From the state of virginia. Find a full Television Schedule online at booktv. Org or consult your program guide. Will come to our Cato Institute p. J. Orourke. We will take questions from the program and you can submit them at the Cato Institute website, facebook, twitter or youtube and use the cato evidence. We have many distinguished scholars at the Cato Institute constitutional studies, Foreign Policy, education and so on but perhaps our most distinguished scholar, at least if we can agree, it depends on what the meaning of distinguished is, our Research Fellow, p. J. Orourke. I would say ive sort of grown up with p. J. When i was in college college, National Lampoon which he edited and i remember quite a few funny bits from National Lampoon but i cant quote them because they all involve drug use, ethnic stereotypes are gender relations which are all forbidden now. He moved on to Rolling Stone where hes Foreign Affairs desk chief which is totally cool because they paid him to travel where he wanted. What he wanted to travel to beirut and televangelist retirement village was always kind of mystifying. As he moved out of the rock n roll stage and into the age of sober reflection, he became a correspondent for the sober wrist magazine in america, he wrote soberly americas about medicare, Social Security reform and other adult topics. On now, moving into the age of about retirement and college tuition, hes editing a magazine on finance and adjustment. Its online, free and called american consequences. Author of 20 books including holidays and hell, all the trouble in the world and eat the rich. One of the funniest writers around is more citations in the penguin dictionary of humors dictations at any other writer but what people often miss when they talk about the humor is what a good reporter and insightful analyst he is. Its a very funny book, also a perspective analysis of politics in a modern democracy and if you read the rich, he will learn more about how countries get rich and why they dont then in a whole year of economics at most colleges. Thats why i recommend those two books as a christmas gift. Give your friends and family and inexpensive College Course in Political Science and economics. Now hes taking his careful study of politics and economics and his need to pay College Tuitions and his existential despair to write his latest bo book, a cry from the far middle. Its a pleasure to welcome the Research Fellow of the Cato Institute, p. J. Orourke. P. J. , welcome back to the Cato Institute microphone. Lets start by asking, what is the far middle . I think its libertarians, radical moderates. We get out of our way, we own the middle of the road. We boys found ourselves, i think everyone feels himself to be a libertarian, caught between the poles of the angry left and the angry right, trying to be reasonable. Its not just the angry left or right, it is just the regular left or liberals and social conservatives. The boys come straight down the middle trying to use logic and we better get our message out right now because the country seems to have lost any sense of that. Way back in 1980, i traveled with the libertarians president ial candidate, clark and for a couple days, tom reed of the Washington Post traveled with us and said you guys are interesting but youre so extreme, you will never make it and i said you know whats extreme . Sending american boys to die in countries theyve never heard of him attacking half of a working mans wages, thats extremism. Exactly. The idea of extreme libertarian is nonsense. What people mean when they say that is actually the anarchists. None of us are in favor of anarchism. In favor of the individual or individual liberty, dignity and the individual responsibility. I spent 20 years as a war reporter will know exactly what anarchy looks like and i think over the summer, some people of the u. S. Got a little idea what anarchy like in portland, is not what we are about we are extremely reasonable to think things through, we try to apply logic to the heat and the swamp, the mess of politics from all sides. Politics is not a very logical thing and it badly needs logic applied. That is one of the problems, applying reason and logic may make you extreme in a world of left and right wings. At cato, we talked about a libertarian enter of civil rights civil liberties, lower taxes, staying out of peoples business and avoiding the extreme agendas of left and right but can libertarians and moderates or centers really cohabit . At the moment, it is tough. I think a lot of people have a gut feeling, called common sense, that what we are saying makes common sense. What our attitudes and positions and research and analysis does not make his headlines. We dont fall into if it bleeds, its the paradigm of the 24 hour modern new cycle. The other half is if it sleeves, it leads and we are just not sleazy and violent enough to attract the kind of attention we need to attract at the moment to get people away from the extremism of their views. One thing with libertarianism as we are willing to use logic and reason and listen to logic and reason to change our minds. We are faced with a group of people at the moment who are not to about to change their minds and some of them you whether or not they have a mind to change. There is a lot of talk about socialism past season, i saw a poll today that said 30 of americans have a positive image of socialism although only one third of them could actually describe accurately what socialism was. Another humors sky i like, fran, not to be confused phone of animal house, wrote years ago that as a high school student, she grew up anticommunist because thats what they taught her in high school. In college, she became leftist like answer american procommunist but then she said she discovered a little bit of maturity beyond college, from each, according to his ability, each according to his needs is a decision i care to lead to politicians why do not believe in ability to comment humorously on the passing scene carry much weight with ones comrades. No truer words were ever spoken. Thank you. I actually addressed that very problem in my book, which is basically i asked why are so many young people so leftwing . Besides the fact that they have forgotten the they are young. First, they are young. Theyve forgotten the real horrors of communist. My daughters, i did the math, the fall of the berlin wall is as long ago as the Great Depression is for me and Something Like china opening itself to the beginnings of free trade, free market principles, that is as far back in history as the peace pact of the 1920s is for me. They dont remember how bad, how truly bad socialism, when it gets all armed up and running, how bad they can be. They think its just either venezuela, which is a weird anomaly or communism comes with rum and coke and who by all singing an old chevys. The thing they really dont get is that marxist maxim from each according to his ability and his need, you cannot have a free society that runs under the principal but theres one little part of society that does operate from each according to his ability and each according to his need. That part is the part of society kids are most familiar with, it is called a family. Within a family, kids are growing up, theres mom and dad doing what they can to provide the kids with what they need so its tempting to carry this from each according to his ability, each according to his need, the actual childish attitude into young adulthood alas. Thats right. He talked about that is the atavism of social justice that we have this atavistic instinctive sense that in the small group, the family, the grant, moving place to place ten to 100,000 years ago, he did operate on every buddy works together to get the food and everybody works together to eat it as they need it and we do that in the family and it is hard maybe to make the extraction that it works in the family, it doesnt work in big society. Cant scale it up, it is a sleek feeling, understand why people feel this way and we, as libertarians dont want others to suffer for deep be deprived they are incapable of taking care of themselves, we not her list social darwinists at all but you cant take the family scaled up to a political to the size of a nation. The reason you cant is this thing called government is necessary once you get a certain number of people concentrated in one place. You need something called government. Government operates on the basis of force in the way for a family or small Group Collective hunter gatherer operates on persuasion, on love, close, personal ties. You cannot have close personal ties with 320 Million People so we create this thing called government was supposed to be limited to those problems that the individual or family or small group civil society, as we would call, minted to the government taking care of those problems like war which we cannot take care of as a family. Notice it has gone somewhat larger, over skillets balance that government is in place always with a gun. You get a traffic ticket and you dont pay the ticket, you will be fine. If you dont pay the fine, you are going to go to jail and if you try to escape jail, they will shoot you. Everything right down to the parking meter on the corner of your street when enforced by government, is enforced by force. I mentioned earlier i thought your two books are better than a College Course in political economy and i should say group you will you will read these books, they could just start with your chapter, big cap politics in your new book. [laughter] i think they could. Try to do my best to boil this down and parked ticket is one example. The other example is every time you ask the government to do something, however lovely it seems to be, youre asking them to do it while a gun is pointed to the head of the people who are going to pay so i think one should always ask oneself, should my mother, holding my mother at gunpoint, dont shooter, in order to accomplish what ive asked the government to accomplish so what i hold my mother at gunpoint to pay . Is something that can be privately done without danger to my mom, bless her heart, shes no longer with us. What i told my mom that gunpoint to save us from being overrun by nazis . I might. Thats an extremely bad thing. But not to pay in i95 or deliver a package by po box. You worry and hear a lot about polarization, we worry a lot at cato, about polarization. What happens to liberalism if everybody is divided between socialism on the left and nationalism and protectionism on the right you also suggest in the book that Political Polarization is a sign of something good. Yes. In one respect. You have a nation so intimately polarized as we do, screaming and yelling at each other, it does indicate, at least in the u. S. , it indicates we are not under exterior threats. We are not under sufficient exterior threats to bring this all together. America is not a naturally homogenous country. We arent joined by ties of ethnicity, barely even by ties of language. The territory is a nation that wasnt ours in the first place. Weve got this mentality that means theres a territory out there, we could go to mars. Together, it is in some ways, artificial. Liberty and rules of law and we tend to unite around that rule of law when under real exterior threats. When pearl harbor was bombed, when 9 11 happened we come together its a luxury for us in the u. S. , this kind of luxury to have quarrels in the open screaming and yelling in the street and nonsense on the internet and strange statements from the democrats in congress, it shows us we are in pretty good shape in a way. You may think the current epidemic would bring us together but apparently a domestic sickness is not the same as a foreign threat in terms of causing unity among americans. You finished this book before the pandemic but i noticed you wrote an article recently where you talked about the pandemic and you did say you wondered if one day there would be a great novel coming out of this called on the couch. [laughter] yes cant leave his mothers house, jack was living in between times running up and down the u. S. And on the road, it is certainly a strange phenomenon. One thing that worries me is you might think after a period, not only with the pandemic but with all the george floyd protest, the chaos has come from the, including writing and ugly counter protesting, you might think we have learned from this, walking a more sensible, limited idea of what the government is and what it does and what it should be. On the other hand, spending seven months locked in the house with all our grievances pestering and grudges growing, getting angry and frustrated, this might lead us to emerge from all of this angry than ever because sometimes thats how human nature works and in the book, im betting on human nature and unfortunately, i dont mean that in a good way. [laughter] i should say we will take questions from all of you, but you can submit by our webpage, facebook, twitter, youtube and use astec cato offense. Right now, as a personal privilege, i have to know is a graduate of vanderbilt university, i take exception to your suggestion, vanderbilt yachts, a roughandtumble guy who made his own money. He didnt have time for workplaces. His children and grandchildren went. My god, my apologies. [laughter] i was talking about, i wrote a piece in here about one way we could cut down on the nb material, envy you feel toward the superrich in the u. S. Is to make the rich uncomfortable, get them out of the tshirts and little bunny slippers and make sure they are back in. Part of that, we generally envy the rich client much because it didnt look that much fun, you had to wear starchy clothes and extreme sports like yacht racing and breaking your neck, hitting things with a stick in the middle of the nowhere called golf. Even then you havent dressed up in funny clothes. Youd be secret out of the yacht club. Because of, vanderbilt being called, the, mistakenly stuck on the yacht race. He had a small boat and a lot of small boats and they got bigger. I look that up, i learned something from reading your book because it encouraged me to go read something else. [laughter] when he was older, he did build him an incredible yacht and took his whole family on a trip to europe that got written up in the newspapers and everything so yes, there was a lot of celebration of the wealthy back then but you are right, it was not all that pleasant. Whereas these days, they can dress like everybody else, go where he wants to, those things, attractive. I could see and being that more than the plus for world. Im sorry. I just wanted to finish a thought. Zuckerberg wearing his underwear in public you could wear your underwear in public but honestly, he gives us the impression that his mom is still selling nametags in the back of his tshirts and shorts when he goes off to summer camp. If hes going to based on the regulatory pressure on him in congress, hes a necktie im sorry for cutting you off in the middle of a question. One zuckerberg did have to go to congress, he did actually wear a suit and tie but that was the only time ive seen that. What i was going to ask wes, you wrote an inaugural in the book, are you hoping they will give the address . No. [laughter] i wrote the inaugural address in which the president says basically the office of the president isnt even mentioned until about age eight or nine of the constitution. Actually, the Vice President president of the senate, should be for the presidency in the constitution. He said i am commanderinchief, although it is congress has the power to make war or peace, not be, and the commanderinchief and otherwise, my duty is to make sure the laws passed by congress are enforced, not given any particular mechanism to enforce them other than being president of the u. S. So really, dont credit me with all the good things that happened in the u. S. And dont blame me for the all the bad things that will happen in the u. S. Im just here, just sort of like the national and keeping the halls here, making sure the lockers are closed little think youre going to hear that. Weve elevated the presidency ridiculous executive office that will not hear from anybody soon on that. Thats probably right. The cult of the presidency, there is that cold and the idea that it was envisioned in the constitution for congress to make the laws and the president would carry them out. Now we wait for the president to give us a budget. Congress should be writing a budget and the president signs it unless its unconstitutional in which case he should veto it. Right. Simple enough its a beautiful little constitution, you can if you can read small type, you can get it on six or eight index cards as opposed to the eu constitution, which members of the eu couldnt stand and voted down. Its like 400 page long gets into how much protein or fat are allowable and pork sausage. Its probably why they are having a problem right now. A question from kevin moore who says we were talking a lot about polarization, divided la land, what parallels or differences do you see between now and the late 60s and 70 70s, which were also tumultuous and angry. It is tempting from to compare the two and the distance and time is sufficient that it allows for comparisons but i think the fundamental differences here are very, very different. The divisiveness and violence in the 1960s had to do with very fundamental issues. There was a national graft where we were dragging people out of homes and schools and sending them off to a place where they never been or heard of tissue people they had never seen the vietnam war was an example of government getting completely out of hand and joined 50000 american kids. That was one element in the 60s. Another element in the divisiveness of the 60s was laws about Racial Discrimination were not yet really settled case and it wasnt until the Civil Rights Act being passed and had become to be enforced so there was tremendous legal eyes to do justice in the u. S. , mostly at a state level. Mostly south but not exclusively in the south. People were angry, people died, people sacrifice their lives to buy this. That was a big big question that resulted in a certain number of violence, it is no