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 not a surprising factor. When you add a change going on between the older generation, the greatest generation and Younger Generation, the baby boom, we dont have anything comparable to that right now. In the end, there are huge changes in attitudes about sexuality of all kinds, drug use, what about more fundamental things arguments over the dinner table want about sex, drugs and rock n roll. What were about racial relatio relations, a lot of them were about the war and a lot of them were about libertarian attitudes of the Younger Generation toward government versus conservative authoritarian attitude that had grown up partly as a result of the depression and world war ii among the older generation. So the issues that divide us in the 1960s an early 1970s were issues of rater imports and the issues dividing us now. Do you think current brands of left and right populism five more people like him to a more classical Libertarian Center for both of these . From your mouth to hear, let us hope so. Societies do not sustain themselves well in chaos. Societies are self organizing and they tend to organize their way out of the chaotic experiences such as experiences we are having right now so it is my greatest wish and hope and prayer that people will react to extremism on the left and the right with the idea wouldnt even want oldfashioned liberalism or conservatism to go away, i just want people to be able to argue with each other in rational terms about this. The heart of the liberals is quite nice and sweet, wants to be good for everybody and the brain of the conservatives can be quite sharp. What about unintended consequences . I want to go back to that sensible argument. Its my hope that will drive a lot of people into our fold. I hope so. Another question from the internet. The speaker says government always relies on force but theres an important difference between illegitimate and legitimate force based on intent. In a democracy, i agreed to be fined by the police for running a red light what are the implications for for libertarians . Right. The government has, and ought to have, a legal monopoly on deadly force. We dont want everything settled by jewels or gunfights so we deliberately created a construct with the legal monopoly on deadly force but what can happen under those substances is having given this authority in a sense, to a third party, that third party can get out of hand the kind of writing and vandalism destruction thats gone on in recent months, on the other hand, we, at the Cato Institute have been protesting for years about militarization and Attorney Police into an Occupying Force within a certain neighborhoods instead of being gordons public order that they should be so i dont have a lot of sympathy with the riots, i do have a certain sympathy for what sets them off. Carl asked, is there any possibility of covering the use of executive orders by this and future president s . I guess we cant compare them to past president s. That would require a time machine we all wish we had. I keep thinking we will be able to order that on amazon but no dice you would think the lesson of the vietnam war would be to return the warmaking powers to congress, to keep president s from military intrusions on their own for they sometimes go to congress or some kind of permission and sometimes tote, according to the mood, as far as i can tell but we seem to learn that lesson from vietnam war and im not too optimistic about learning the lesson of executive orders which have been abused by not only this president but the last president , president before last and the president before that, going back down to the time of lbj and even Woodrow Wilson. We dont seem to be able to learn that. Congress is so busy getting reelected, doesnt seem to remember its supposed to be the loss, creates the law of the land. And has the power to declare war. Yes. Having all the powers the presidency has taken. It goes back to one of our very best president s, probably lincoln who started this trend toward more powerful presidency. I think it came into force as an attitude under Teddy Roosevelt and a practice under Woodrow Wilson but this is something with a long history. We have three branches of government and one of them has been the most of the other and theres a tendency in both executive legislative branch to throw things into the Supreme Court so we have this tripod that our government stands on and one or maybe two, maybe all three are getting shaky. Deborah says she heard you speak at the university of wisconsin many years ago she recalls you said you want a libertarian. Have you changed . I feel what she recalls, a member of the Libertarian Party to which my answer would be, and still is, no i fall and probably the more conservative side of libertarian, there are sometimes but of course, the duty and branch of libertarianism to constantly disagree with each other so thats interesting you bring that up. He dont think so . [laughter] you are the speaking with ironing. I think the question was about Libertarian Party. The reason i said no, i dont consider the u. S. Usually, at least, to be a country that has what europeans would recognize as literal parties. You cant get thrown out of our party if you donate so much as a nickel to either side that you have joined the party. There is no card to carry around, to fake tendencies, sometimes has a lot of overlap, it is one tendency to think government should solve our problems and another tendency that things government is our problem. You can have those two ideas in your mind if anybody has had to sit down and sit fill out government forms simultaneously think that. Im not a Libertarian Party member because i dont consider america to be a Political Party system. Also because im involved for all these years with the Cato Institute in our job is to be nonpartisan, to analyze things and hope the analysis makes a big difference in the way legislatures and bureaucrats and executive about things. Sometimes it does. Not as often as i would like but i consider in a way, libertarian to me is not just a political position, it is a form of analysis. Fundamentally immoral analysis, its about the individuals, individual liberty, dignity and responsibility. It is a way of looking at every question and issue largely through that lens of individual liberty and dignity and responsibility. I see some interesting questions about history coming up here. Steve from kansas city wants to know, and past cultural wars was the degree of intolerance to opposing points of view that we see today. The answer is yes, you better. This is nothing new and violence, which this culture war is being conducted, is by historical standards, rather moderate look to the french revolution if you want to see a real culture war. Well have the troubles rolling to the street, at least not yet. Yes, they do say america has never been subdivided, i say well, your safety is 61. Pretty divided me. Say what you will about not taking any income. Thats right maybe it was the 1960s, definitely the 1860s and i think it was gordon would i heard not long ago say let me tell you about the 1790s, the battles between federalist and jeffersonians, which probably was over American Attitudes towards the french lives resolution so we have gone through this before. The distinguished professor official challenges you, is the United States not more libertarian than it was 50 years ago . He says we are not at war, people can marry whoever they want, taxes on much higher as a of income they were 50 years ago so that sounds like progress. How did we get here . Id like to think we help here at the Cato Institute. I agree, america is libertarian more than 50 years ago along 60 or 70 years ago. I am old enough to remember. That shows me there is a great dear of libertarianism and the american heart. I think its hard for people to identify as libertarians partly because i pointed out its a way of analyzing things more than it is a political identity but yes, there is a strong libertarian streak in the u. S. And we do act upon it, maybe two steps forward, one step back it may have pauses and may not the press it deserves because a lot of it is quite good and that doesnt make good news. Here is a sort of related question from a young man who once worked for the Cato Institute and left and was never heard from again. I believe it was little annie who said the libertarian moment is always a day away. Was she right or is it more like simon, its Getting Better all the time . Its a little bit of both. Im glad you are watching, max has had quite a distinguished career worked for cato, he worked for me as a matter of fact and he is a brilliant guy. He is now a serious Silicon Valley executive. We wont burden him a more direct description of his job but anyway, it was a day away. Its a happy ending and we need it like annie did. You said the gulf war was a rare Foreign Policy success but here we are 30 years later still at war in the gulf. Well, to very distantly different kinds of work. In the case of the kuwait war, you had a dictatorship, a huge dictatorship that went in stepped on a little country, it may not have been a shining example of democracy and liberty but nonetheless, was not doing harm to the rest of the world and that is just not a lesson we want the rest of the world to learn, to do that kind of thing where there goes all in, denmark and belgium its this same thing that set up world war ii. The violation of ocean so we went in with a great deal of force and exercised that force with considerable wisdom and stopped when we were done. Limited operation. I was there for the whole thing so i speak with a little bit of authority here. In terms of the boss area and the part closest to the golf, they were hoping to get rid of Saddam Hussein and we did nothing to support them so one might honestly say we stopped to soon. Kuwait was restored to sovereignty, i was back there not too long afterwards and they rebuilt the place. Thats a very different matter from the quagmires we involved ourselves in since so its a distinguished cash im not somebody who believes force should never be used in international relations, there are times when nothing else will do. Here is an interesting question from carlos in chile. He says its common to hear as an argument, this outrage would never happen in the usa and im not sure whether he hears you and chile, sometimes we say that in the u. S. , he says here this would never happen in the usa until you scratch the surface and discover that government going on in the u. S. Why you think the image overseas is so much better than reality . It is comparative to a certain extent. Just looking at ourselves, looking in the mirror, we see all our faults is as i see my 72yearold self. One reason i dont shave anymo anymore, to keep from having to look in the rear but when you go around the world and discover the false the rest of the world has, is a great comparative experience. I dont know of chile and cant speak to the situation the but my experience in most of the world has been corruption is far more obvious and evident and pervasive in all levels of government and here in the u. S. , not that we dont have our problems, the ethnic and racial hatred we so deplore here in the u. S. , and rightly so, is much worse in many parts of the wor world. I covered the bosnian war, nobody on the face of the earth, other than a servant of bosnia who couldnt tell them apart, i think when i witnessed my first battle, it was the unsellable shooting the unpronounceables. So many, rule of loss that are protection of Free Expression is then even places like the wind or europe. Our Economic Opportunities we wouldnt have, who wouldnt be thinking about immigration this were an attractive place from an economic pointmac of view. Comparatively speaking, we are doing really well. To get back to complaining about our own country, congress, bob wants to know, do you think term limits would move congress into thinking more about Public Interest and less about their own . Thats interesting because that is an argument i had for many years, i went back and forth. Ed was always very much in favor of turn limits. I thought the likelihood especially with the house of representatives the likelihood was instead of there being one long time, rather corrupt and ineffective, forever older about each, perpetual congress person, the seat would belong to a certain Interest Group so you always have a seat that always changed every two years, he would have it from michigan, that certain pharmacy from somewhere in the corn belt, the social conservative see from somewhere down south. You would just be changing you want a dog who knows where all the bones are varied or do you want a dog who will dig up the holy ark . Then one day over cocktails, some things were said, he said to me page eight, after 25 years or so of arguing with you about term limits, let me say just one more thing. Everybody in washington is opposed. I said ed, you just won your argument. Yes, i think that is a good. If all of the special interests and politicians are against it, there must be something they think it was due to the power is the u. S. In the middle of a new great awakening with woke culture being the new religious ways . Rush, lets hope not. It seems to be the idea used to be perpetually aware of injustice. Not be able to or eat or drink because theres so much injustice. All it is put together in one great big injustice blob and youve got to spend your time being aware of it being aware of it seems to consist of mainly talking other peoples ear off about it and following other people who are not sufficiently aware or not aware of all in this doesnt seem to me something that will last very long. It is extremely boring and you will end up practitioners and its proponents i think we will get over this, past experience with greater awakenings in the u. S. , which has mostly been religious but not always. There was a populist great awakening at the end of the 19th century. Past history is they have their 15 minutes and then we move on. Heres a question that relates to you professionally but also the state of the country. It seems to me in your book you implied all the people who read books are rich or baby boomers or something. Are you worried about the decline in literacy or seriousness in the United States . Absolutely. Reading is hard even if what you are reading is something probably in flight, reading is still hard work. You have to translate the words from the page in your mind, create mental images to go with the words, just watching on television or your computer a much easier experience and im worried we are losing the discipline required even for Light Reading and that means our view of things will be increasingly superficial, sensationalist and short, very brief attention fans. One thing about reading even if its junk, the worst sort of murder mysteries or geopolitical thrillers, not even lower in months but family written once, requires a concentration and that concentration span is very useful in every other endeavor in life and thats why i told my kids, get off that screen and open a book, any book. I dont care what you are reading but just read because you may gain information from the book, the Attention Span you will find worthwhile everywhere else in life. I do wonder, do you think your teenagers, because of the texting, actually have written more words as teenagers than you ever did . Yes but they were short words and they were misspelled. [laughter] true but they knew what they meant. I suppose youre right but, texting has brought writing back in but when was the last time someone wrote you a letter and seal it up in an envelope. That is pretty rare. Its been a while. Heres a question i dont think economists can answer so well post it to you. They may know what they are talking about so i can answer. Has the pandemic wiped out, do you think it will come backwards is a back . What we know historically about the disease epidemics is economically, we tend to recover pretty quickly which is one reason until this thing came along, we had sort of forgotten about the spanish flu epidemic even though it took an enormous amount of suffering, because we tend to recover rather quickly, this one may a little more difficult because we are still recovering from the disease itself, forgetting all the suffering that went into it and not remember the dead people. In this case, we are essentially in the middle of an epidemic while trying to limit and prevent the epidemic from reaching full force and doing the amount of damage in an epidemic like this in every period of the past weve done much more damage than this one. This mechanism of prevention are themselves very destructive for paying a price like this and with very bad leadership in washington and confusing science and changing science, it is very hard to tell when we are doing the right thing so it may be a slower come back but the black plague, unless you died from it, which about half the people did, so it wasnt so good for them, probably put an end to the system, it calls the labor shortage in europe that resulted in the rise of the middle class smoke proprietorship by completely oppressed ones so the benefits of the black plague, economically speaking, were probably positive but economics is one of those things like more recount the victories but we dont really count the deaths. All right, i think we are about out of time so i wanted to ask you your new book is a cry from the far middle. Is there a take away you want people to get after reading that book . Go back to just being mad at each other. Its like anybody doing a marriage or partnership over longterm, knows that you dont, or a family, you dont maintain that close relationship without having arguments. We have sealed to have reached that point in american needs marriage counseling. Keep the argument on the subject, and argue let us argue but all means as much as we want and as hard as we want and even yelling and shout is fine but let us confine the argument to the subject at hand and quit hating on each other. All right, great. The book is a cry from the far middle available everywhere backs can be found. I want to thank everybody for joining us. We had a lot of questions and aapologize we werent able to get to all of them. The video recording of this event will be available on catos web page. Go back and patch it again, post it on facebook, tell your friends, and we look forward to seeing you at our next event. Thank you, pj, thanks, everybody. Next, mychal smith offers thoughts on the american dream. And then rebecca listener and mira rapphooper talk bull the Global Leadership of the United States and then carter page will talk but how he was investigated by the fbi and justice department. You can find morings in on your program guide. Now heres mychal smith on the american dream. Everyone, this is jeff mark with magic city books, thrilled to have you become here for our author sear which we have been doing since april, two to three times a week which has been a great way to stay connected to you, our customers and readers and meet new people that may have never been to tulsa or poock stores so thank you for watching, and really thrilled with engagement level we have had. Well be doing a lot of fun stuff, and pretty compelling conversations into the fall