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 leftwinger but it didnt 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 its a story of a bunch of us. And it is a long story and i wont 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. Thats 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 indepth tory. The joke depends on political correctness. The people to make a joke about eggs then he will. And to say look, its 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. Im just a little guy im 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 middleaged 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 orourke. Guest host new jersey, go ahead. Caller im 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 its abominable mr. Orourke 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 freemarket question in just a second. Host in your dedication to give the wore a chance, heres what you write like many men of my generation i had an opportunity to get a promptly chickened out. In 1970 i had a doctors 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 dont belong in the army. He was right on the first count and possibly the second. I didnt 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 longhaired peace creep i hope that was you. Guest lets put it this way. A bad situation is a really rotten situation it isnt changed by whether you make fun of it or you dont 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 freemarket and minimumwage and people working in coal mines and working 49 hours a day, 90s the weekend so on and so forth its interesting you immediately get that response from lots of people. Its 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 didnt 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 doesnt 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 isnt prescriptive or tell us how to conduct the freemarket or give the same rules. It tells us there should be rules and we should all obey the rules but it doesnt 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 wont and its interesting its the one failed book when adam smith turns into a policy wont he becomes as foolish as the rest of us do when we become policy wonks. So to the angry caller id 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 dont 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 dont 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, everybodys smug about their desire to limit human freedoms. Some do need to be limited but it doesnt make you a good person for recognizing that. But you are not a good person. You deserve the smugness and dont deserve to vent your anger on foolish innocent humorous just because you have some desire to limit. Pj orourke 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 im 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 its been a great 110 years its been a great run since the First American automobile in Springfield Massachusetts. If it had been a success, Springfield Massachusetts would be todays city which i as it so happens, Springfield Massachusetts is full of anyway. We owe our very existence to the car to the cars 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 couldnt sneak a girl into the wreck room of your farmhouse because your mom and dad didnt have a car so they couldnt commute so they were home all day working on the farm. And your farmhouse didnt have a wreck room because recreation hadnt 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 ive 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 couldnt get a steady job with retirements working on the general livestock corp. Assembly line putting letters. It just couldnt 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 americas founding fathers. Of all the truths that we hold to be selfevident, 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. Thats what the declaration of independence says. Ive got to tell you, it just isnt 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 didnt even have any line. [laughter] he was one of ten kids. They grew up in a oneroom 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 mans 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 didnt 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 grandpas 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. Dont 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 couldnt 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 didnt 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. Im 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 couldnt get herself killed in it, it just wouldnt. The pundits were telling us theres plenty of blame to go around for the death of the american car and im not sure about that. Its true that the car executives are knuckleheads that all of them are. Look at bill gates. If you were worth a zillion dollars, wouldnt you go to a college and get a decent 5dollar haircut . Labor Union Leadership is maddening but its 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 isnt going to happen. They make 600 an hour or so im told. They get laid off every time a camel is not an ope that an ope. Maybe their pay is too high but its not like they are getting paid. I dont 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, theyve been looking at cars as they comfortable for a business. The fire the mbas and higher public. The fate of detroit isnt 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. Weve opened up archives to look at programs with pj orourke 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 allnight 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 obrien, david letterman, jay leno. They could do like nbc did, till conan and mary jay leno. Im laughing but then it struck me, thats politics. Thats 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 isnt always a foregone conclusion. In the case of the president ial 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 wont 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. Its great to the politica