This picture on the left is that real . Oh yes. [laughter] not a wig. I would guess 71. I think a martian left i did not make enough sense to be communist or prosecutor. Went to the transformation occur . It was gradual. There is a book coming out from the hoover institution. Who is backing this and why i turned right. Its a story of a bunch of us. I was a radical leftist i got a job. 150 a week i was a messenger per week that was a lot of money as far as i was concerned living on the Lower East Side and i was pretty broke. We get paid every two weeks. I was looking forward to 300. So is my landlord. And my drug dealer. [laughter] and other people. I got my first paycheck like is supposed to be 700 that after federal tax and estate tax and Social Security i have been advocating socialism. Communism, marxism for years screaming and yelling and demonstrating and we already have it. They just a calf my pay. Whats going on . Also politics is christopher hitchens. Much more recently. Back in 1993 here is what he had to say about you. He is another ask leftist, sixties radical dropout remembers funny what he was like to be permanently paranoid and bummed out in the sixties. And then like public enemy to cash in the chip. And with the books and essays. Its called the reptile and the next is called holidays in hell. Much better than mine ever have civic i met him sure. So i know i have been a radical and how wonderful it would be to music on but not band buttondown and on the satire of Political Correctness but its not funny to laugh at couples but its funny but not funny enough. Christopher. Getting away with murder. I may get away with slande slander, civil assault. Ive never even got away with physical assault. I think he overstates the case. And also i am long past the point where i claim to be a young republican. I am an old republican. Like most middleage white guys. You didnt know you would come here this afternoon to get attacked. [laughter] holidays in hell is another book all the trouble in the world and etiquette book for rude people. The original edition was 1983. Now eat the rich is what got me started that i was simply puzzled i did not understand why some countries are rich and others are poor. So i started to poke around going to rich countries and poor countries to figure out why this country was rich others were poor and from that experience that the editor of Grove Atlantic in england came up with a series of books to change the world of which and its because they are poking around. Mississippi you are on with pj or work. Go ahead. New jersey go ahead. Caller im not sure why he deserves to be taken seriously or this time on your show when a man i suspect never wore a uniform and would have done his darndest a have a were now and i happen to have been the republican for 50 years voting for nixon and ronald reagan. Thousands of americans have been killed tens of not hundreds of thousands have been killed no useful purpose served by the war and i think it is abominable that mr. Orourke would make fun of it you find something amusing. To talk about the entirety of free markets if he has any conception of minimum wage laws does he remember that condition before and they could work 12 hour days . Is that what he thinks is freedom . We will get to the free market question in just a second. He was on the democratic line. Like many men of my generation i have an opportunity to give for a chance to probably check it out i went to my draft physical 1970 with a doctors letter of drug abuse it was for a half pages long with three. Five pages i was shunted into the office of the Army Psychiatrist to say you are fw dont belong in the army but that meant someone else had to go in my place i would like to take the and dedicate this book to him i hope you got back in one piece and you are more used to your platoon mates and i would have been i hope you are rich and happy now in 1971 when somebody punch me in the face for being a longhaired piece creep i hope that was you. I got a couple of nice letters for that dedication people thought they had. [laughter] so the beginning of what the fellow on the phone said ive never asked anybody to take me seriously putting it this way a bad situation were really rotten situation like bad disease like death itself isnt changed if you make fun of it or you dont. We make fun of things not because we approve of them or love them or cute or cuddly but to cope with their own terror and unease and existential horrors and anger at god disappointment with ourselves. You can drink and make a joke take drugs and make yourself populist and pious. It will make it better or worse. That as to free markets and minimum wage people working in coal mines and 49 hours a day its interesting when you say you are in favor of free markets to get that response is not at all what adam smith meant. What he was talking about was keeping coercion out of life and the marketplace and only one aspect. Adam smith the essays that he rode a very important book that no one reads anymore call the theory of moral sentiment is all about making people rely upon persuasion and to give up brute force. That is the core morality and free society and democracy. He lived in a pre democratic era and didnt understand democracy at work. He was is moral and practical and sympathetic. At the root of freedom is persuasion. The idea you want free markets does not mean you want the middle by force or by anarchy. It implies a rule of law and that we are all equal before the law is not prescriptive it doesnt tell us exactly the free market or if there are rules are there should be rules but doesnt say quite exactly what they are. Adam smith tries to lay down the rules and make them prescriptive and becomes a policy wonk. And when he turns into a policy wonk he turned as foolishness as the rest of us. And to that corner i would just like to say my three hour should be wasted on me. They asked me. What can i tell you. And you may well be right. But not just because to limit certain freedoms and may be the correct thing to do but dont be smug about that desire. Everyone who wants to limit freedom to the tele band or people in favor of minimum wage laws come everybody is smug about their desire to limit human freedoms. Some really do need to be limited. But that doesnt make you a good person to recognize that you are not a good person you deserve no smugness and on foolish innocence just because you have a desire to limit. So there. Civic it is the last time to say sayonara to the american car American Automobile Companies they will live on like a ghost dragging their chain at taxpayers expense. The fools in the Corner Office at the Detroit Union will retire to their Vacation Home in palm beach and st. Petersburg. They dont deserve our sympathy more than the trolls under the capital dome but pity the poor american when Congress Gets through with it a light weight vehicle small Carbon Footprint with Renewable Resources when i was a kid we call the dish when a schwinn bike. [laughter] it has been a great 110 years, its been a great run since they built the First American automobile in Springfield Massachusetts. If it had been a success Springfield Massachusetts could be todays city for love racial tensions in Violent Crime in Springfield Massachusetts is full of anyway. We a lot more than the entertaining spectacle of the felon mayors. Many people my age we owe our very existence to the car or the cars back seat. [laughter] if you check the parents wedding anniversary and the birthday maybe too close for comfort. There was no premarital sex in america before the invention of the internal combustion engine. [laughter] its true you cannot sneak a girl into the rec room because your mom and dad didnt have a car so they were stuck at home working on the farm. Saturday night you could take a girl out but it was hard to get her into the mood to bust into the corset because you were facing the hind end of a horse. Thats wales the atmosphere. And then the American Nuclear family. That was a relief to all conserved. There are worse things you can do as the sudanese. We never hear or thank you or a word of thanks. From those in the body cast that skateboard all the time. And this is what then enviable standard of living you cannot have a steady job with Retirement Benefits with the general livestock at corporation putting others on cows it just cant be done. And the american car was a source of intellectual stimulation the sheer genius that transformed the 19 oh eight model t ford into the shelby cobra gt500 over one single human lifetime of speeding tickets. Compare this to the progress in the previous mode of transportation force production course design . Unchanged for thousands of years. I did some research on this. Nobody thought to hang a stirrup from a saddle and tell 500 a. D. That was invented. And automobile and design proceed at the same piece on pace we would be parrying ourselves down the road by running with both feet stuck to hold in the floor like fred flintstone. And most important the americas founding fathers. That the trues we hold to be selfevident. Of all of the unalienable rights of which we are endowed and it is right there front and center with the declaration of independence. And freedom to get out of here. King george. Thats the declaration of independence. The saga of the american car is not abstract. Now nancy pelosi may think she was transferred home on think of the clouds on sarah from but i know the car got me to where i am. My grandfather, Jacob Orourke born 1877 on a farm about the size of this podium in line city ohio. [laughter] one of ten kids growing up in a oneroom shack they are lined up a age staring at the photographer amazed to see someone in shoes. My greatgrandfather was a woodcutter in the midwest where there and on are no trees also drunk and illiterate have a copy of his marriage certificat certificate. His only accomplishment aside from the ten prizes that he won on the roulette wheel but nothing ever accomplished is he trained a pair of old nags to call him home dead drunk pastor in the wagon and the horses bring him home. Grandpa jacob left home headed for the bright lights of toledo ohio and went to work as a buggy mechanic. One day over list buggy pulled up at the shop. Grandpa saw that and saw the future. It didnt take him long to realize more money was to be made selling them instead of repairing them. And when the wedding anniversary was too close for comfort and the time i came along in the forties we had a buick. And ran around the usedcar lot in iran the Parts Department in cleaning and waxing the cars. My soninlaw on the Ohio Car Dealers Association and do whatever it is that i do. There are times i wish i had stayed and took over that agency because really just to be on the latenight tv car dealership adds, i got this idea i want to go to pirate pats. Come down to pirate pats treasure island. [laughter] free chocolate for the kids. [laughter] grandpa died in 1960 that we owe everything to the american car without that. So the history begins with the american car. And go to college. So i take the demise of the american car. And what fun to jump on ralph nader with both feet and send a big marxist goosed out of his crackhead. Even though ralph says 75 and clearly insane. And that was the corvair. And that was just wrong because my a friend had a corvair. And the worst driver in the world and one of the fastest. It just couldnt be done. And that there is plenty of blame to go around and im not sure about that either. Its true the car executives are knuckleheads at all executives are knuckleheads. Now worth the zillion dollars what you go get a decent fivedollar haircut . But one thing to expect those leaders to be down at the uaw hall standing on a chair yelling we demand less money from the bosses. Making 600 an hour or so im told. But every time the camel starts at the opec meeting maybe their pay is too high but its not like they get the pay. To understand what doomed the american automobile. And then returned to melodrama. So as a convertible world business. The state of detroit is not a foreign competition or corporate greed and energy or measuring you size of the footprint. It is a tragic romance unleashing passion. Especially wild horses. Not jury duty for some exciting crime like the o. J. Simpson murder. I want government to be jury duty for a long, boring, complex, concerning tax law. In fact let me suggest indicting our federal tax code just for starts. Which is nothing but fraud. I want government to be double and onerous responsibility like attending a parentteacher conference. Something to be undertaken with weary 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 real job in real life. I want them helping them pleading to be allowed to return to the private interest in personal obligations. I want them yearning into sit in front of the tv with a beer watching ed crane lose money on his world series bets. I want our elected officials to say that they intend to spend more time with their families and mean it. We will know when we have won an election. We will know when we have won an election when every single candidate who is voted into Office Begins his or her victory speech by saying 0 shippe oh en. Im working on a book with political science, instead of basing my theory on the work of deep political thinkers such as john locke and tom payne and ed crane, im basing my theory on a dumb game played all night giggle sessions in girls boarding schools. My wife told me about this. The game is called kill, screw, mary. The girls picked three men and they go around the room and every girl has to decide which one of the three she would kill, which when she would screw in which when she would settle down and raise a family. I think the example my wife gave is that her example was conan obrien, David Letterman and jay leno. The girls could do like nbc did and screw letterman. And im laughing joe, screw, mary, thats how we pick the president of the United States. Faith is example, 1982 president ial election, george h. W. Bush, bill clinton ross perot, they kill ross perot, we can argue that for bill clinton. And we mary george h. W. Bush. The outcome of the game is not a conclusion, witness our mysterious, the case of the 2000 president ial election, america was divided on whether to screw george wr get screwed by al gore but i think we all agreed on killing ralph nader. I wont venture any examples from recent elections for fear of attracting attention from the secret service hardest hit seems to be in the Obama White House but anyway, its got me thinking, its a game that works on government, you killed the postal service, get in bed with fema housing, married the armed forces and saber government policies, screw agriculture, merry Social Security and Health Care Reform kills us. It is great to political analysis because in a free and democratic country, politics is a three let leggett stool. It balanced on a tripod of power, freedom and responsibility. Kill, screw, marry. We live in a free and democratic country. Little less democratic than it was before last night which is fine by me. Also kill, screw, marry is a great political analysis because we are so passionate about our politics and how to passionate affairs and, and the passion usually in a crime of passion and occasionally they turn into stable permanent legal arrangements which is to say the endless quarrel known as marriage. How do we approach the Political Institution of our free and democratic country, do we overthrow them with violence, do we screw around cheating on them while they cheat on us or do we build something that is lasting and boring, worthy and annoying, marvelously virtuous and at the same time cycling a marriage. Power, freedom responsibly, kill, free, marry. When i first began to think about politics, when nixon roamed the earth, i was obsessed with the freedom, the screw part of kill, screw, marry. I had a messy idea of freedom back in those days in Drinking Water but i had a tidy idea that freedom was a central issue of politics, i love politics, many young people do, kids can spot a means of gain without merit in them. This may be the reason that professional politicians retain a certain zest, ted kennedy was the boil right down to his last agent disease moment, i was wrong about the lovable nature of politics but im sure i was right about the preeminent place freedom should have an applicable system. But there are lots of definitions of free, 36 definitions of free and the international dictionary, plenty of people are theoretically in favor of freedom, we are all but overrun with theoretical allies and freedoms cause, we have collaborators in the fight for freedom that we dont even want, the probe harry and nothing to lose with their chains. Its a second to last communist manifesto and theres a creepy echo and chris kristoffersons and bobby mcgee. In 100 flowers blossom, half a Million People died in that definition of freedom. We should probably keep in mind that the original definition of the word free in english is not in bondage. The most meaningful thing about freedom is that mankind has a sickening history of slavery. Here in america, we have freedom because we have rights with the same way that we can get mixed up about freedom, we can get mixed up about our rights. There are two kinds of rights. Political scientist called them positive rights and negative rights. Sometimes we call them opportunities and privileges. I call them get out of your rights and give me rights. Politicians are always telling us about our give me rights, especially the politicians that we have in the white house right now as he give me some healthcare. Our bill of rig