President to learn more about president and order your copy today wherever books and ebooksare sold. Now on book tv like to highlight them programs from our archives political satirist p. J. Orourke. Over the past 20 years hes appeared on tv posted 20 times. First up in 2007 when our monthly call in program in that. He discussed his politics, writing and why uses humor to address political andsocial issues. This picture on the left, is that a real picture mark. Oh yeah. Not only area that was i would guess 71. Not quite positive. Floor your politics in 1971. I think a martian left. That would be the easiest way to sum it up. I was a leftwinger but i didnt make enough sense to actually be a communist or a trotskyite or anything like that. And the transformation of her it was gradual. The place and back i do about this. There is a book coming out from the huber institution. I was a radical leftist, very much in favor of some sort of marxist socialist thing in america. I got a job. I got a job pain 150 a week and i was a messenger in new york, 150 a week was a lot of money as far as i was concerned. I was living in the Lower East Side and very broke. We got paid every two weeks. I was really looking forward to that 300. So was my landlord, i may say. And my drug dealer. [laughter] in a number of other people. I got my first paycheck and i netted out at 178. It was supposed to be 300. After federal tax and estate tax, city tax, social security, healthcare, Retirement Fund which i cared a lot about in those days and i said wait, wait i have been advocating socialism and marxism, communism for years screaming and yelling and demonstrating in the street and we already have it. They just took half my pay. Whats going on here . Im not rockefeller and they took half my pay. We have socialism but thats when i started to snap out of it. It took a while. Someone else who made a switch and their politics was Christopher Hitchens. Yet, much more recently. Yet, but back in 1993 heres what he had to say about you. P. J. Orourke who gets away in my opinion is with murder. Hes another exit leftist, 60s radical who wrote finally about what it was like to be permanently stoned and dumbed out and paranoid. Then [inaudible] he has been cashing in this trip ever since and has terrific following as a humorist for his books of essays. The first one is quite funny, called the Republican Party reptile. The next one was called for is called holidays in hell and most recently, give war a chance. These did well among the young, much better than my books have done. It gets me down. So does my revenge upon him. Have you met him . Sure. I reckon that he was running empty on this joke and i know ive been there been a radical and now i see how wonderful it would be to be completely buttoned up, buttondown tory. The joke basically depends on a set tile and political correctness. Okay, so people try not to make jokes about aids but p. J. Will make a joke about aids. So its not good to laugh about couples but then he will and i said look, and the words of the title, its quite funny but not quite funny enough. Christopher, christopher, getting away with murder. I might get away with slander. But verbal assault but i dont think ive even gotten away witd slightly cowardly and im never got away with physical assault. I think he overstates the case. 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 and like most middleaged white guy, even if we sometimes call ourselves Something Else like a democrat. You do not know you come over and get attacked did you . [laughter] holidays and hell is another p. J. Orourke book. All the trouble in the world, modern manners and adequate book for rude people. First book. When was this put out . The original addition of that was 1983. Beat the rich, what was this about . That was what got me out on rounded up on adam smith which was i was simply puzzled and did not understand why some countries are rich in other countries are poor. And so i started poking around and going to rich countries and poor countries trying to see if i could figure out why this country was rich in other countries poor. It was from that experience that toby monday, editor of Grove Atlantic in england who came up with this idea of a series of books, books that change the world, of which my book on adam smith is one and Christopher Hitchens has one on thomas paine, the rights of man. And very good it is. It was because of some adam smith and poking around in adam smith that toby asked me to write on adam smith and. You are on with p. J. Orourke, go ahead. Hello, come in nesbitt. Okay, new jersey, go ahead. Caller i am not sure why mr. Orourke should be taken seriously and given time on your show when a man who, i suspect, never wore the uniform and i suspect from hearing about his politics from the vietnam era would have done his darndest to avoid wearing a uniform and is so utterly flippant about war and we have a war now that we should not have had and i happen to have been a republican for 50 years, voting for three times for nixon and twice for Ronald Reagan but tens of hundreds of thousands of iraqis have been killed and no useful purpose is served by this war and i think its abominable that this mr. Orourke can make fun of war and can find nothing amusing about it but the question i wanted to ask is he talks about the imperative of free markets and those mr. Orourke have any conception about why we have things like minimum wage laws and maximum hour laws and osha laws and he does remember the conditions that existed in america before we had those laws and the way laborers were obliged to work 12 hour days, six day weeks and is that what mr. Orourke thanks his freedom . Host thank you. Mr. Orourke will get to the free market question that he had a just a second but that was one odd republican. It was on the democratic line. Guest im glad he came in on the democratic line. We want in your dedication to give war a chance heres what you write, like many men of my generation i had an opportunity to give war a chance and i promptly chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctors letter about my history of drug abuse. The letter was four and a half pages along with three and half pages devoted to listing the drugs i had abused. I was shunted into the office of an Army Psychiatrist at the end of a 45 minute interview pounding his desk and shouting you are asked up and you dont belong in the army. He was right on the first count and possibly write on the second. I do not have to go but that of course meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fella and i hope you were more use to your platoon mates the night would have been. I hope you are rich and happy now in a 1971 when someone punched me in the face for being a longhaired piece tree i hope that was you. Guest i got a couple nice letters from that dedication from people who thought they had punched me in the face. [laughter] they said they appreciated it. To begin with what the fellow on the phone said, ive never asked anyone 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 and like death itself isnt changed by whether you make fun of it or you dont. We make fun of things, not because we approve of them or love them and not because they are cuddly and cute. We make fun of things owner to cope with our own terror in own unease and own existential horror or anger at god or our disappointment with ourselves et cetera and so forth. Humor is a defense mechanism and you can drink and make a joke and you can take drugs and you can make yourself all pompous and pious or you can do all those things at once. So, what i make fun of war, dont make fun of or, unfortunately will not make war better and nor will it make it worse. As to free markets and minimum wage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours. [audio difficulties] his whole a very different book people read which is a theory of moral sentiments which is about morality is all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. That is the core of morality and it is the core of a free society and it is the core of democracy, even though adam smith, in some ways did not know that. He lived in a pre democratic era and did not quite understand democracy could work but he did understand freedom could work. He was a moral and practical and just a plain sort of sympathetic advocate of freedom. At the root of freedom is persuasion. The idea that you want free markets does not mean that you want markets ruled by force and it does not mean you want markets ruled by anarchy and it implies a rule of law and implies that we are all equal before that law and it is not prescriptive and does not tell is exactly does not give us exact rules and it does not tell us that should be rules and we should obey the rules but it does not say quite exactly with those rules are and in book five of the wealth of nations, adam smith tries to lay down some rules and tries to take his theories and make them prescriptive, actually give us political policy. He becomes a policy wants. Its interesting and its the one failed book in the there are five books in the wealth of nations. When adam smith turns into a policy wonk he becomes as foolish as the rest of us do when we become policy wonks and it becomes you know, like theyve had in this white house and the last in this congress so to the very angry caller, i would like to say for a second i have no idea why three hours should be wasted on me and i will not claim that there is a good reason but they asked me. But you know because you have certain ideas about how freedom should be conducted and you may well be right and i respect those ideas and those ideas are worth arguing about and they may not be the same ideas but dont just because you want to limit certain freedoms in the market may be wise and may be the correct to do to limit those freedoms but dont be smug about your desires to limit freedom. Everybody who wants to limit freedom from those who desire that there be human slavery to the caliban, to the people in favor of minimum wage laws and everybody is smug about their desire to limit human freedoms. Some human freedoms really do need to be limited but it doesnt make you a good person for recognizing that and inmate make you wise or sensible assuming your arguments are good. But you are not a good person and you deserve smugness and dont deserve to be to venture anger on foolish innocent humerus just because you have some desire to limit so there. [laughter] p. J. Orourke has appeared on book to be close to 20 times over the past 20 years. Up next, he provides a tribute to the american automobile while discussing his book, driving like crazy. This event was held as the Peterson Automotive Museum in los angeles in june of 2009. Guest it is, im afraid, the last time to say, how shall we put it, sayonara to the american carpet american automobile companies, ford, gm they will live on in some forum and a marleys ghost dragging their chains at taxpayers expense. The fools in the corner offices of detroit and the officials of the detroit unions they will retire to their vacation homes in palm beach and st. Petersburg respectively and they do not deserve our somebody. No more than the malevolent trolls under the capitol dome in washington but pity the poll american car when congress and the white house get through with it. A lightweight vehicle with a small Carbon Footprint using alternative energy and Renewable Resources to operate in a Sustainable Way when i was a kid we called it a schwinn. [laughter] its been a great hundred ten years and been a great run and has been a great run, 110 years since the [inaudible] brothers but the First American automobile in Springfield Massachusetts and the motor ragging comedy if it had been a success Springfield Massachusetts might be todays motor city full of banded houses with on a playmate, drug dealing, Violent Crime and racial tensions which has it so happens being filled massachusetts is full of anyway. But, we owe a lot more then the entertainment spectacle of detroits various fellow and mayors and in fact, many people my age we owe our very existence to the car or to the cars backseat. [laughter] where if you check our parents wedding anniversary with our birthdate and find them too close to comfort that is probably where we were conceived. There was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion entrance. Its true. You cannot sneak a girl into the rec room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad did not have a car so they could not commute so they were in stockholm all day working on the farm. Your farmhouse did not have a rec room because recreation had not been discovered due to all the farm work. Odd saturday night, take a girl out to the buggy but it was hard to get her into the mood to let you bust into her corset because you are facing the high end of a horse and it spoils the atmosphere. Car lead us out of the barn and while the car was added the car destroyed the American Nuclear family and anyone who had an American Nuclear family can tell you that that was a relief to all concerned. Cars cost america to be paved. There are much worse things you can do with the country and to pave it as has been proven over and one thing i wondered is we never hear a thank you or a word of thanks, also car people, forgetting america paved from those kids in the body casts whose skateboard all the time but not a word of thanks. You know, cars provided america with an enviable standard of living for you cannot get a steady job with high wages and health and Retirement Benefits working on the general Livestock CorporationAssembly Line putting others on cars. It could not be done. I think that the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation, intellectual stimulation. If you think of innovation the invention the sheer genius that transformed the 1908 model ct ford into the 1968 shelby cobra gt500 and in the course of one single human lifetime full of speeding tickets. Compare this progress in the previous mode of transportation. Horse production, horse design, unchanged for thousands of years. When it comes to creativity with the horse i did research on this when i was writing about this and i looked it up. Nobody thought to put a stirrup or thought to hang a stirrup from the saddle until about 500 a. D. , the stirrup was invented in people have been riding horses for thousands of years and took them until 500 a. D. To invent this and where were they putting their feet to . If automobile design and engineering had proceeded at the same pace as horse design and engineering we would be powering ourselves down the road by running with both our feet stuck to the hole in the floor like Fred Flintstone although it may come to that with the 2010 obama mobile. But most important of all most important of all was that the cars fulfilled the ideal of americas founding fathers. Of all the truths we hold to be selfevident and of all the unalienable rights with which we are in down, which one is most important to the American Dream . It is right there, front and center, flat in the name of the declaration of independence. Freedom to leave. Freedom to get out of town paid freedom to get the hell out of here. King george, can i have the keys . That is what the declaration of independence says. Ive got to tell you the saga of the american car this is not an abstract matter to me. This is no subject of fanciful theories. Nancy pelosi may think she was transported home from the maturity ward on pink fluffy clouds supported by seraphim but low carbon cerebellum. [laughter] but i know it was the car they got me to where i am. My grandfather Jacob Orourke was born in 1877, born on a farm above the size of this podium here in lime city, ohio which was not a city. Do not even have lime. He was one of ten kids, grandpa was one of ten kids but grew up in a oneroom unpainted shack that i have a photograph of them lined up by age, steering at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes and i mean, my greatgrandfather, my great grandfather barney was a woodcutter in the midwest where there are no trees. Unemployed, quite a lot, also drunk, also illiterates. Ive got a copy of barneys marriage certificate with barneys x right there and barney is only a competent aside from the ten prizes he won on the corn shuck stuffing of the poor mans roulette wheel, the only thing barney accomplished is he trained a pair of old nags to haul him home dead drunk. He would fall out of the tavern im a passout in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. That was what he accomplished. Grandpa jake he left home armed with the fifth grade education, heading for the bright lights of toledo, ohio. He went to work as a buggy mechanic. Buggy mechanic. Then one day horses buggy pulled up at the shop and grandpa saw that and he saw the future and he fixed that too. It did not take grandpa long to realize that cleaner hands were to be had and more money was to be made selling the things since instead of repairing them and also my uncle arches birthdate and grandma and grandpa wedding anniversary was a little too close for comfort and so anyway he got in the car business and by the time that i came along in the 1940s we had orourke buick. Grandpa and my uncle arches owned a dealership and my father was a Sales Manager and dads younger brother ran a used car lot and baby brother jack was a salesman and the ants and the girl cousins worked in the office and the boy cousins walked worked on the car light and our soninlaw would go to run the ohio Car Dealer Association and i would go on to do whatever it is i do in this book and i tell you even in these dark days for the american automobile i wish i had stayed and taken over that buick agency. To be on those latenight tv local car dealership adds. [laughter] i got this whole idea that i wanted to pirate paths Treasure Island buick and come out with th