“Just this whole process of going through the baby boom’s
history, I began to realize what a nicer society—kinder, more
decent society—that we live in today than the society when I was a
kid,” says P.J.
O’Rourke, best-selling author of Holidays in
Hell, Parliament of Whores, and many other
titles.
O’Rourke sat down with Reason’s Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest
2014 in Las Vegas to discuss his new book, The
Baby Boom: How it Got That Way and It Wasn’t My Fault and I’ll
Never Do it Again.
The interview also includes a tour of O’Rourke’s long and varied
career in journalism, from his humble beginnings writing for an
underground alt-weekly to his time as editor of National
Lampoon and his incredible work as a
foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone to his
current position as columnist at the Daily
Beast.
A prominent libertarian, O’Rourke also discusses the
difficulties in selling a political philosophy devoted to taking
power away from politicians. “If libertarianism were
easy to explain and if it weren’t so easy to exaggerate the effects
of libertarianism—people walking around with ‘Legalize Heroin!’
buttons and so on—I think it would’ve been done already,” says
O’Rourke. “But the problem is, of course, is that libertarianism
isn’t political. It’s anti-political, really. It wants to take
things out of the political arena.”
Watch the entire interview above, or click below for version
with full transcript, more links, and downloadable versions.
About 35 minutes. Edited by Zach Weissmueller. Interview by Nick
Gillespie. Shot by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, and Weissmueller.
Music by Antiqcool.
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