>> this picture on the left is a real picture? >> yes. [laughter]

it was. >> what we are politics and 71? >> i think a martian left would be the easiest way to sum it up. i was a left-winger but it didn't make sense to be a communist. >> went to the transformational kerr? >> it was gradual. it took place, in fact i just wrote about this. there is a book coming out from the hoover institute of why i turned right and it's a story of a bunch of us. and it is a long story and i won't tell you but i will give the short version. i was a radical leftist in a

search of marxist socialist thing in america and i got a job i got a job paying $150 a week. i was the messenger in new york. that was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. i was very broke and i was paid every two weeks. i was really looking forward to that $300 and so was my landlord. and my drug dealer. [laughter] and other people. i got my first paycheck it was 178. it was supposed to be $300 but after taxes and social security and health care retirement fund i said wait. i have been advocating socialism marxism and communism for years.

demonstrating on the street and we already have it. they already took half of my pay. i am not rockefeller. we have socialism. that's when i started to snap out of it. >> somebody else who made a switch in their politics is christopher hitchens. >> much more recently. >> right. but in 1993 this is what he had to say about you. >> he is another ask leftist, sixties radical drop out and remembers permanently to be paranoid in the sixties and has been cashing in the chip ever since and terrific calling as a humorist for his books and essays. the first one is quite funny called republican party reptile.

the next one is called holidays in hell. and then give or a chance. these are much better than any of my books. so here is my revenge upon him. but i reckon he was running on empty with the joke i have been there now i see how wonderful it would be to be a completely but in-depth tory. the joke depends on political correctness. the people to make a joke about eggs then he will. and to say look, it's funny but not funny enough. >> christopher christopher christopher. getting away with murder cracks maybe i get away with slander or a little bit of assault. i'm just a little guy i'm

cowardly i even got away with physical assault. i think he overstates the case. also i am long past the point to be a young republican button down or not. i am an old republican like middle-aged white guys. . . . .

books that changed the world of wedge my book on adam smith is one and christopher hitchens has one also on thomas paine. it was because of adam smith that he asked me to write. >> host: you are on with pj o'rourke. >> guest: >> host: new jersey, go ahead. >> caller: i'm not sure why he deserves to be taken seriously

or given all this time on your show when a man i suspect never wore the uniform or hearing about his politics in the vietnam era would have done his harvest we have a war now we should end have had. thousands of americans have been killed, tens if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis have been killed. i think that it's abominable mr. o'rourke can make some of the war and find something amusing about it but the question i wanted to ask he talks about the imperative of the free marks. the condition that existed before we had those borers and

the way they were obliged to work six day weeks is that what he thinks is freedom? >> guest: thank you. we will get to the free-market question in just a second. >> host: in your dedication to give the wore a chance, here's what you write like many men of my generation i had an opportunity to get a promptly chickened out. in 1970 i had a doctor's letter about my history of drug abuse. the letter was 4.5 pages long with three and a half devoted to listing the drugs i have used. i was shunted into the office to at the end of a 45 minute interview, pounding his desk shouting you don't belong in the army. he was right on the first count and possibly the second.

i didn't have to go but that meant someone else had to go in my place. i would like to dedicate the book to him. i hope you were more juice to your platoon mates and then i would have been. i hope you are happy and when someone punched me in the face for being a long-haired peace creep i hope that was you. >> guest: let's put it this way. a bad situation is a really rotten situation it isn't changed by whether you make fun of it or you don't we make fun

of things in order to cope with our own terror and existential horror. humor is a defense mechanism. you can drink and make a joke and take drugs and where you can do all of those things at once. as to free-market and minimum-wage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours a day, 90s the weekend so on and so forth it's interesting you immediately get

that response from lots of people. it's not of course at all what adam smith meant. what adam smith was talking about is keeping abortion out of life and marketplaces was one aspect of keeping coercion out of life. the wealth of nations, a very important book no one reads anymore called the theory of moral sentiments about morality was all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. that is the core of morality and the free society and the core of democracat the coreof democracym smith in some ways didn't quite understand that he did

understand that freedom could work. he was a practical and just plain sort of sympathetic advocate of freedom. the idea that you want free markets doesn't mean that you want markets ruled by force or anarchy it implies a rule of law and that we are all equal before the law. it isn't prescriptive or tell us how to conduct the free-market or give the same rules. it tells us there should be rules and we should all obey the rules but it doesn't fit quite exactly what they are. in book five adam smith tries to lay down some rules and take his series and make them perspecti prescriptive and give policies.

he becomes a policy won't and it's interesting it's the one failed book when adam smith turns into a policy won't he becomes as foolish as the rest of us do when we become policy wonks. so to the angry caller i'd like to say this for a second i have no idea why three hours should be wasted on me. because there are certain ideas on how freedom should be conducted and i respect those ideas and they are worth arguing about but don't just because

they want to limit certain freedoms in the market, you may be wise and it may be the correct thing to do to look at those freedoms, but don't be smug about her desire to limit freedom. anybody that wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the taliban to people who are in favor of minimum wage laws, everybody's smug about their desire to limit human freedoms. some do need to be limited but it doesn't make you a good person for recognizing that. but you are not a good person. you deserve the smugness and don't deserve to vent your anger on foolish innocent humorous just because you have some desire to limit.

>> pj o'rourke has appeared on booktv close to 20 times over the past 20 years. up next, he provides a tribute to the american automobile michael discussing his book driving like crazy. this was held at the peterson automotive museum in los angeles in june of 2009. >> it is i'm afraid the last time to say how shall we put it sayonara to the american car. the companies, they will lift in some form. in the corner offices of detroit they are going to retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. petersburg.

the congress and the white house gets through with it, a lightweight vehicle with a small carbon footprint using alternative energy and renewable resources when i was a kid we called it a schwinn. [laughter] i guess it's been a great 110 years it's been a great run since the first american automobile in springfield massachusetts. if it had been a success, springfield massachusetts would be today's city which i as it so happens, springfield massachusetts is full of anyway. we owe our very existence to the

car to the car's back seat of her if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthday they might find that a little too close for comfort as to where we were conceived. there was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the combustion. you couldn't sneak a girl into the wreck room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad didn't have a car so they couldn't commute so they were home all day working on the farm. and your farmhouse didn't have a wreck room because recreation hadn't been discovered due to all the farm work. saturday night you could take a girl out but it was hard to get her in the mood to put you bust into her corset because you were facing behind and of a horse and it spoils the atmosphere. so while the car was as if it

destroyed the american nuclear family and anyone that has had a nuclear family can tell you that was a relief to all concerned. and they caused america to be paved. there are much worse things you can do to the country and pay it. one of the things i've won her, we never hear thank you, never a word of thing delete code than thanks, not a word of thanks. cars provided america with an enviable standard of living. you couldn't get a steady job with retirement's working on the general livestock corp. assembly line putting letters. it just couldn't be done. and i think that the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation. you think of the innovation, the invention, the sheer genius

transformed the 1908 model t. ford to the 1968 gt 500 in the lifetime of speeding tickets. in the previous mode of transportation, horse production, horse design unchanged for thousands of yea years. nobody thought to hang a strip from a settlement of about 500 when it was invented. people have been writing for this for thousands of years and it took them until 500 a b. we

would be running like a hole in the floor like fred flintstone for what may come to that with the 2010 obama mobile. but most important of all was faithful filled with the idea of america's founding fathers. of all the truths that we hold to be self-evident, that all of the unalienable rights with which they are endowed, which is most important to the american dream is right there, front and center in the name of the declaration of independence, freedom to leave, freedom to get out of town, freedom ticket out of here. king george, can i have the keys. that's what the declaration of independence says. i've got to tell you, it just

isn't an abstract matter to me. this is the subject of fanciful theories. nancy pelosi may think she was transported home from the maternity ward on pink fluffy clouds, but i know it was the car that got me to where i am. my grandfather, jacob, was born in 1877 on a farm about the size of this podium here in line city, ohio, which was not a city and didn't even have any line. [laughter] he was one of ten kids. they grew up in a one-room unpainted shack i have a photograph of the windup by age staring at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. my great grandfather was a woodcutter in the midwest, where

there are no trees. [laughter] unemployed quite a lot, also drunk and illiterate. i have a copy of his marriage certificate. his only accomplishment aside from that advises that he one on the cornish with stuffing on the poor man's roulette wheel, the only thing he accomplished as he trained a pair of hogs to hold him home, he would pass out in the wagon and they would bring him home. that is what he had accomplished in his life. grandpa jake left home under a fifth grade education heading for the bright lights of toledo ohio. he went to work as a buggy mechanic and then one day a horseless buggy of the shop. grandpa is all that and he saw the future. it didn't take long to realize cleaner hands were to be had

into selling things instead of repairing them. also, my uncle arches birthdate and grandma and grandpa's wedding anniversary were a little too close for comfort. anyway, he got in the car business and by the time i came along in the 19 orgies, we had a overwrote automotive. they ran the used car lot and it was a salesman and they ran the parts department and they worked in the department and all of the cousins and we all worked out on the caon thecar lot, cleaning ae car is. my cousin would go on to run the ohio car dealer association and association andi would go on tot is that i do, writing about cars and stuff. i tell you, even in these dark days for the automobile i wish

there were times that they stayed in toledo and taken over that buick agency because beyond this late night local tv car dealership ads, i got this idea that i wanted to do pirates pat buick. [laughter] come on down to pirate past where the prices walk the plank. don't miss our used car lot, three chocolate for the kids. [laughter] grandpa died in 1960, honors from the rotary and the lions club and my family just we owe everything to the american car. without the car, we couldn't read and have food and stuff. our history begins with the beginning of the american car. and by now some of us have even

gone to college. they didn't go far in college or do very well, but we went. [laughter] so i take the demise of the american car, i take this personally. i'm looking around for somebody to blame. i want to blame somebody like ralph nader. what fun it would be to jump on him with both feet and sandy p. marxist views squirting out of his crack egghead carried [laughter] we should still do that even though he is 75 and clearly in pain. [laughter] it took more than one man and dilbert book to wreck the nation. he was wrong because my high school girlfriend connie had one and she was the worst driver in the world and one of the fastest and if connie couldn't get

herself killed in it, it just wouldn't. the pundits were telling us there's plenty of blame to go around for the death of the american car and i'm not sure about that. it's true that the car executives are knuckleheads that all of them are. look at bill gates. if you were worth a zillion dollars, wouldn't you go to a college and get a decent 5-dollar haircut? labor union leadership is maddening but it's one thing to be met with the labor union leaders and another thing to expect them to be down at the uaw standing on the chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses. that just isn't going to happen. they make $600 an hour or so i'm told. they get laid off every time a camel is not an ope that an ope. maybe their pay is too high but

it's not like they are getting paid. i don't understand what doomed the american automobile. we have to give up on economics and turned to melodrama. politicians, journalists, financial analysts, of the other purveyors, they've been looking at cars as they comfortable for a business. the fire the mbas and higher public. the fate of detroit isn't a matter of financial crisis or corporate greed, union intransigence on energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprint in the carbon. it is a tragic romance in the unleashed passions and titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses, especially wild horses. >> we've opened up archives to look at programs with pj

o'rourke the author of 19 books. in 2010 he appeared at the cato institute in washington, d.c. where he is also a senior fellow, to offer his thoughts on politicians and the federal government. >> i will not be satisfied until every seat in the house and senate is filled by a regular person. a regular person who, quite reasonably, hates being there. i want the government to be like jury duty. and off jury duty fo got jury de exciting crying like the o.j. simpson murder. i want government to be like jury duty for a long, boring, complex, confusing trial concerning taxable. let me suggest inviting our federal tax code, just for starters, which was nothing but a fraud.

i want the government to the doldole and onerous responsibily like attending a parent teacher conference. something that can be undertaken with 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 job in life. i want them hoping and believing to bpleadedto be allowed to retr 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 expense. i want our elected officials to sit down and say they intend to spend more time with their families and the mean it.

we will know when we have won an election and whenever a single candidate who is voted into office begins his or her victory speech by saying oh, shit. [laughter] i am working on a new theory of political science and instead of basing my theory on the work of deep political thinkers such as john locke and tom paine and i am basing my theory on the game played at all-night jiggled session in sporting schools. games called kill screw mary. the girls pics free men and 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. the example my wife gave when she was telling me about this cars with conan o'brien, david letterman, jay leno. they could do like nbc did, till conan and mary jay leno. i'm laughing but then it struck me, that's politics. that's how we pick th the presit of the united states. take as an example 1992, george h. w. bush, bill clinton, ross perot. we told ross perot, screwed clinton and married george h. w. bush. the outcome isn't always a foregone conclusion. in the case of the presidential election in 2000, america was divided whether to screw george

w. or get screwed by al gore but we all agreed on killing off ralph nader. i won't venture examples from the more recent elections in fear from attracting attention from the secret service a as pat is that sometimes seems to be from the obama white house. [laughter] anyway, so, screw, mary works in the government. kill the postal service, get in bed with fema housing, and married the armed forces. agricultural subsidies, mary social security and health care reform tells us. it's great to the political analysis because in a free and democratic country, politics is a sort of three-legged stool. politics balanced upon a tripod of power, freedom and responsibility, to screw mary. we live in a free and democratic country, a little less

democratic than it was last night which is fine with me. also, kill, screw, mary, we are so passionate about our politics and out of the passionate affairs at the end come in passion usually come in a crime of passion sometimes. and occasionally they turn into stable permanent legal arrangements we choose to save the endless quarrel known as marriage. so how do we approach the political institutions of our free and democratic country, to the overthrow them with violence, screw around cheating on them while they cheat on us or build something lasting and boring, worthy and annoying, marvelously virtuous and at the same time stifling, cover freedom, responsibility, kill, screw, mary. when i begin to think about politics, when nixon roamed the

earth, i was obsessed with the freedom, the square park of kill, screw, marry. i had the idea that freedom is the central issue of politics. now i loved politics. i met young people do. kids could spot a game without merit. this may be the reason of professional politicians retain a certain youthful zest. ted kennedy was right down to his last disease wracked moment. i was wrong about the lovable nature of politics that i was sure that i was righ i was righe preeminent place that freedom should have in the political system. but there are lots of definitions of free. 36 definitions in webster's third international dictionary.

plenty of people are theoretically in favor of freedom. we are all that overrun with theoretical allies in freedom's cause. we have got collaborators in the fight for freedom that we don't even want. the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. it's the second to last sentence of the manifesto there's a creepy echo in the refrain. announced leading 100 flowers blossom and 100 schools contend as the policy. half a million people died in the definition of freedom. and we should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word free in english is not in bondage. the most meaningful thing is mankind has a sickening history of slavery. now here in america, we have freedom because we have rights.

the same way we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights. there are two kinds of rights, political scientists call them positive rights and negative rights. sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. i call them get out of here right. politicians are always telling us that they give me rights especially those in the white house right now. as in give me some health care insurance. the bill of rights doesn't mention any gave me rides. it's all about the freedom to say i have god, guns and a big mouth and if the jury finds me guilty the judge will hold my bail. the right to be left alone, our freedom from interference usually from government but also our own citizens when they want us to sober up, put the gun down and go back.

politicians don't like this. they do not like they get out of here rights because for one thing all legislators are being invited to get out of here and for another thing, strict adherence would leave little scope for legislation, something that a legislators want to do. much more politically alluring and this is how we find ourselves tempted with the right to education and housing and a living wage and oil spill beach cleanup, high-speed internet access, three french hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. politicians show no signs of even knowing the difference between get out of here and give me great and appointed by the dazzle of anything that makes them popular, they honestly may not be able to tell.

but there is evidence that a confusion of the riots was originally presented to the public with malice and forethought. president franklin roosevelt for freedom appear to be at first glance as natural as well matched and tidy composition as the norman rockwell illustrations, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, freedom from fear. but notice how number three, freedom from want slept in among the more respectable members of the freedom family. want what, we ask. saying that we look to the freedom from want, this was not an expression of generosity from 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.

it's years before i realized they considered the sweeping rights created by half a century of social welfare programs to be extensions of freedom and in the opportunity since people were given the opportunity to you know, not starve to death and that isn't a purely evil way of looking at things. and not all for social welfare programs were banned. but the electorate failed to

properly scrutinize social welfare programs. it's not that we failed to examine whether they were needed or not or well or poorly run, but they failed to look at the enormous power being taken from people didn't get into politics. we let freedom be turned into power, f. off and die the politicians told us. politicians are careful about promising to write into cynical about delivering them. in turn they are certainly expendable. the government gives me the right to get married. this indicates i have the right to a good marriage otherwise why bother giving me that right, mine is made better to my children's rights to daycare so they are not in my face all day. the right to nurturing development. every child has the right to a happy childhood so i have the

right to have the children. richer children are happier. give me some of angelina jolie's. the expense of these rights because politicians happy. they get to the spending. even get out of here rights are not free. the judiciary, and considerable expenditure of patients by the neighbors when they want us to sober up, put the gun back and go in the trailer. trailer. give me a 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 loses those goods and services, but all citizens lose the power that must be given to a political authority to enforce the transfer. and we didn't want to understand

the power and this is true of people my age. it was obvious in the way we reacted when politicians chose to limit freedom by drafting us into the war of the vietnam. we fought the establishment by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. we are a pathetic bunch. >> in 2014 he offered a critique of the baby boom generation as one of the over 70 million boomers and reflected on his relationship with his parents and children. >> we are the generation that changed everything. of all of the era is, ours is the one that made the biggest impression on ourselves. [laughter]

but that's an important accomplishment because we are the generation that created itself and divided the light of itself from the darkness and said let there be solved. [laughter] if you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this your self. this isn't to say that they are selfish. that means too concerned with the self and we are not. it isn't something we are just concerned with. we are selves. before us, it was without form and void with your parents and their dumpy clothes. then we came along. [laughter] now the personal is political and socioeconomic, the personal is the religious and secular science and the arts, everything that creeps upon the earth aft

after. the baby boom has done one thing it is to be get a personal universe and our apologies for anyone that comes happens to personally be a jerk. it's sort of like fish proverbial speaking. give the man a fish and you've fed him for a day, teach them to fish and if he turns into a dry fly, catch and release, i can see water is pestering trout on a graphite rod. at least his life partner is glad to have him out of the house. [laughter] 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. i wish it would have had a cooler name the way the lost generation did.

good luck to anyone that tells us to get lost. it's too late now. we are stuck with being called explosive and vince and maybe now it's time we've splattered ourselves over the place for the baby-boom to look back and think what made us who we are and what caused us to act the way we do, and what the fuck. [laughter] if we hadn't decided to be young forever, we would be old. [laughter] [applause] the youngest baby boomers born in the last year when anybody thought it was hip to like lyndon johnson or turning 50 and we would be sad about getting old if we were not busy remarrying and having revived careers that hit glass ceilings when children arrive to renewing

prescriptions that keep us from being sad. and we will never retire. we can't. the mortgages underwater. [laughter] we are in debt with the kids college education and it serves us right because we are the generation that insisted that a passion for living should replace working for one. [laughter] still, it's an appropriate moment for us to weigh what we have wrought and kelly woodlief added to its 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. but the world is still our fault. it's a matter of power and privilege tomography. whenever anything happens anywhere, somebody over 50 signs the bill for it. and seated as we are, hearing

generation x. and y. and the millennialist saying check please. [applause] >> wonderful. i chose a couple paragraphs to ask. do you need your reading glasses? >> yes. >> near the end of the book it is a bit of summing up and so you can see sort of where he lands with this. so just from their -- >> turn the page, got it. and yet we are the best generation in history that goes to show history stinks. [laughter] but at least we are fabulous by historical standards. baby boom was a carefully conducted scientific experiments.

empirical results are up. you take the biggest generation and the most important country and put them all into accessibly happy families. give them too much affection, extravagant freedoms and responsibility, plenty of money, a profusion of opportunity and a collapse of traditional social standards and you get better people. [laughter] not better, take it one by one. we are as smug and able the way people always have them but we are better behaved. they are careful, entitled but we are still swelled. [applause] >> love that. thank you. this book has a very interesting

structure. chapters are essay length and you blend in some memoir stuff about your life along with a lot of broad thinking about baby boomers and how we got this way. you start by i think it started in 1946 and lasted the last year of the baby-boom plus 1964 so you were born sort of on one end of the spectrum and i on the other although it is a defining characteristic that they all look the same age. [laughter] >> about 18 by reference to nation. >> but you described the experience as seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen.

>> gets me, hillary clinton, bill -- >> we were in this exploration that would be the baby-boom that we were also tethered very closely. he got dragged under the boat. if we wound up a little soggy as financial advisor try to stir tea party protests. >> your senior class was on the vanguard of so many things including the vietnam and drug taking. 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 as do all of these things and it scared me and i did none of those things. >> younger baby boomers are not as cautious. as i put it in the book, they increased sex, drugs and rock 'n roll and the philosophical underpinnings thereof. >> who wasn't. [laughter] >> that they've see >> that they've seen the older baby boomers in action and is all what works in general doesn't always work when the bomb sets fire to the beanbag chair. [laughter] >> baby-boom kind of gets better behaved as it goes along. >> one delightful aspect of the book is you start by describing what sounds like a very, very early memory in toledo ohio, where you are watching the world through the picture window of your brand new house.

just delete the >> i'm standing there, too young to go to school, watching the big kids go to school, one of my early memories. it's a silent generation. they were not silent out there. yelling and screaming. it seemed like, you know, there's a moment in the book all generations of kids wanted to be grown-ups accept us. [laughter] we wanted to be bigger kids. that's the vow that we've kind of kept. >> actually you make an observation about the childhood that really struck me. you say children, the baby-boom children were in control of their own childhoods. our parents worked as children. our children work like maniacs, and it we were a generation, are a generation of people that have childhoods.

>> it was like get out of the house. get out it's a beautiful day. it's raining. [laughter] 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 so cautious and so fearful of things you know, like don't get to know people who are not from europe. [laughter] that would be scary. on the other hand, they would like the fourth of july would come around and dad would hand out the n. '80s like here's some explosives that should probably take a license. [laughter] everybody has the own uncle, this was my businessman

respectable uncle he would give us the firecrackers at the cottage on the lake to blow up if shand she would give us eacht cigarette, not to smoke, but because that was the safe way to light a firecracker. [laughter] if we used matches we might hurt ourselves. [laughter] and they drink. they restrict all day long until about 6:30. [laughter] i know i'm only ten but can i take the car? go! in 2017, p. j. o'rourke published a book on the 2016 election entitled "how the hell did that happen." in march he spoke at the commonwealth club in san francisco to provide thoughts on president trump and the reasons for his victory. here is a portion. >> how could a person like

donald trump possibly become president? maybe it is a matter of what the great political satirist hl mencken said democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. [laughter] 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 beliefs. the political elites that created the post world war ii international order into fo whor the past 70 years have been running everything, running everything into the ground as far as a lot of ordinary voters are concerned. i mean com, internationally, wee seeing a rise in xenophobia and authoritarianism.

and it ranges from the faintly comic spectacle of the european union in shambles to the deeply sinister activities of vladimir putin. taking measurements for a new iron curtain. now if you would think that this would seem worse to ordinary voters than a standard issue political elite jeb bush or hillary clinton. but the political elites did in part create their own problem. over the past for generations, the hallmark of the political elites has been the expansion of the political power. political power has expanded in size and extent. one third of the world's gdp is now spent by the politicians in the government arounandthe gove. one out of every three things to make is grabbed by governments. if your cat has three kitchens, one of them is a government agent.

[laughter] political power is expanded in scope. politics cast its net over every little aspect of life. nothing is so private that it isn't tangled up in politics. transgender bathrooms. we know politics is crap and now we find out that where we take one is political issue. [laughter] and i have to say to the political elites, when are you going to realize that politics is just, it's a two-way street. street. street. delete politicians have spen spt for generations creating a powerful, huge, heavy, unstoppable monster truck of a government, and event the same delete politicians get a shock and weeping when a horrible politician whom they detest tickets behingetsbehind the whee truck around and runs them over. we need to make the truck smaller. take the engine and install foot pedals.

make the government into a child's car so the worst that can happen is that it hits you in the shin. people around the world say we are sick of the elites and tired of the experts, to hell with them for deep thinkers who think they know what we should have better than we do and while you're at it, grabbing everything we thought. we've got. we see this revolt against the for example in the vote and alternative political parties in europe on both ends of the political spectrum. the green on the left and nationalists on the right. we can see it in brazil where almost every politician in the country can't left, right or middle of the road is charged with corruption for the reason that they are guilty of it. in the case of brexit, the trade union easily, they are all opposed to brexit. that's to say the people that

supported the iraq war, plus the people that caused the 2008 global financial crisis plus the people that nationalized the british automobile industry, they were all in an unprecedented agreement on one issue and the voter voters thout couldn't go on voting against this trifecta. there was a very similar case in colombia. the elite spent five years negotiating a peace treaty with the communist guerrillas that had been in the hinterlands since 1964. the site was held to ratify the agreement causing the voters to ask a lot after 52 years of murder, kidnapping, theft, trafficking in narcotics, the guerrillas are getting retirement benefits. the site failed. even the politics of australia has been in turmoil. the politics in australia are so

dole that the name of the conservative party is the liberal party. [laughter] but australia has had five ministers in six years and the last election nearly resulted in a hung parliament. that must have been tempting. [laughter] i suppose it's pinging legislators is immoral and probably illegal, except in queens land of the parliamentarians are caught chasing sheep. [laughter] politics of canada, even worse than the politics of australia. and yet in canada, they have a completely inexperienced bashing celebrity named justin. i haven't looked up canadian politics, because who would. but i'm assuming that justin is justin bieber. [laughter] and because here iit because hee saw the revolt against the elites and the ridiculous price of donald trump. i'm thinking okay i understand

the desire to shake things up with why trump of all people. the, trump may be a rich guy. maybe he's a member o he is a m% like he says he is that there is nothing elite about him for sure, nothing unique about the way that he sounds. he sounds like the rest of us except after we have had six drinks. he is a jerk. but you could imagine playing around golf with him 20 harvard graduates that have never been on bowling is. and to make sure you take the adviser's suggestioadvisor's suu had from the fairway.

in the appropriate term. they wind up on the personal e-mail server. of course on the other hand i don't know if i could stand or how long i would last playing around in golf with donald trump before i gave the temptation standing on the green watching the ball with his foot to create an alternative fact about how close it is. it is a little puzzling. i didn't really feel the power of this myself while i was reporting on this and then in certain ways at the beginning of the 21st century it seems like an odd time to be having the revolt against the elites especially in a country like ours where things have gone at least fairly well. we are not in desperate

financial straits. the great recession of 2008, that was painful and there was a certain amount of waking up on friend's couches after somebody took the house. but these days practically everybody in america has had a divorce, so we've been through that before. and if there were any bread lines during the great recession they were not handed now flows of low-carb thin slims. 700 to 800,000 veterans died gettysburg. we are culturally and politically polarized but not in a way that would startle and old-school history professor

away from his nap in the faculty lounge. your 1861, that was polarized. fort sumter isn't taking any incoming at the moment as far as i know it yet the american people are fearful and they blame their fear on the political elite. one of the reasons for this is because the political elites have done a lousy job of dealing with certain problems. the middle east, for example, i mean, demons have been unleashed in the middle east. the leaves fail to address the problems that cause the demons to be unleashed. indeed seem to have been breeding demons in the kennels of the elite to the pharmacy politics and military strategy. and then they turn them loose and the middle east as if they've ever been an endangered species in the region as if they were trying to reintroduce

demons. one has been murder all over the world. how much of the hatred in the middle east could a person get them to be at last been made in a gay club in orlando. and of course the mishandling of the middle east, the refugee crisis in europe. the europeans are asking what did the elite care, they are not crowding the stairways and a quarter hours in halls of the european parliament in brussels. the refugees are not building shantytown on the tennis courts at the private country clubs. immigration means fun new ethnic restaurants. ..

>> so we are seeing in this global revolt the elites are blamed for everything. including the fact we live in a time of rapid change. nevermind much of that changes good change living in extreme poverty less than a dollar a day has been reduced by half from the year 2000.

and with some backsliding with an overall growth the human liberty the past 30 years since the 1989 fall of the berlin wall and to be fair to the elites rapid change creates problems for them. 's speedy transformation in economic norms confused everybody. especially those who thought they were reading the amore parade. mankind no longer has to march in lockstep they are becoming individual persons and this is great but difficulties arise on the parade ground when the stride is broken. and with the bass drums with

the trombonist to boost the clarinet player and nobody can spell glockenspiel. now they are waving a stick so swift improvements in transport and communication and technical capabilities have combined with globalization and international trade shrinking to a pluto -sized planet. the love everything brought to our door except we don't we love yellowstone but had we like the tourist and the bears and everyone in the rec room?

now it's a smaller place. and the smaller world would make everyone get along. and then to go see the world like yellowstone park from new jersey. how are your kids getting along? [laughter] but then there is a occurs whatever it is. on the internet i would be the wrong person to ask. i just figured out myspace the only person there is me. [laughter] but whose bright idea was it to make sure every idiot is in

communication with every other idiot? [laughter] i trust the digital revolution will change everything and has done so already. and to buy any brand that exist and they can more repair man at sears and like the opioid addiction attack all changes disruptive and scary like changing a diaper or a change of life.

and with that distrust of political elites and in some cases has been earned and the results can be very disturbing. and then to harness popular outrage that income to on - - incompetent those who took over after perestroika even president xi makes look at the tea in china scale corruption and indeed and tire elite aspects and isys terrorist hate the elites so much they have suicide squads who go around killing themselves. the modern world is a scary world and say a phone - - fear is a schoolmarm.

and those in the democratic countries even the one plus one fundamentals of democracy when all they can think of is thinking it has tentacles growing out of its head. >> really want from the classroom is donald trump. >> one reason the concept of money and the other reason it violates common sense is we don't have to use real commodities as many but

written promises. this is fiduciary many meaning to trust and not be too quick to do so. trust but verify. paper money does have a libertarian origin. and then to in the privately bills of exchange and precious metals have been entrusted for safekeeping. but it wouldn't take long to steal the idea. it was first printed in sweden first coming in the form of copper plates.

and in 1656 and in 1716 the scotsman help the government to establish the bank royale and bank royale issued too many notes and the french government went broke. and in 1775 the second continental congress creating paper money but passing a lot refusing to accept it. and even if they lie about the amount and historically the

most common commodity is gold those currencies are led by the most major of those which is the british pound. but have great economic growth. and money should be worth something but gold seems like what ever but the high value of gold it is a habit when people were rare. it could go out of fashion and growth stand immoral the way they view feel and even to have huge new amounts this happened to the spanish.

and then to melted down to send it to the meant. and creating more money not just things to buy with it. and with the vast oceans and fields in spain took two gold. and then sold nothing but deposit slips. gold isn't a perfectly rational basis but the real problem with fiduciary many is not that it's irrational but inconvenient to be converted into a commodity limits the amount of currency that can be printed. the government has to have some of that that fiduciary

many and then to redeem the fates of paper currency. and then to wake up on april 5th , 1933 when fdr signed the executive orders 6102 banning the ownership of gold. they could find out to read the main paper currency is against the law. and then why can't the government lie and steal that is exactly to say that one dollar is x amount of gold that one dollar is one dollar that is a binding edict also a

cheap and not reliable car. [laughter] it is backed by nothing that faith the government will keep printing money if they are using it for much more important such as toilet paper. it's not just the venezuelan boulevard no intrinsic values with any fiat money. is the pronouncement of existentialism from government central banks and trillions of trillions of dollars are singing we are here because were here because were here because were here popular in the trenches of world war i which is when fiat money came into general use. all the money today is fiat money we have it because the government says we've got to is supposed to be the lousy parent reason frustrated and

the inept government tells us like we tell our children because i said so. is cryptocurrency the answer? that is a i'm glad you asked that question as politicians always say and they mean i have no idea. as a libertarian i want the medium of exchange, kind of money adhering to libertarian principles. actually just to one libertarian principle would suffice. and what i do does not physically harm anyone else is not of anyone else's business. cryptocurrency is the private kind of money libertarians

want. and those two most important senses first it is not public or subject to government public policy. that is to issue is much as the government feels like issuing it treats you like a stalker. a couple of clicks of the federal reserve keyboard then there is a rant. the first isn't but subsequent are worrisome. unfriending the government is very difficult to do. cryptocurrency the on --dash encrypts the transaction so that is it revealed to the government to a snooping. i am fairly law-abiding and i wait for the walk sign in the middle of the night on an empty the street corner i don't even cheat on my taxes

even more than loopholes require me. i wouldn't use of for a criminal scheme except cuban cigars but i don't like those private purchases to be on the public record with credit card records and sales receipts and who knows what. now somebody buys a plastic inflatable many mouse stall for intimate relations in the home i don't want to know about it. i don't want the government to know about it because the epa would impose regulations on all of us with the high-minded to leak that information because then the store would

be vandalized because my car is parked nearby. so that's the key serve cryptocurrency. but to tell the truth i don't own any and in fact i have no use for cryptocurrency. that coin is down but it has been hovering around $7000. but i have a banged up station wagon. if you offered one bit coin i would tell you to bite me. and those that underlying

cryptocurrency. i'm confused about a lot of things. i find on airplanes all the time with no idea how they take off or land but i am confused by the internet whose bright idea was it to make sure every idiot in the world is in touch with every other idiot? [laughter] also as far as i can tell the internet is the enormous hacking industries service by a computer network. so that is the weaponize slide rules and now somebody wearing him og pajamas in the bedroom with the floor covered in snickers wrappers logging on to make himself a billionaire with the darknet.

i hope walgreens accepts cryptocurrency for the acne cream. anybody that is not confused by many is insane. that extra confusion is not the antipsychotic medication needed. we worry about money and medium of exchange and that society will collapse. so i thought the way to understand that worry is where society has collapsed already. back in 1982 i went to somalia with the military mission to save somalia. so let me pause and talk about anarchy because libertarians are confused with being an

anarchist and this is a true they believe in social structure that protects individual liberty and dignity to ensure individual responsibility this is very different from believing and no social structure at all and somalia has no social structure at all it was true anarchy to be overthrown in celebrating their independence by shooting each other and fighting broke out everywhere not just traditional african warfare they all belong to the same tribe they have clans and some clans divided in two murderous feuds. they fight with cannons and in

the old town not one talent stood upon another everything was built out of concrete that was blasted into rebar. no water or electricity the only illumination was from tracer bullets and sewage welled up and mounds of sand blew through the streets. rubbish was thrown. and those achieved in mogadishu. i signed on as a radio reporter with abc news. and then to be intact and hired a 40 million army of mercenaries to protect the compound.

and we are housed in this compound as they like to be called and even with the gun man there are all these people to bake and see. no foreigner could just make a move without making a hornets nest and those young man waving ak-47 assault rough on - - rifles with the gun mounts mounted into their bed. there is another abc reporter.

but leon offered to take me to the market in mogadishu i wanted to see if there was a market and if there was what were they buying and selling? i learned an important lesson about medium of exchange in that market. i learned there will always be a medium of exchange. it may not be what you suspect but as society collapses there will be a form of currency so with the armed somali transfer and this requisite track but getting down to the market my friend leon gets out of the car and pulls out the 9 millimeters glock pistol and

racks a bullet into the chamber. i am looking and leon says i call it the visa card of the future. [laughter]

>> and with this event virtually. and a place to share and sustain ideas. i like to think samantha so to watch the broadcast in closed captioning