been snapped for firewood, sewage weld up to pavement. goats grazed. so one place -- it wasn't one place i could go alone. abc had managed to find wall more or less intact and hired a 40-man army of somali mercenaries to protect this compound and then some 20 some of us reporters, camera crews, producers, tech people, we were all housed in this compound, bedded down in shifts while our

security as the somali mercenaries like to be called are security camped in the courtyard. it was impossible for us to go outside this compound without a truck full of the security and even with our gunmen there were people to beg and hands tucked at wallets, no foreigners could make a move without causing hornet's nest of attention and young men waving ak47 assault rifles, pushed among the crowd, rusted dented pickup trucks with gun mounts welded into their beds, so there's another abc reporter leon, he had been in somalia for 6 months and leon offer today take me to the

market. i said, sure, i wanted to see whether there was a market and if there was a market, what the heck were the somalis buying and selling. i learned an important lesson about medium of exchange in that market. i learned, i learned that there will always be a medium of exchange. the currently may not be what you expect but no matter how totally society collapses, there will be a form of currency, so we are traveling with an armed somali driver and armed somali translator and truck full of armed security, but even so when we get down to the market, my friend leon gets out of the car and he pulls out a 9-millimeter glock pistol and waves it over his head and racks a bullet into

the chamber and i'm looking at him and leon looks at me and grinning like a maniac and says i call it the visa card of the future. [laughter] >> now if you missed any of the author programs with pj o'rourke or you want to watch them in their entirety you can visit our website booktv.org. césar chives by -- access our archives at the top of the page and type pj o'rourke. >> after that is the vended and the vile. winston's churchill's leadership and alan describe it -- describs the life and wrapping up our

look at best selling nonfiction books, hidden valley road, a profile of the galvin family which consisted of 12 children half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. you can watch them online at booktv.org. ♪ >> i would like to welcome you to unbound, virtual conversation. today we are going to be talking about something extremely timely which is parenting during a time of crisis and i know a lot of you were thinking about that. it is a privilege to have in conversation some some some of t minds and advocates on the