books by political satirist pj or work and then booker prize-winning author arundhati roy and what president trump and winston churchill have in common beginning now on the book tv . >> now we like to highlight some programs from our archives with a equals arrest pj o'rourke. over the past 20 years he's appeared on both ddclose to 20 times . first up, in 2007 on a monthly call in program in-depth. pj o'rourke discussed his politics, writing and why he uses humor to address political and social issues . >> this picture on the left, isthat a real picture ? >> oh yeah. not a way. that was i would guess 71. not quite positive.

>> what were your politics in 1971? >> i think a martian left 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 a trotskyite or anything. >> when did the transformation occur? >> it was gradual. i just wrote about this. there is a book coming out from the huber institution is backing this. edited by mary eberstadt called why i turned right and it's the story of a bunch of us and why we became right and it is a long story and i won't tell it but i'll give the shortversion . i was a radical leftist. very much in favor of some sort of marcus socialist thing in america. i got a job. i got a job paying hundred

$50 a week. i was a messenger in new york , hundred $50 in new york a week was a lot of money as far as i wasconcerned, i was on the lower east side and i was very broke . we got paid every two weeks and i was lookingforward to that 300 bucks . and so was my landlord i may say. and my drug dealer. and a number of other people and i got my first paycheck and i netted out 178 or something. it was supposed to be $300 but after federal taxes and estate taxes, city tax, socialsecurity , care, retirement fund which i cared a lot about in those days and i said wait a minute. i've been advocating socialism. marxism. communism for years, screaming and yelling and demonstrating and we already have it . they just took half my pay.

what's going on here? i'm not rockefeller, they just took half my pay. we have socialism and i started to snap out of it for a while. >> somebody else who madea switch in their politics was christopher hitchens . >> much more recently. >> but back in 1993 i believe here's what he had to say about you. >> o'rourke is a guide to get away with murder. he's another ex-leftist, 60 radical dropout, wrote fondly about what it was like being permanently stoned and paranoid in the60s . then sort of like any republican and he's been cashing in this chapter percent and has aterrific following as a humorous . for his books and essays, the first one quite funny. it's called republican party reptile . and the next one was called, it's called holidays in hell and a more recent one is

called give war a chance and it's much better than any of my books ever happened it gets me down so there's my revenge on him.i've met him, sure and he's a funny guy to hang out within a bar. i reckon he was running on empty with this joke about i know i've been there, i've been a radical, now i see how wonderful it would be to be a completely buttoned up, buttoned down 40. and the joke basically depends on satire and political correctness. people try not to make jokes about age, pj will make a joke about age. it's not funny to laugh about criminals and i said in the words of the movies, that's quite funnybut it's not funny enough . >> christopher, getting away with murder. i might get away with slander , and verbal assault. i don't think i've ever gotten away with, i'm just a little guy and cowardly. 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 a young republican button-down or not . i'm an old republican, now i'm like most middle-aged white guys. we're all republicans even if we sometimes call ourselves something else like democrats . >> didn't know you were going to come over here this afternoon and get attack. holidays in hell is another pj o'rourke book. all the trouble in the world. modern manners and an elegant book for rudepeople . first book, when was this put out? >> the original edition was 1983. >> eats the rich, what was this about? >> eat the rich was what got me started on adam smith which was i was simply puzzled. i didn't understand why some countries are rich and other countries are poor.

so i started poking around going to rich countries and poor countries and trying to see if i can figure out why this country was rich and other countries were poor and it was from that experience that toby monday, the editor of grove atlantic in england who came up with this idea of a series of books that changed the world of which my book on adam smith is one and christopher hitchens as one also on thomas paine, rights of man and very good it is. it was because of some adam smith, some poking around at adam smith that toby askedme to write on adam smith . >> your own with pj o'rourke, go ahead. are you with us? >> come in nesbitt. >> go ahead. >> i am not sure why mister o'rourke deserves to be taken seriously given all 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 darndest to avoid wearing a uniform and so utterly flippant about war. we have a more now that we should not have been in and i happen to have been a republican for 50 years, boating three times for richard nixon and twice for ronald reagan. thousands of americans killed, kansas not thousands of iraqis have been killed. no useful purpose is served by this war and it's abominable that mister o'rourke can make fun of where war and find something amusing about the question i wanted to ask if he talks about the imperative of free markets. does mister o'rourke have any conception about why we have things like an minimum wage law, maximumhour laws and osha laws ? does he remember the condition that existed in america before we had those laws and the way laborers

were obliged to work 12 hour days, six-day weeks ? is that what mister o'rourke exists freedom? >> we will get to the free market question that he had in just a question of second. >> that's one on republican. >> it was on the democratic line. >> i'm glad he came in on the democratic line. >> in your dedication to give war a chance here's what you write. like many men of my generation i had an opportunity to give war a chance on it chickened out area i went to my draft with a doctor's letter about my drugabuse . it was four pages long with 3 and a half pages devoted to listing the drugs i had abused. i was shunted in the into the office of a psychiatrist at the end of an interview, pounding his desk and shouting you are f up, you don't belong in the army. he was right on the first count and possibly right on the second . i didn't have to gobut that

meant the one else had to go in my place . i would like to dedicate this book to him. i hope you got back in one piece and i hope you are more used your platoon mates than i would have been had i hope you're rich and happy now and in 1971 when somebody punched me in the face for being a long hair, i hope that was you. >> i got a couple nice letters because of that dedication from people who thought maybe they had punched me in the face and said they appreciated it. to begin with thebeginning of what the fellow on the phone said , i've never asked anybody to take me seriously. aftermaking fun of war , let's put it this way. bad situation and war is a 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 are cuddly and cute.

we make fun of things in order to cope with our own terror, our own unease, our own existential horror, our anger at that. our disappointment with ourselves, etc. and so forth. humor is a defense mechanism. you can drink, you can make a joke. you can take drugs. you can make yourself all pompous and pious. or you can do all of those things at once. so what do i make fun of war or don't make fun of war is unfortunately not going to make war better . nor is it going to make war worse. as to free market and a minimum wage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours a day, nine days a week and so on and so forth, it's interesting when you say you're in favor of

freemarkets, you immediately get that response from lots of people . it's not a course at all what adam smith met. what adam smith was talking about was keeping coercion out of life. and keeping coercion out of marketplaces is only one aspect of keeping coercion out of life. adam smith's whole know you of the wealth of nations and an important book that he wrote that no one reads anymore call the theory of moral sentiments which is about morality was all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. that is the core of morality. it's the core of a free society. it's the core of democracy even though adam smith in some ways didn't know that area you live in. and he didn't understand democracy could work but he understood that freedom could work. he was a moral and a

practical and just a plain 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 and it does not mean that you want markets ruled by anarchy. it implies the rule of law and it implies that we are all equal before the law. it is not prescriptive. it doesn't tell us how to conduct the free market or give us exact rules. it tells us there should be rules and we should all obey the rules but it doesn't say quite exactly what those rules are. in book 5 of the wealth of nations adam smith tries to lay down some rules.he tries to take his theories and make them prescriptive, give us political policy. he becomes a policy walk. and it's interesting.

it's the one failed book in the wealth, five books in the wealth of nations. when adam smith turned into a policy wonks he becomes as foolish as the rest of us who when we become policywonks . he becomes like they've had in this white house and like they will have in this congress . so to the very angry collar, i would just like to saythis . although i have no idea why three hours should be wasted on me and i'm not going to say that there is any good reason for it. but 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 about area they may not be the same ideas i have but don't just because you want to limit certain freedoms in the market, you may be wise and

it may be the correct thing to do to limit those freedoms but don't be smug about your desire to limit freedom. everybody who wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the callahan to people who are in favor of minimum wage laws, everybody is smug about their desire 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. or make you a wise person or a sensible person assuming your arguments are good but you're not a good person and you deserve no smugness and you don't deserve to vent your anger on foolish innocent humorists just because you have some desire to limit, so there.

>> p.j. o'rourke has appeared on book tv to 20 times over the past 20 years he provided tribute to the american automobile while discussing his book driving like crazy. this event was held at the peterson automotive museum in los angeles in june 2009. >> it is i'm afraid last time to say how shall we put it? sayonara to the american car. american automobile companies, ford, gm or chrysler, they will live on in some kind of form, a kind of marley's ghost dragging their chains attaxpayers expense . the fools in the corner offices of detroit and the fool officials of detroit unions will retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. petersburg respectively and deserve our sympathy, they don't deserve our sympathy any more than the malevolent trolls under the capitol dome in washington but pity the poor american car when congress and the white house get through with it.

a lightweight vehicle with a small carbon footprint using alternative energy and renewable resources tooperate in a sustainable way , when i was a kid we called it a schwinn . and i guess it's been a great hundred 10 years. it's been a great run. hundred 10 years since the jury a brothers the first american automobile in springfield massachusetts and if it had been a success, springfield massachusetts might be today's motor city . a row of abandoned houses, unemployment, drug dealing, violent crime and racial tensions which have it happens bring field massachusetts is full of anyway. but the wheel of the american car, we owing a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of detroit various allen mayors. in fact many people my age we all our very existence to the car or to the cars backseat.

where if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthdates and find them a little too close to comfort, that's probably where we were conceived. there was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. you couldn't sneak a girl into the rec room after farmhouse because her mom and dad didn't have a car because they couldn't commute so they were stuck home working on the farm . and your farmhouse didn't have a rec room is recreation and not been discovered due to all the farm work. on the on saturday night you could take a girl out in a buggy but it was hard to get her into the mood to let you bust into her corset because you two were facingbehind" and it just spoiled the atmosphere . so the car let us out of the barn and while the car was added the car destroyed the american nuclear family and

anyone who had an american nuclear family and tell you that was a relief to all concerned . and the cars cost cost america to be paid. there are much worse things you do to a country then pay the as the sudanese have been proven in darfur and one of the things i've wondered is we never hear a thank you, never a word of thanks for getting all of america paved from those kids in the body casts to skateboard all the time not a word of thanks . cars provided america with an enviable standard of living. you could not get a steady job with high wages and well and retirement benefits working on the general livestock corporation assembly-line others on cars it just couldn't be done and i think that the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation. you could think of the innovation, the invention, the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 model t

ford into the 1968 shelby cobra gt500. in the course of one single human lifetime for speeding tickets. compare this to the progress in the previous mode of transportation . horse reduction, horse design, unchanged for thousands of years and when it comes to creativity with a horse, i did a little research on this when i was writing. you know, nobody thought to put, nobody thought to hang the store of from a saddle until about 580. the startup was invented. people have been riding horses for thousands of years and it took them until 580 two invent this. where were they putting their feet? if automobile design and engineering and proceeded at the same pace as worst design and engineering we would be powering ourselves down the road running with both of our

feet stuck through a hole in the floor like fred flintstone although it may come to that with the 2010 obama mobile. but most important of all, most important of all was the cars fulfilled the ideal of america's founding fathers. of all the troops that we hold to be self-evident, of all the inalienable 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 read freedom to leave. freedom to get out of town read freedom to get the hell out of here. king george, can i have the keys? that's what the declaration of independence says. and i've got to tell you, the saga of the american car. this is not an abstract matter to me. this is no subject of

fanciful theories. nancy pelosi, she may think he was boarded home from the maternity ward on the clouds supported by seraphim. low carbon seraphim. but i know it was the car that got me to where i am. my grandfather, jacob o'rourke, he was born in 1877 . he was born on a farm about the size of this podium. in line city ohio which was not a city and didn't even have any line. he was one of 10 kids, grandpa was one of 10 kidsand they grew up in an unpaid check , i have a photograph of them lined up by age tearing at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. my great-grandfather barney, he was a woodcutter. in the midwest, where there are no trees.

unemployed quite a lot. also drunk, also illiterate . i've got a copy of barney's marriage certificatewith barney's x right there . barney's only accomplishment aside from the 10 prizes he won on the corn shop stopping of the poor man's roulette wheel, the only thing barney ever accomplished in his life as he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home get drunk. he would fall out of the tavern, passed out in the wagon and the horses would bring him home and that is what he accomplished. grandpa jake left home armed with a fifth grade education heading for the bright lights of toledo ohio. and he went to work as a buggy mechanic. a buggy mechanic and one day horseless buggy pulled up at the shop. grandpa saw that and he saw the future. he fixed back to. and it didn't take grandpa long to realize cleaner hands were to be had and more money was to be made telling the

things instead of repairing them and also my uncle arches birthday and grandma and grandpa's anniversary were a little too close for comfort. so anyway he got in the car business and by the time my dad came along in the 40s we had o'rourke buick and grandpa and my uncle archie owned the dealership and my father was a sales manager and dad's younger brother randy used car lot and baby brother jack was a salesman and cousin ike ran the parts department and all the ants and the girls cousins worked in the office and all the boy cousins and me worked on the car lot cleaning and waxing the cars and arches done in law would go on to run the ohio car dealers association and i would go on to new whatever it is that i do. in this book, write about cars and stuff but i'll tell you, even in these dark days for the american automobile there are times i wish i'd stayed in toledo and taken

over that car agency because just to be on those local car dealership adds. i got this whole idea i wanted to do pirate treasure island buick. i come out with aparent on my shoulder and one of those big cats . on come on down to pirate pats treasure island buick where prices walk the plank. don't miss our pieces of v-8 used car lot . re-chocolate doubloons for the kids. it's been a great life. grandpa died in 1960. honors from the rotary and columbus and moose lodge as befits a good car dealer. but my family,we all everything to the american car and without the car , he couldn't read. and have food and stuff to our history begins with the beginning of the american car and by now some o'rourke's, some of us have even gone to

college. we didn't go far in college, we didn't do very well butwe 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. i want to bring blame somebody like ralph nader. what fun it would be to jump on ralph nader with both feet and send the pink marxist group do squirting out of his cracked and had and we should do that even though ralph is 75 and clearly insane but it took more than one man and his ignorance and well-written book unsafe at any speed to wreck the most important industry in the nation and that was the corvair that ralph was attacking in unsafe at any speed. ralph was just wrong about the corvair because my high school girlfriend connie had a corvair and connie was the worst driver in the world. and one of the fastest and if connie couldn't get herself killed in the corvair, it couldn't be done so ralph was all wrong.

but the pundits are all telling us there's plenty of blame to go around with the death of the american park and i'm notsure 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 worth a zillion dollars, wouldn't you go to a barber college and get a decent five dollarhaircut ? come on. labor union leadership is maddening but it's one thing to be mad at the labor union leaders and it's another thing to have expected those labor union leaders be down at the uaw hall standing on a chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses. that was just not going to happen. car workers make $600 per hour or so i'm told they get laid off every time a camel. [bleep] and opec meeting. maybe their pay is too high but it's not like they're getting paid. so i think to understand what

doomed the american automobile we have to give up on economics andturn to melodrama . politicians, journalists, financial analysts and all the other purveyors of the by now , they've been looking at cars as it convertible were a business. fire the mbas, hire a poet. the face of detroit is not a matter of financial crisis of foreign competition, corporate greed and union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the suicides of a footprint in the carbon. it's a tragic romance. it's about unleashed passions, clashes, lost love and wild horses. especially wild horses. >> we've opened up our archives to look at other programs with p.j. o'rourke. he is author of 19 books and

in 2020 he appeared at the cato institute where he is also a senior fellow to offer his thoughts on allegations andthe 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 a jury duty. and not jury duty for some exciting crime like the o.j. 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 a

doll and onerous responsibility like attending a parent-teacher conference . something to be undertaken with weary reluctance 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 open and pleading to be allowed to return to their private interests and personal applications. i want yearning to be sitting in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose money on his world series that's really 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 one an election. we will know when we've won

an election when every single candidate who is voted into office begins his or her victory speech by saying oh check. i'm working on in this new book on a new theory of political science and instead of basing my. on the work of bigpolitical thinkers such as john locke and john stuart mill and ed crane , i'm basing my theory on a dumb game played at all like giggle sessions in girls boarding schools. my wife told me about this. james called kill, screw, mary. 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 ones

you would settle down for life and raise a family. i think the example my wife gave when she was telling me about this was our example was conan o'brien, david letterman and jay leno. the girls could do like nbc did and killed conan and screw letterman, all the other interns did and maryjay leno . and i'm laughing then it struck me. kills through mary, that's politics. that's how we picked the president of the unitedstates . take as example 1992, presidential election. george hw bush, bill clinton, ross perot. we kill ross perot, we can hardly avoid a screw from bill clinton and we married w bush the outcome is not always a foregone conclusion, witness walking down the isle with george. the 2000 present the

presidential election america was divided about whether to screw george w or get screwed by al gore but i think we all agreed on killing ralph nader . i won't venture any examples from more recent elections for fear of attracting attention from the secret service , hard as that sometimes seems to be in the obama white house. but kills through mary. it got me thinking the game works on a partisan government to. kill thepostal service, get in bed with fema housing, marry the armed services and same withpolicy . screw agricultural subsidies and healthcare reform tells us . it's great tool of political analysis because in a free and democratic country, politics is sort of a three-legged stool area politics is balanced upon tripods. of power, freedom and responsibility.kill, screw, marry and we live in a free and democratic country. less democratic than it was before last night which is fine with me .

also, kills through mary is a great tool of political analysis because you're so passionate about our politics. and how do passionate affair and? in a passion usually, a crime of passion sometimes and occasionally a turning to stable, permanent legal arrangements just to say the endless peevish quarrel known as marriage. so how do we approach the political institutions of our free and democratic country? overthrow them with violence? do we screw around cheating on them while they cheat on us or do we try to build something that is lasting and boring but worthy and annoying. on marvelously virtuous and dreadfully stifling marriage? power, freedom responsibility. killsthrough mary . when i first began to think about politics, when mastodons and nixon roamed the earth, i was obsessed

with the freedom. screw part of kills through mary. i had a messy idea back in those days, drinking bond water but i had a tiny idea that freedom was the central issue of politics. i love politics. many young people do. kids can spot a means of game 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 disease racked a moment and i was wrong about the lovable nature of politics but i was sure i was right about the preeminent place freedom should have in a political system. but there are lots of definitions of free.

36 definitions of free and webster's third international dictionary. plenty of people are theoretically in favor of freedom . we are all but overrun with theoretical allies in freedoms cause. we have got collaborators in the fight for freedom that we don't even want. the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, the second to last sentence of the communist manifesto and there's a creepy echo of it in the refrain of chris christopherson's me and bobby mcgee. now announced letting 100 flowers blossom and 100 schools of thought content . half 1 million people died in that definition of freedom and we should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word read in english is not in bondage. the most meaningful thing about freedom is thatmankind has a sickening history of slavery . here in america, we have freedom because we have rights. the same way we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights.

there are 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 give me rights. our visions are always telling us about our give me rights. especially the politicians we've got inthe white house right now . as in give me some healthcare insurance area our bill of rights doesn't mention any give me rights. our bill of rights is all about our freedom to say i have got god, guns and a big mouth and if the jury finds me guilty the judge will pay my mail and this is a get out of your right, our right to be left alone, all right from interference from government but also from our fellow citizens when they want us to sober up and put the gun down and go back in the trailer. politicians don't like give

me here. they only like give me rights. they do not like get out of here rights. they don't like get out of here rights because all legislators are being invited to get out of here and for another thing strict adherence to get out of here rights would leave little scope for legislation. something legislatorsdearly love to do . give me rights. much more politically alluring and this is how we find ourselves tempted with the right to education, the right to housing, right to a living wage. the oil spill beach cleanup, high-speed internet access. free french hands, two turtledoves and a partridgein a pear tree . politicians show no signs of knowing the difference between get out of here and give me rights and blinded by the dazzle of anything that makes them popular, they honestly may not be able to tell. but there is evidence that a confusion about these rights was originally presented to

the public with malice of forethought. president franklin roosevelt's four freedoms appear to be at first glance as natural as well matched, as tiny a composition as those normal norman rockwell illustrations . read him of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of want and freedom from fear but notice how the beggar ,number three , freedom from want has slipped in among the more respectable numbers of the freedom family. want what, we ask ? saying as roosevelt did that we look forward to a world founded on for essential human freedom and that one of these freedoms is freedom from want . this is not an expression of generosity for roosevelt red declarations like freedom from want are never expressions of generosity. there were 6 million jews in europe who wanted nothing but a safe place to go and where

was roosevelt there? when rights consistent special privileges and positive benefits, right skill freedom. wrong rights are the source of abusive political power. if years before i realized, years after i first got interested inpolitics , before i realized the central issue of politics is power. not freedom. kill, not through and only an idiot wouldn't have seen this and i was one. i won the loan. liberals, moderates, even some conservatives consider the sweeping give me rights created by half a century of social welfare programs to the extensions of freedom in the opportunity right cents. people were given the opportunity to not starve to death and it's not a purely evil way of looking at things . and not all the social welfare programs were bad. but the electorate, the candidate send me failed to properly scrutinize social

welfare programs. it's not that we failed to examine whether the programs were needed or unneeded or well or poorly poorly run read what we failed to look at was the enormous power being taken from people and getinto politics . we let freedom be turned into power. and dive, the politicians told us and politicians are careless about promising me rights, they are cynical about delivering them and give me rights in turn are observably expendable. 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 has made a lot better by my children's right to daycare so the there's not in my face all day. deprived of their right to a development environment read every child has the right to a happy childhood. so i have the right to the children. richard children are happier.

giveme some of angelina jolie's .the expense of all these rights makes politicians happy. they get to do thespending . even get out of here rights are free. they entail a military, a judiciary and a considerable expenditure of patients by our neighbors when they want us to sober upand put the gun down but give me rights require no end of money and money is the least of their cost . every one of its 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, we didn't want to. we didn't want to understand

the power and this is particularly true of people my age, of the baby boom. it was obvious in the way we react when politicians attempted to use their power. our freedom by into the war in vietnam. we thought the establishment. by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. we're a pathetic bunch. >> you're watching tv on c-span2 and were taking a look at author programs with political satirist pj or mark, a former editor inchief of national lampoon . he offered a critique of the baby boom generation and one of the over 70 million boomers and reflected on his relationship with his parents and children . >> we are the generation that changed everything. of all the eras and ethics of americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression on ourselves. [laughter] but that's an important accomplishment caused we are the generation

thatcreated the self . the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self and said let there be self . if you were born between 1946 and 1964 you may have noticed this yourself. this is not to say we are as a selfish generation selfish means too concerned with the self and we are not . self isn't something we are concerned with. we are self's. before us, self was without form and void like our parents and their dumpy clothes. then we came along. now the personal is the political. the personal is the socioeconomic, the religious and the secular, science and the arts area and everything that creeps upon the earth in

his or her kind. if the baby boom has done one thing, it is to get a personal universe in our policies for anyone who happens to be a jerk. the 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 anglicans fanatic, three pound test line and $1000 traffic rod. at least his wife partner is glad to have him out of the house. so here we are in the baby-boom cosmos. formed in our image, personally tailored to our individual needs and predetermined to be eternally fresh and novel. and we sawthat it was good . or pretty good. it should have had a cooler name. it's good luck to anyone who tells us to get lost.

anyway, it's too late now. we're stuck with describing this exploding as things in. it maybe it's time now that we've splattered ourselves 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 waywe do ? because the truth is if we had decided to be young forever, we would be old. >> .. >> ..

and we'll never retire. we can't. the mortgage is underwater. we are in debt up to the rogaine for the kids college education. serves as right because with generation that insisted that a passion for living to replace working for one. [laughing] still, , it's an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have wrought in town but with added to it subtracted from existence. we've 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. [laughing] but the world is to our fault, it's a matter of power and privilege, never anything happens anywhere. somebody over 50 signs the bill for it. "the baby boom" stated as we are at the head lice table is very generation x, generation y and the millennials all say check,

please. [applause] >> wonderful. actually, i also chose another just a couple of paragraphs and asked p. j. to read. do you need your reading glasses? >> yes. >> visited 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. turn the page. >> got it. and yet we're the best generation in history which goes to show history stinks. [laughing] but at least we're fabulous by historical standards. "the baby boom" was a carefully conducted scientific experiment. the empirical results are as.

you take the biggest generation in the most important country and you put them all into accessibly happy families come give them too much affection, extravagant freedoms, scant responsibly, plenty of money, a modicum of peace if they dodged the draft, provision of opportunity and a collapse of traditional social standards. you get better people. [laughing] well, not better. take it one by one we are as smug and able and is filed as came. we people always have been but we are better behaved of the better behaved isn't a way to put it. we are careless, rash, indulge, entitled. but you know, we are still swell. >> love that, thank you. [applause] so this book is actually other 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 as we all know i think the baby boom stored in 1946, lasted the lesser of the baby boom births were 1964. p. j., you are born sort of on one end of the spectrum. i on the other. although it is defining characteristic of baby boomers that we all look the same age. [laughing] >> about 18 by my rough estimation. [laughing] >> but you describe the baby boom experience as a seniors, how perfect high school seniors, judy's come sophomores and freshmen. you were in the senior class. >> i am in the senior class. to me, hillary clinton and bill

cher. cheech. [laughing] >> my speech, we were at the bow way of the expiration that would be the baby boom but also tethered very closely behind our parents, the greatest generation. in effect that keel keel haul,t dragged under the vote. if we want up a little soggy as a sort of financial advisors with tongue studs trying to start tea party protests. we are to be forgiven. >> your senior class was really on the vanguard of so many things including vietnam and drug taking and sex. by the time the freshman class came along, i think, in my case, i'm the youngest of format, i watched my three older siblings

do all these things and it scared me witless and i did none of those things. it's as if i grew up in the '50s. >> younger baby boomers are more cautious. as i put in the book i said they embrace sex and drugs and rock 'n roll, the deep philosophical underpinnings of their of. >> who wouldn't? >> they have seen us in action older baby boomers in action at the new what works in general doesn't always work when the bong sets fire to the beanbag chair. [laughing] the baby boom gets better behaved as he goes along. >> and actually one delightful aspect of this book is that you start by describing what sounds like a very early memory in dear toledo, ohio, where you are watching the world that the picture would of your brand-new, your families a brand-new house. >> i'm standing there in the window up to much income to

young to go to school and him watching the big kids go to school. it is one of my very early memories. this is the silent generation. they were not silent after. they were yelling and screaming. i say at this moment in the book that all generations of kids have wanted to be grown ups, except us. we wanted to be bigger kids. >> actually to make an observation about childhood that just really struck me. you say children of the baby-boom children were in control of their own childhood. our parents worked as children. our children worked like maniacs, and yet we were a generation, are a generation of people who are childhoods. >> like get out of the house. remember come get out of the house, it's a beautiful day.

it's raining, it's 30. [laughing] they said it was a beautiful day. get out of the house. i 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, you know, like don't get to know people who are not from europe. that would be scary. and yet at the other hand, they would like one of the gillette rent and dad would hand out the m ag's. [laughing] here's some explosives that probably should take a license, you know? everybody has got the uncles. my uncle mikey mike. he would give us -- this was more respectable. this was my businessman uncle who did this. he would give us the firecrackers at his cottage at

the lincoln lepen for the jaw and gives a speech a lit cigarette. [laughing] >> those with a date. >> not to smoke because, you , t come not to smoke because i was the safeway to light firecrackers. [laughing] started to fiddle with matches,, we might hurt ourselves. of course they drank. it was like, a real strict all day long until about 630, you know? [laughing] i know i'm only ten by can i take the car? sure. what the -- >> in 2017 p. j. o'rourke published a a book on the 2016 election entitled "how the hell did this happen?." in march of that year he spoke at the commonwealth club in san francisco to fight his thoughts on president trump and the reasons for his victory. here's a portion. >> how could a person like donald trump possibly become

president? maybe it's just a matter of what the great political satirist h. l. mencken said. he said democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. [laughing] or, more likely it's part of something larger because here in the united states we are not alone in having a political awkward moment. we seem to be in the midst of a global revolt against the political elites. the political elites who create the 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 are seeing a rising xenophobia, it with their jainism. it ranges -- authoritarianism. and ranges from the european union in shambles to the deeply

sinister activities of vladimir putin and xi jinping. taking measurements for new iron curtain. you would think, you would think this would seem worse the ordinary voters and a standard issue political elitism of the jeb bush or hillary clinton. but the political elites did impart create their own problem. over the part four generations the hallmark of the political elites has been the expansion of political power. political power as expand in size and expense. one-third of the world gdp is now spent the politicians in government around the world. one out of every three things you make is grabbed by government. if your cat has three kittens can one of them is a government agent. [laughing] political power has expanded in scope. politics cast its net over every

little aspect of life. nothing is so private that thas integral up in politics. transgender bathrooms. we knew the politics is crap, now we find out where we take one is a political issue, you know? and i had to say to the political elites, when are you guys can realize, guys and gals, going to realize that it's a two way street. the elite politicians have, forr generations, created a powerful huge heavy unstoppable monster truck of a government, and then the same elite politicians get all shocked and repeat when a horrible politician who they detest gets bent the wheel, turned the truck around and runs them over. we need to make that truck smaller, make the trucks motor, yank the engine and it's all what battles. they pick up into a kiddie car so the worst can happen is it

bangs is in the shins. so people all over the world are saying we are sick of the elites, tired of the experts, to hell with the deep thinkers who think they know that we should have better than we do, and you while they're at it regretting everything we've got. we see this, this revolt against the elites and for example, in the brexit vote. we sit in the rise of alternative medical parties in europe. on both ends of the political spectrum, both greens on the left and nationalists on the right. we can see in brazil where almost every politician in the country, left, right or middle of the road has been charged with corruption for the simple reason that their guilty of it. indicates the brexit, britain's political elite, its business elite and its trade union elite were all opposed to brexit. that's to say the people who supported the iraq war was the

people caused the 2008 global financial crisis, plus the people who nationalize 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. latin america, there was very similar case in colombia. columbia elite spent five years negotiating a peace treaty with a starving rabble of communist guerrillas have been marauding in the countries hinterlands since thinking 64. the plea to site was held to ratify the peace agreement causing colombia is voters to ask, what, what, after 52 years of murder, , kidnapping, pellet, threat theft and trafficking narcotics the guerrillas are getting retirement benefits, you know? even the dull politics of australia have been -- the politics and australia are so dull that the name of the

conservative party is the liberal party. but australia has had five prime minister's in six years and its last election nearly result in a hung parliament. must've been tempting. i suppose it's hanging legislators is immoral and probably illegal except in queensland at the parliamentarians are caught chasing sheep. politics of canada, and yet in canada they have a premier was completely inexperienced dashing young celebrity named justin. i haven't googled canadian politics because, who would? but i'm assuming that justin is bieber. of course you're america obviously we saw the revolt against the elites and the ridiculous rise of donald trump. i'm thinking okay, i understand the desire to shake things up but why trump?

of all people. well, trump may be a rich guy, maybe he's a member of the 1% like he says he is, but there's nothing elite about him, for sure. nothing in the about the way he sounds. sounds like the rest of us except he sounds like the rest of us after we've had six drinks. [laughing] he doesn't even drink. he's a jerk, the guys the jerk but you can imagine playing a round of golf with him. he cheats, but so do i. imagine a round of golf hillary clinton, okay? she's got 20 harvard graduate caddies but under bit on the links. they spent a whole match telling you not hurt but you what club to use. the secret service is it to make sure you take her advisers suggestion that you hit from the fairway with a sand wedge. after your chip shot the company and summer get moved closer to her lie, and an appropriate term

to use in any game hillary is play. the scorecard mistress of winds up on her personal e-mail server. of course in your hand i don't know if i could stand how long i would last playing a round of golf with donald trump before i gave in to the temptation to whack a titlist into the back of his head while he standing on the green nudging his ball with his foot to create an alternate effect about how close it is to the whole. but anyway, global revolt against the elites, you know? in many ways it's a little puzzling. i didn't really feel the power of this myself while i was reporting on this. in certain ways the beginning of the 21st century seems like an odd time to be having some sort of revolt against the elites especially in a country like ours where things are going at least fairly well. we are not in desperate financial straits. the great recession of 2008,

that was painful and there's a certain amount of waking 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. if there were any bread lines during the great recession they were not handing out loads of love the taste low-carb been slim. america's obesity crisis provides. we are embroiled in a long war, more than 7000 american combatants have died during the 15 years of the war on terror. more than 7800 american combatants died at the battle of gettysburg. streets are not filled with protesters against the war we're in now. hippies are not sticking daisies in drones. we are culturally and politically polarized in america these days but not in a way that would start an old school history professor and joel him away from the stab faculty lounge.

year 1861, i mean, that was polarized. fort sumter isn't taking any incoming at the moment as far as i know. and yet the american people are fearful and they blame their fears on the political elite. one of the reasons for this, the point reason is because the political elite and 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 cause the demons be unleashed indeed, elites seem to have been breeding demons in the early diplomacy elite geopolitical and the military. then they turned turn these des loose in the middle east as a demons had ever been and endangered species in the region, zip the elites were trying to reintroduce demons. one result has been murder all

over the world. how much further away from quarrels and hatred of the middle east could a person get and to be at lat night in in ay club in orlando, florida? another result of course at this mishandling of the middle east as the refugee crisis in europe. europeans are going what did the elites care? the refugees are not crowding the stairways and recorders and jostling the elites and the halls of european parliament in brussels. the refugees are not building shantytowns on the tennis courts of the elites private country clubs. to elites immigration means household staff can fund your ethnic restaurants. elites don't seem to be able to see any similarity between a wall that donald trump has promised us and the gated communities in which the elites live. another problem the elites called for themselves is they

have promised the politics can fix everything. when you promise that you can fix everything, then everything that's broken is your fault, you know? politically elites say politics can fix climate change, then i want to see bill clinton shoveling my driveway, you know? i know, i know, he has heart trouble but thanks to global warming my driveway tribunal hw inches of snow this winter. what we are seeing in this global revolt against the elites is the elites in the cup getting blamed for everything. whether or not it's their fault. including getting blamed for the fact we live in a time of rapid change. never mind much the change is good change. a 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, and also despite some

recent backsliding, there's been an overall growth in human liberty over the past 30 years, definitely since the 1989 fault of the berlin wall. to be fair to the elites, rapid change creates problems for them. speedy transformation and social mores, economic norms and lyrical givens confuses everybody, , confuses everybody especially those who thought they were leaving the mores, norms in givens prorate. mankind the longer has to march in lockstep. people are becoming individual persons instead of masses on review. this is great but certain difficulties arise on the parade ground when the strike is broken, and the band breaks up a can leave the tube was to be turned into a beer bong, a fellow with the bass based on g on the curb playing a solo from

endicott of the come the trombone is using his life to goose the cornet player and nobody left who comes bell glockenspiel. meanwhile this drawn major is some dork stan in lieu of the street when a goofy hat and waiting a stick. swift improvements in transport, in communication and in technical capabilities have combined to produce this thing we called globalization, international trade, shrinking the earth to a pluto sized planet. that's great sometimes. we love everything from everywhere wrong right to our door, except when we don't. we love going to yellowstone park but how much do we love having the hurts of bison, the guys come the trees, the mounds, the tourist and that there's all in our rec room? we need to keep clean the carpet. then we find out a eight hour job. it's a smaller place now to make political elites think to make a

smaller world would make everyone get along. try it with your kids. put them into small place such as the back seat of your car. now taken to see the world. take them to yellowstone park from, say, new jersey. how are your kids getting along? i guess politically elites don't take family car trips. i guess politically elites don't even fly economy class. then there is whatever it is that's going on with the internet about which i would be the wrong person to ask. i finally got my space figured out only to discover the field person in my space is me. 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? i take it on trust that the

digital revolution would change everything. for all i know it's done so already. didn't used to be a bookstore next-door? where did sears go? i'm glad, i'm glad i can comparison shop for it referred to it online and that exists and have delivered the next day with free shipping, but they can more repairman at sears, like he is now listed as a foot soldier in america's opioid addiction attack, and how to get my refrigerant into the ups dropbox when icemaker it's working? all change is disrupted. all change is scary. changing a diaper, change of life, any change, friday people asking for spare change on the street. got a little of that here. when contemporary social and economic change our combined

with contemporary distrust of political elites, a distrust that is some case has been earned, the results can be very disturbing. russia ugly nationalism comes from vladimir putin harnessing outraged at the incompetent kleptomaniac politically elites who took possession of russia. xi jinping neil maoism makes use of a popular anger, all the tea in china scale of corruption among chinese elites. there are anti-elite aspects aspects to a fanatical interpretation of g.i. isis terrorists, they hate the elites so much that their suicide squads of elites who go around killing themselves. modern world is a scary world, and fear is a bad schoolmarm. we've got a monster blackboard, and how can people in the democratic countries learn even

one plus one fundamentals of democracy with all the can think of is -- so what happens is the people in the class turned for help to the big stupid bully at the back of the classroom. and that's donald trump. >> a look at the saddest pgo works programs concludes with a discussion of his most recent book, "none of my business" which looks at the history of currency and his thoughts on finance. >> one reason that the concept of money so often violates comn 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 commodities as money. we can use written promises to deliver those real commodities, paper money. this is fiduciary money from the

latin word meaning to trust. and to not be too quick to do so. trust but verify, said one of the president's, billy president we had that even possessed some libertarian inclinations. actually paper money has libertarian origin. it's a free market invention, at least in europe. the money was he felt privately in the 13th century from bills of exchange among italian merchant and from receipts given by goldsmiths to precious metals have been entrusted for safekeeping. but it did not take long 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, thus in sweden a large fortune was a large fortune. in 1656 the stockholm begin

issuing more convenient paper notes at the bank issued too many notes and the swedish government went broke. in 1716 scotsman john law help the french government established the bank royale issuing notes that by the belt of france's landholdings west of the mississippi. bank royale issued to many notes. the french government went broke. most extensive pre-modern pre-mn experiment with fiduciary money happened right here in america in 1775, the second continental congress not only created paper money but passed a law against refusing to accept it. continental congress issued to many notes and a pattern begins to emerge. all fiduciary money is backed by commodity even if the backers are lying about the amount of that commodity. historically the most common commodity has been gold. but in 1960 century the major

currencies of the world are based on gold and by the most made of all those currencies which was the british pound. this was a time of monetary stability and not coincidentally of great economic growth. some people think we should go back on the gold standard and not all of them live in armed compounds in idaho. money should be worth something and gold seems as good as whatever. but the hideout of gold is a social convention. it's a habit left over from the days when bright unblemished things, people included, were rare. gold may go out of fashion. a generation they can along that regards gold as gross and him all the way millennials regard deal. and gold is a product. we may discover improved methods to get huge amounts of it. this happened to the spanish when they conquered the new world they obtain tons of gold. melted it down and send it to a minute.

it never occurred to the spanish that they were just creating more money, not creating more things to buy with it. between 1500-1600 prices in spain without a 400%. so present with the vast wealth of america's oceans, fields, forests, spain took the gold pick it was as if somebody robbed a bank and sold nothing but deposit slips. gold is not an absolutely perfectly rational basis for a currency but the real problem with fiduciary money from a government standpoint is not that it's irrational but that it's inconvenient. i currency that can be converted into a commodity limits the amount of currency that can be printed or a government has to have at least some of that commodity or the world makes a laughingstock out of its banknotes, not worth the continuity with fiduciary money governments lie about having the precious metals to redeem their

paper currency, and the governments do worse than live. people holding fiduciary money can wake up the way they it din april 5, 1933 when fdr signed executive order, executive order 6102, banning the ownership of gold. people can wake up and find at the redeeming paper currency for what the law says it's worth is against the law. so if the government can lie and steal to support its currency, why can't a government lie about, and steel, everything,, everything to do with its currency? and that is exactly what all governments have done. instead of passing a law saying one dollar equals x amount of gold, , our government has passd a law saying one dollar equals one dollar. this is fiat money come from the latin word for a binding edict, also from an italian word for a cheap and not very reliable car. [laughing] fiat money is back by nothing

faith that a government will not keep printing money into were using it in place of something much more important such as toilet paper which is what things have come to in venezuela. and it's not just by any means venezuela boulevard. no intrinsic values involved in any fiat money. it's just a pronouncement of existentialism from government central banks. trillions and trillions of dollars, euros, pounds and run them be, they're singing we're here because we have because we are here. which was a popular to in the trenches during world war i appropriate since world war i was when the money came into general use. all of the money in a world today is the money. we've got it because the says we've got to. yet money is supposed be worth something for what i call a lousy parent reason. frustrated and inept government tells us like we frustrated and

inept parents tell our children, because i said so. so it's crypto currency the answer? that's one of those i'm glad you asked that question, questions. as politicians running for office always say, what you mean by that is i have no idea what the answer is. as a libertarian i want a medium of exchange, i kind of money that adheres to libertarian principles. actually, money that adheres to just one libertarian principle would suffice as far as i'm concerned and this is the privacy principle. what i do that is not physically harm anyone else is none of anyone else's business, period. business is conducted with money come crypto currency would seem to be a private kind of money libertarians want. it's private in the two most important senses of privacy.

first come crypto currency is the public and, therefore, it is not subject to government public policy. in government public policy with money is to issue as much as the government feels like issuing. government treats money like a stalker treats posting things on your facebook page for a couple of clicks of the federal reserve keyboard and there's another creepy rant. the region rant didn't have much value in subsequent rankings are increasingly worthless. but i'm finding the government, very difficult to do. second come crypto currency encrypts transactions. what you're buying or selling is not revealed to a nosy snoop and that nosy snoop being once again the government. i'm a fairly law-abiding guy. i will wait for the walk sign on an empty street corner in the middle of the night. i don't even cheat on my taxes anymore than federally mandated tax loopholes require me to do. i would use crypto currency for

any criminal scheme. well, maybe cuban cigars, but no matter how legal the purchases i make art, i don't like those private purchases being on the public record and sales receipt and credit card records available to who knows what, nosy snoop government agency. i don't like other peoples purchases been on the public record either. somebody buys a plastic inflatable anatomically correct many mouse doll for intimate relations in the privacy of the home, i don't want to know about it. and i do want the government to know about either for fear that the epa may impose endangered plastic road regulations on all of us or maybe some high-minded epa functionary will leak the information causing inflatable mouse doll store to be vandalized while my cars parked nearby within paint tossing

distance. i'm much more worried about government abusing its police powers that be about individuals abusing their purchasing powers here 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. the price of one bitcoin is down this morning, i checked but it's been hovering lately around $7000. but if you want to buy, i did think of old volvo station wagon i got for my teenage kids to bring up some more, and if you offered me one bitcoin for that volvo station wagon, i would tell you to bite me. it's because i am ignorant. i'm confused by the mathematical intricacies used to form the computer program block chains that underlie cryptocurrencies. i'm confused about a lot of things. i'm confused by women which didn't stop me from marrying a

delightful one. i fly on airplanes all the time with no idea why they take off or how they land. what i'm particularly confused on the internet. i look at the internet and i think whose bright idea was it to make sure that every idiot in the world is in touch with every other idiot? [laughing] also, as far as i can feel the internet is an enormous hacking industry service by a small global interconnected computer network. and i fear, i fear that somehow crypto currency is intention of laundered with weaponized slide rules and a high school evil math club. right now some dateless pear-shaped 15-year-old wearing emoji pajamas is in his bedroom with the floor covered in empty snickers wrappers logging on to make himself a billionaire on the darknet. i hope walgreens except crypto currency in payment for acne cream. so to sum up, money is a root of

libertarianism but anybody who isn't confused by my is insane. the extra confused of crypto currency probably are nothing e psychotic medication that is needed. we worry about money, worry about our medium of exchange between worry if our medium of exchange collapses, our society will collapse. back a number of years ago i thought about this and if maybe the way to understand that worry about society collapsing is to go someplace or society has collapsed already. so back in 1992 i went to somalia to cover the u.s.-led military mission there to save somalia notionally from famine. actually from anarchy. let me pause for a moment and talk about anarchy. because we libertarians are often confused with or accused of being an arcus. this isn't true.

libertarians believe in social structure. we believe in in a social strue that protects individual liberty, upholds individual dignity and injures individual responsibility. this is very different from believing in no social structure at all. and somalia have no social structure at all. somalia was true anarchy. a vicious dictatorship had been overthrown and the somalis celebrate their independence by shooting each other. fighting broke out everywhere and it wasn't traditional african tribal warfare. because the smallest all belong to the same tribe. but that tribe has six clans. the six clients have hundreds of sub clans and each saqlain is led into murderous feuds. the smallest on each other with rifles, machine guns, mortars, janice and judge by the look of mogadishu, lots of filth. not one stone stood upon another. another. and a new part it, everything

had been built out of concrete and the country had been blasted back into piles of aggregate rebar and portland cement. there was no water or electricity. and i the only illumination with the tracer bullets. every tree and bush had been snatched for firewood. sewage welled up to the pavement, through what pavement was left. mouse of sand through the streets. rubbish was dumped the top wreckage and goats graze on it. everything that kinds can't accomplish had been achieved in mogadishu. it wasn't simply so i could go longer i signed on as a radio reporter with abc news. abc had managed to find a wall to mention more or less intact and they hired a 40 man army of somali mercenaries to protect this compound and then some 20 of us reporters, camera crew, producer, tech people, we were all housed in this compound,

bedded down in shifts while our security, as the somali mercenaries like to be called, our security camp in the courtyard. it was impossible for us to go outside this compound without a truck full of the security. even with our gunmen along there were always people massing of two bag and steve, hands tied the walls, pockets, no foreigner could even make the move without attracting a hornets nest of attention demanding grasping, pushing mobs of cursing, whining people. young men waiting ak-47 assault rifles pushed among the crowd, rustic, they did pickup trucks with gun mouse welded into the beds sputtered around on predatory errands. so there's another abc reporter, i will call you and leon. he had been in somalia for six months, and leon offered to take me to the market in mogadishu.

i said sure, i wanted to see whether there was a market in mogadishu, and if it was a market what the heck with the smallest buying and selling. the somalis. i learned an important lesson about medium of exchange in that market in mogadishu. i learned that there will always be a medium of exchange. the currency may not be what you expect but no matter how totally society collapses, there will be a form of currency. we are traveling with an armed somali driver, and on somali translator and is requisite 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 nine-millimeter o'clock pistol and had, waited over said in a dramatic gesture and racks a

bullet into the chamber. i'm looking at him and leon looks at me and he's like raining like a maniac and he says i call it the visa card of the future. [laughing] >> now if you missed any of these author programs with p.j. o'rourke or you want to watch them in their entirety, you can visit our website, tv.org. access archives for using the search box at the top of the page and search p. j. o'rourke. >> here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to the "washington post."

some of these authors have beer on booktv and you can watch them online at booktv.org. >> tonight at 8:30 p.m. eastern, best-selling thriller writer david baldacci talks about his writing career and books on "in depth." watch booktv on c-span2. >> welcome everyone. i want to thank everyone who is joining us today from around the world. my name is imani perry. i'm a professor in the department of african-american studies at princeton university, and i'm thrilled to be moderating today's conversation.