a copy if you haven't already. we have autographed copies for sale. we look forward to welcome you back when the time comes. take care. good night.

>> this picture on the left is that real? >> oh yes. [laughter] not a wig. i would guess 71. i think a martian left i did not make enough sense to be communist or prosecutor. >> went to the transformation occur? >> it was gradual. there is a book coming out from the hoover institution. who is backing this and why i turned right. it's a story of a bunch of us.

i was a radical leftist i got a job. $150 a week i was a messenger per week that was a lot of money as far as i was concerned living on the lower east side and i was pretty broke. we get paid every two weeks. i was looking forward to $300. so is my landlord. and my drug dealer. [laughter] and other people. i got my first paycheck like is supposed to be $700 that after federal tax and estate tax and social security i have

been advocating socialism. communism, marxism for years screaming and yelling and demonstrating and we already have it. they just a calf my pay. what's going on? >> also politics is christopher hitchens. >> much more recently. >> back in 1993 here is what he had to say about you. >> he is another ask leftist, sixties radical dropout remembers funny what he was like to be permanently paranoid and bummed out in the sixties. and then like public enemy to cash in the chip.

and with the books and essays. it's called the reptile and the next is called holidays in hell. much better than mine ever have civic i met him sure. so i know i have been a radical and how wonderful it would be to music on - - but not band button-down and on the satire of political correctness but it's not funny to laugh at couples but it's funny but not funny enough.

christopher. getting away with murder. i may get away with slande slander, civil assault. >> i've never even got away with physical assault. i think he overstates the case. and also i am long past the point where i claim to be a young republican. i am an old republican. like most middle-age white guys. >> you didn't know you would come here this afternoon to get attacked. [laughter] holidays in hell is another book all the trouble in the world and etiquette book for rude people. >> the original edition was 1983. >> now eat the rich is what

got me started that i was simply puzzled i did not understand why some countries are rich and others are poor. so i started to poke around going to rich countries and poor countries to figure out why this country was rich others were poor and from that experience that the editor of grove atlantic in england came up with a series of books to change the world of which and it's because they are poking around. >> mississippi you are on with pj or work.

go ahead. new jersey go ahead. >>caller: i'm not sure why he deserves to be taken seriously or this time on your show when a man i suspect never wore a uniform and would have done his darndest a have a were now and i happen to have been the republican for 50 years voting for nixon and ronald reagan. thousands of americans have been killed tens of not hundreds of thousands have been killed no useful purpose served by the war and i think it is abominable that mr. o'rourke would make fun of it you find something amusing. to talk about the entirety of free markets if he has any

conception of minimum wage laws does he remember that condition before and they could work 12 hour days? is that what he thinks is freedom? >> we will get to the free market question in just a second. >> he was on the democratic line. >> like many men of my generation i have an opportunity to give for a chance to probably check it out i went to my draft physical 1970 with a doctor's letter of drug abuse it was for a half pages long with three.five pages i was shunted into the office of the army

psychiatrist to say you are fw don't belong in the army but that meant someone else had to go in my place i would like to take the and dedicate this book to him i hope you got back in one piece and you are more used to your platoon mates and i would have been i hope you are rich and happy now in 1971 when somebody punch me in the face for being a long-haired piece creep i hope that was you. >> i got a couple of nice letters for that dedication people thought they had. [laughter] so the beginning of what the fellow on the phone said i've never asked anybody to take me seriously putting it this way a bad situation were really

rotten situation like bad disease like death itself isn't changed if you make fun of it or you don't. we make fun of things not because we approve of them or love them or cute or cuddly but to cope with their own terror and unease and existential horrors and anger at god disappointment with ourselves. you can drink and make a joke take drugs and make yourself populist and pious. it will make it better or worse. that as to free markets and minimum wage people working in

coal mines and 49 hours a day it's interesting when you say you are in favor of free markets to get that response is not at all what adam smith meant. what he was talking about was keeping coercion out of life and the marketplace and only one aspect. adam smith the essays that he rode a very important book that no one reads anymore call the theory of moral sentiment is all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. that is the core morality and free society and democracy.

he lived in a pre- democratic era and didn't understand democracy at work. he was is moral and practical and sympathetic. at the root of freedom is persuasion. the idea you want free markets does not mean you want the middle by force or by anarchy. it implies a rule of law and that we are all equal before the law is not prescriptive it doesn't tell us exactly the free market or if there are rules are there should be rules but doesn't say quite exactly what they are.

adam smith tries to lay down the rules and make them prescriptive and becomes a policy wonk. and when he turns into a policy wonk he turned as foolishness as the rest of us. and to that corner i would just like to say my three hour should be wasted on me. they asked me. what can i tell you.

and you may well be right. but not just because to limit certain freedoms and may be the correct thing to do but don't be smug about that desire. everyone who wants to limit freedom to the tele band or people in favor of minimum wage laws come everybody is smug about their desire to limit human freedoms. some really do need to be limited. but that doesn't make you a good person to recognize that you are not a good person you deserve no smugness and on

foolish innocence just because you have a desire to limit. so there. civic it is the last time to say sayonara to the american car american automobile companies they will live on like a ghost dragging their chain at taxpayers expense. the fools in the corner office at the detroit union will retire to their vacation home

in palm beach and st. petersburg. they don't deserve our sympathy more than the trolls under the capital dome but pity the poor american when congress gets through with it a light weight vehicle small carbon footprint with renewable resources when i was a kid we call the dish when - - a schwinn bike. [laughter] it has been a great 110 years, it's been a great run since they built the first american automobile in springfield massachusetts. if it had been a success springfield massachusetts could be today's city for love racial tensions in violent crime in springfield massachusetts is full of

anyway. we a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of the felon mayors. many people my age we owe our very existence to the car or the cars back seat. [laughter] if you check the parents wedding anniversary and the birthday maybe too close for comfort. there was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. [laughter] it's true you cannot sneak a girl into the rec room because your mom and dad didn't have a car so they were stuck at home working on the farm. saturday night you could take a girl out but it was hard to get her into the mood to bust

into the corset because you were facing the hind end of a horse. that's wales the atmosphere. and then the american nuclear family. that was a relief to all conserved. there are worse things you can do as the sudanese. we never hear or thank you or a word of thanks. from those in the body cast that skateboard all the time. and this is what then enviable standard of living you cannot have a steady job with retirement benefits with the general livestock at corporation putting others on cows it just can't be done.

and the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation the sheer genius that transformed the 19 oh eight model t ford into the shelby cobra gt500 over one single human lifetime of speeding tickets. compare this to the progress in the previous mode of transportation force production course design? unchanged for thousands of years. i did some research on this. nobody thought to hang a stirrup from a saddle and tell 500 a.d. that was invented.

and automobile and design proceed at the same piece on - - pace we would be parrying ourselves down the road by running with both feet stuck to hold in the floor like fred flintstone. and most important the america's founding fathers. that the trues we hold to be self-evident. of all of the unalienable rights of which we are endowed and it is right there front and center with the declaration of independence.

and freedom to get out of here. king george. that's the declaration of independence. the saga of the american car is not abstract. now nancy pelosi may think she was transferred home on think of the clouds on sarah from but i know the car got me to where i am. my grandfather, jacob o'rourke born 1877 on a farm about the size of this podium in line city ohio. [laughter] one of ten kids growing up in a one-room shack they are lined up a age staring at the

photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. my great-grandfather was a woodcutter in the midwest where there and on - - are no trees also drunk and illiterate have a copy of his marriage certificat certificate. his only accomplishment aside from the ten prizes that he won on the roulette wheel but nothing ever accomplished is he trained a pair of old nags to call him home dead drunk pastor in the wagon and the horses bring him home. >> grandpa jacob left home headed for the bright lights of toledo ohio and went to work as a buggy mechanic. one day over list buggy pulled

up at the shop. grandpa saw that and saw the future. it didn't take him long to realize more money was to be made selling them instead of repairing them. and when the wedding anniversary was too close for comfort and the time i came along in the forties we had a buick. and ran around the used-car lot in iran the parts department in cleaning and waxing the cars. my son-in-law on the ohio car

dealers association and do whatever it is that i do. there are times i wish i had stayed and took over that agency because really just to be on the late-night tv car dealership adds, i got this idea i want to go to pirate pats. come down to pirate pats treasure island. [laughter] free chocolate for the kids. [laughter] grandpa died in 1960 that we owe everything to the american car without that.

so the history begins with the american car. and go to college. so i take the demise of the american car. and what fun to jump on ralph nader with both feet and send a big marxist goosed out of his crackhead. even though ralph says 75 and clearly insane. and that was the corvair. and that was just wrong because my a friend had a

corvair. and the worst driver in the world and one of the fastest. it just couldn't be done. and that there is plenty of blame to go around and i'm not sure about that either. it's true the car executives are knuckleheads at all executives are knuckleheads. now worth the zillion dollars what you go get a decent five-dollar haircut? but one thing to expect those leaders to be down at the uaw hall standing on a chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses.

making $600 an hour or so i'm told. but every time the camel starts at the opec meeting maybe their pay is too high but it's not like they get the pay. to understand what doomed the american automobile. and then returned to melodrama. so as a convertible world business. the state of detroit is not a foreign competition or corporate greed and energy or measuring - - you size of the footprint. it is a tragic romance unleashing passion.

especially wild horses. not jury duty for some exciting crime like the o.j. simpson murder. i want government to be jury duty for a long, boring, complex, concerning tax law.

in fact let me suggest indicting our federal tax code just for starts. which is nothing but fraud. i want government to be double and onerous responsibility like attending a parent-teacher conference. something to be undertaken with weary reluctance because good citizenship requires it. i want every congressman, every senator, every president, every supreme court justice to be wishing, longing, begging to go back to his or her real job in real life. i want them helping them pleading to be allowed to return to the private interest in personal obligations. i want them yearning into sit in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose money on his world series bets. i want our elected officials to

say that they intend to spend more time with their families and mean it. we will know when we have won an election. we will know when we have won an election when every single candidate who is voted into office begins his or her victory speech by saying 0 shippe oh en. i'm working on a book with political science, instead of basing my theory on the work of deep political thinkers such as john locke and tom payne and ed crane, i'm basing my theory on a dumb game played all night giggle sessions in girls boarding schools. my wife told me about this. the game is called kill, screw,

mary. 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 when she would screw in which when she would settle down and raise a family. i think the example my wife gave is that her example was conan o'brien, david letterman and jay leno. the girls could do like nbc did and screw letterman. and i'm laughing joe, screw, mary, that's how we pick the president of the united states. faith is example, 1982 presidential election, george h. w. bush, bill clinton ross perot, they kill ross perot, we can argue that for bill clinton. and we mary george h. w. bush. the outcome of the game is not a

conclusion, witness our mysterious, the case of the 2000 presidential election, america was divided on whether to screw george wr get screwed by al gore but i think we all agreed on killing ralph nader. i won't venture any examples from recent elections for fear of attracting attention from the secret service hardest hit seems to be in the obama white house but anyway, it's got me thinking, it's a game that works on government, you killed the postal service, get in bed with fema housing, married the armed forces and saber government policies, screw agriculture, merry social security and health care reform kills us. it is great to political analysis because in a free and democratic country, politics is a three let leggett stool. it balanced on a tripod of

power, freedom and responsibility. kill, screw, marry. we live in a free and democratic country. little less democratic than it was before last night which is fine by me. also kill, screw, marry is a great political analysis because we are so passionate about our politics and how to passionate affairs and, and the passion usually in a crime of passion and occasionally they turn into stable permanent legal arrangements which is to say the endless quarrel known as marriage. how do we approach the political institution of our free and democratic country, do we overthrow them with violence, do we screw around cheating on them while they cheat on us or do we build something that is lasting and boring, worthy and annoying, marvelously virtuous and at the same time cycling a marriage.

power, freedom responsibly, kill, free, marry. when i first began to think about politics, when 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 in drinking water but i had a tidy idea that freedom was a central issue of politics, i love politics, many young people do, kids can spot a means of gain without merit in them. this may be the reason that professional politicians retain a certain zest, ted kennedy was the boil right down to his last agent disease moment, i was wrong about the lovable nature of politics but i'm sure i was right about the preeminent place freedom should have an

applicable system. but there are lots of definitions of free, 36 definitions of free and the international dictionary, plenty of people are theoretically in favor of freedom, we are all but overrun with theoretical allies and freedoms cause, we have collaborators in the fight for freedom that we don't even want, the probe harry and nothing to lose with their chains. it's a second to last communist manifesto and there's a creepy echo and chris kristofferson's and bobby mcgee. in 100 flowers blossom, half a million people died in that 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 with the same way that we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights. there are two kinds of rights. political scientist called them positive rights and negative rights. sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. i call them get out of your rights and give me rights. politicians are always telling us about our give me rights, especially the politicians that we have in the white house right now as he give me some healthcare. our bill of rights does not mention any give me rights, our bill of rights is all about our freedom to say i have god guns and a big damn mouth and if the jury finds me guilty the judge will hold my bail.

this is a god out of your right, our freedom from interference usually from government but from our fellow citizens when they want us to sober up, quit yelling and go back in the trailer. politicians do not like give me here. they only like give me rights, they do not like get out of your rights. they don't like get out of your rights because for one thing all legislators are being invited to get out of here and 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 politically alluring. this is how we find ourselves tempted with the right to education and housing and the right to a living wage to oil spill beach cleanup, high-speed internet access, three french hands, two turtledoves in a partridge in a pair tree. the politicians showed no sign of knowing the difference

between get out of here and give me rights. and blinded by the dazzle of anything that makes them popular, they honestly may not be able to tell. but there is evidence that a confusion about these rights was originally presented to the public with malice and forethought. president franklin roosevelt for freedom appeared to be a first glance as natural as tidy of composition of those norman rockwell illustrations for them, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. but notice how the beggar, number three, freedom from want has slipped in the more respectable members of the freedom family. want what we ask. saying as roosevelt did as we look forward to world founded upon human freedoms and one is freedom from want, this was not an expression of generosity from

roosevelt, declaration from freedom from want are never generosity. there were 6 million jews in europe who wanted nothing but a safe place to go and where was roosevelt there, when rights consist of special privileges of positive benefits rights kill freedom, wrong rights are the source of abusive political power, years before i realized this, years after i got interested in politics, before i realized the central issue of politics is power is freedom, kill, not screw. only an idiot would've seen this and i was one. and i was not alone. liberals, moderates and even conservatives consider the give me rights created by half a century of social welfare programs to be extensions of freedoms and the opportunity sense and people were given the

opportunity to not starve to death, that is 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 is not that we fail to examine whether the programs were needed or unneeded or 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 be turned into power, f off and die the politicians told us. they're careless about promising give me rights, they are cynical about delivering them. give me rights in turn are absurdly expendable, the government gives me the right to get married, this indicates i have a right to a good marriage, otherwise bu why bother giving e that right, my marriage is a lot

better to my children's right to daycare so the brats are not my face all the being deprived of their right of an environmental environment. every child has a right to a happy childhood. i have the right to happy children. richard children are happier. give me some angelina jolie. the expense to all these rights makes politicians happy that they get to do the spending, even get out of your rights are not free they and tele-military, judiciary and a considerable expenditure will of our neighbors when they want us to sober up and put the gun down and go back to the trailer. but give me rights require no end of money and money is the least of their cost. everyone of such rights means a transfer of goods and services from one group of citizens to another, the first group of citizens loses the goods and services but all citizens lose the power that must be given to

a political authority to enforce that transfer. and we did not want to understand that power and this is particularly true of the baby boom, it was obvious in the way that we reacted when politicians attempted to use their 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, and empathetic bunch. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2 and were taking a look at author programs with political former editor in chief and in 2014 he offered a critique of the baby boom generation as one of the over 70 million boomers and reflected on his relationships with his parents and children. >> we are the generation that changed everything.

while the errors and epics of america, are is the one that made the biggest impression on ourselves. [laughter] but that's an important accomplishment because we are the generation that created the south, divided the life of the south from the governance of the south and said let there be se self. [laughter] if you are born between 1946 and 1964 you may have noticed this yourself. this is not to say we are selfish, selfish means to concerned with the self and we are not, something is not concerned with, we ourselves. and before our self was without form and joy like our parents and are dumpy close. [laughter] then we came along.

now the personal is the political, the personal is a social economic and the religious and the secular, the science and the arts, the personal is everything that creep up upon the earth kind, for bb boone has done one thing, it is to get a personal universe and our apologies for anyone who has to personally be a jerk. self is like fish per verbally speaking, if you give a man a fish and fed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he turns into a fly, and angling fanatic, icy water pestering trout and thousand dollar graphite rod. at least his life partner is glad to have them out of the house. [laughter] here we are in the baby-boom cosmo formed a mart image and tailored to our individual needs and predetermined to be internally fresh and novel.

and we saw it was good. or pretty good. i knew she had a cooler name. good luck to anyone that tells us to get lost. it is too late now, were stuck with being described and now maybe it's time that we've spotted 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 that we do and what the [bleep] because the truth is if we hadn't decided to be young forever, we would be old. [applause] the youngest baby boomer born in the last year when anybody thought it was hip to like lyndon johnson, they are turning 50 and we would be sad about getting old if we weren't

getting busy marrying younger wives and reviving careers that hit the ceilings when children arrived in renewing prescription that keep us from the inside and remember retired -- we will never retire the mortgage is underwater were in debt up to the rogaine for the kids college education and it serves as right. we are the generation that insisted that a passion for living should replace working for one. [laughter] it is an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have wrought in tally what we added to the subtracted from existence, we reached the age of accountability, the world is our fault, where the generation that has an excuse for everything, one of our greatest contribution to modern life but the world is still our fault in a matter of power and privilege of demography and never anything

that happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signed the bill in the baby-boom seated as we are at the head of life's table is here in generation x, generation y in the millennial same check please. [applause] >> i also chose just a couple of paragraphs, do you need your reading glasses? >> yes. [laughter] >> this is near the end of the book, a bit of a summing up. and you can see where p.j. lands with this. >> turn the page, got it. >> were the best generation in

history which goes to show history stinks. [laughter] but at least we are fabulous by historical standards, the baby-boom was a carefully conducted scientific experiment, empirical results are up, take the biggest generation and the most important country and you put them all into excessively happy families, give them too much affection, a scant responsible to, plenty of money, a profusion of opportunity and a collapse of traditional social standards. and you get better people. [laughter] not better, to get one by one were smug and able in the way people always have been, but we are better behaved although better behaved is not a way to put it, weren't goals, were entitled but we are still swell.

[applause] >> this has a very interesting structure. the chapters are essay length and you blend in real memoir stuff about your life along with broader thinking about baby boomers and how we got this way. you start by, as we all know, the baby-boom started in 1946 and lasted the last year brook h were 1964. so you were born on one end of the spectrum and i on the other although it is a defining characteristic of baby boomers that we all look the same age. [laughter] >> about 18 by my rough

estimation. >> you describe the baby-boom experience as seniors to perfect high schools, seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen's. >> i'm in the senior class, it is me, share, hillary clinton and bill teach. [laughter] the seniors, where the voyage of exploration that would be the baby-boom but also tether closely behind her parents, the greatest generation. we got dragged under the boat and if we wound up a little soggy and as financial advisors with tongue stud and trying to start to party protest, we are to be forgiven. >> your senior class was on the vanguard of so many things

including vietnam and drug taking and by the time the freshman class came along, i think it mike case on the youngest of four i watch my three older siblings do all of these things and it scared me and i did none of those things. i grew up in the 50s. >> the younger baby boomers are more cautious and they embraced, drugs and rock 'n' roll and the philosophical underpinning and laziness in action, they seen the older baby boomers in action and they knew what works in general does not always work when the bonk sets fire to the beanbag chair. [laughter] the baby-boom becomes better behaved when it comes along. >> the one lightbulb aspect, you start by describing what sounds like a very early memory in

toledo ohio where you are watching the world to the picture window of your family's brand-new house. >> i'm standing there in the window comes up to my chin, i'm watching the big kids go to school and it's one of my very early memories. this is a silent generation and they were yelling and screaming and it just seemed -- i see at this moment in the book that all generations of kids that wanted to be grown-ups except us, we wanted to be bigger kids. and it's a vow that we have kind of kept. >> you make an observation about childhood that 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 we were a generation or are a generation of people who at childhoods. >> yeah, get out of the house it's a beautiful day. [laughter] it's raining, it's burning. they said it was a beautiful day get out of the house. i have never quite figured out the parenting style. we take a lot of grief for being helicopter parents. but our parents, they were strange, they can be so cautious and so fearful of things, don't get to know people who are not from europe. [laughter] that would be scary enough the other hand like fourth of july would come around and dad would hand out the mad's. [laughter] here's some explosives.

everybody has the uncles, uncle mikey mike and he would give us -- this was my businessman uncle to do this. he would give us a fire cracker and he would give us a lit cigarette. [laughter] not to smoke but because that was the safeway to light a fire cracker. if we fiddle with matches we might hurt herself. then they drink, they were real strict all day long until 630. [laughter] and they would say i know i'm only ten but can i take the car. [laughter] >> in 2017 p.j. o'rourke published a book on the 2016 election entitled how the hell

did this happen, in march of this year he spoke at the commonwealth club in san francisco to provide his thoughts on president trump and the reasons were his victory. here is a portion. >> how can a person like donald trump possibly become president, maybe it's just a matter of the great political mink and 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 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 that created the post-world war world war two had been running everything into the ground as far as a lot of ordinary voters

are concerned, internationally we are seeing a rise in xenophobia and jingoism and authoritarianism and it ranges from the comic spectacle of the european union to the deeply sinister activity of vladimir putin and xi jinping, taking measurements for new iron curtains. you would think that this would seem worse to ordinary voters than a near standard political elite is a of jeb bush or hillary clinton but the political elites did in part create their own problem. over the past four generations the hallmark of the political elite has been the expansion of political power, political power is expanded in size and expense. one third of the world's gdp is spent by the politician and government around the world.

one out of every three things that you make is grabbed by government. if your cat has three kittens, one is a government agent. 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 group transgender bathrooms, we knew politics was crab now we find out where we take one is a political issue. [laughter] and i have to say to the political elites, no wonder when you guys will realize that politics is a two-way street, the elite politicians have spent four generations creating a powerful huge heavy unstoppable monster truck of a government in the same elite politicians get all shocked and weepy when a

politician who they detest gets behind the wheel turns the truck around and runs him over. we need to make the truck smaller, yank the engine install foot pedals, make the government into a kiddie car so the worst it can happen it brings us intuition's. so people all over the world are saying were sick of the elites, were tired of the experts, to the hell with the deep thinkers who think they know odder than we do and who while they're at it or grabbing everything that we got. we see this in this revolt against the elites for example in the brings a vote. we see in the rise of alternative to political parties in europe. . . .

>> now in the case brexit the business silly and trade union elite are all opposed to brexit. and with the iraq war with the global financial crisis to nationalize the british automobile industry unprecedented agreement on the issue in very similar case in columbia. to spend five years to negotiate a peace treaty with those gorillas that were marauding in the hinterland since 1964. this was held to cause columbia's voters to add what? after 52 years of murder kidnapping and narcotics the

gorelick's are getting retirement benefits even in the dull politics of australia in turmoil they are so doll that the name of the conservative party is a liberal party. [laughter] but australia had five prime minister in six years resulting in a hung parliament it must have been tempting and to with that parliamentarian chasing that she. politics and canada even more than the politics of australia. and i have then googled canadian politics because who would but i am assuming and

here in america we saw the revolt against the elites and ridiculous rise of donald trump. but why trump of all people. but there is nothing elite about it for sure. he sounds like the rest of us after he had six strings and he does even drink. he's a jerk that you can imagine playing a round of golf with hi him. he cheats but so do i. imagine a round of golf with hillary clinton all the caddies who have read about golf but never on the links they spend the whole match

telling you what the club is and the secret service is they are to make sure you take the suggestion hitting from the fairway with the sand wedge after the cut in the pan get moved closer to her ally and appropriate term in the scorecard mysteriously ends up on the personal e-mail server on the other hand i don't know if i could stand how long i would last playing around with donald trump before i gave into the temptation to whack a titleist into the back of his goal. with an alternative fact. but global revolt against the elites in many ways it is puzzling. i didn't feel the power of this myself while i was reporting on this and in the

beginning of the 21st century it seems like an odd time to have a revolt especially in a country like ours. we are not in desperate financial straits but the great recession of 2008 that was painful waking up on friends couches that practically everybody in america has had a divorce. we spent of that before. and if there is any bloodlines sure not handing out low carbs since limbs but we are embroiled in a long war with those three years of the war on terror. but 7800 combatants died at the battle gave one - - gettysburg.

we are culturally and politically polarized in a way that would startle the old school history professor jerking them awake from the faculty lounge. in 1861, that was polarized. fort sumter isn't taking any incoming as far as i know. but american people are fearful and blame their fears on the political elite. one important reason is we have done a lousy job dealing with certain problems. the middle east for example. and the elites failed to address the problems that

cause the demons to be unleashed and they are breeding demons and the diplomacy geopolitics and military strategy. as if demons had ever been an endangered species in the region or trying to reintroduce demons. also murder all over the world how much further away from the middle east cut a person get then to be in a gay nightclub in orlando florida? another result with the mishandling of the middle east is a refugee crisis in europe. and the europeans are saying what do the elites care? and with the halls of the european parliament and building shantytowns on the tennis courts. that means nannies and household staff and ethnic restaurants they cannot see

any similarity between the wall donald trump has promised us and that gated communities in which the elites live. another problem is they have promised politics can fix everything. when you promise you can fix everything everything that is broken is your fault of political elite say politics can fix climate change and i want to see bill clinton shoveling my driveway. things to global warming it only had a few inches this winter. so we are seeing in this global revolt and with rapid change.

and with extreme poverty less than a dollar a day that has been reduced by half since the year 2000. and also despite some recent backsliding in human liberty and to be fair to the elites rapid change creates problems for them speedy transformation and then to confuse everybody and don't have to march in lockstep to become individual persons set of our mass on review.

with those certain difficulties arise on the parade ground when the stride is broken and the band breaks up it could turn into a beerbohm with the bass drum sitting on the curb and the trombone to goose the cornet player and nobody can spell glockenspiel. but the elite john major standing in the middle of the street wearing a goofy hat leaving a stick. so swift improvements of transfer and communication. and that technical capabilities with globalization and international trade shrinking to a pluto size planet. and then brought right to the door except when we don't like we love going to yellowstone park.

the mountains the tourist and the bears in the rec room. so it is a smaller place now to make the political elites that the smaller worldwide have everybody get along. to put them in a small place such as the backseat of your car and i will take them to see the world. and yellowstone park from new jersey. and they don't take family car trips. they don't even fly economy class.

and the wrong person to ask i finally got my space figure only to discover the only person there is me. so to make sure every idiot in the world is in communication with every other idiot. so the digital revolution would change everything and has done so already. where did sears go? i'm glad i can comparison shop for refrigerator online and by any brand that exist and deliver the next day with free shipping that they can more repair man at sears is not the soldier how do i get my refrigerator into the ups dropbox all change is disruptive and scary.

and contemporary social and economic change and with those political elites distrusted in some cases has been earned and it can be disturbing. the ugly new nationalism comes from vladimir putin at the incontinent - - incompetent for those that took possession after perestroika. all the tea in china scale among the chinese elites. and those anti- elite aspects of the financial interpretation of g heidi they hate elites so much they have suicide squads to kill

themselves perched on - . the modern world is a scary world and fear is a bad schoolmarm we have a monster at the blackboard how can people in the democratic countries learn the one plus one fundamentals when all they can think of it slimy and scaling the tentacles coming out of the head. they turn to help to the bully at the back of the classroom and that is donald trump. >> with the concept of money to violate common sense is

governments do nonsensical things that many. the wave money violates common sense to have real commodities as many that written promises to deliver those written commodities, paper many. fiduciary many from the latin word meaning to trust. and the only president we have that even possesses some libertarian inclinations actually paper money does have libertarian origin. it's a free market invention at least in europe paper money was developed privately in the h century around the italian market on - - merchants and to whom precious metals have been entrusted for safekeeping. did not take long for political authorities to steal the idea. government fiduciary many in

the west was first printed in sweden traditional sweetest commodity money came in the form of copper plates. and the stockholm bongo and paper notes and that think issued too many notes and then to help the french government established the bank royale but the landholdings must've been in the city on - - mississippi. the french government went broke the modern experiment and then refusing to accept it the continental congress issued too many notes and a

pattern begins to emerge. fiduciary many even if they are lying about the amount and by the 19th century the major currencies of the world based on gold which was the british pound this is a period of monetary stability not a great economic growth not all the armed compounds in idaho in gold seems as good as whenever but that is a social convention left over when that was rare. and to come along as gross and immoral the way millennial's regard feel.

[laughter] and that is a product we may have new products and this happened to the spanish when they conquered the new rule melted it down and send it to the meant it never occurred to the spanish they were just creating more money, not more things to buy with it. between 151600 prices in spain went up 400 percent so with the vast wealth of america's oceans and fields, spain took the gold like they sold nothing but deposit slips. so gold is an absolutely perfect rational basis and it's not that is your irrational but inconvenient the currency to be converted into a commodity limit the amount of currency that can be

printed a government has to have some of that commodity or the world makes a laughing stock out of the bank notes. and then to have those precious metals and they do worse than live people holding fiduciary many can wake up like dated april 5th 1933 when fdr signed executive order 6102 be ending the ownership of gold. people can wake up to find that redeeming paper currency for what the law says it is worth is against the law. the government can lie and steal to support currency why can't they lie and steal everything that's what all governments have done the same one dollar is x amount of gold we say x on - - one dollar

equals one dollar from a binding edict and cheap and not very reliable car. [laughter] fiat money is backed by nothing and tell the user in place of something more important such as toilet paper. not just the venezuela and boulevard is just a pronouncement of existentialism from government central banks trillions and trillions. we are here because were here because we are here which is a popular tone one - - tune since world war i is when fiat money came into general use.

we got it because the government says we've got to. and with the lousy parent reason. because i said so. so is cryptocurrency the answer? i'm glad you asked that question question. has politicians running for office and what they mean is they have no idea what the answer is. one a medium of exchange the kind of money to adheres to the libertarian principles. the privacy principle it does not physically harm anything

else is not of anyone else's business. and to have the private kind of money that libertarians want. first cryptocurrency is not public are subject to government public policy. and to treat it like stock or on facebook page. a few clicks of the federal reserve keyboard is another rant. and funding the government is difficult to do. cryptocurrency encrypts transactions. what you are buying and selling is not revealed to a new z on - - nosy snoop who is the government.

to be on empty street corner i don't even cheat on my taxes more than the loopholes require me to do. no matter how legal the purchases i'm a car, i don't like those private purchases being on the public record with sales receipts and credit card records available to who knows who. and the plastic inflatable anatomically correct through the private home i want to know about it.

i want the government to know about it either for fear that epa may impose endangered plastic rodent regulations on all of us. and then to be vandalized my car is parked nearby. i'm much more worried about government of using the police powers than individuals abusing purchasing powers. so the case in favor of cryptocurrency but to tell the truth, i don't own any in fact i have no use for cryptocurrency the price for that clean is down this morning if you offered me one bit coin i would tell you to bite me.

and because i am ignorant, confused by the mathematical intricacies to form the block chains that underlie cryptocurrency's. and women which didn't stop me from hearing one i find airplanes all the time with no idea why they take off or how they land. but i am particularly confused by the internet. i think whose bright idea was it to make sure every idiot in the world is in touch with every other idiot? [laughter] it is an enormous hacking industry with a small global interconnected network. and i fear that somehow cryptocurrency is the invention of nerds and slide rules. and now a 15 -year-old wearing

energy pajamas in the bedroom logging on to make himself a billionaire on the darknet. i hope walgreens excepts cryptocurrency for acne cream money is the root of libertarianism and were not confused is insane they probably are not the antipsychotic thing that is needed. we are worried if the medium of exchange clashes then a society will clash. i thought about this maybe the way to understand that worry is that worry is to go where has collapsed already. back in 1992 i went to somalia from total anarchy.

let me pause and talk about anarchy because we libertarians are often confused with our accused of being an anarchist. this isn't true libertarians believe in social structure that protects individuals liberties and dignity and ensures responsibility. this is different than no social structure at all and somalia has no social structure at all. it was true anarchy. and the somalis celebrated the independence by shooting each other. fighting broke out everywhere. because the somalis all belong to the same tribe but it has six clans and hundreds of sub plans and each is divided into

murderous feuds. with rifles and machine guns and wads of filth. in the old town not one stone stood on one another everything had to be built out of concrete and it was blasted with the tracer bullets every tree and bush word be snatched for what pavement was left mounds of sand blew through the streets, rubbish dropped and the goats grazed. everything that guns can accomplish were achieved in mogadishu. i signed on as a regular reporter with abc news. they managed to find a mansion

in tact and hired a 40 man army of somali mercenaries to protect this compound and 27 some of us producers housed in the compound with the security as a mercenaries like to be called and it is in impossible without a truck full and even with the gun man along there are all these people to pay and leave wristwatch bands no foreigner could even make a move without attracting a hornets nest of attention and the junk man waving ak-47 assault rifles rested dented

pickup trucks with gun mounts welded into the bed like the planetary on - - predatory errands. being in small he is six months leon offered to take me to the market in mogadishu. if there was a market what are they buying and selling and learning an important lesson in the medium of exchange i learned there will always be a medium of exchange. the matter how society collapses there will be a form of currency. with a somali translator and

even so we get down to the market and to pull out and 9 millimeters glock pistol. and waves it over his head and looking at him and he looks at me grinning like a maniac and says i call it the visa card of the future. [laughter]