Quite positive. What were your politics in 1971 . I think a martian left would be the easiest way to sum it up. I was a left winger but but i t make enough sense to actually be a communist or anything like that. Went to the transformation ocher . It was gradual. It took place over, in fact, i just wrote about this. There was a book coming out from the hoover institution, is backing this, called why i turned right. And its the story of a a buncf us and why we became right. It is a long story and and i wt tell it but ill give the short version. I was a radical leftist, very much and have some sort of marxist socialist thing in america. I got a job. I got a job paying 150 a week. I was a messenger in new york. 150 a week was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. I was living down on the Lower East Side and i was very broke. We got paid every two weeks. I was really looking forward to that 300 bucks. So with my landlord. And my drug dealer and a number of other people. I got my first paycheck and embedded out like 178 or something. This was supposed to be 300 bucks, but after a federal taxes, state tax, city, social security, health care, retirement fund, which he really cared a lot about in those days. I said wait a minute, ive been advocating socialism, marxism, communism for years, screaming and yelling and demonstrate industry. And we already have it. They just took half my pay. Whats going on . Im not rockefeller. They just took half my pay. We had socialism. Thats what i start to step out of it. Took about. Host somebody else who made a a switch in the politics Christopher Hitchens, and guest much more recently. Host back in 1993 i believe heres what he had to say about you. He is a guy who gets away with murder. Hes another exleftist, \60{l1}s{l0}\60{l1}s{l0} radical dropout, wrote very fondly about what is right thing permanently stoned and bummed out and paranoid in the 60s. Then became a young republican as is been cashing in this chip ever since and has been a humorist for his books and essays. The first one quite funny is called Republican Party reptile. The next one was called holidays in help more recently is called give war a chance. Heres my revenge upon him. I met him. I reckon he was running this joke about i know id been there, ive been the radical, notes that wonderful it would be to be a completely buttoned up, button downed tory. The joke basically depends on a satire on political correctness. So people cannot make jokes about age. P. J. Will make a joke about age. I said look, in the works of the title, thats quite funny but its not funny enough. Guest christopher, christopher, christopher. Hitting away with murder. I might get away with slander, verbal assault. I dont think i even have got away with just a little got an cowardly. Ive never even got away with physical assault. I think it overstates the case. And also of course im long past the point where i can claim to be a young republican buttoned down or not. Im an old republican. Now im like most middleaged white guys. We are all republicans, even if we sometimes call ourselves something else, like democrat drama you did know you would cor and get attacked, did you . [laughing] holidays and help us another p. J. Orourke book. All the trouble in the world, modern manners, and etiquette book for with people. Guest first book. The original edition of that was 1983. Host eat the rich. What was this about . Guest eat the rich is what got me started on what wound up being adam smith. Which was i was simply puzzled. I didnt understand why some countries are rich and other countries are poor. And so i started poking around going to rich countries and poor countries and trying to see if i could figure out why this country was rich and other countries were poor. It was from that experience that toby monday, the editor of Grove Atlantic in england who came up with this idea for a series of books come books that changed the world of which my book on adverse this is one and Christopher Hitchens has will also on thomas paine, the rights of man. And very good it is. It was because of some atoms that poking around in at the smith that toby asked me to write on adam smith. Host nesmith, mississippi, you are on with p. J. Orourke. New jersey, go ahead. Caller i am not sure why mr. Orourke deserves be taken seriously or be given all this time on your show when a man who i i suspect never wore the uniform and i suspect from hearing about his politics in the vietnam era wouldve done to start is to avoid wearing the uniform can be so utterly flippant about war. We have a war now that we should not have had and i happen to been a republican for 50 years voting three times Richard Nixon and twice for ronald reagan. Thousands of americans have been killed, tens if not hundreds of thousands of iraqis have been killed. No useful purpose is served by this war and to think its abominable that mr. Orourke can make fun of war and can find something you think about it. But the question i wanted to ask is, he talks about the imperative of free markets. Does mr. Orourke have any conception about why we have things like like a minimumwagw and maximum our laws and osha laws . Does he remember the condition that existed in america before we had those laws and the way laborers were obliged to work 12 hour days, sixday weeks . Is that what he thinks is freedom . Host thank you. Well get to the free market question that had just a second but in your guest that was one on republican. Host it was on the democratic line. Guest im glad. Host and her dedication to give war a chance, heres what you write. Like many meant of my generation i had an opportunity to give war a chance at a probably chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with the doctors letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and half pages long with three and half pages devoted to listing the drugs i had abuse. I was shunted into the office of the army psychiatrist, at the end of the 45 minute interview with me was pounding his desk and shouting you are aft of your queue dont belong in the army. He was right on the first count and possibly write on the second. Anyway i didnt have to go with that of course meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope youre more used to your platoon mates than i wouldve been. I hope youre rich and happy now and in 1971 and somebody punched me in the face of being a longhaired peace creep, i hope that was you. Guest i got a couple nice letters because of that dedication from people who thought maybe they had punched me in the face. And said they appreciated it. To begin with the beginning of what the fellow on the phone said, ive never asked anybody to take me seriously. As to making fun of war, lets put it this way. A bad situation, and war is a really rotten situation, like a bad disease, like a death itself, isnt changed by what he make fun of it or you dont. We make fun of things not because we approve of them or love them, not because theyre cuddly and cute. We make fun of things in order to cope with her own terror, our own and these, our own existential horror, our anger at god, or disappointment at ourselves, et cetera and so forth. Schumer is a defense mechanism. You can drink. You can make a joke. You can take drugs. You can make yourself all pompous and pious, or you could all of those things at once. So whether i make fun of war or dont make fun of work, unfortunately its not going to make more better nor is it going to make war worse. As to free market and minimumwage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours a day, nine days a week and so on and so forth, its interesting when you say youre in favor of free markets you neatly get that response from lots of people. Its not of course at all what adam smith meant. What adam smith was talking about was keeping coercion out of life and keeping coercion out of marketplaces is only one aspect of keeping coercion out of life. Adam smiths whole, the wealth of nations, essays that he wrote, a very important book that he wrote that no one reaches more is called the theory of moral sentiments which is about morality was all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. That is the core of morality. Its the core of a free society. Its the core of democracy even though adam smith in some ways didnt know that. He lives in a predemocratic era. He didnt quite understand that democracy could work, but he didnt understand that freedom could work. He was a moral and a practical and just a plain sort of sympathetic advocate of freedom. At the root of freedom is persuasion. The idea that you want free markets does that mean that you want markets rule by force. Does that mean that you want markets rule by anarchy. It implies a rule of law, and it implies that we are all equal before the law. It is not prescriptive. It doesnt tell us exactly how to contact the free market. It doesnt give us the exact rules. Tells us that there should be rules and that we should all obey the rules, but it doesnt say quite exactly what those rules are. In book five of the wealth of nations at a smith tries to lay down some rules come he tries to take his theories and make them prescriptive, actually give us political policy picky becomes a policy wonk. Its interesting, its a one failed book in the welfare got five books and a wealth of nations. The fifth book stinks. What adam smith turns into policy while he becomes as foolish as the rest of us do when we become policy wonks. He becomes likely that in this white house like they will have in this congress, so to their angry caller i would just like to say this. First, i have no idea why three hours should be wasted on me and im not going to say there is a good reason. They asked me. But because you of certain ideas how freedom should be conducted, and you may well be right and i respect those ideas and those ideas are worth arguing about. They may not be the same ideas that i have, but dont just because you want to limit certain freedoms in the market, you may be wise and it may be the correct thing to do to limit those freedoms, but dont be smug about your desire to limit freedom. And everybody wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the taliban, the people who are in favor of minimumwage laws, everybody is smug about the desire to limit human freedoms. Some human freedoms really do need to be limited but it doesnt make you a good person for recognizing that. It may make you wise person or sensible person, assuming arguments are good, that youre not a good person. You deserve no smugness and you dont deserve to be, to venture anger on foolish, and is a humorous just because you have some desire to limit, so there. P. J. Orourke has appeared on booktv close to 20 times over the past 20 years. Up next to provide attribute to the american automobile while discussing his book driving like crazy if this event was held at the Petersen Automotive Museum in los angeles in june 2009. It is im afraid the last time to say how shall we put it, sayonara to the american car. American Automobile Companies ford, gm, chrysler will live long in some form, some marlies ghost tracking their chains at taxpayers expense. The fools in the corner offices of detroit in the officials at the tribune will retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. Petersburg respectively. And deserve our sympathy. They dont deserve our sympathy anymore than the malevolent troll of the capitol dome in washington do, but pity the poor american car when congress and the white house get through with it. A lightweight vehicle with a small Carbon Footprint using alternative energy and Renewable Resources to operate in a sustainable way, when i was a kid we called it a schwinn. [laughing] i guess its been a great 110 years, been a great run great run. It has been a great one, 110 years since the First American automobile in springfield, massachusetts, and if the motorbike and company ever been a success springfield, massachusetts, might be todays motor city full of abandoned houses, unemployed, drug dealing, Violent Crime and racial tensions, which as it so happens springfield, massachusetts, is full of anyway. But we owe the american car, we owe it a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of detroit various felon mayors. In fact, many people my age with all our very existence to the car or to the cars backseat where if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthday and find him like a little too close to comfort, that is probably where we were conceived. There was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Its true. You could mistake a girl into the rec room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad, they didnt have a car so they couldnt commute so they were stockholm all day working on the farm. Your farmhouse didnt have a record because recreation had not been discovered and due to all the farm work. On saturday night you could take a go out in a buggy but it was hard to get into the mood to let you bust into her corset because the two of you are facing the hind end of a horse and it just boils the atmosphere. So the car let us out of the barn, and while the car was added the car destroyed the American Nuclear family and anyone whos had an American Nuclear family can tell you that was released to all concerned. Cars cost america to be paved. There are much worse things you do to a country as a sudanese have been proven over in darfur. One of things i wanted is we never hear a thank you, never a word of thanks as car people forget all america paved and the kids in the body cast this keyboard all the time. Not a word of thanks. Cars provide an american with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and Retirement Benefits working on the general Livestock Corporation assemblyline putting utters on castor itches couldnt be done. On cows. It just could be done. The american car was a source of intellectual stimulation, like innovation. The invention, the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 model t ford into the 1968 shelby cobra gt500. In the course of one single human lifetime full of speeding tickets. Compare this to the progress in the previous mode of transportation, horse production, horse design, unchanged for thousands of years. When it comes to creativity with the horse i did a Little Research on this one is writing about the stuff i look to do. Nobody thought to put a stirrup, nobody thought to hang a stir from the saddle until about 500 a. D. , the stirrup was invented. People have been riding horses for thousands of years and it took them until 500 a. D. To invent this. Where were they putting their feet . It automobile design and engineering have proceeded at the same pace as horse design and engineering, we would be powering ourselves down the road by running with both of our feet stuck the hole in the floor like fred flintstone, although it may come to that with a 2010 obama mobile. But most important of all, most important of all was the cars fulfilled the ideal of americas founding fathers. Of all the truths that we hold to be self evident, of all of the unalienable rights with which we are endowed, which one is most important to the American Dream . It is right there front and center, flat in the name of the declaration of independence, freedom to leave, freedom to t out of town, freedom to get the hell out of here. King george, can i have the keys . Thats what the declaration of independence says. I got to tell you, the sock of the american car, this is not an abstract matter to me. Soccer. This is the subject of fanciful theories. Nancy pelosi, she may think she was transported home from the Maternity Ward on pink fluffy clouds supported by seraphim. Low carbon seraphim. But i know it was the car that got me to where i am. My grandfather, jacob orourke, he was born in 1877. He was born on a farm about the size of this podium here. In line city of ohio which is not the city and didnt even have any line. He was one of ten kids. Grandpa was one of ten kids. They grew up in a oneroom unpainted check. I have a photograph of them enlightenment age staring at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. My greatgrandfather, my greatgrandfather barney, he was a woodcutter in the midwest where there are no trees. Unemployed quite a lot. Also drunk. Also ill literate. Ive got a copy of his marriage certificate with his acts like it. Barneys hold a consummate aside from the ten prices that he won on a corn check stuffing of a poor mans roulette wheel, the only thing barney ever accomplished in his life was he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home dead drunk. He was fall out of the cabin, has hassett in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. Thats what he accomplished in his life. Grandpa jake, the leftover armed with a fifth grade education heading for the bright lights of toledo, ohio. And he went to work as a buggy mechanic, a buggy mechanic. And then one day a horseless buggy pulled up at the shop and grandpa saw that and he saw the future, you know . He fixed that, too. It didnt take grapple not realize that cleaner hands were to be had in more money was to be had made selling the thinks instead of repairing them. And also local, grandma and grandpa is wedding anniversary were a little too close for comfort. And so anyway, he got in the car business and by the time i came along in the 1940s, we had orourke buick and grandpa and Michael Cohen arch own the dealership and my father was a Sales Manager and dad younger brother joe ran the used car lot and baby brother jack was a salesman and the cousin randall Parks Department at all the ants and girl cousins worked in the office and all the boy cousins and me we all worked out on the car lot cleaning and waxing the cars. Arch soninlaw would go to run the ohio cargill association and i would go on to do whatever it is that i do in this book when i write about cars and stuff. I telecom even these dark days for american alleles i wished id stayed in toledo and taken over the agency. Really the others latenight tv local car dealership ads. I got this whole idea i wanted to do hybrid path Treasure Island buick. , with apparent on my shoulder in one of the big cats at the eyepatch. Im down to hybrid path Treasure Island vi