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president to learn more about president and order your copy today wherever books and e-booksare sold . >> now on book tv like to highlight them programs from our archives political satirist p.j. o'rourke. over the past 20 years he's appeared on tv posted 20 times. first up in 2007 when our monthly call in program in that. he discussed his politics, writing and why uses humor to address political andsocial issues . >> this picture on the left, is that a real picture -mark. >> oh yeah. not only area that was i would guess 71. not quite positive. >> floor your politics in 1971. >> i think a martian left.

that 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 like that. >> and the transformation of her it was gradual. the place and back i do about this. there is a book coming out from the huber institution. >> .. >> i was a radical leftist, very much in favor of some sort of marxist socialist thing in america. i got a job. i got a job pain $150 a week and i was a messenger in new york,

$150 a week was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. i was living in the lower east side and very broke. we got paid every two weeks. i was really looking forward to that $300. so was my landlord, i may say. and my drug dealer. [laughter] in a number of other people. i got my first paycheck and i netted out at 178. it was supposed to be $300. after federal tax and estate tax, city tax, social security, healthcare, retirement fund which i cared a lot about in those days and i said wait, wait i have been advocating socialism and marxism, communism for years screaming and yelling and demonstrating in the street and we already have it. they just took half my pay. what's going on here? i'm not rockefeller and they took half my pay.

we have socialism but that's when i started to snap out of it. it took a while. >> someone else who made a switch and their politics was christopher hitchens. >> yet, much more recently. >> yet, but back in 1993 here's what he had to say about you. >> p.j. o'rourke who gets away in my opinion is with murder. he's another exit leftist, 60s radical who wrote finally about what it was like to be permanently stoned and dumbed out and paranoid. then [inaudible] he has been cashing in this trip ever since and has terrific following as a humorist for his books of essays. the first one is quite funny, called the republican party reptile. the next one was called for is called holidays in hell and most recently, give war a chance. these did well among the young, much better than my books have done. it gets me down. so does my revenge upon him.

>> have you met him? sure. i reckon that he was running empty on this joke and i know i've been there been a radical and now i see how wonderful it would be to be completely buttoned up, button-down tory. the joke basically depends on a set tile and political correctness. okay, so people try not to make jokes about aids but p.j. will make a joke about aids. so it's not good to laugh about couples but then he will and i said look, and the words of the title, it's quite funny but not quite funny enough. >> christopher, christopher, getting away with murder. i might get away with slander. but verbal assault but i don't think i've even gotten away witd slightly cowardly and i'm never got away with physical assault. i think he overstates the case. 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 and like most middle-aged white guy, even if we sometimes call ourselves something else like a democrat. >> you do not know you come over and get attacked did you? [laughter] holidays and hell is another p.j. o'rourke book. all the trouble in the world, modern manners and adequate book for rude people. first book. when was this put out? >> the original addition of that was 1983. >> beat the rich, what was this about? >> that was what got me out on rounded up on adam smith which was i was simply puzzled and did not understand why some countries are rich in other countries are poor. and so i started poking around and going to rich countries and poor countries trying to see if i could figure out why this

country was rich in other countries poor. it was from that experience that toby monday, editor of grove atlantic in england who came up with this idea of a series of books, books that change the world, of which my book on adam smith is one and christopher hitchens has one on thomas paine, the rights of man. and very good it is. it was because of some adam smith and poking around in adam smith that toby asked me to write on adam smith and. >> you are on with p.j. o'rourke, go ahead. hello, come in nesbitt. okay, new jersey, go ahead. >> caller: i am not sure why mr. o'rourke should be taken seriously and given time on your show when a man who, i suspect, never wore the uniform and i suspect from hearing about his

politics from the vietnam era would have done his darndest to avoid wearing a uniform and is so utterly flippant about war and we have a war now that we should not have had and i happen to have been a republican for 50 years, voting for three times for nixon and twice for ronald reagan but tens of hundreds of thousands of iraqis have been killed and no useful purpose is served by this war and i think it's abominable that this mr. o'rourke can make fun of war and can find nothing amusing about it but the question i wanted to ask is he talks about the imperative of free markets and those mr. o'rourke have any conception about why we have things like minimum wage laws and maximum hour laws and osha laws and he does remember the conditions that existed in america before we had those laws and the way laborers were obliged to work 12 hour days, six day weeks and is that what mr. o'rourke thanks his freedom?

>> host: thank you. mr. o'rourke will get to the free market question that he had a just a second but that was one odd republican. it was on the democratic line. >> guest: i'm glad he came in on the democratic line. we want 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 and i promptly chickened out. i went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor's letter about my history of drug abuse. the letter was four and a half pages along with three and half pages devoted to listing the drugs i had abused. i was shunted into the office of an army psychiatrist at the end of a 45 minute interview pounding his desk and shouting you are asked up and you don't belong in the army. he was right on the first count and possibly write on the second. i do not have to go but 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, fella and i hope you were more use to your platoon mates the night would have been. i hope you are rich and happy now in a 1971 when someone punched me in the face for being a long-haired piece tree i hope that was you. >> guest: i got a couple nice letters from that dedication from people who thought they had punched me in the face. [laughter] they said they appreciated it. to begin with what the fellow on the phone said, i've never asked anyone 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 and 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 and not because they are cuddly and cute. we make fun of things owner to cope with our own terror in own

unease and own existential horror or anger at god or our disappointment with ourselves et cetera and so forth. humor is a defense mechanism and you can drink and make a joke and you can take drugs and you can make yourself all pompous and pious or you can do all those things at once. so, what i make fun of war, don't make fun of or, unfortunately will not make war better and nor will it make it worse. as to free markets and minimum wage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours.

[audio difficulties] his whole a very different book people read which is a theory of moral sentiments which is about morality is all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. that is the core of morality and it is the core of a free society and it is the core of democracy, even though adam smith, in some ways did not know that. he lived in a pre- democratic era and did not quite understand democracy could work but he did understand freedom could work. he was a moral and 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 not mean that you want markets ruled by force and it does not mean you want markets ruled by anarchy and it implies a rule of law and implies that we are all equal before that law and it is not prescriptive and does not tell is exactly does not give us exact rules and it does not tell us that should be rules and we should obey the rules but it does not say quite exactly with those rules are and in book five of the wealth of nations, adam smith tries to lay down some rules and tries to take his theories and make them prescriptive, actually give us political policy. he becomes a policy wants. it's interesting and it's the one failed book in the -- there are five books in the wealth of

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

your desires to limit freedom. everybody who wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the caliban, to the people in favor of minimum wage laws and everybody is smug about their 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 and inmate make you wise or sensible assuming your arguments are good. but you are not a good person and you deserve smugness and don't deserve to be to venture anger on foolish innocent humerus just because you have some desire to limit so there. [laughter] >> p.j. o'rourke has appeared on book to be close to 20 times over the past 20 years.

up next, he provides a tribute to the american automobile while discussing his book, driving like crazy. this event was held as the peterson automotive museum in los angeles in june of 2009. >> guest: it is, i'm afraid, the last time to say, how shall we put it, sayonara to the american carpet american automobile companies, ford, gm they will live on in some forum and a marley's ghost dragging their chains at taxpayers expense. the fools in the corner offices of detroit and the officials of the detroit unions they will retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. petersburg respectively and they do not deserve our somebody. no more than the malevolent trolls under the capitol dome in washington but pity the poll 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. [laughter] >> it's been a great hundred ten years and been a great run and has been a great run, 110 years since the [inaudible] brothers but the first american automobile in springfield massachusetts and the motor ragging comedy if it had been a success springfield massachusetts might be today's motor city full of banded houses with on a playmate, drug dealing, violent crime and racial tensions which has it so happens being filled massachusetts is full of anyway. but, we owe a lot more then the entertainment spectacle of detroit's various fellow and mayors and in fact, many people my age we owe our very existence to the car or to the car's backseat.

[laughter] where if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthdate and find them 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 entrance. it's true. you cannot sneak a girl into the rec room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad did not have a car so they could not commute so they were in stockholm all day working on the farm. your farmhouse did not have a rec room because recreation had not been discovered due to all the farm work. odd saturday night, take a girl out to the buggy but it was hard to get her into the mood to let you bust into her corset because you are facing the high end of a horse and it spoils the atmosphere. car lead 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 can tell you that that was a relief to all concerned. cars cost america to be paved.

there are much worse things you can do with the country and to pave it as has been proven over and one thing i wondered is we never hear a thank you or a word of thanks, also car people, forgetting america paved from those kids in the body casts whose skateboard all the time but not a word of thanks. you know, cars provided america with an enviable standard of living for you cannot get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the general livestock corporation assembly line putting others on cars. it could not be done. i think that the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation, intellectual stimulation. if you think of innovation the invention the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 model ct ford into the 1968 shelby cobra

gt500 and in the course of one single human lifetime full of speeding tickets. compare this 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 research on this when i was writing about this and i looked it up. nobody thought to put a stirrup or thought to hang a stirrup from the saddle until about 500 a.d., the stirrup was invented in -- people have been riding horses for thousands of years and took them until 500 a.d. to invent this and where were they putting their feet to? if automobile design and engineering had proceeded at the same pace as horse design and engineering we would be powering ourselves down the road by running with both our feet stuck to the 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 that the cars fulfilled the ideal of america's founding fathers. of all the truths we hold to be self-evident and of all the unalienable rights with which we are in down, which one is most important to the american dream? it is right there, front and center, flat in the name of the declaration of independence. freedom to leave. freedom to get out of town paid freedom to get the hell out of here. king george, can i have the keys? that is what the declaration of independence says. 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 may think she was

transported home from the maturity ward on pink fluffy clouds supported by seraphim but low carbon cerebellum. [laughter] but i know it was the car they got me to where i am. my grandfather jacob o'rourke was born in 1877, born on a farm above the size of this podium here in lime city, ohio which was not a city. do not even have lime. he was one of ten kids, grandpa was one of ten kids but grew up in a one-room unpainted shack that i have a photograph of them lined up by age, steering at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes and i mean, my great-grandfather, my great grandfather barney was a woodcutter in the midwest where there are no trees. unemployed, quite a lot, also

drunk, also illiterates. i've got a copy of barney's marriage certificate with barney's x right there and barney is only a competent aside from the ten prizes he won on the corn shuck stuffing of the poor man's roulette wheel, the only thing barney accomplished is he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home dead drunk. he would fall out of the tavern i'm a passout in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. that was what he accomplished. grandpa jake he left home armed with the fifth grade education, heading for the bright lights of toledo, ohio. he went to work as a buggy mechanic. buggy mechanic. then one day horses buggy pulled up at the shop and grandpa saw that and he saw the future and he fixed that too. it did not take grandpa long to realize that cleaner hands were to be had and more money was to be made selling the things since instead of repairing them and also my uncle arches birthdate

and grandma and grandpa wedding anniversary was a little too close for comfort and so anyway he got in the car business and by the time that i came along in the 1940s we had o'rourke buick. grandpa and my uncle arches owned a dealership and my father was a sales manager and dad's younger brother ran a used car lot and baby brother jack was a salesman and the ants and the girl cousins worked in the office and the boy cousins walked worked on the car light and our son-in-law would go to run the ohio car dealer association and i would go on to do whatever it is i do in this book and i tell you even in these dark days for the american automobile i wish i had stayed and taken over that buick agency. to be on those late-night tv local car dealership adds.

[laughter] i got this whole idea that i wanted to pirate paths treasure island buick and come out with the parrot on my shoulder and those big cats and i would say come on down to pirate paths treasure island where prices walk the plank. [laughter] don't miss the art pieces of the car lot. three chocolate doubloons for the kiddies. been a great life. grandpa died in 1960 and albeit honors from the rotary and lions club and the lodge in the fifth is a good car dealer and my family owe everything to the american carpet without the car we could read and not have food and so our history begins with the beginning of the american car. by now some o'rourke's have even gone to college. we did not go far and confident. [laughter] or do well but we went.

so i take the demise of the american car and take this personally great i'm looking around for 70 to blame and i am mad. i want to blame someone like ralph nader. what fun it would be to jump on ralph nader with both feet and send a pink marxist goose squirting out of his crack to get the egg had. i think we should do that even though ralph is somebody 75 and clearly insane but it took more than one man in his ignorant and ill written book, unsafe at any speed, to wreck the most important industry in the nation. that was they forbear that ralph was attacking an unsaved nation and the colbert and ralph was just wrong about the career because my school high school girlfriend connie had a colbert and connie was the worst driver in the world. and one of the fastest. if connie cannot get herself killed in the colbert it cannot be done. the contents, the pundits are telling us that there's plenty of blame to go around for the

death of the american car and i'm not sure about that either. now it is true that the car executives are knuckleheads paid but all executives are knuckleheads. look at bill gates. if you were worth a good zillion dollars wouldn't you go to a barber college and get a decent five-dollar haircut? 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 expect those labor union leaders to be down at the uaw halls standing on a chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses. that is not going to happen. car workers make $600 an hour or so i'm told. but they get laid off every time a camel parts at an opec meeting. maybe they have their pay is too high but is not like they are getting that pay. no, i think to understand what doomed the american automobile

we have to give up on economics and we have to turn to melodrama. politicians, journalists, financial analysts and all the purveyors of the banal have been looking at cars as if a convertible or a business. buyer the nba or a poet and the fate of detroit is not a matter of financial crisis of foreign competition and corporate greed, union and transcendent energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprint in the carbon. it's a tragic romance, tragic romance. it's about unleashing passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses. this is especially wild horses. >> we've opened up our archives to look at other programs with satirized p.j. o'rourke, author of 19 books and 2010 he appeared at the cato institute in washington dc where he is also a senior fellow to offer his

thoughts on politicians and federal governments. >> 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, confusion trial concerning tax law. in fact, let me suggest indicting our federal tax code just for starters. which is nothing but fraud. i want government to be dull, dull and onerous responsibility

like attending a parent-teacher conference. something that to be undertaken would 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 to return to their private interests and personal applications. i want them yearning to be sitting in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose money on his world series bets. i want our elected officials to say that they intend to spend more time with their families and mean it. mean it. we will know when we have one in election. we will know when we have won an election. when every single candidate who

has voted into office begins his or her victory speech by saying, oh sh it. [laughter] i am working in this new book on a new theory of political science. instead of basing my theory on the work of deep political thinkers, such as john locke and tom paine and john stuart and ed crane i'm basing my theory on a dumb game played at all-night google sessions and girls boarding schools. my wife told me about this. games called kill, screw, mary. what happens is the girls pick three men and they go around the room and every girl has to decide which one of the three she would kill, which one she would screw, and which one she would settle down for life and raise a family. i think the example my wife gave when she was telling me about

this was i think for example was conan o'brien, david letterman, jay leno. the girls could do nbc did and kill conan, screw letterman and all the interns dead and mary j lano. i'm laughing but then it struck me that don't screw mary, that's how we pick the president of the united states. take his example, 1992, presidential election for george hob bush, bill clinton, ross perot. ...

i won't venture into exempt from recent election for fear of attracting attention from secret service, hard as it 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 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 how do passionate affairs end? 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? do we 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 a means of gain without merit. this may be the reason the professional politicians retain a certain youthful zest. ted kennedy was the boil 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 political system. but there are lots of definitions of free. 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 chains. 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 letting 100 flowers blossom in 100 schools of thought to content as a policy. half a 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 give 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 they want us 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 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 of 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 tidy 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 one of these is freedom from want. this was not an expression of generosity said roosevelt. 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 kill freedom. wrong rights of the source of abusive political power. it was 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 have seen this, and i was one. i wasn't alone. moderate, even some conservatives considered the sweeping give me 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 not all the social welfare programs were bad, but the electorate, the candidates, and me, failed to properly scrutinize social welfare programs. it's not that we failed to examine whether the programs were needed or not needed for

well or poorly run. what we failed to look at was the enormous power being taken from people and given to politics. we let freedom be turned into power. f off and die the 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 me and my marriage has made a better for my children's right to declare so the brats -- richer children are happy. 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 they want us to sober up and put the gun down and 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 fought the establishment by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns, but that ain't much. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 and were taking a look at author programs with p.j. o'rourke o'rourke, 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 eras 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

self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self and said that there be self. [laughing] if you were born between 1946-1964 you may have noticed this yourself. this is not to say we are selfish generation. selfish means too concerned with the self, and were not. self isn't something we're just concerned with. we are self. before self, it was without form and void like our parents and our dumpy clothes. then we came along. and now the personal is the political. the personal 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, proverbially 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 glad 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. we are stuck with being described as exploding. 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 f? because the truth is if we had decided to be young 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 glass ceilings when children arrived and women prescription for drugs that keep it something sad. will never retire. we will never retire. we can't. the mortgages underwater. we are in debt up to the rogaine

for the kids college education and it serves us right. we are the generation who insisted that a passion for living to replace working for one. still, it's an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have brought and tallied what we've added to and 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 still 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" seated as we are at the head 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 ask p. j. to read. do you need your reading glasses? >> yes. >> this is near the end of the book. it's a bit of a summing up and so you can see sort of where p. j. lands with this. 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 us. 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, a profusion 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 cain. 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 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 we all know i think the baby boom started in 1946, lasted the last year of the baby boom births were 1964. p. j., you were 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, juniors, 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 exploration that would be the baby boom but also tethered very closely behind our parents, the greatest generation. in effect that keel haul, we got dragged under the boat. 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 four, 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 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 through 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. 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 you 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 had childhoods. >> like get out of the house. remember that, 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, the fourth of july would come out and dad would hand out the m neds. -- m-80s. [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.

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 and give us a lit cigarette. >> not to smoke because, unit , not to smoke because that was a safe way to light firecrackers. 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 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, in jainism. 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 to ordinary voters and a standard issue political elitism of the jeb bush or hillary clinton. but the political elites did in part 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 by 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 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 is

not tangled 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 going to realize, guys and gals, going to realize that it's a two way street. the elite politicians have, for generations, created a powerful huge heavy unstoppable monster truck of a government, and then the same elite politicians get all shocked and weepy when a horrible politician who they detest gets behind 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 battles. they pick up into a kiddie car so the worst can happen is it

bangs us 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 see it in the rise of alternative 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. 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 the people who supported the iraq war plus 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's elite spent five years negotiating a peace treaty with a starving rabble of communist guerrillas have been marauding in the countries hinterlands since 1964. 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, pellets, threat theft and trafficking narcotics the guerrillas are getting retirement benefits, you know? even the dull politics of australia had been in turmoil. 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. hung parliament, must have been tempting. i suppose it's hanging legislators is immoral and probably illegal except in queensland if 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 here in 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 elite 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 catty submit all the books about golf but have never been on the links. they spent a whole match telling you not her 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

playing. the scorecard mysteriously winds up on her personal e-mail server. of course i don't know if i could stand how long i would lastly 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 alternative fact 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 loaves 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 jolt him

awake from the 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 important 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 casused the demons be unleashed indeed, elites seem to have been breeding demons in the early diplomacy elite geopolitical and the military. then they turn these demons loose in the middle east as a demons had ever been and endangered species in the region, as if the elites were trying to reintroduce demons. one result of the murder all over the world. how much further away from quarrels and hatred of the middle east could a person get

then to be at latin night in the glee 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 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 have casued 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? political 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, by driving only had a few 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 of that 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 fall of the berlin wall. to be fair to the elites, rapid change creates problems for them. speedy transformation and social mores, economic norms and political givens confuses everybody, confuses everybody especially those who thought they were leaving the mores, norms in givens parade. 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 stride is broken, and the band breaks up a can leave the tube was to be turned into a beer bong, a fellow with the based on sitting on the curb playing a solo from

inagoddadavida, 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 brought right to our door, except when we don't. we love going to yellowstone park but how much do we love having the herds 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 bear ate our 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 take them to see the world. take them to yellowstone park from, say, new jersey. how are your kids getting along? i guess political elites don't take family cartridge. i i guess political elites don't even fly economy class. then there occurs were ever it is, whatever it is about the internet which i'd i be the wrg person to ask. i finally got my space figured only to discover that the only 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 there used to be a bookstore next-door? where did sears go? i'm glad, i'm glad i can comparison shop for refrigerator online and have delivered the next day with free shipping. but the kenmore repairman at sears, he is now listed as a foot soldier in america's open a addiction attack, and how do i get my refrigerant into the ups dropbox when icemaker quits working? all change is disruptive. all change is scary. changing a diaper, change of life, any change, people asking for spare change on the street. got a little of that here. when contemporary social and economic change are combined with contemporary distrust of political elites, a distrust that is some case has been earned, the results can be very disturbing.

russia's ugly nationalism comes from vladimir putin harnessing outraged at the incompetent kleptomaniac politically elites who took possession of russia. xi jinping neo-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. >> and our look at p. j. or 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 often violates common sense is that governments do so many nonsensical things with that money. another reason that money violates common sense is that we don't have to use real 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, the only president who had possessed some libertarian inclinations. actually paper money has 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 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 and 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 bank of france's landholdings of france's landholdings west of the mississippi. bank royale issued too many notes. the french government went broke. most extensive pre-modern 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 too 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. by the 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 high value of gold is a social convention, i have left over from the day when bright, unblemished things, people included, were rare. gold may go out of fashion. a generation they come along that regards gold as gross. old is a product. we may discover improved methods to get huge new about 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 mint. 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 went up by 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. a 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 continental. with fiduciary money governments lie about having the precious metals to redeem their paper currency and the governments do worse than lie.

people holding fiduciary money can wake up the way it did on 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 passed a law saying one dollar equals one dollar. this is fiat money 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 backed 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 remnibi, 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. fiat 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 is 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 they mean by that is i have no idea what the answer is. 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. 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 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 original rant didn't have much value and subsequent rantings 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 wouldn't use crypto currency for any criminal scheme.

well, maybe cuban cigars, but no matter how legal the purchases i make are, i don't like those private purchases being on the public record and sales receipt and credit card records available to who knows what, nosy snoop government agency. i don't like other peoples purchases being on the public record either. somebody buys a plastic inflatable anatomically correct minni 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 to peta causing the 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 than i am 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 have a banged up old volvo station wagon i got for my teenage kids to bang 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.

but 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 tell 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 invention of outlawed nerds with weaponized slide rules and 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 accepts crypto currency in payment for acne cream. so to sum up, money is a root of libertarianism but anybody who

isn't confused by money is insane. the extra confused of crypto currency probably nothing at the psychotic medication that is needed. we worry about money, worry about our medium of exchange we 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 where 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 anarchists. this isn't true. libertarians believe in social structure. we believe in a social structure that protects individual

liberty, upholds individual dignity and ensures individual responsibility. this is very different from believing in no social structure at all. and somalia had 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 somalis all belong to the same tribe. but that tribe has six clans. the six clans have hundreds of sub clans and each sub clan is divided into murderous feuds.

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 up the bag and fees. no foreigner could even make a move without attracting a hornets nest of attention demanding, grasping, pushing mobs of cursing, whining people. these young men with ak-47 assault rifles pushed among the crowd, rusted, then did pickup trucks with gun mounts welded onto the bed sputtered around on predator errands. so there's another abc reporter, i will call him leon. leon offer to to make me -- to take me to the market in mogadishu. i said sure, i wanted to see whether there was a market in

mogadishu, and if there was a market what the heck with the somalis buying and selling. 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 this 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 it pulls out a nine-millimeter glock pistol and he weighs it over his head in a dramatic gesture and racks the bullet into the chamber. i'm looking at him and leon

looks at me and he's like grinning like a maniac and he says, i call it the visa card of the future [laughing] >> if you missed any of these other programs with p. j. o'rourke or you want to watch them in their entirety, you can visit our website, booktv.org. access archives by using the search box at the top of the page and search p. j. o'rourke. >> tonight on booktv, political leaders beginning at . watch booktv tonight and over the weekend on c-span2.

>> the president's from public affairs. available now in paperback and e-book. presents biographies of every president organized by the ranking, by note historians from best to worst. and features perspectives into the lives of our nation's chief executives and leadership styles. visit our website c-span.org/thepresidents to learn more about each president and historian featured in order your copy today wherever books and e-books are sold. >> watch c-span's daily unfiltered coverage of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic with from the white house, congress, and governors from across the country plus join in the conversation on our live call-in program "washington journal" pic if you missed any of our live coverage, watch anytime on-dan