your copy today wherever books and e-books are sold. >> booktv is television for serious readers, all weekend, every weekend, join us next saturday beginning at 8 am eastern for the best in nonfiction books. .. first up, in 2700 monthly call-in program p. j. o'rourke discussed his politics, , writig and white uses humor to address political and social issues. >> is this picture on the left of real picture of you? >> yes. not a wig. 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 but i t make enough sense to actually be a communist or anything like that. >> went to the transformation ocher? >> it was gradual. it took place over, in fact, i just wrote about this. there was a book coming out from the hoover institution, is backing this, called why i turned right. and it's the story of a a buncf us and why we became right. it is a long story and and i wt tell it but i'll give the short version. i was a radical leftist, very much and have 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 a week was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. i was living down on the lower east side and i was very broke. we got paid every two weeks. i was really looking forward to that 300 bucks. so with my landlord. and my drug dealer and a number of other people. i got my first paycheck and embedded out like 178 or something. this was supposed to be 300 bucks, but after a federal taxes, state tax, city, social security, health care, retirement fund, which he really cared a lot about in those days. i said wait a minute, i've been advocating socialism, marxism, communism for years, screaming and yelling and demonstrate industry. and we already have it. they just took half my pay.

what's going on? i'm not rockefeller. they just took half my pay. we had socialism. that's what i start to step out of it. took about. >> host: somebody else who made a a switch in the politics christopher hitchens, and -- >> guest: much more recently. >> host: back in 1993 i believe here's what he had to say about you. >> he is a guy who gets away with murder. he's another ex-leftist, \60{l1}s{l0}\'60{l1}s{l0} radical dropout, wrote very fondly about what is right thing permanently stoned and bummed out and paranoid in the '60s. then became a young republican as is been cashing in this chip ever since and has been a humorist for his books and essays. the first one quite funny is called republican party reptile. the next one was called holidays in help more recently is called give war a chance.

here's my revenge upon him. i met him. i reckon he was running this joke about i know i'd been there, i've been the radical,, notes that wonderful it would be to be a completely buttoned up, button downed tory. the joke basically depends on a satire on political correctness. so people cannot make jokes about age. p. j. will make a joke about age. i said look, in the works of the title, that's quite funny but it's not funny enough. >> guest: christopher, christopher, christopher. hitting away with murder. i might get away with slander, verbal assault. i don't think i even have got away with just a little got an cowardly. i've never even got away with

physical assault. i think it overstates the case. and also of course i'm long past the point where i can claim to be a young republican buttoned down or not. i'm an old republican. now i'm like most middle-aged white guys. we are all republicans, even if we sometimes call ourselves something else, like democrat drama you did know you would cor and get attacked, did you? [laughing] holidays and help us another p. j. o'rourke book. all the trouble in the world, modern manners, and etiquette book for with people. >> guest: first book. the original edition of that was 1983. >> host: eat the rich. what was this about? >> guest: eat the rich is what got me started on what wound up being adam smith. which was i was simply puzzled. i didn't understand why some countries are rich and other countries are poor.

and so i started poking around going to rich countries and poor countries and trying to see if i could figure out why this country was rich and other countries were poor. it was from that experience that toby monday, the editor of grove atlantic in england who came up with this idea for a series of books come books that changed the world of which my book on adverse this is one and christopher hitchens has will also on thomas paine, the rights of man. and very good it is. it was because of some atoms that poking around in at the smith that toby asked me to write on adam smith. >> host: nesmith, mississippi, you are on with p. j. o'rourke. new jersey, go ahead. >> caller: i am not sure why mr. o'rourke deserves be taken seriously or be given all this time on your show when a man who

i i suspect never wore the uniform and i suspect from hearing about his politics in the vietnam era would've done to start is to avoid wearing the uniform can be so utterly flippant about war. we have a war now that we should not have had and i happen to been a republican for 50 years voting three times 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 to think it's abominable that mr. o'rourke can make fun of war and can find something you think about it. but the question i wanted to ask is, he talks about the imperative of free markets. does mr. o'rourke have any conception about why we have things like like a minimum-wagw and maximum our 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 he thinks is freedom? >> host: thank you. we'll get to the free market question that had just a second but in your -- >> guest: that was one on republican. >> host: it was on the democratic line. >> guest: i'm glad. >> host: and her dedication to give war a chance, here's what you write. like many meant of my generation i had an opportunity to give war a chance at a probably chickened out. i went to my draft physical in 1970 with the doctors letter about my history of drug abuse. the letter was four and half pages long with three and half pages devoted to listing the drugs i had abuse. i was shunted into the office of the army psychiatrist, at the end of the 45 minute interview with me was pounding his desk and shouting you are aft of your queue don't belong in the army. he was right on the first count and possibly write on the second. anyway i didn't have to go with that of course meant someone 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 you're more used to your platoon mates than i would've been. i hope you're rich and happy now and in 1971 and somebody punched me in the face of being a long-haired peace creep, i hope that was you. >> guest: 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 the beginning of what the fellow on the phone said, i've never asked anybody to take me 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 a death itself, isn't changed by what he 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 of things in order to cope with her own terror, our own and these, our own existential horror, our anger at god, or disappointment at ourselves, et cetera and so forth. schumer 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 could all of those things at once. so whether i make fun of war or don't make fun of work, unfortunately it's not going to make more better nor is it going to make war worse. as to free market and 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 free markets you neatly 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 coercion out of life and keeping coercion out of marketplaces is only one aspect of keeping coercion out of life. adam smith's whole, "the wealth of nations," essays that he wrote, a very important book that he wrote that no one reaches more is called "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. he lives in a pre-democratic era. he didn't quite understand that democracy could work, but he didn't understand that freedom could work. he was a moral and a practical

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

it's interesting, it's a one failed book in the welfare got five books and a "wealth of nations." the fifth book stinks. what adam smith turns into policy while he becomes as foolish as the rest of us do when we become policy wonks. he becomes likely that in this white house like they will have in this congress, so to their angry caller i would just like to say this. first, i have no idea why three hours should be wasted on me and i'm not going to say there is a good reason. they asked me. but because you of certain ideas how freedom should be conducted, and you may well be right and i respect those ideas and those ideas are worth arguing about. they may not be the same ideas that 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. and everybody wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the taliban, the people who are in favor of minimum-wage laws, everybody is smug about the desire to limit human freedoms. some human freedoms really do need to be limited but it doesn't make you a good person for recognizing that. it may make you wise person or sensible person, assuming arguments are good, that you're not a good person. you deserve no smugness and you don't deserve to be, to venture anger on foolish, and is a humorous just because you have some desire to limit, so there.

>> p. j. o'rourke has appeared on booktv close to 20 times over the past 20 years. up next to provide attribute to the american automobile while discussing his book "driving like crazy" if this event was held at the petersen automotive museum in los angeles in june 2009. >> it is i'm afraid the last time to say how shall we put it, sayonara to the american car. american automobile companies ford, gm, chrysler will live long in some form, some marlies ghost tracking their chains at taxpayers expense. the fools in the corner offices of detroit in the officials at the tribune will retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. petersburg respectively. and deserve our sympathy. they don't deserve our sympathy anymore than the malevolent troll of the capitol dome in washington do, 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 to operate in a sustainable way, when i was a kid we called it a schwinn. [laughing] i guess it's been a great 110 years, been a great run great run. it has been a great one, 110 years since the first american automobile in springfield, massachusetts, and if the motorbike and company ever been a success springfield, massachusetts, might be today's motor city full of abandoned houses, unemployed, drug dealing, violent crime and racial tensions, which as it so happens springfield, massachusetts, is full of anyway. but we owe the american car, we owe it a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of detroit various felon mayors. in fact, many people my age with all our very existence to the car or to the cars backseat

where if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthday and find him like a little too close to comfort, that is probably where we were conceived. there was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. it's true. you could mistake a girl into the rec room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad, they didn't have a car so they couldn't commute so they were stockholm all day working on the farm. your farmhouse didn't have a record because recreation had not been discovered and due to all the farm work. on saturday night you could take a go out in a buggy but it was hard to get into the mood to let you bust into her corset because the two of you are facing the hind end of a horse and it just boils 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's had an american

nuclear family can tell you that was released to all concerned. cars cost america to be paved. there are much worse things you do to a country as a sudanese have been proven over in darfur. one of things i wanted is we never hear a thank you, never a word of thanks as car people forget all america paved and the kids in the body cast this keyboard all the time. not a word of thanks. cars provide an american with an enviable standard of living. you could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the general livestock corporation assembly-line putting utters on castor itches couldn't be done. -- on cows. it just could be done. the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation, like 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 full of speeding tickets. compare this to the progress in the previous mode of transportation, horse production, horse design, unchanged for thousands of years. when it comes to creativity with the horse i did a little research on this one is writing about the stuff i look to do. nobody thought to put a stirrup, nobody thought to hang a stir from the saddle until about 500 a.d., the stirrup was invented. people have been riding horses for thousands of years and it took them until 500 a.d. to invent this. where were they putting their feet? it automobile design and engineering have proceeded at the same pace as horse design and engineering, we would be powering ourselves down the road

by running with both of our feet stuck the hole in the floor like fred flintstone, although it may come to that with a 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 truths that 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 t out of town, freedom to get the hell out of here. king george, can i have the keys? that's what the declaration of independence says. i got to tell you, the sock of the american car, this is not an abstract matter to me.

-- soccer. this is the subject of fanciful theories. nancy pelosi, she may think she was transported home from the maternity ward on pink fluffy 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 here. in line city of ohio which is not the city and didn't even have any line. he was one of ten kids. grandpa was one of ten kids. they grew up in a one-room unpainted check. i have a photograph of them enlightenment age staring at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. my great-grandfather, my great-grandfather barney, he was a woodcutter in the midwest where there are no trees.

unemployed quite a lot. also drunk. also ill literate. i've got a copy of his marriage certificate with his acts like it. barney's hold a consummate aside from the ten prices that he won on a corn check stuffing of a poor man's roulette wheel, the only thing barney ever accomplished in his life was he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home dead drunk. he was fall out of the cabin, has hassett in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. that's what he accomplished in his life. grandpa jake, the leftover 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 then one day a horseless buggy pulled up at the shop and grandpa saw that and he saw the future, you know? he fixed that, too. it didn't take grapple not realize that cleaner hands were to be had in more money was to

be had made selling the thinks instead of repairing them. and also local, grandma and grandpa is wedding anniversary were a little too close for comfort. and so anyway, he got in the car business and by the time i came along in the 1940s, we had o'rourke buick and grandpa and michael cohen arch own the dealership and my father was a sales manager and dad younger brother joe ran the used car lot and baby brother jack was a salesman and the cousin randall parks department at all the ants and girl cousins worked in the office and all the boy cousins and me we all worked out on the car lot cleaning and waxing the cars. arch son-in-law would go to run the ohio cargill association and i would go on to do whatever it is that i do in this book when i write about cars and stuff. i telecom even these dark days for american alleles i wished

i'd stayed in toledo and taken over the agency. really the others late-night tv local car dealership ads. i got this whole idea i wanted to do hybrid path treasure island buick. , with apparent on my shoulder in one of the big cats at the eyepatch. i'm down to hybrid path treasure island view where prices walk the plank. don't miss our pieces of used car lot. free chocolate doubloons for the kiddies. it's been a great life. grandpa died in 1960, honors from the rotary and the lions club and the moose lodge. but my family, we i would owe everything to the american carpet without the car, we couldn't read, didn't have food and stuff so our history begins with the beginning of the american car. by now 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. i would appoint somebody like ralph nader. what fun it would be to jump on ralph nader with both feet and send pink marxist deuce squirting out of his crack a kid. i think we should get a little ralph is 75 and and clearly insane. but you know it took more than one man and is a good and ill te written book "unsafe at any speed" direct the most important industry in the nation. that was the corvair ralph was attacking at and save it in his deed. ralph was just wrong about the corvair because my high school girlfriend had a corvair, and connie, connie was the worst driver in the world. and one of the fastest. if connie couldn't get yourself killed in the corvair, it couldn't be done so ralph was

all wrong. but the pundits are all telling us that this point the blame to go around for the death of the american car and a number of sure about that either. it's true that the car executives are knuckleheads, but all executives are knuckleheads. look at bill gates. if you are worth i got zillion dollars, wouldn't you go to work -- coat of armor, and get a five dollars haircut. labor unions it is maddening it's one thing to be mad at the union leader and it's another thing to expected those labor union leaders to be down at the uaw hall standing on a chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses. that's just not going to happen. car workers make $600 an hour, hour, or so i'm told. but they get laid off every time a camel farce at an opec meeting. maybe their pay is too high but is not like they're getting that pay. some so no, i think you understd

what doomed the american automobile, we have to give up on economics and we have to turn to melodrama. see, , politicians, journalists, financial analysts, the purveyors of the banal, they been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. fire the mbas, hire a poet. the fate of detroit is a matter of financial crisis of foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprint in the carbon. a tragic romance, a tragic, it's about unleashed passes can titanic clashes come lost love and wild horses especially wild horses. >> we have opened up our archives to look at all the programs with p. j. o'rourke, the author of 19 books tickets

once and he appeared at the cato institute in washington, d.c. where is also a senior fellow to offer his 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 o.j. simpson murder. i want government to be like jury duty for a long, boring, complex, confusing trial concerning tax law. in fact, many suggest our federal tax code, just for starters, which is nothing but fraud. i want government to be dull and

onerous responsibility attending a parent-teacher conference. something that to be undertaken with a 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 hoping and pleading to be allowed return to their private interests and personal applications. i want them getting to be sitting in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose bluesman on his world series bats. i what 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 have won an

election when every single candidate who is voted into office begins his or her victory speech by saying, oh, shit. [laughing] now, i'm working on, and this new book, a new theory of medical science. instead of basing my theory on the work of deep political thinkers such as john locke and tom paine and jon stewart and ed crane, i'm basing my three on a down again played at all-night giggle sessions in girls boarding schools. my wife told me about this. games called to screw mary. what happened is the girls picked 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 for life and raise a family. i think the example my wife gave when she was telling me about this was i think her example was conan o'brien, david letterman, jay leno. the girls could you like nbc did, kill conan and screw letterman and all the other interns did come and marry jay leno. i'm laughing but then it struck me, that's politics. luckily pick the president of the united states. take this example 1992 presidential election, george h.w. bush, bill clinton, ross perot. kill ross perot. we could hardly avoid screw from bill clinton and we marry kindly old george h.w. bush. the outcome of the game is not always a foregone conclusion. witness our mysterious -- the 2000 presidential election america was pretty much evenly divided about whether screw

george w. or get screwed by al gore but i think we all agreed on killing ralph nader. i will venture in examples from recent elections for fear of attracting attention from the secret service, hard is that sometimes seems to be in the obama white house, but anyway, kill, screw, marry, it got me thinking. the game works on parts of government. you kill the postal service can get in bed with fema housing, marry the housing forces. screw aquaculture subsidies, marry so social scared and healthcare reform kills us. i mean kill, screw, marry. a great tool of political analysis because in a free and democratic country politics as a sort of a three legged stool. politics is balanced upon a tripod of power, freedom, and responsibility. kill, screw, marry. we live in a free and democratic country, less democratic than it was before last night, which is fine with me.

also kill, screw, marry is a great tool of political analysis because we are so passionate about our politics. an out of passionate affairs and? in the passion usually, in the crime of passion sometimes and occasionally they turn into stable, permanent, legal arrangement which is to say the endless quarrel known as marriage. so how do we approach the political institutions of our free and democratic country? to overthrow them with violence? to a screw around cheating on them while they screw around cheating on us, or do we try to build something that is lasting and boring, worthy and annoying, a marvelously virtuous and it's a think i'm dreadfully stifling, a marriage. now, when i first began to think about politics, when mastodons and nixon roamed the earth, i

was obsessed with the freedom, the screw part of kill, screw, marry. i had a messy idea of freedom back in those days, and drinking bong water but had a tidy idea that freedom was the central issue of politics. i loved politics. many young people do. kids can spot i means of gain without merit. this may be the reason the professional politicians retain a certain youthful zest. ted kennedy was the boiled right down to his last aged disease racked moment. 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 medical system. but there are lots of definitions of free. 36 36 definitions of free in webster's third international dictionary. plenty of people are

theoretically in favor of freedom. we are all but overrun theoretical allies and freedoms cause. we've got collaborators in the fight for freedom that we don't even want. the proletarians have nothing to lose but their change. it's the second to the last sentence of the communist manifesto, and is a creepy echo of it in the refrain of kris kristofferson me and bobby mcgee. mao announced leading 100 flowers blossom in 100 schools of thought to content as a policy. half 1 million people people died in the definition of freedom. we should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word free in english is not in bondage. the most meaningful thing about freedom is that mankind 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 the positive rights and negative rights. sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. i call them get out of here rights, and give me rights. politicians are always telling us about our youth me rights, especially the politician we're in the white house right now. as in give me some healthcare insurance. 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 the big mouth and if the jury find me guilty the judge will throw my bill. our right to be left alone to our freedom from interference, usually from government would also from our fellow citizens when the one is to so broken with yelling, but the gun death and go back in the trailer. politicians don't like give me.

they only like give me rights. they did not like get out of here rights. they don't like it out of your rights because for one thing all legislators are being invited to get out of here. for another thing strict adherence to get out of your rights would leave little scope for legislation come something that legislators dearly love to do. give me rights, much more lyrically alluring and this is how we find ourselves tempted with the right to education, the right to housing, right to a living wage, to oil spill beach cleanup, high-speed internet access, three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge a pear tree. the politician show no signs of even knowing the difference between get out of here and give me rights. and blinded by the dazzled anything that makes them popular, they honestly may not be able to tell. but there is evidence that i 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 tight a composition is of those norman rockwell illustration. freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, freedom from fear. but notice how the beggar, number three, freedom from want, has slipped in among the more respectable members of the freedom family. want what, we ask. saying as roosevelt did, it would look forward to a world founded upon the essential human freedoms and what of these is freedom to want. this was not an expression of generosity said rosa. 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? when rights consists of special privileges and positive benefits, rights to freedom. wrong rights of the source of abusive political power. it years before i realize come years after i first got interested in politics before i realize the central issue of politics is power, not freedom. kill, not screw. only an idiot would not seen this, and i was one. i wasn't alone. moderate, even some conservatives considered the sweeping in the right tree by half a century of social welfare programs to be extensions of freedom and the opportunity right since. people given opportunity to not starve to death. it's not a purely evil way of looking at things. and all the social welfare programs were bad, but the electorate, the candidates, indie, failed to properly

scrutinize social welfare programs. it's not that we failed to examine whether the programs were needed or not needed for well or poorly run. what we feel to look at was the enormous power being taken from people and given to politics. we let freedom returned into power. f off and die the politicians told us. the politicians are careless about promising give me rights. they are cynical about delivering them. and give me rights in turn are absurdly expandable if the government gives me the right to get married. this indicates i have a right to a good marriage, otherwise why are they giving the right to request my marriage is made a lot better for my children's right to daycare so the brats met my face only. every child has the right to a happy childhood. so i have the right to happy

children. richard children are happier. give me some of angelina jolie is. the expense of all these rights makes politicians happy. they get to do the spending. they even get out of your rights are not free. they entail a military, a judiciary and a considerable expenditure of patients by our neighbors when you want us to sober up and put the content go back in the trailer. but give me rights require no end of money and money is the least of the 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 who loses his goods and services all citizens lose the power that must be given to a political authority to enforce that transfer. we didn't, we didn't want to, understand that power. this is equally true of people my age, of the baby boom.

it was obvious in the way we reacted when politicians use the power to limit our freedom by drafting us into the war in vietnam. we thought the establishment by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns, but that ain't much. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 in particular look at author programs with p. j. o'rourke, a a former editor in chief of national lampoon. in 2014 he offered a a critique of the baby boom generation is one of the over 70 million boomers and reflected on his relationships with his parents and children. >> we are the generation that changed everything. of all the errors and ethics of americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression on ourselves. [laughing] but that's an important

accomplishment because we are the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the southcom divided the light of the self from the dark of the self and said let there be self. if you point between 1946-1964 he may have noticed this yourself. this is not to say what a selfish generation. selfish means too concerned with the self, and were not. self is is something where just concerned with. we are self. before self, it was without form and void aye parents and are dumpy clothes. then we came along. and now the personal is the political. the person is a socioeconomic. the process is is a religious and secular, the site and the arts the personal is everything that creeps upon the earth after his and her kind if the baby boom has been one thing, it is

to beget a personal universe and our apologies for anyone who happens to personally be a jerk. self is kind of like fish, preferably speaking. you give a man a fish and you're fed up for david teach a man to fish and if it turns into a dry fly, catch relays, angling fanatic up his liver and icy water pestering trout with his three-pound test line, $1000 graphite rod, well, least his life partners led to have him out of the house. [laughing] 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 saw that it was good. or pretty good anyway. we should've had a cooler name the way the lost generation did. so good luck to anyone who tells us to get lost. anyway, it's too late now.

yes doc. 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 way we do, and what the flock mac? because the truth is if we had decided to become forever we would be old. [laughing] youngest baby boomers born in the last year when anybody thought it was hip to like lyndon johnson. are turning 50. we would be sad about getting old if we weren't busy marrying younger wives, reviving careers that hit class feelings when children arrived in renewing prescriptions for drugs that keep us from being separate and we will never retire.

we can't pick the mortgages underwater. we are in debt up to the rogaine for the kids college education and serves as right. because with the generation who insisted that a passion for living should replace working for one. [laughing] still, it's an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have wrought and tell her what was added to and subtracted from existence. would reach the age of accountability. the world is our fault. are the generations has an excuse for everything. one of our greatest contributions, moderate life. the world is to our fault. it just a matter of power and privilege demography. whenever anything happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signed a bill for it. the baby boom seated as at the head of lice children come generation x, generation y and the millennials all saying

check, please. [applause] >> wonderful. i actually, i also chose another, just a couple of paragraphs to ask p. j. to read. be. do you need your reading glasses? >> yes. >> this is need into the book. it's a bit of a summing up and so you can see sort of where p. j. lands with this. from there, turn the page -- >> got it, 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, baby boom was a carefully conducted scientific experiment, the empirical results are us.

you take the biggest generation in the most important country and you put them all into excessively happy family, given too much affection, extravagant freedoms, scant responsible tim pawlenty money, a modicum of peace if they dodged the draft, a profusion of opportunity and a collapse of traditional social standards. and you get better people. not better really. take one by one where a smoking able and of violent as king the way people always have been but we are better behaved better behaved -- we're woeful, terms, rash, indulge, entitled, but you know we are still swell. >> love that, thank you. [applause] >> so this book actually has an 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 it all know, i think the baby boom started in 1946, lasted, the last year of the baby boom births were 1964. so you were born sort of on one end of the spectrum. i on the other. although it is defining characteristic of baby boomers and we all look the same age. >> yes. [laughing] >> about 18 by my rough estimation. >> but you described the baby boom experience as seniors -- operative, high school. seniors, judy, sophomores and freshmen and you are in the senior class. >> i'm in the senior class.

me, cher, hillary clinton, bill clinton, they are seniors. cheech. [laughing] my thesis seniors, the right at about which of the voice of exploration that would be the baby boom. but we are also tethered very closely behind our parents, the greatest generation. in fact, that u-haul, we got dragged under the vote. if we want up a little soggy as a sort of financial advisors with the tongue studs trying to start tea party protest. 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, as on the youngest of four, i

watched all all my three older siblings do all these things and it scared me witless, and i did not of those things. it's his -- it's as if i grew up in the 50. >> young baby boomers are more cautious. as the put in the book, they embraced sex drugs and rock 'n roll in the deep philosophical underpinnings thereof. >> who wouldn't? >> they have seen us in action seemed the older baby boomers in action of the new what works in general doesn't always work when the bong set fire to the beanbag chair. [laughing] baby-boom gets better behaved as it goes along. >> and actually one delightful aspect of this book is that you start by describing what sounds like a very, very early memory endeared toledo, ohio, where you are watching the world to the picture wind of your brand-new, your families brand-new house. >> i'm standing there at the

windowsill, too young to go to school. i been watching the big kids go to school. it is one of my very early memories. this is the silent generation. they were not silent out there. there were yelling and screaming and it just seemed like, you know, i say at this point in the book that all generations of kids have one to be grown-ups, except us. we wanted to be bigger kids here that's a a bow with kind of ke. >> you actually make an observation about childhood that just really struck me. you say children of the baby-boom children were in control of the own childhood. our parents worked as children. our children worked like maniacs, and yet we were a generation, our generation, a people who went childhood. >> it's like get out of the house. remember, get of the house.

it's a beautiful day. mom, it's raining, it's 30. they said it's 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, fourth of july, rent and dad would have out m-80s. here's some explosives that should probably take a license. anybody has the oakland. 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 lake to blow on the fourth of july and give us each a lit cigarette. [laughing] not to smoke. you know, not to smoke but because that was the safeway delight the firecrackers. [laughing] it's hard to do with matches. we might hurt ourselves. and then of course they drank. it was like, they were real strict all day long until about 6:30. i know i'm only ten but can they take the car? sure. what the -- >> in 2017 p. j. o'rourke published the book on the 2016 election entitled "how the hell did this happen?" in march of that you spoke of the commonwealth club in san francisco to provide 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, she said democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. or, more likely, it's part of something larger here 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 acquitted 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 rise in xenophobia, in jingoism and authoritarianism, and it ranges from the faintly comic

skeptical of the european union in shambles to the deeply sinister activities of vladimir putin and xi jinping. i mean, taking measurements for a new iron curtain. now, , you would think that this would seem worse to ordinary voters than a mere standard issue political elitism of a jeb bush or a hillary clinton but the 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. lyrical power has expand in size and expense. one-third of the world gdp is destined by the politicians in governments around the world. one out of every three things you make is grabbed by governments. if your cat has three kittens, one of them is a government agent. political power has expanded in scope.

politics cast its net over every little aspect of life. i mean, nothing is a private that it isn't tangled up in politics. transgender bathrooms can we knew the politics is crap. now we find out that when we take what is a political issue. and i have to say to the political elites, when are you guys going to realize, guys and gals, going to realize that politics, it's a two-way street. the elite politicians have this four generation trading at powerful huge have the unstoppable, monster truck of a government, , and in the same elite politicians get all shocked and repeat went a horrible politician who they detest gets behind the wheel, turns the truck around and runs them over. we need to make the truck smaller, make the truck smaller, yank the engine and install foot pedals. make the government into a kiddie car so the worst that can

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

the people cause the 2008 global financial crisis, plus the people who nationalized the british automobile industry, they were all in unprecedented agreement and the voters felt the couldn't go wrong voting against this trifecta. latin american, there was a very similar case in columbia. columbia elite spent five years negotiating a peace treaty with the starving rabble of communist guerrillas would been marauding in the countries hinterlands since 1964. the plebe a site was held to that peace agreement causing columbia is voters to ask, what, what, after 52 years of murder, kidnapping, elledge, threat and trafficking in narcotics, the guerrillas are getting retirement benefits. even the dull politics of australia have been in turmoil. the politics of 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 resulted in a hung parliament. hung parliament, must have been tempting. i suppose it's hanging legislators is immoral and probably illegal, except in queen's landing at the parliamentarians are caught chasing sheep. .. >> of course, here in america, we saw the elites and the rise

of donald trump. i understand the need to shake things up and why trump? trump, maybe he's a member of the 1% like he says. there's nothing elite about him. nothing elite about the way he sounds. he sounds like the rest of us. except he sounds like the rest of us after six drinks. he's a jerk. you can imagine playing a round of golf with him. you know, cheats, but so do i. now, imagine a round of golf with hillary clinton, okay? 20 harvard graduates, caddies, read books about golf and never been on the links and spend the whole match telling you, not her, but you what club it use and the secret service is there

and hit with a sand wedge. and hillary's appropriate lie in any game hillary is playing. and the score card is on hillary's personal e-mail server. and yow how long i would last playing with donald trump, with a titlest in the back of his head, and in many ways it's puzzling. 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, it seems like an odd time to have revoke against elites, especially in a country like ours doing at least fairly well. we're not in desperate financial straits. the great recession of 2008

that was painful and there was a certain amount of waking up on friend's couches after somebody took the house. these days practically everybody in america has had a divorce, and we've been through that before. if there were any bread lines, it wasn't low carb love the slim. and more than 7,000 combatants have died in the 15 years of the war on terror. more than 7,80 died at the battles of gettysburg. and streets are not filled with the protesters, hippies aren't sticking in daisies. and we're not polarized in america, know the way that would startle an old school history professor and jolt himsy way from his nap in the

faculty lounge. the year 1861, i mean, that was polarized. fort sumpter 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. 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, i mean, demons have been unleashed in the middle east. elites failed to address the problems that caused the demons to be unleashed. indeed, elites seem to have been breeding the elites in elite military strategy and then the elites turn these demons loose in the middle east as if demons had been an endangered species, as if elite

h has-- how much furtheren from the quarrels and hatreds in the middle east, to be at latin night in a gay nightclub. and the refugee crisis in europe, and the europeans are going, what do the elites care, the refugees aren't crowding the stairways and the corridors and jostling the elites in the halls of the european parliaments in brussels. aren't building shanty towns on the elites private country clbs. to elites, means nannies, fun new ethic restaurants. elites 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 thoer another problem that

the elites caused for themselves. the promise that elites can fix everything. when you promise that you can fix everything, then everything that's broken is your fault, you know? i mean, political elites say that politics can fix climate change, then i want to see bill clinton shovelling my driveway. you know? i know, i know, he's got heart trouble, but thanks to global warming my driveway only had a few inches of snow this winter. so we're seeing in this global revote against the elites, the elites end up getting blamed for everything whether or not it's their fault, including getting blamed for the fact that we live in a time of rapid change. never mind that much of that change is good change. a number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty, living on less than a dollar a day, that's been reduced by half since the year 2000. it's amazing, marvellous project, and yet, and also

despite some recent back sliding, you know, there's been an overall growth in human liberty the past 30 years, definitely since the fall of the berlin wall. and you know, to be fair to the elites, rapid change creates problems for them, too, you know, speedy transformation and social mores, economic norms and political givens, it confuses everybody. it confuses everybody, especially those who thought they were leading the mores, norms and givens parade. 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, you know, when the band breaks up, it can leave the tuba could be turned into a beer bong. you know, the fellow with the base drums sitting on the curb

playing ingodda davita, and nobody left left that can sme smell-- that can spell -- swift improvements in transport, in communication, and in technical, technical capabilities have combined to produce global withization, international trade, shrinking the earth to a pluto sized planet. that's great sometimes. i mean, we love having everything from everywhere brought to our door except when we don't. we love going to yellowstone park, how much do we like the bisons, mountains, trees and be bear, and the bear ate our job. the world is a smaller place

now. to make the political elites to think that it would make a smaller world would make everyone get along, i mean, try it with your kids, now? put them in a small place such as the back seat of your car. now take them to see the world. take them to, you know, for example, yellowstone park from, say, new jersey, you know? i mean, 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's a curse wherever it is going on on the internet which i would be the wrong person to ask, i finally got myspace figured out only to discover the only person in myspace is me. and concerning the internet whose bright idea was it to make sure every idiot in the world is in communication with

every other idiot. i take it on trust that the digital revolution would change everything and for all i know-- and didn't there used to be a bookstore next to-- hey, where did sears go? i'm glad i can comparison shop for a refrigerator on-line and buy any brand that exists and have it delivered the next day with free shipping, the kenmore repairman at sears, he's now enlisted as a food soldier in america's opioid addiction attack and how do i get my refrigerator in the inbox when the ice maker needs fixing. >> frightening people asking for spare change on the street, got a little of that here. you know, when contemporary social and economic change are

combined with contemporary mistrust of political elites, a distrust in some cases has been earned, the results can be disturbing. russia's ugly new nationalism comes from vladimir putin, harnessing popular outrage at incompetent maniac political elites who took over russia after parastroika. and xi jinping, the scale of corruption among chinese elites. there are anti-elites aspects to the interpretation of jihad. isis terrorists hate elites so much they have suicide squads of elites who go around killing themselves, i mean, modern world is a scary world. and fear is a bad school marm and we have got a monster at the blackboard and how can people in the democratic

countries learn even the one plus one fundamentals of democracy when all they can think of is eek, it's slimy and scaly. the pupils in the class turn to help for the big, stupid bully at the back of the classroom and that's donald trump. >> and our look at satirist p.j. o'rourke's programs looks at his book, "none of my business" and current history and finance. >> and one reason that the concept of money so often violates common sense is that the 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 fiducia, to trust and to not be too quick to do so, trust, but verify said one of the presidents-- the only president that possessed some libertarian inclinations. actually paper money has a libertarian origin. it's a free market invention. at least in europe. paper money was developed privately in the 13th century from bills of exchange from italian merchants and receipts from goldsmiths whose precious metals had been entrusted for safe keeping. it didn't take long for political authorities to steal the idea and government fiduciary money in the west was first presented in sweden. traditional swedish commodity money came in the form of copper plates, thus in swede and large fortune was a large fortune, and in 1656 the

stockholm bankle issued paper notes and the bank issued too many notes and the swedish government went broke. in 1716, scottsman john law helped the french government establish the bank royale issued by france's land holdings west of the mississippi and bank royale issued too many notes and the french government went broke. most extensive pre-modern experience with fiduciary money here, second continental congress created paper money and passed a law refusing to accept it. the continental congress issued too many notes and a pattern begins to emerge. all fiduciary money is backed by a commodity even if the backers are lying about the amount of the commodity. historically it's been gold.

by 19th century major currency of the world were based on gold, and based on the british pound. 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 high value of gold is a social convention, it's a habit left over from the day when bright unblemished things, when people included were rare. gold may go out of fashion and a generation might come along that consider gold gross, like millennials think of veal. and this happened to the spanish, went to the new world

and melted it down and sent it to a mint. it never occurred to the spanish that they were creating more money not things to buy with it. in 1600 prices in spain went up 400%. with america's vast fields, oceans, to r forests, spain took the gold. it's like a bank with nothing, but deposit slips. and gold is not a rational bases for currency. the from the government standpoint it's not that irrational, but it's inconvenient. the currency that can be turned into a xhot, limits how much can be printed. they have to have some commodity. with the fiduciary government, governments lie about having

the precious metals to redeem their paper currency and governments do worse than lie. people who he willing fiduciary money can wake up the way they did when fdr signed 6102 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 the government can lie and steal to support its currency, why can't a government lie about and steal everything. everything to do with its currency, and that is exactly what all governments have done. instead of passing the law saying one dollar equals x amount of gold, our government has passed a law saying one dollar equals one dollar. this is fiat money, from latin binding edict. and italian word for a cheap

and not reliable car. [laughter] >> fiat is backed by nothing other than faith that the government will keep printing money in place of something more important, which is toilet paper which is what things have come to a venezuela and it's not just by any means venezuelan boulevard. no intrinsic value of fiat money. it's pronouncement of existentialism by government central banks. trillions and trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, yens, and ranimbi saying we're here because we're here we're here, popular from world war i which is when fiat money came into use. and all of the world is fiat money because the government says we've got it, what i call the lousy parent reason. frustrated and inept government tells us like we frustrated an

inept parents tell our children, because i said so. so, is cryptocurrency the answer? now, that's one of those, i'm glad you asked that question questions. as politicians running for office always say and what they mean by that is i have no idea what the answer is. now, as a libertarian, i want a medium of exchange, a 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 does not physically harm anyone else is none of anyone else's business, period. now, businesses conducted with money, cryptocurrency would seem to be the kind of money that libertarians want. it's private in the two most

important senses of privacy. first cryptocurrency is not public and therefore it is not subject to government public policy. and government public policy with money is the issue as much as the government feels like issuing. government treats money like a stalker treats posting things on your facebook page. a couple of clicks of the federal keyboard and there's another rant. and they're increasingly worrying. unfriending the government, very difficult to do. second, cryptocurrency 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 fairly law abiding guy. i'll wait for the walk sign on an empty street corner in the middle of the night. i don't even cheat on my taxes any more than federally

mandated loopholes require me to do. i wouldn't use cryptocurrency for any scheme, well, maybe cuban cigars. i don't like those private purchases being on the record credit cards records and who knows what nosey snoop government agency and i don't like other people's purchases being on the public record either. now, if somebody buys a plastic inflatable anatomically correct mini mouse doll for intimate relations for privacy of the home, i don't want to know about it. and i don't want the government to know about it either because for fear the epa may impose endangered plastic rodent regulations on all of us or maybe some high-minded epa functionary will leak the information to pita causing the inflatable mouse doll store to be vandalized while my car is

parked nearby in paint tossing distance. i'm much more worried about government abusing its police powers than i am about individuals abusing their purchasing powers. so, that's the case in favor of cryptocurrency. but tell the truth, i don't own any. i have no use for cryptocurrency. the price for one big client is down this morning, i checked. it's been hovering around $7,000, okay? but if you want today buy-- i've got a banged up old volvo station wagon i bought for my kids to bang up more. i'm ignorant, confused by the mathematical intricacies formed by the computer block chains, and cryptocurrency, i'm confused by a lot of things,

and i'm confused by women which didn't stop me to marrying one. and confused by airplanes, no idea how they take off or land. i'm particularly confused by the internet and i think whose bright idea was it to make sure that every i hdiot in the world is in touch with every other idiot. as far as i can tell the internet is an enormous hacking industry serviced by a small global network. and i fear that somehow cryptocurrency is the invention of outlaw nerds with weaponized slide rules in 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 with empty snickers wrappers logging on to make himself a billionaire in the internet. and i hope that walgreens

accepts cryptocurrency for acne cream. anyone who isn't confused by money is insane. the confusions of cryptocurrency is probably not the oent psychotic medication. we worry about the our medium of exchange collapses our society will collapse, so, back a number of years ago, i've thought about this and i thought maybe the way to understand that worry about society collapsing is to go someplace where society has collapsed already. back in 1992, i went to somalia to cover the u.s. led military mission there to save somalia, notionally from famine, actually from total anarchy and let me pause for a moment and talk a little about anarchy. we libertarians are often confused with or accused of being anarchists and this just,

this isn't true. libertarians believe in social structure. we believe in protecting liberty and social responsibilities. this is different from no social have structure at all. somalia had no social structure at all. it was true anarchy. a vicious dictatorship was overthrown and somalis celebrated by shooting each other. fighting broke out, it wasn't traditional african tribal warfare because the somalis belong to the same tribe. the prescribe has six subclans and each is divided into murderous feuds. the somalis bought each other with rifles, machine guns, mortars and canons and by the look the mogadishu, filth.

in the new part of the city everything had been built out of concrete and the concrete blasted into piles of aggregate rebar and portland cement. no matter or electricity. at nigh the only illumination was tracer bullets. every tree and bush had been snatched for firewood. sewage weld up through the pavement, through what pavement was left. mounds of sand blew through the street and rubbish atop wreckage and goats grazed on offel. i find on as a radio report with abc news and abc managed to find a walled mansion more or less intact and hired a 40 man army of somali mercenaries to protect this compound and some 20-some of us, reporters, camera crews, producers, tech people, we were all housed in

this compound. we were bedded down in shifts while our security, as the somali mers naris, like to be called, camped in the courtyard. it was impossible to go outside of this compound without a truckful of security. even with our gunmen along, there were people massing up, hands tugged at wallet pockets and there were pushes mobs of cursing, whining, sneering people and young men waving ak-47 assault rives pushed among the crowds and russed pickup trucksment sputtered around on predatory errands. there was another abc reporter i'll call him leon. he had been in somalia for six months and leon offered to take

me to the market in mogadishu. i said sure, i want today see whether there was a market in mogadishu, if there was, what were they buying? goats feeding on offal. >> i learned 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. so we're travelling with an armed somali driver, an armed somali translator and this requisite truck full of armed security. even though when we got down to the market, my friend leon gets out of the car and he pulls out a .9 millimeter glockpistol and

he's grinning like a maniac, i call it the visa card of the future. [laughter] >> now if you missed any of these author programs with satirist p.j. o'rourke or want to visit them in their entirety, you can visit our archives, using the search box at the top of the page and search p.j. o'rourke. >> tonight, on book tv, political leaders beginning at 8 p.m. eastern, "time" magazine national political correspondent molly ball discusses the career of house speaker nancy pelosi. followed by a discussion on what donald trump and winston churchill have in common. then a talk about the character and motivations of north korea's kim jong-un. watch book tv tonight and over

the weekend on c-span2. the. >> the u.s. senate is about to gavel in for a pro forma session. they are meeting briefly every three days to technically stay in session while senators are in their home states. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parl men tehran will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian parliamentarian:washington,d.c. , may 26, 2020, to the senate:under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable josh hawle >> the u.s. senate gavelling out after a brief pro