{"id":27557,"date":"2014-08-27T08:12:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T13:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27557"},"modified":"2014-08-27T08:12:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-27T13:12:57","slug":"reason-tv-p-j-orourke-on-millennials-and-baby-boomers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/08\/27\/reason-tv-p-j-orourke-on-millennials-and-baby-boomers\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Reason.tv<\/em> &#8211; P.J. O&#8217;Rourke on Millennials and Baby Boomers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tXBC8xYdRz4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Published on 26 Aug 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just this whole process of going through the baby boom&#8217;s history, I began to realize what a nicer society \u2014 kinder, more decent society \u2014 that we live in today than the society when I was a kid,&#8221; says P.J. O&#8217;Rourke, best-selling author of <em>Holidays in Hell<\/em>, <em>Parliament of Whores<\/em>, and many other titles.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Rourke sat down with <em>Reason<\/em>&#8216;s Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest 2014 in Las Vegas to discuss his new book, <em>The Baby Boom: How it Got That Way and It Wasn&#8217;t My Fault and I&#8217;ll Never Do it Again<\/em>. As the father of three kids born between 1997 and 2004, he also lays down some thoughts about millennials, noting that they live in a much nicer, more tolerant world than the one in which he grew up. &#8220;I don\u2019t think my 10-year old boy has ever been in a fist fight,&#8221; says O&#8217;Rourke, who was born in 1947. &#8220;I mean there might be a little scuffling but I don\u2019t think he\u2019s has ever had that kind of violent confrontation that was simply part of the package when I was a kid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He also feels that the internet &#8220;fragments information&#8221; in a way that destroys the sweep of history, at least at first. &#8220;You end up with mosaic information,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Now, I think over time the kids put these mosaics together but I don\u2019t think the internet itself lends itself to the sweep of history.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The interview also includes a tour of O&#8217;Rourke&#8217;s long and varied career in journalism, from his humble beginnings writing for an underground alt-weekly to his time as editor of <em>National Lampoon<\/em> and his incredible work as a foreign correspondent for <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> to his current position as columnist at the <em>Daily Beast<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A prominent libertarian, O&#8217;Rourke also discusses the difficulties in selling a political philosophy devoted to taking power away from politicians.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If libertarianism were easy to explain and if it weren&#8217;t so easy to exaggerate the effects of libertarianism \u2014 people walking around with &#8216;Legalize Heroin!&#8217; buttons and so on \u2014 I think it would&#8217;ve been done already,&#8221; says O&#8217;Rourke. &#8220;But the problem is, of course, is that libertarianism isn&#8217;t political. It&#8217;s anti-political, really. It wants to take things out of the political arena.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Published on 26 Aug 2014 &#8220;Just this whole process of going through the baby boom&#8217;s history, I began to realize what a nicer society \u2014 kinder, more decent society \u2014 that we live in today than the society when I was a kid,&#8221; says P.J. O&#8217;Rourke, best-selling author of Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,10,28,13],"tags":[311,407,119,550,45],"class_list":["post-27557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-babyboomers","tag-drugs","tag-libertarianism","tag-nostalgia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7at","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27558,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27557\/revisions\/27558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}