Juno News - Ep 10 ｜ Dave Rubin ｜ The radical left’s crusade against western civilization

00:00:00.000 I always believed in equality. I mean, that was the type of liberalism that I was taught in my

00:00:04.460 family. So I always believed in that. And again, the left now is not for equality, they're for

00:00:09.720 equity. Equality is equality under the law. The law says we should all be treated equally,

00:00:15.180 regardless of our race, gender, sexual orientation, and all of those things. Of course, I'm for that.

00:00:20.340 But they've now become about equity, that they want to rejigger everything. So we'll have X

00:00:24.760 amount of black people as this, and X amount of gay people as this, and this, this. And that is

00:00:29.720 actually anti-human, because it removes the individual. It just says, oh, you are the sum

00:00:34.380 of your parts. You're black. Well, we know what to do with you. You're gay. We know what to do with

00:00:38.860 you. You're a woman. We know what to do with you. I always say, defending my liberal principles is

00:00:43.980 becoming a conservative position. The radical left has always existed, and always called for a

00:00:48.860 drastic reordering of our society, away from liberty, tradition, and order, and towards equality,

00:00:54.840 redistribution, and some kind of intense intergenerational justice. The political left,

00:01:00.860 however, has shifted and drastically changed in recent years. They've become more fervent,

00:01:05.900 more radical, more out of control, less tolerant, less liberal, and less willing to operate in the

00:01:11.940 normal arena of politics and political discourse. This trend emerged on college campuses, where

00:01:17.920 self-proclaimed social justice warriors began to shift their focus away from the typical critiques of

00:01:23.900 the economic order, and towards a cultural crusade against Western civilization, democracy,

00:01:30.320 the rule of law, and the very foundation of our free society. The left has been spiraling out of

00:01:35.780 control ever since, as a small group of ideological radicals have been empowered to stomp on previous

00:01:42.480 norms and hijack mainstream thought and institutions without recourse, correction, or apology.

00:01:49.260 My guest on the season finale of the True North Speaker series was one of the first to tap into these

00:01:55.380 changes, and one of the strongest and clearest opponents of this new regressive brand of leftism.

00:02:02.500 Dave Rubin has built his own media empire, and hosts one of the most successful and popular shows on

00:02:08.540 YouTube, The Rubin Report, which throws away the stale old tactics of cable news interviews,

00:02:14.760 and taps into a large audience of people who enjoy honest, long-form conversations,

00:02:21.440 thoroughly discussing ideas, and focus on understanding the pressing cultural issues of

00:02:26.660 our time. In my conversation with Dave today, we talk about a broad range of topics, from his

00:02:32.440 career in stand-up comedy, to entrepreneurship, to getting black market haircuts during the pandemic.

00:02:37.820 We also get into where and why the left went so wrong, and how we can expose their hypocrisy

00:02:44.280 and combat their efforts to tear apart the foundation of our society.

00:03:01.080 Well, it is my pleasure today to be joined by Dave Rubin. Dave, I'm a big fan, and it's so exciting to

00:03:06.340 finally have you on our show, and I know you're promoting a book or trying to do a book tour

00:03:11.160 remotely, which must be kind of interesting, just given that everything's still kind of locked down.

00:03:15.580 You're in Los Angeles, right? What's life like in Los Angeles these days?

00:03:20.760 I am in Los Angeles. I am under lockdown. I am in quarantine. I did an entire book tour

00:03:27.080 for a month where I was supposed to be in, you know, something like 20 U.S. cities across the nation,

00:03:32.260 and then we were working on a Canadian tour, actually, and I was going to go to the UK and

00:03:36.060 a couple other European stops. Ended up doing the entire book tour literally in this chair,

00:03:40.980 which is in my studio here in my garage, which made it easy to do a lot of stuff. You know,

00:03:45.620 I was able to do more than I could have if I was on the road, but, you know, I do like being out

00:03:50.620 there with people. I like performing live and feeling that live emotion with the crowd when you're,

00:03:57.360 you know, you got hundreds or thousands of people in front of you. So I do miss that, but, you know,

00:04:02.400 the book has sold really well. I think the things that I write about in the book are the things that

00:04:07.140 everyone is talking about right now. So, you know, I think I've done something here that has some

00:04:13.680 value in these strange times, but everything being equal, I would trade it all for the old world.

00:04:20.080 You remember the pre-February world when, I guess we could refer to those as the good old days now.

00:04:24.860 Well, it does seem like the sort of spectrum has changed, like things that we used to

00:04:30.180 complain about before just seem like, you know, totally different than the fact that, I mean,

00:04:34.080 I'm here in Toronto. I still haven't been able to get my haircut, Dave. Believe it or not,

00:04:38.300 I've not had a haircut in this calendar year in 2020. They're open now, but of course the salons

00:04:44.400 all have like a two month waiting list now. So, you know, just the little things that you kind of,

00:04:49.360 you kind of miss. Your hair looks great to me. I have had, I've had a couple illegal haircuts and

00:04:56.520 I'm sure my mayor here in Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti probably has a bounty out on my head,

00:05:02.180 but I've got a good friend who is my, she normally is my stylist at a salon. She's doing it out of her

00:05:08.400 garage right now. We'll have to keep that on the DL. Hopefully no Los Angeles County authorities

00:05:13.140 are watching right now. But it's all, you know, look, look, there's, there's a real pandemic.

00:05:18.740 There's no doubt about it that, that this thing is real. The question is what level of lockdown and

00:05:25.820 quarantine and change of life are we all going to be willing to accept seemingly forever? Because,

00:05:32.340 you know, the idea was we're going to flatten the curve. Well, we really did flatten the curve

00:05:36.280 virtually everywhere. You know, we didn't see overrun hospitals. I don't know of one single overrun

00:05:42.320 hospital in the United States. I don't know of one single overrun hospital in Canada. That's not

00:05:48.360 to say there aren't little areas that have bigger bumps than other areas. But this idea that we should

00:05:54.440 just completely change our way of life forever and, you know, put restaurants at half capacity,

00:06:00.580 even if everyone walking into the restaurant has been checked, you know, had their temperature checked

00:06:05.820 and all of those things, restaurants won't be able to stay open. I mean, they're not going to be able

00:06:10.100 to pay their rents. They're not going to be able to pay their employees. And it's not just restaurants,

00:06:13.460 by the way, of course, it's mom and pop stores and, you know, pretty much everything else that

00:06:18.580 isn't a giant corporation that can figure out ways to survive. So we're watching a changing economy.

00:06:24.080 I think we're watching a changing political structure. All of our institutions are crumbling

00:06:28.480 around us. You know, when we talk about academia and newspapers and media and all of that, and we're just

00:06:34.260 in a massive, massive time of change right now. And, you know, hopefully if you've got your head

00:06:40.300 on straight, you'll be able to get out of it okay. Well, I totally agree. There's so much sort of

00:06:44.740 uncertainty and so much questioning. I mean, some of those institutions deserve to be changed and

00:06:50.880 challenged and some disruption would be nice. You know, a lot of people are moving more online and

00:06:55.420 that kind of thing. And people are sort of distrusting this culture of, you know, rule by experts.

00:07:00.760 We're always deferring to experts and we learn that, hey, sometimes the experts are totally wrong

00:07:04.640 and what they're telling us isn't great. And I think that we should sort of be challenging that.

00:07:08.680 But I also see sort of a rise of some of the cultural trends that you really talk a lot about,

00:07:13.220 like the rise of sort of safetyism. So people saying, you know, I would rather take all these

00:07:18.720 extreme measures to stomp down liberties and not allow people to do basic things, you know, to save one

00:07:25.460 life or something like that, which is totally preposterous, but you're seeing kind of more and more of that.

00:07:30.080 And that's something you've kind of been watching and talking about for a long time, especially

00:07:34.580 on college campuses. Does that sort of concern you or is that something that you've seen and

00:07:39.480 been concerned about for a long time? Oh, yeah. Well, I've been concerned about it forever. But,

00:07:43.420 you know, as the saying goes, those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.

00:07:47.740 And I think what we're suddenly all doing is trading in our liberty, meaning our ability to go to

00:07:55.020 friends' houses and celebrate the 4th of July, say here in the United States, and go to the beach

00:07:59.760 and be free people. That doesn't mean take no precautions. It doesn't mean cough on old people.

00:08:05.140 And it doesn't mean touch everything and then touch your face. But have some level of personal

00:08:10.920 responsibility for you, your family, your loved ones, your local community, and figure out how

00:08:16.620 to stay open as a country. If we trade all of our personal freedoms in for security, the idea being,

00:08:25.920 you know, people usually think of security, meaning we're going to be kept safe from being shot when

00:08:29.920 we walk out on the street or kept safe from terrorism or something like that. But in this case,

00:08:34.180 the security that we're talking about is the security of a amorphous, invisible at some level

00:08:40.180 disease, you know, this pandemic of COVID, we will never be able to leave our houses again if that's

00:08:46.280 how we want to treat this. Because, you know, when you hear these people that say, oh, well,

00:08:49.240 we've got to lock down until there's a cure. We've got to lock down until nobody can get sick. Well,

00:08:54.120 first off, we don't have a cure for the common cold. But putting that aside, there will always be

00:08:58.980 risk. Life is about risk. Every day you walk out of your house, you get struck by lightning, bit by a dog,

00:09:05.960 hit by a car. There is a litany of other things that can happen to you. You could have a

00:09:09.980 monument pulled down on your head if you're walking in a public park. Anything can happen.

00:09:14.220 And these days, anything will happen. And the idea that the government can protect you from all of

00:09:22.060 that and make your life risk-free, it's anti-human, actually. To be human is to mitigate a certain

00:09:30.020 amount of risk. And you have to decide what your risk level is. It's really as simple as that.

00:09:35.460 It's a really good point. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, what they're planning for

00:09:39.460 and what they're trying to prevent, presumably, is impossible. I think that's so much of a theme

00:09:43.600 on the left, from my perspective, is that they have this sort of utopian idea of what the world

00:09:48.660 could be like if only we had the right people in charge and the right government structures.

00:09:53.080 And that's sort of, you know, as people who are not on the left know, that's a fallacy that's not

00:09:58.640 in line with human nature. And yet, that's sort of what we constantly see. So I want to talk a little

00:10:03.800 bit, Dave, about your career and your transition, because you've had a really interesting career.

00:10:07.820 You started out as a stand-up comic, and you transitioned, I believe, to becoming a political

00:10:12.380 talk show host over at The Young Turks, which is a left-leaning or left-wing YouTube channel.

00:10:18.480 So how does that transition?

00:10:19.280 You can say it. Far left.

00:10:20.640 Far left. Well, one of the things I'm constantly trying to figure out is what the difference is

00:10:25.500 between someone who's left-wing and someone who's far left, because there doesn't really seem to be

00:10:29.400 a good distinction. And, you know, increasingly, they're blurring lines even between the mainstream

00:10:33.580 left and what I would consider the far, far left. But for you, so you left being a stand-up comic

00:10:39.300 and decided to get into the political talk show world. Were you sort of firmly a left-winger at

00:10:44.980 that point? Or what was your thinking at that point?

00:10:47.520 Yeah, I talk about this a little bit in my book. You know, I think the default settings that I had,

00:10:51.360 the factory settings that I had by growing up culturally in America through a public education,

00:10:56.060 which I had most people grow up kind of lefty. There's just this sort of basic idea,

00:11:01.460 Democrats good, Republicans bad. Lefties care about poor people, Republicans care about money.

00:11:07.940 You know, Democrats are for peace, Republicans are for war. A series of these very simple and

00:11:14.140 obviously not true things that you just get through television and culture and media.

00:11:18.940 That's just what you start thinking. And I would say, in effect, I was that. You know, I came from

00:11:26.080 a family. I grew up in New York. I was born in Brooklyn. I grew up in Long Island. I lived in New York

00:11:30.900 City most of my life. I went to college, upstate New York, SUNY Binghamton, where I was a political

00:11:35.640 science major. So I'm a true New Yorker. And then eight years ago, I moved, a little over seven years

00:11:40.920 ago, I moved here to Los Angeles. So I've only lived in New York and LA. And it's kind of funny

00:11:44.780 because when you think of New York and LA, you think of, oh, these bastions of like, you know,

00:11:49.780 the crazy leftist political ideology. And yet the things that I talk about, about freedom,

00:11:55.420 personal responsibility, limited government, all that, that resonates really well in the middle of the

00:11:59.340 country. So I don't know how it happened that, that I went from growing up there to live in here.

00:12:03.700 And yet the middle is really where I belong, I suppose. I would say that I was always kind of

00:12:11.000 political. As I said, I was a political science major. My family, we debated everything, every

00:12:16.060 holiday. We would have 20, 30 people sitting at tables and arguing about abortion and foreign policy

00:12:23.340 and the whole thing. And then dessert would be served and everybody was fine. I never, nobody ever stormed

00:12:28.420 out of a dinner because of politics. You know, there were family fights over family things,

00:12:33.500 but nobody, it was just like, oh, this is what you do. You argue about things and then, you know,

00:12:38.280 dessert rolls around, you have a piece of cake and, and you're good. And I think that was really

00:12:43.900 embedded in me, which is why I don't mind talking to people that are different than me politically.

00:12:48.660 I actually really like it. And I think it's also why I'm, I'm open to changing my mind if I get

00:12:54.140 some other information. But, um, to your earlier point about, it's hard to tell what's left versus

00:13:00.080 far left or whatever. That is a real problem of the modern left, because you're right. The left has

00:13:07.460 become so monolithic. If you don't tick off the exact things that they believe right now,

00:13:13.100 and the second that they believe it, you better believe it too. Otherwise you're out. And that's

00:13:17.940 why they're constantly purging people. And interestingly, what I see happening on the right. So for example,

00:13:23.360 I could show you that on the right, there are all sorts of interesting people right now. You have

00:13:28.020 sort of traditional conservatives, you've got MAGA, Trump waving people, you've got libertarians,

00:13:34.320 you've got really sort of the far, uh, and cap people who are like sort of super libertarians.

00:13:39.920 Those people are all having an interesting fight about what the future of, of the right of

00:13:44.720 conservatism is. That's pretty healthy. You know, you don't see these people destroying each other

00:13:48.980 and, and all that on the left, you basically have the progressive monolithic ideology.

00:13:55.380 And then there's a couple sort of mugged old school liberals. That's what I would say.

00:14:00.340 I am, or at least was, and they're just being purged. And I think what they're realizing is as

00:14:06.340 they're being purged from the left, that now says you have to have, you know, eight month abortions are

00:14:11.420 okay. I mean, these are crazy positions or $15 minimum wage as we're automating everything.

00:14:16.320 These are things that don't make any sense. What's happening is that if you're a decent lefty,

00:14:20.800 meaning an old school liberal, you're going, Hey, you know, those people on the right,

00:14:24.880 they're not that bad. And maybe they're not all bigots and racists and the rest of it.

00:14:28.240 So I think there's a really interesting, uh, political realignment happening.

00:14:31.680 It's interesting. So, um, my husband and I spent a couple of years living in California,

00:14:35.040 we were in the Bay area and, you know, Silicon Valley kind of has a reputation of being

00:14:40.080 very left wing and very monolithic, like you said, but our experiences with our friends and people

00:14:45.520 that my husband was working with and stuff was that even most Democrats recognize that their

00:14:51.600 party has gone too far, or they don't agree with the, like every boiler point position,

00:14:56.960 but then you go on social media and you kind of see, it feels different. Like it feels like

00:15:01.200 all the lefties agree and they're all pushing this sort of cancel culture,

00:15:05.040 extreme positions, like some of the stuff you talked about. And I, I, I almost think it's driven

00:15:09.520 a little bit, at least now by the sort of Trump derangement that, you know, they believe that

00:15:13.840 Trump is so bad that you, you kind of have to stay aligned with, with the left because,

00:15:19.040 I mean, they don't, they don't want another four years of Trump. How do you think Trump plays,

00:15:24.160 plays into this, this whole new sort of alignment?

00:15:26.640 Yeah. Well, I do think Trump derangement syndrome is real. I am not a doctor, but I believe that it

00:15:32.720 could be clinically diagnosed. These people that will take any position, as long as it's the opposite

00:15:39.040 position of Trump. And you know, you can say whatever you want about Trump, but Trump's great

00:15:43.120 skill obviously is that he understands people. Trump understands human emotion and how to manipulate

00:15:49.680 it. Now that, now, depending on whether he manipulates it to spread freedom or to spread

00:15:55.440 anarchy or to spread authoritarianism or whatever, those are all things that we can debate about Trump

00:16:00.320 specifically, but he knows what people want, what people care about, what moves people, what changes

00:16:06.480 people, all of that. Um, I would say that he has exposed something in the left that it doesn't

00:16:13.680 seem to me that if you're the average Democrat, you're the average lefty. It seems to me that you

00:16:19.680 don't know why you think anything that you think you, you just kind of believe it to be true. We have

00:16:25.280 to have minimum wage or, or it has to be a $15 minimum wage. We have to have Medicare for all,

00:16:32.400 or, you know, universal healthcare for all. How are we going to pay for it? We don't know,

00:16:36.480 but we just feel that we should have these things. Everything that they do is based on feelings.

00:16:42.080 That's actually quite different than what I see on the right, where generally people know,

00:16:47.440 if you're from an American perspective, if you're on the right, you believe in individual rights,

00:16:52.240 meaning that everyone, regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender, any of those things,

00:16:57.040 if you're a legal member of the United States, you should be treated equally under the law.

00:17:00.640 That's a pretty solid bedrock principle. Now it doesn't mean that everyone on the right

00:17:06.960 lives up to that at every moment, but that's sort of the underlying principle that allows

00:17:11.840 conservatives, libertarians, ex lefties to all sort of accept that that's what society is. And then of

00:17:18.320 course that's safeguarded by the constitution and the bill of rights. That's a pretty beautiful system.

00:17:23.200 On the left, in effect, they just say, oh, I think something. And that means it's kind of right.

00:17:28.160 And that sort of subjectivity explains why they're so hysterical all the time. So it's like,

00:17:32.960 you know, Bernie comes out and he says, $15 minimum wage. And now Bernie has never run a business.

00:17:38.400 Bernie doesn't know why he believes that, but he believes that's just a number that he should

00:17:42.640 accept. And then because he accepts it, other people should accept it. But then what happens is

00:17:47.200 this did happen. A few weeks later, after he said that Rashida Tlaib, one of the squad, one of the worst,

00:17:52.560 you know, congresswomen that we have here in the United States, she said $20 minimum wage. And it's like,

00:17:58.320 oh, well, he just made up a number. And since they believe government is inherently good, well, then why

00:18:04.320 shouldn't the number be higher? And then someone will say, well, why not 25? Why not 40? And that is the flaw.

00:18:11.200 I think that is the most fundamental flaw of leftist thinking. They don't know why they believe what

00:18:16.320 they believe other than it sort of sounds good. Free education for everybody, free college for

00:18:21.760 everybody, free food for everybody, whatever it might be. Now that all sounds good, but none of,

00:18:26.640 we all know nothing's for free and they get very upset when you ask them how to pay for it.

00:18:31.280 So that difference between individual rights, which is a bedrock principle of equality,

00:18:38.640 versus I just kind of feel the government should do things because, you know, I kind of feel it. And

00:18:43.040 that's kind of right. That explains the asymmetry that we have right now.

00:18:46.880 It's so true. I was sort of on the left too, when I was in university and my thinking was usually just

00:18:52.160 like, why wouldn't we, you know, we're a rich society. Why wouldn't we help everyone? Why wouldn't

00:18:56.160 we give more money to homeless people? And it's not until you take a couple of economics classes,

00:19:00.240 or you read, you know, you read a little more that you realize, okay, there's not like unlimited

00:19:04.960 things that we could do. And to a point earlier, the government isn't perfect. So a lot of things

00:19:09.680 they try to do ends up having all kinds of unintended backfiring effects. Well, you mentioned

00:19:15.200 that- And by the way, just very quickly, I mean, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

00:19:19.520 I don't think that most people on the left have bad intentions. I think some of them do actually.

00:19:24.640 I think Bernie, I think at this point he's so wrong about so many things that I believe his

00:19:29.520 intentions actually to be bad. I think AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, I actually do believe

00:19:36.080 their intentions are bad. They think America is fundamentally evil and want to alter it. But the

00:19:41.280 average lefty who's just chanting mindless slogans and saying most of these things, I don't think

00:19:46.400 their intentions are bad. I think their intentions are exactly what you just laid out there when you

00:19:50.480 were in university. And basically they need to wake up and start understanding the world as it is,

00:19:56.400 not as they wish it to be. Yeah. And I think one of the things that does that, Dave, is having your

00:20:01.520 first job and realizing how much of your money goes to the government. I had a really good friend in

00:20:06.000 university who was further to the left than me and we used to always debate. I became more libertarian.

00:20:10.800 And she was opposed to everything that I was talking about. And then she became a lawyer. And I

00:20:15.840 remember she had like her first paycheck and she called me up and she was just like,

00:20:19.840 okay, I'm a libertarian. I tried to take the bus this morning. It didn't show up. And so I had to

00:20:25.680 end up like calling a taxi, like the government doesn't work and they take all my money. And I

00:20:29.920 feel like that process of just having a job, being employed. And I think one of the bigger things is

00:20:35.360 taking a risk and starting your own business. I think starting your own business, having to worry

00:20:39.200 about not just surviving and reading the market, but also doing payroll and paying for employees is one of

00:20:45.680 the one of the most sort of capitalistic things that you can do when doing so. It kind of cements

00:20:50.880 your ideas about the market and how it works and why it's better than a government run system. I know

00:20:56.160 you took a big risk when you left the Young Turks and you started your own thing. I want to know,

00:21:01.920 what was that like? Have you always sort of been entrepreneurial or were you nervous? What was

00:21:06.240 the hardest part about starting your own show and going on your own?

00:21:09.040 You know, I don't know that I was always entrepreneurial in a business sense really,

00:21:16.240 but I always sort of, I've always had a sense of adventure. You know, if you're going to do

00:21:19.760 standup in New York City, you better have a sense of adventure because that's going to be a pretty

00:21:23.600 miserable existence. You might enjoy the 10 minutes you're on stage, but the rest of it,

00:21:27.440 handing out tickets in Times Square and having to drag friends to show and being heckled and all that

00:21:33.040 stuff, you better have a sense of adventure. As for the entrepreneurial part, you know, when

00:21:37.280 when I left the Young Turks and eventually I moved over to Aura TV, which was Larry King's digital

00:21:42.960 network. And then we left there to go to Patreon, which was our first chance at fan funding. Eventually

00:21:47.520 we left Patreon and I started my own subscription network. So we've taken a lot of risks where me and

00:21:52.640 my director and my producer have jumped from job to job where we've given up salaries, given up

00:21:58.000 health insurance with the idea of building something on our own. And I'm thrilled and probably most

00:22:02.800 out of all the things that I've done, I think I'm most proud of the fact that I have

00:22:07.280 right now I have two separate businesses because I have my production company that runs the Rubin

00:22:11.520 report, obviously. And you know, we've got about eight employees and I pay all their health insurance

00:22:15.680 and we pay our guys well and we treat them well, which by the way, there's a reason I do that.

00:22:19.680 It's not because I'm some benevolent Jesus figure. It's because I know if I treat my guys well,

00:22:24.880 they're going to work hard and feel rewarded and it will make my product better. And that's good for me.

00:22:29.280 That's called rational self-interest. That's that's a pretty great thing.

00:22:32.400 I also have locals.com, which is my tech company that I started in the midst of all this.

00:22:37.520 My companies have no debt. We make payroll. As I said, we treat our team great and we're always

00:22:45.120 expanding. We just hired two people this week at locals. And one of the things that I'm really

00:22:51.120 thrilled about is that it's not just that I talk about these ideas of low taxes and why small

00:22:56.720 government's important and why small business is important, all that. I've put it into action in my life.

00:23:02.880 And I think that that's one of the things that the, the progressives generally don't do very well.

00:23:07.920 They rail about all of these things, but they don't want to put them into practice in real life.

00:23:12.800 You know, I don't like talking about my, my former employers that often, but just a very easy one,

00:23:16.880 because you mentioned them is that, you know, on the young Turks, they scream and rant and rave about

00:23:21.440 unions all the time. And then in the last few months, you probably saw the story, their employees

00:23:25.840 wanted to unionize and they fought them on it. And they said, no, no, no, we're too small to unionize.

00:23:30.720 So they, they preach about it for everybody else, but they don't want it for themselves.

00:23:35.440 And that's so consistent with what I see out of the progressive ideology. You should live by our

00:23:40.880 rules, but we can't live by our rules. Cause we got reasons we can't, but you should.

00:23:45.840 I think that's the biggest reason why so many people are skeptical of climate alarmists as well,

00:23:51.440 because here in Canada, for instance, you know, we have prime minister, Justin Trudeau and his,

00:23:56.480 his, you know, his government is very green, very, very, very committed to climate change ideology

00:24:02.240 and talking about it and sort of electric Canadians, they implemented a carbon tax and all that kind of

00:24:06.880 stuff. But, but then, you know, you, you look at their, their, their actions, you know,

00:24:10.880 they fly all over the world. They, they brought like an entourage of 200 people to the Paris Accords

00:24:15.120 when they were there, you know, they're spending boatloads of money. They'll fly, you know, all

00:24:19.840 over the world just for photo opera or whatever. And it's like, how can you sit there and tell

00:24:24.320 Canadians that we need to make fundamental changes in our lives, including, you know, very, uh, hefty

00:24:30.960 tax that makes our economy less competitive relative to the United States and other countries.

00:24:34.880 When, when at the same time, you're not really practicing what you preach, you know, Justin

00:24:39.520 Trudeau banned single use plastics. And then he's there at the protest, drinking out of a plastic

00:24:44.560 water bottle. It's like, come on, man, you gotta, you gotta practice what you preach, at least if you

00:24:48.560 want people to follow you.

00:24:49.840 Progressive 101, you know, he's, he's for diversity and tolerance. And Trudeau has also been in blackface.

00:24:57.280 Was Stephen Harper ever caught in blackface? I'm going to guess not.

00:25:00.800 Absolutely not.

00:25:02.720 Yeah. Yeah. Right. So it's like, this is what they do. They virtue signal constantly. There's

00:25:09.520 that, that photo. I'm sure there's probably a video of it too. A couple of years ago,

00:25:13.200 Justin Trudeau, um, at the mosque where it separated men and women. And he always tells

00:25:18.960 you what a feminist he is. Meanwhile, in this place, women have to come in, in the back door

00:25:23.040 and can't, can't be with men. Now that's, that's up for the religion to decide and the people who

00:25:27.600 prescribe to that religion. And by the way, that's not just a, uh, uh, an issue in Islam,

00:25:32.400 obviously in, in Orthodox Judaism, they separate the sexes. Religions have all, all sorts of things

00:25:37.360 that they can do, but to run around and say, I'm for women's equality and I'm for all of these things.

00:25:42.080 And then you're actually okay going to religious places where things are not equal. It's just,

00:25:47.520 it's just endless virtue signaling. And I, just because you say you're a good person and have nice

00:25:52.960 socks, Trudeau always has nice socks. I'll give him that. The guy has spent a lot of time thinking

00:25:57.840 about his socks. Uh, perhaps it would be better if he would think about some of the things related

00:26:02.560 to lowering taxes for you guys. Uh, you know, especially out in the West, they know what's

00:26:06.560 going on with the oil over there. Um, it's like, this is what they do. They look good,

00:26:12.640 but are, are any of the things that they're doing good? That's the question.

00:26:16.080 Well, Trudeau is particularly image obsessed. I think he puts more time and effort into his photo ops and,

00:26:22.480 and, and, you know, however, he's going to look and dress on a certain day than, than anything into

00:26:27.120 the, into the policy. Uh, but, but yet he gets away with it. I think it's partially to do with the

00:26:31.520 press up here. And I know your press down in the U S is particularly, uh, biased as well, but up here,

00:26:37.360 they sort of have a love in for Trudeau and they don't, they don't bother asking him tough questions.

00:26:41.360 Well, yours is also state funded by the way, which complicates it. And the state happens,

00:26:46.800 the machinery of the state happens to be in line with his sort of lefty policies. Um, you know,

00:26:53.760 if you ever get a conservative back in office, I suspect they will not be as friendly to Trudeau.

00:26:59.440 But, you know, again, this is the type of guy who will run around screaming about cultural

00:27:03.120 appropriation and all, and the racism of Canada. And it's like, how many, how many outfits have we

00:27:08.560 seen Trudeau in where he's actually culturally appropriating and dancing in Indian garb and any of

00:27:14.240 those things. I'm not saying he's racist. I think by his own estimation of what makes someone racist,

00:27:19.520 he's racist. Well, absolutely. He doesn't, again, to the point, you know, he doesn't live up to the

00:27:24.000 standards, uh, that he preaches. You, you've had some controversial guests on your show, Dave. And I

00:27:29.840 think that that is sort of becomes like a caricature, uh, that the left likes to say, oh, you know,

00:27:35.120 Dave Rubin has become far right because he had Stefan Molyneux on his show or something like that.

00:27:39.600 How do you combat some of that criticism and what do you think about it?

00:27:42.480 Dave Rubin Well, first off, I've done hundreds,

00:27:45.040 if I don't even know, maybe, maybe a thousand interviews. I don't know how many interviews

00:27:48.320 I've done, but hundreds and hundreds, certainly. Um, you know, if you're going to be an interviewer,

00:27:52.960 you're going to talk to people across the political spectrum, the religious or belief

00:27:57.280 spectrum, the philosophical spectrum, you know, whatever that is, you're going to try to have a

00:28:01.280 wide swath of people. When people ask me this question, I always say, you know, it's possible

00:28:06.000 that I've interviewed somebody and not every single one of my interviews was the perfect interview.

00:28:11.200 I try to sit across from somebody and usually I have a couple notes and questions I want to get to,

00:28:15.920 but I always say at the end of an interview, if I didn't have to look down at my questions once,

00:28:19.520 if I just was able to sit there and do this, that to me is a great interview.

00:28:23.680 Now, sometimes in the course of that, you're going to miss something. Maybe,

00:28:27.120 you know, sometimes someone will say something sort of crazy, but I want to,

00:28:30.000 I want to let them finish their thought. And then it goes on a little too far where I feel like I can't

00:28:34.480 quite back it up. Sometimes I end up, I do end up backing it up. That's, look, you're interviewing

00:28:40.400 me right now. You may look back on this interview two years from now and go, man, I should have asked

00:28:45.200 Ruben this, that, the other thing. Or when he said that, I should have said no, you know, this, that.

00:28:50.880 You know, as far as someone like Molyneux, you know, I knew it was going to be controversial

00:28:54.640 when I interviewed him. He obviously just got banned from YouTube. By the way, I'm far more worried about

00:29:00.560 the power that YouTube has of banning people than I am of the ideas of Stefan Molyneux,

00:29:05.040 even if his ideas are odious and nefarious. My feeling was that what I should ask him is,

00:29:12.720 why do you care so much about race and IQ? What is it about you that makes this an issue?

00:29:19.520 It's not an issue that I've ever spent any real time thinking about other than to prepare

00:29:24.000 for my interview with him. I don't think I've ever, maybe it's once come up in any of the other

00:29:29.360 hundreds of interviews I've done. I don't, I honestly, I can't even recall another time that

00:29:34.000 it came up, but perhaps it has. I felt I asked the right questions. Now, a ton of people were angry

00:29:39.600 at me. A ton of people said, this proves that I'm far right and all of this other stuff. But what I

00:29:45.120 do find interesting about that is that people always seem to gatekeep to the right, but never to

00:29:50.800 the left. So in other words, if you talk to Milo or Stefan Molyneux, or, or some people would say you

00:29:56.960 shouldn't talk to Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro, or, you know, people that are more traditional

00:30:01.120 conservatives. Well, then there's these people that attack you for it. But if you talk to

00:30:05.280 virtually anyone on the left, Al Sharpton is a crazy far lefty. He's on MSNBC. He's friends

00:30:11.680 with Louis Farrakhan, who is a complete Jew hater. But you're allowed apparently to talk to him

00:30:17.520 because we get Jamel Hill and other social justice warriors. Wasn't it Ice Cube just a week ago talking

00:30:22.720 about how great Louis Farrakhan is? I mean, on the left, they seem to do no gatekeeping,

00:30:27.680 and you can get away with it all the time. On the right, we seem to have to do gatekeeping.

00:30:32.400 Again, it's one of those asymmetries. But I think the simplest way to answer your question is,

00:30:37.040 I've talked to all sorts of interesting people. I never treat anybody differently. And that's going

00:30:42.160 to come with some risk. And if some of them weren't perfect, you're not going to believe this,

00:30:46.720 but I'm not a perfect human. Well, and also the guilt by association,

00:30:50.320 this happens all the time in Canada. So, you know, there's a very controversial

00:30:55.040 sort of far right person named Faith Goldie, you might have heard of her. And, you know,

00:30:58.720 before she went sort of far right or alt right, she used to be sort of more like a mainstream

00:31:03.040 Catholic conservative, and she would do a lot of events and that kind of thing. And so a lot of

00:31:06.720 people have pictures with her because she was like a famous sort of conservative commentator.

00:31:10.560 And then all of a sudden, you know, she went too far, she crossed that line. And like you said,

00:31:14.640 the right does a good job of gatekeeping. So she started going down that alt right path,

00:31:18.800 talking about race and that kind of thing. And people cut her off, but it didn't matter because

00:31:23.040 the media and the left used all of that as sort of, you know, these horrible accusations saying,

00:31:28.320 well, if you once five years ago appeared at an event with Faith Goldie, that must mean that you're

00:31:32.880 a secret racist. And, and, and they play this horrible game. And it's like, you know, like exactly

00:31:38.160 to your point that the left just doesn't, doesn't do that. And, and also,

00:31:41.680 they extrapolate it. Well, they extrapolate it over time because sometimes you could talk to somebody

00:31:48.320 and then years later they do something and then they say, wait a minute, but you talk to them and

00:31:52.000 you say, well, well, I talked to them before they did that thing. And even that doesn't matter, right?

00:31:56.640 Well, the context doesn't matter. They don't, they don't care. They just want to use the photo as like,

00:32:01.120 here, this is evidence that you're, that you're done. And this is why we should cancel you.

00:32:04.960 You know, interesting. You, you mentioned Faith Goldie. I actually did meet her once. I don't

00:32:09.680 know much about her work truly. I don't know that I've ever read anything she's done. You know,

00:32:13.200 I've seen her come across Twitter every now and again, but one time I was at an airport,

00:32:17.040 I think I was in Canada, actually on tour with Jordan Peterson. I'm pretty sure that's when it was.

00:32:21.600 And a girl came up to me and told me what a big fan she was and blah, blah, blah,

00:32:25.040 and told me she's a YouTuber and whatever. And, and I, I'm pretty sure we took a selfie together.

00:32:31.840 She took the selfie. And then, uh, the tour manager who I was with said, oh, do you know

00:32:36.400 who that is? That's Faith Goldie. And now, again, I don't, I really don't know much about her. So

00:32:41.040 I'm not, I'm truly not even passing judgment on her, but I mentioned it because as you say this thing

00:32:45.360 about people taking pictures with each other and associating with each other, you know, people,

00:32:49.760 every time I go to the airport, someone takes a selfie with me. Every time I go to Whole Foods,

00:32:53.520 someone takes a selfie with me. The idea that you can be, uh, judged, uh, the totality of your life

00:32:59.760 can be judged by these things. Let's not forget Jordan Peterson took after all of the shows that

00:33:04.880 we would do, he would do a meet and greet. You know, if you paid extra, you could take a picture

00:33:08.240 with him and get a signed book. He did thousands and thousands of pictures. All you do is shake

00:33:15.200 his hand, take a picture, walk away. That's it. You can't talk. You can't even ask him a question

00:33:19.120 because they have to just keep it moving. You may remember that, uh, when there was the Christchurch

00:33:23.760 shooting in New Zealand, um, you know, which was a shooting at the, at the mosque there,

00:33:29.680 it turns out that a few weeks before there was a guy who took a picture with Jordan and it said

00:33:34.960 something to the effect on the shirt, you know, I'm against Islam because I'm for women. I'm for

00:33:39.280 gay people, blah, blah, blah. And then, uh, Cambridge university decided to end their relationship

00:33:46.320 with Jordan where he was going to study the Bible, uh, which was one of his true. I never saw him

00:33:52.320 happier than the day he told me that he got that. Uh, he was going to be like an adjunct professor

00:33:56.960 sort of thing there. And he was gonna be able to learn there for six months and he was going to

00:34:00.240 take some time off. He was thrilled because he took a picture with a guy that it had some words on his

00:34:05.520 shirt. They ended that relationship. Um, think about, he took so many thousands of pictures.

00:34:11.200 The idea that he even read that guy's shirt or even saw it is just absolutely bananas.

00:34:16.160 Well, now that I know that picture of you and Faith Goldie is out there, Dave, I think,

00:34:20.480 you know, you should be careful because that could, uh, get you in trouble. Next time you come to

00:34:23.920 Canada, you know, you've done, you've done so many, uh, you've done so many interviews with Canadians.

00:34:28.480 I was just thinking about it because you've had obviously Jordan Peterson. Uh, I know you,

00:34:32.720 you did a sit down once with Lauren Southern, uh, Lizzie Shepard, who I work with and she was on your

00:34:37.920 show. Uh, who else? Stefan Molyneux, Canadian, Yasmin Mohamed, uh, Janice Fiamenko, who's awesome.

00:34:43.920 I've worked with her as well. So, oh, and of course I can't forget Maxime Bernier, who's the one who actually

00:34:49.040 introduced us and helped set up this interview. So what, what is it about Canadians that, uh,

00:34:53.680 you know, there's so many interesting, uh, conversations to be had. What, uh, what do

00:34:57.680 you think about Canada and why do you have so many Canadian guests?

00:35:00.480 You know, it's a good question and I've thought about it a little bit. And when,

00:35:03.360 when I did the tour with Jordan, obviously, you know, his adopted hometown is Toronto because he

00:35:07.440 was a professor at University of Toronto. He's from, uh, Calgary or Saskatchewan.

00:35:11.840 Northern Alberta. Yeah. Western, Western Canada. Right. Um, so we spent a lot of time in Canada

00:35:20.240 and I always found the Canadian audience and I've obviously been to Canada on family vacations.

00:35:25.600 And over the years I've, I've been to, I did the Calgary comedy festival years ago and I've been to

00:35:30.000 Banff and I've been to Toronto and Montreal and the rest of it. There's something about Canadians that

00:35:34.880 I've always liked. I don't, well, first off Canadians generally are very friendly. I find Canadians are

00:35:40.640 friendly. There's a, there's a service almost like a little bit of a softness there. I don't

00:35:45.200 mean that in a negative way, like just a niceness there. Maybe it's cause you guys have, you know,

00:35:50.240 a lot of space without that many people. You can breathe a little bit more, something like that.

00:35:54.240 Uh, but I found the Canadian audiences to be really, really fun. Um, did you happen to see any

00:36:00.400 of the shows that I did with Jordan by any chance? So I didn't though, but I will say I saw you do a

00:36:04.320 standup show in San Jose a couple of years ago. Um, but that wasn't with Jordan. That was just you,

00:36:08.800 I think you were on your standup tour and my husband and I went and saw you. It was nice.

00:36:13.200 Actually, do you know what? He, he, he got one of your t-shirts. You, you were doing this thing

00:36:16.640 where you were asking people how they ranked on some kind of a hierarchy and, and he shouted something

00:36:22.240 out and then you, you threw him a t-shirt. So he, yeah, yeah, I do. I do. You know, we do like a,

00:36:26.960 an oppression hierarchy and I get the whole audience to yell, you know, what, what's your oppression? And

00:36:31.440 it ends up being hilarious because people come up with funny, funny things. The best one that I ever heard

00:36:35.920 was a woman said her oppression is that she's one inch taller than officially being called a midget.

00:36:42.720 And thus, uh, she is oppressed because of that, because she cannot get whatever benefits might,

00:36:49.120 might come with that. But in any event, I, I mentioned, uh, the tour with Jordan because

00:36:54.320 in Canada, one of the jokes that I would always ask, you know, we did the Q and A together at the end

00:36:59.040 and usually the audience would submit questions. But one of the things that would often come up

00:37:03.360 would be, will Jordan ever run for prime minister of Canada? And the, just by asking the question,

00:37:10.080 the crowd would go bananas, you know, please begging him and applauding and screaming. And he

00:37:15.200 would have some funny, funny responses to that. But I, I just think, well, look, Canadians are known for

00:37:19.840 a great sense of humor, you know, uh, so much great comedy. And some of the comedians that we think

00:37:24.880 in America, we think of as American comedians, you know, like John Candy and Rick Moranis and

00:37:30.000 a lot of the SCTV guys, I mean, that was a Canadian venture. Basically, uh, there, there's

00:37:34.640 just such a, a legendary feeling of comedy and goodness from Canada. Yeah. I've always loved

00:37:40.160 Canada. Well, that's great. And hopefully we'll have you, we'll have you up and you can do some

00:37:44.800 more events once this crazy coronavirus thing, uh, listen, when I, when I get up to Canada,

00:37:50.240 I'm building the wall so nobody else can come in. Well, I want to talk about your book because I,

00:37:55.760 first of all, I think it's one of the best names for a book I've seen. And it seems so relevant.

00:38:00.240 This time I got a copy behind you there called don't burn this book, thinking for yourself in

00:38:04.640 an age of unreason. So I think part of the book is about your personal journey going from the left

00:38:10.000 and leaving the left and why you did that. Uh, but you're also talking about how rare it is for

00:38:15.280 people to think of for themselves. I think you might've coined the term, the regressive left.

00:38:19.920 I don't know if you coined it or you certainly popularized it. I'd never heard of it, uh,

00:38:23.520 until watching your videos and you, you really kind of helped cement the idea that, okay, wow,

00:38:27.600 the left is actually really close-minded and doesn't really allow the free sort of liberal

00:38:32.880 discussion that you think liberals are supposed to promote. So, so tell us a little bit about

00:38:38.000 the book and, and what led you to writing this book at this time?

00:38:41.280 Yeah. Well, for the record, Majid Nawaz, who's a former guest of the Rubin Report and, and author and,

00:38:46.800 uh, British, uh, radio personality, he's the one that first came up with the phrase regressive left.

00:38:53.040 He had mentioned it a couple of times on Twitter. I was the one that sort of popularized it because I

00:38:56.560 started talking about it on my show all the time and it really, the phrase, oh, they're not

00:39:01.840 progressive. They're regressive. They're not for moving forward because moving forward would be for

00:39:07.120 equality for everybody, not equity, uh, meaning equality of opportunity, not quality of outcome.

00:39:13.280 They're actually moving backwards because they're viewing us based on our group characteristics. And

00:39:18.080 that actually is bigotry. So I, I credit Majid in the, in the book for it, because a lot of people do

00:39:23.760 think that I came up with the phrase regressive left, by the way, I just heard Rudy Giuliani say

00:39:27.680 it yesterday at the white house. And I thought, wow, that that's pretty good. Maybe, uh, maybe that

00:39:32.000 did trickle up somewhere there. Um, look, the Genesis of the book and the idea behind the book is that

00:39:39.120 although I lay out all of my political positions, every, every position that I have, the point is not

00:39:45.280 to make you say, oh, you must take these exact positions to be a good person or to be a classical

00:39:52.000 liberal or something like that. The idea is think for yourself, really, really think through why

00:39:58.720 are you pro-life or pro-choice? Really think through whether you think there should be universal

00:40:04.640 healthcare, really think through what does sensible foreign policy mean? Um, you know,

00:40:10.160 like a simple one like that, like, you know, there's this idea, if you listen to the lefties,

00:40:14.240 it's like, oh, no war, there should be no war. There should be no military industrial complex,

00:40:18.960 but well, yeah, we all would love peace all the time, but just because you say you're for peace,

00:40:23.920 that doesn't mean that there are no bad guys out there. So you have to, you have to talk about

00:40:28.720 things in a complex way. So I believe in a very strong military, not because I'm pro-war. I want

00:40:34.880 America to be the strongest nation in the world. So people know they cannot bring war to us. So they

00:40:39.680 take us seriously. That's called deterrence. I mean, this isn't my idea. This is an idea that has been

00:40:45.600 churned through literally for thousands of years. Why do you, why do you have a strong army? Why do

00:40:49.840 you have a strong castle? Why do you have a moat? These are things to protect yourself. Um, but, but

00:40:55.600 again, the left is really good at coming up with these slogans that you kind of think it's right.

00:41:00.160 And what I want people to do is go, oh, it's not for, you know, free college. Okay. Yeah. That does

00:41:05.760 sound sort of nice, but is it that they really want everyone to get a full holistic education or is it that

00:41:11.600 they want everyone to be brainwashed into the stuff that they think? We know that something

00:41:16.240 like 90% of, uh, college professors are lefties. Well, what a great place to send people if you

00:41:22.720 want to indoctrinate them into your ideology, Bernie Sanders. So it is pretty sweet on top of the fact

00:41:27.440 that of course it is not free. So I, I just want people to think seriously about these things. And if

00:41:32.560 at the end your conclusions on a couple of specific policy issues are different than mine,

00:41:38.480 that's a okay with me. Well, one of the points you make in your book is that there are good people

00:41:44.800 on both sides that come to their beliefs in a good hearted way. Uh, but you feel, or you think

00:41:50.720 that the, that the right is more willing to engage and discuss, especially in good faith or your

00:41:56.000 experience has been, whereas the left is sort of unwilling to, and you kind of see that. Like,

00:42:00.560 I think Ben Shapiro has had like an open invitation to debate all kinds of different left-wing people

00:42:05.280 and very few ever take him up on the offer. And you know, increasingly the left-wing people don't

00:42:11.680 even want to be seen on the same stage or in the same platform as conservatives because they think

00:42:15.840 that their ideas are, are truly evil. So how can people on the right engage and have these open

00:42:22.320 conversations if the left is unwilling to, to discuss things with us? Well, it's a tough question

00:42:27.440 because I don't know that there's really a good answer other than we have to keep putting our best

00:42:32.640 foot forward. We have to keep turning the other cheek, but also not becoming abuse victims. You

00:42:38.880 know, um, you're right that in many, many cases, lefties are now refusing to talk to conservatives

00:42:46.000 at all because they have decided that all of their ideas are so evil, inherently racist and patriarchal

00:42:52.880 and everything else that that's their excuse for not having to defend their ideas. Um, and by the way,

00:42:59.280 that is much worse on the left than the right. It just is. I know everybody wants to say, oh,

00:43:05.040 or not everybody. I know a lot of people want to say, oh, the side, they're equally bad. The left

00:43:09.440 is just as bad as the right. The rights is just as bad as the left. The Republicans are just as bad

00:43:13.440 as Democrats. That is just, that's just not possible. They have completely different views on things.

00:43:19.360 That doesn't mean that one is inherently better than the other, but they're probably not exactly equal,

00:43:24.640 right? Like that's just not even possible that they're just equally good and equally bad. If they have

00:43:28.960 completely separate views of the world right now, it happens to be the right is more open-minded.

00:43:34.240 I have debated gay marriage on my show with Ben Shapiro, who has a religious interpretation of

00:43:39.520 marriage. I'm obviously for gay marriage. I've debated the death penalty. I'm, I'm pro I'm against

00:43:45.920 the death penalty. Dennis Prager is for the death penalty. Um, I've debated all sorts of things, uh,

00:43:52.800 legalization of drugs. I'm not for legalizing all drugs. I'm for legalizing marijuana and psychedelics,

00:43:58.560 but Michael Malice has been on my show. He's for debate, uh, legalizing all of those things.

00:44:02.720 It is very hard to find leftists that you can debate with that at the end will

00:44:06.800 shake your hand and say, okay, I agree to disagree on the, on the right right now.

00:44:10.400 There's plenty of opportunity to do that. And I'll keep talking to those people.

00:44:14.240 Well, I think part of the reason that the right has this, uh, openness to debating is that we finally

00:44:19.680 have, uh, our own platforms. Like I think you, especially in the last like 20, 30 years, the

00:44:25.680 media has become increasingly left and there aren't as many spaces for conservatives and right wingers,

00:44:31.280 which is why new media, new, new kind of like independent media outlets. And even, you know,

00:44:37.040 your, your, your show provides a platform where you can actually have long form discussions and

00:44:42.080 open-ended discussions, which helps people realize that, you know, there, there's more to

00:44:47.840 conservatism than just the sort of slogans or like, you know, thinking that conservatives hate

00:44:54.000 gay people and they hate women and they, they love war and whatever else, the sort of bumper sticker.

00:44:59.360 So, so it sort of has been shows like yours that has enabled really in-depth conversations and, and,

00:45:06.160 and flushing out of ideas. So since, since you left the left and came over to the right,

00:45:12.560 do you consider yourself a conservative? Have you changed your mind on any specific issues at all

00:45:17.280 since you've sort of come out as being a classical liberal or someone who's no longer on the left?

00:45:22.640 Yeah. Well, I would say the one thing people ask me this a lot, I would say most of the

00:45:26.720 fundamental principles that I always believed in equality. I mean, that was the type of liberalism

00:45:31.760 that I was taught in my family. So I always believed in that. And again, the left now is not for equality,

00:45:37.680 they're for equity. Equality is equality under the law. The law says we should all be treated equally,

00:45:43.520 regardless of our race, gender, sexual orientation, and all of those things. Of course, I'm for that.

00:45:48.880 But they've now become about equity that they want to rejigger everything. So we'll have X amount of

00:45:53.600 black people as this and X amount of gay people as this and this, this. And that is actually anti-human

00:45:59.200 because it removes the individual. It just says, oh, you are the sum of your parts. You're, you're,

00:46:03.920 you're black. Well, we know what to do with you. You're gay. We know what to do with you. We're,

00:46:07.680 you're a woman. We know what to do with you.

00:46:10.080 I would say that the one thing that I've absolutely shifted on for sure is economics.

00:46:14.080 So I'm way more libertarian economically. That's why I'm a low taxes guy. I'm a state's rights guy.

00:46:19.440 I want to do everything possible to make small business flourish. So for sure, I've, I've moved

00:46:25.280 to the right on that. Most of the other things that I argue for, I think actually are classically

00:46:32.000 liberal positions. But I, you know, at the same time, I always say defending my liberal positions

00:46:36.800 is becoming a, or defending my liberal principles is becoming a conservative position. So, uh, I don't

00:46:44.080 want to blow it yet, but my next book, uh, we just signed the deal and the title will be announced,

00:46:48.880 uh, probably next week or the week after. And at that time, uh, you will be able to ask me if I

00:46:55.360 consider myself a conservative. How about that?

00:46:57.360 Okay. Well, that's exciting. Congratulations on the next book. I think, I think people are still

00:47:03.280 excited about this book, but that's great. One of the other things in, in don't burn this book you

00:47:07.680 talk about is, you know, don't check your privilege, check your facts. One of the issues I have with

00:47:12.240 debating left, even just like we had our Canada Day celebrations and I was posting very unabashedly

00:47:18.960 patriotic Canadian messages. And I was getting a little bit of hate both from the left and the right,

00:47:23.600 because you know, the right hate the prime minister right now. And there's a lot of sort of animosity

00:47:28.800 towards central Canada, especially from out West, Alberta, they have very reasonable criticisms of

00:47:34.720 the government and their picture, but, but on the left they'll say, well, Canada is this oppressive

00:47:40.240 colonial, uh, you know, even on the one day a year where we're supposed to be patriotic,

00:47:45.760 put our differences aside and just love our country. Uh, you know, they're obsessed with

00:47:50.320 looking at every negative aspect of Canada and they'll just say, oh, you know, check your privilege,

00:47:54.720 Candace, like your privilege. That's why you think that it's like to, to sort of write off your idea,

00:48:00.000 like, like to just say like your privilege, therefore your view doesn't count. It's like,

00:48:03.600 well, what about my experiences? What about my knowledge? What about my understanding of history?

00:48:07.040 What, you know, I've, I've traveled around, I've seen a lot of things. I'm not some privileged person

00:48:11.360 living in a bubble that has no idea what's going on in the rest of the world, but they throw that line out

00:48:16.320 there and it sort of, you know, paralyzes you because you're kind of like, what can you even

00:48:20.880 say back to that? It's like, yeah, sure. I'm privileged. Of course I am. I live a good life

00:48:24.800 and made good decisions and that's that. But how do you, how do you combat that? And what,

00:48:29.280 what do you mean by that? When you say, you know, check your facts, don't just check your privilege.

00:48:32.720 Yeah. Well, check your facts is first, just know what you're, when you're entering an argument,

00:48:38.080 know what you're talking about, know what you're talking about, know,

00:48:41.040 have some data, have some talking points in the, in the right sense of talking points so that not

00:48:47.120 everything you say is just based on feelings. Oh, I want to help poor people. So we have to give

00:48:53.680 more money to programs. Well, that does sort of sound right. But then if you look at the data,

00:48:58.880 once you give people all of these benefits, you, you keep them generationally in a, in trapped in

00:49:05.040 a cycle of poverty. So you should know some statistics related to that. And in this chapter,

00:49:09.280 I lay out a lot of statistics, uh, related to, to gun stats and to, uh, poverty and a whole slew of

00:49:15.200 other things, the wage gap and a bunch of other things. Um, but when I say don't check your privilege,

00:49:22.240 look, when people talk about white privilege or cisgender privilege or straight privilege,

00:49:27.680 these are all nonsensical terms that eliminate you as the individual. Candace, I've only known you for

00:49:34.320 half hour or so. You strike me as very thoughtful, decent person. I know nothing about your

00:49:39.120 upbringing, whether your parents are married or whether you came from a broken home or whether

00:49:44.000 you were born poor or born rich, or whether you were, uh, maybe addicted to drugs at one time in

00:49:50.480 your life or the, uh, the litany of things that, that have led you to this moment. I know nothing

00:49:56.640 about it other than I can get a vague sense from one conversation of who you are. And it's, it seems to

00:50:02.560 be a good person who is thoughtful and interesting, right? That's the best I can do at this moment. And

00:50:08.160 after we do this, hopefully I'll know you more and then we can go from there, right?

00:50:12.160 This idea that we should judge people, white privilege. So let me get this straight. White

00:50:17.120 privilege exists. And if you're white, you have privilege by your birth color. So you're telling

00:50:22.320 me that all of the poor people that grow up in meth addicted families in the middle of the country on,

00:50:26.880 on opiates and a whole slew of other stuff, um, that, you know, their teeth are falling out and they're

00:50:32.480 in crime and poverty and all these, they're privileged. They're privileged because of that.

00:50:38.800 I don't believe that. Uh, that isn't to say that some level of discrimination doesn't exist,

00:50:43.920 but we should also acknowledge that at this point, you know, we're almost at the point where the left

00:50:48.800 will scream about systemic racism, which doesn't exist, meaning that there's no racism in the system.

00:50:53.920 There might be individually racist people, but if you, you can't show me a law in the United States that,

00:50:59.440 that is racist towards people, if that, if such a, we did have laws, right? We had Jim Crow laws.

00:51:05.040 We got rid of them. Uh, if such a law existed now, I would be for getting rid of that law.

00:51:10.960 Um, but in many ways there's, you have almost every privilege by being a minority now, because

00:51:16.800 most likely you will get that job instead of the white person. So in 30 years or something,

00:51:22.400 when white people are a minority in the United States, are we going to now have

00:51:26.560 minor, you know, brown privilege and then white people should have laws that pick them up? I mean,

00:51:31.200 none of it makes any sense, but again, it's one of those things. It just sort of sounds right. Yes.

00:51:36.640 White privilege, straight privilege, and it's all nonsense. There's, there's one privilege here and

00:51:42.320 that's you are born in the United States, man, you got a chance that almost everyone in the world

00:51:47.760 would love to trade for. That's the privilege.

00:51:50.320 Well, and that's, that's why if Canada and the U.S. had open border immigration policies,

00:51:55.280 our countries would be completely overrun because obviously people from all over the world,

00:51:58.720 different skin colors, different cultures, different ethnicities, they want to be here.

00:52:02.480 They want to be in the U.S. They want to be in Canada. And that should tell you something

00:52:07.040 about our society. But, but the left, I guess, just doesn't really see it that way. And I think-

00:52:12.880 Look, they tell you two things at once. They tell you how horrible we are and how,

00:52:17.680 you know, we have a genocidal maniac is in charge of the country. And what do they also tell you?

00:52:22.800 We want open borders. Why would you want open borders so that other people can share in the

00:52:28.080 horror of this thing? You think Trump's keeping anybody in the United States? If you want to leave,

00:52:33.040 go. Hitler didn't let people leave, right? He, he subjugated and then exterminated his own citizens.

00:52:40.160 You think Trump is stopping anyone that wants to leave the United States? I'm pretty sure

00:52:44.480 he'll buy you a ticket if you want to leave. Well, and that's the big difference between

00:52:48.640 Trump's wall and the Berlin wall, which the Berlin wall was designed to keep people in. And

00:52:53.040 I also know, interestingly, that, that wall was known as the anti-fascist, it was anti-fascist wall.

00:52:58.320 So, so that was- Clever, clever. That was anti-fascism back then. And here you have people,

00:53:04.320 you know, wanting to get into the country so badly that they're willing to scale walls and, and climb over

00:53:10.400 it. Uh, one of the things I'm most concerned of right now, Dave is just the mob mentality. And,

00:53:16.240 you know, your book is about being an original thinker, being a free thinker and standing up

00:53:21.200 against sort of political correctness. But, you know, just over the last six weeks or so, we've

00:53:26.240 seen the, the protests over the, uh, George Floyd death, which I think almost everyone I've ever heard

00:53:32.480 speaking about it, condemns it as being a horrible act of police brutality. I haven't heard anyone defend

00:53:38.160 the police officer. So we were all in agreement. We had a moment of potential unity where we could

00:53:43.200 all just say, you know, police brutality is wrong, killing an unarmed person, regardless of what color

00:53:48.160 they are is wrong. Uh, but, but suddenly the mob sort of shifted and it turned into, you know, railing

00:53:54.960 against capitalism and society and trying to tear apart America. And you had these sort of Black Lives

00:54:01.120 Matter edicts that everyone had to repeat. And if you didn't, you, you got fired or you risked being

00:54:05.920 excommunicated. I think it had a chilling effect where conservatives just didn't really even want

00:54:11.600 to say anything. They didn't want to comment. They didn't want to stand up to it. They didn't want to

00:54:15.200 mention it. And I think that was to me, the worst aspect of it is seeing how, you know, how people

00:54:21.120 get afraid of, of speaking their mind because there are real life consequences. And a lot of people

00:54:26.560 were getting canceled, not just on the right, but on the center. And even on the left, we've, we've seen

00:54:32.400 countless examples of it. So I just want to get your take on what's happening culturally at this

00:54:37.200 moment in time and what, what steps we can sort of take to, to find some normalcy.

00:54:42.320 Yeah. Well, first off, um, you know, where I live in Los Angeles, you know, when, when we had that week

00:54:47.920 where there were protests and violence everywhere, you know, there's still some ongoing protests,

00:54:51.440 but that one particular week, a few days after, uh, George Floyd's murder, which by the way,

00:54:56.800 you're completely right. Everyone across the political spectrum condemned. I was on Sean Hannity's

00:55:02.560 show two days after or the day after, and he absolutely was condemning it and is still condemning

00:55:08.080 it. This was, this was a no brainer for everybody. I haven't heard anyone across the political spectrum

00:55:14.320 really say that, that this should have happened or that this was just, or something like that. So

00:55:18.320 you're right. There was an opportunity, but what's interesting is, um, when, when LA was being destroyed,

00:55:24.320 um, I drove down one of the main roads here where all the businesses were, were barricaded up and,

00:55:31.680 you know, wood in front of the glasses, big panels, and they all say Black Lives Matter,

00:55:36.240 peace, unity, dah, dah, dah. And it's like, if you really think about what's going on here,

00:55:40.480 what's happening? Is it true that every single store for a mile long is for Black Lives Matter,

00:55:48.400 meaning the organization of Black Lives Matter and really agrees with these people politically,

00:55:53.280 or are they hostages? Are they hostages who say, oh, if I don't write this slogan on my

00:56:02.720 cardboard or, or wood cut out in front of my window, because they're going to break my window,

00:56:06.960 they're going to burn down my store. And we obviously know what the answer is. That's not

00:56:11.360 to say some of the business owners don't believe in, in the organization of Black Lives Matter, but

00:56:16.720 all of these people that are talking about love and tolerance and they're writing these slogans on their

00:56:19.920 doors. What you're saying is, please, please don't destroy my stuff. And it's like, are those,

00:56:26.560 are those the good guys? Are the, are the good guys the ones that make you do that? That sounds

00:56:30.480 far more like a mafia tactic than some sort of peaceful, loving, diverse, inclusive, uh, group of

00:56:36.960 people. Right? So, uh, my feeling right now is that between what happened with COVID and being locked in

00:56:44.080 our houses and then, uh, the economic fallout of that, you know, right before all of that,

00:56:50.800 what was happening in America? Well, we were going through the impeachment thing, which turned out

00:56:54.080 to be a sham and Russia was a sham and Ukraine was a sham and we didn't go into world war three when

00:56:59.280 we assassinated the Iranian general Soleimani and we survived net neutrality. They have taken us on such

00:57:06.960 a, um, adventure, an adventure in made up stuff that now we're at a point where it's hard to gauge

00:57:15.200 what is real. And I think a lot of people are walking around going, well, we must live in this

00:57:20.400 deeply racist society, but let's not forget at Trump's state of the union, which was back in

00:57:25.120 January. Although it's not very long ago, he was talking about the lowest black unemployment ever

00:57:29.600 and who sat there with their arms like this, the congressional black caucus and all the Democrats.

00:57:34.960 I thought we should be for low black unemployment, but again, they want to take him out at all costs.

00:57:41.040 And I'm worried that over the rest of the summer and then leading into the fall for the election,

00:57:45.680 they're going to do everything and everything they can to tank the economy, to make sure we're in the

00:57:49.920 middle of a race war or God knows what. And it'll be on us. It'll be on the calmer heads to make sure

00:57:56.320 that they don't win. It almost feels like the country is just so divided. I say, I say the country,

00:58:02.400 but I think you're in the same situation in the US that we're in Canada, that the society,

00:58:07.120 the culture is so divided where you have people on the left who it almost seems like they don't

00:58:12.800 want to reconcile. They don't want to find a middle ground. They don't want to find unity. They want to

00:58:17.520 destroy the other side. And I think that sort of goes with your thinking on like the left has become

00:58:24.000 very regressive. They've become very hateful, very small minded in a way. Do you think that there is a

00:58:30.400 path towards continued unity? Like how can we have a society together if the left is so dead set on

00:58:38.080 stripping conservatives of any positions of power, stopping conservative thought, you know, getting

00:58:44.560 rid of it on university campuses, anytime there's a right wing thinker, having them canceled? I mean,

00:58:49.520 how can we, how can we possibly live in a society together and live in a country together when

00:58:53.680 there's such animosity towards one side? Well, I would say in a healthy society,

00:58:59.280 you want attention, a somewhat healthy tension between conservatism and liberalism, meaning

00:59:05.040 on the conservative side, you want to help. You want the idea that, oh, good things of the past

00:59:10.400 must be conserved, especially freedom and liberty. And then on the liberal side, you want, oh, but there

00:59:16.400 are new horizons where we can hopefully expand freedom. And you want that tension to be pushing and

00:59:22.240 pulling and constantly battling back and forth. You actually don't want, you know, you hear people

00:59:27.600 say, oh, we want to destroy the other side. I don't think in a healthy society, you want that because

00:59:33.920 once you destroy the other side, well, now there's nothing really left for you to check your own

00:59:39.200 excesses. And we're all just humans and our systems are made by humans and we could all go off the deep

00:59:44.240 end with any idea. Um, so to watch the left go bananas like this, I think is deeply dangerous

00:59:51.360 because there will be nothing if an, if the left snaps in half and just goes, I mean, they're there

00:59:57.040 already in effect. Um, then there's going to be a vacuum of balance and you do want some level of

01:00:03.840 balance. I think the only way we get out of this that I can possibly foresee if we're going to remain

01:00:10.480 Western free countries. Um, and, and there are ways I can envision that not being the case in the

01:00:16.400 future, but if we are to remain free countries, the thing that must happen in effect, the democratic

01:00:23.680 party in the United States, and, and, and I don't want to talk about this purely from a Canadian

01:00:28.800 standpoint, cause I'm not an expert in Canadian politics, but what, from what I know, the labor

01:00:32.640 party in, uh, in Canada and the labor party in the UK, liberal, liberal party. Oh, sorry. The liberal,

01:00:38.800 the liberal party in Canada and the labor party in the UK in effect, they must be destroyed,

01:00:45.280 not destroyed so that they'll never exist again, but they must be destroyed. So the bad ideas

01:00:50.720 will finally be purged. Now in the UK, their labor party did get destroyed. The, the Jeremy Corbyn

01:00:57.120 labor party got annihilated in the last elections. I think that is good for the future of the UK.

01:01:03.760 What is happening here? It's like Biden is the last firewall against the real

01:01:08.400 radicals taking over and Biden has dementia and, and a slew of other problems. Nobody knows what

01:01:13.040 he thinks about anything anymore because he's trying to pretend he's an old school Democrat

01:01:16.960 and then also trying to pander to the, to the far left base. That thing needs to be destroyed.

01:01:23.040 And by destroyed, I mean, is in, I mean, it's crazy for me to say this. I can't believe I'm saying this,

01:01:27.440 but I think Trump has to win in a landslide. And by the way, even if he wins in a landslide,

01:01:31.840 they're still going to revolt. I mean, they'll say the election was rigged. They're going to,

01:01:35.600 they're going to be violent on the streets and all that. But I think that perhaps what

01:01:39.440 would happen is after losing to Trump twice and getting crushed, I think it's possible then

01:01:45.920 that some of the old liberals will be like, no, no, no, no, no. We let the inmates run the asylum

01:01:51.680 and we have to rebuild a Phoenix could rise from the ashes. But if it goes the other way

01:01:57.920 and the lefties win and Biden's president, they will do everything in their power to destroy

01:02:03.040 conservatives forever through big tech, through whatever governmental agencies they can.

01:02:08.400 They will make sure that the ideas of conservatism will be treated as the ideas of Nazism. That is

01:02:13.520 insanely dangerous. And then I think hopefully you, you get through four years of Trump. And then after

01:02:21.440 that, I, what I see, what I see really is the hopeful thing on the horizon is that in 2024,

01:02:26.720 you're going to get a really interesting crop of Republicans. You won't need a Trump anymore because

01:02:30.720 you won't need the great wrecking ball anymore, but you'll get people like Dan Crenshaw and Nikki Haley

01:02:36.080 and Tim Scott, people that are moderate, interesting, conservative, you know, that,

01:02:41.600 that skew from conservative, more traditional conservatives, say like Nikki Haley to Dan

01:02:46.400 Crenshaw, who's a little more libertarian. And then you'll have a great debate amongst them.

01:02:50.160 And I think that gets us to sort of an American reset, but what could happen in the next four years

01:02:55.040 to get there? Only the Lord knows. Well, I, I just, I have to say,

01:03:00.480 because I was living in San Francisco when Trump was elected and when Trump first came on the scene,

01:03:04.480 I didn't like him at all. I thought he was just the wrong kind of conservative for the country. I

01:03:08.160 was sort of more of a Ted Cruz kind of person. And over time I came to appreciate Trump because I felt

01:03:13.520 like he made all of the wrong, he made all the right people angry. Like he, he, the left is going to

01:03:18.880 paint conservatives as being these horrible, hateful bigots, no matter what we do. So why not find someone who

01:03:24.480 could really push back and, and, you know, this no nonsense kind of approach. And, and, and then

01:03:30.240 when, when Trump won, obviously you're really surprised. I was in San Francisco. I remember

01:03:33.600 there was like a sense of terror and horror in the, in the city at the time and through with friends

01:03:38.400 and people that lived in my building and stuff like that. And I thought, you know, this is, this is kind

01:03:42.080 of what the country needs. They need to realize that just because all of their friends are huge

01:03:46.960 Hillary supporter, Hillary supporters and they're Democrats, you know, there are these other Americans who are

01:03:52.400 not influenced by CNN and not influenced by the media and they have their own values. And maybe

01:03:57.120 the left will kind of wake up and, and recognize that instead of just demonizing Trump, we should

01:04:02.000 try to get to know conservatives a little more. We should try to get to know our fellow countrymen.

01:04:05.840 And I think that, that, that was an optimistic take because obviously the reaction has been

01:04:11.840 completely negative and they haven't learned anything. In fact, they've gotten more fervent and

01:04:15.440 crazier and, and probably worse down that path.

01:04:17.760 Yeah. Which, which by the way, that gets to what we talked about earlier about how they base

01:04:21.280 everything on feelings. So when things don't go their way, they use that as proof, as opposed to

01:04:26.720 what a rational person would do. If things aren't going your way, you might reevaluate what you're

01:04:31.040 doing. That's what you would do in your life. They use failure as a, as a reason to double down on what

01:04:37.120 they think that they've, they've come to believe that failure is proof of all of the things that they

01:04:42.800 believe, which is a seriously dangerous thing. But, but, uh, Candace, you mentioned, you know,

01:04:46.800 living in San Francisco, you're in an apartment building. Okay. They, they all think Trump is evil.

01:04:50.160 Guess what? Trump has come for none of those people. Did Trump set, uh, pull any of those

01:04:54.320 people out of their apartments? I don't think so. Did Trump burn any of the buildings down in San

01:04:58.800 Francisco or in Los Angeles? I don't think so. Who was it? It's the lefties that are doing it.

01:05:04.160 You know, when they come one day for Bill Maher, when they come to Ellen DeGeneres's mansion,

01:05:09.440 when they come to Jimmy Kimmel's house, who's going to be burning down their, their houses

01:05:13.680 as rich people? Is it going to be the Trump supporters or is it going to be the lefties?

01:05:18.720 And I think everyone knows the truth and it's obviously the lefties.

01:05:22.720 Well, hopefully people will come around and have the same sort of transition that you've had to sort

01:05:27.840 of seeing the light. I wish that, uh, more people were as sort of open-minded and free thinking

01:05:33.040 as you, Dave. Now in, on our show on, uh, True North update, we're, we like to do a little bit

01:05:39.520 where we ask our insiders to submit questions. So we have a couple of questions from True North

01:05:44.000 insider club that, that they'd like to, they'd like to ask you. So Dave, this comes from Eric

01:05:48.720 and Nicola. They say, what would you like Donald Trump to read to become an, an ideologue? I know

01:05:54.400 Trump has been criticized for not really being conservative enough. So if you were advising Trump,

01:05:59.040 what would you, what would you like him to read or what would you like him to know to become more

01:06:02.000 conservative? Um, well, I don't know that I would want him to become a pure political ideologue. I

01:06:07.600 mean, I think his, his magic is actually what you just described, his ability to understand people,

01:06:12.880 as we were talking about earlier. I would say, I mean, this would be the same thing that I tell

01:06:16.800 everybody to read, which is he should read On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. I have a copy in my

01:06:21.280 nightstand. I mean, it's, you know, it's this thick. You can read it in an evening. It's pretty dense.

01:06:26.400 You're going to have to stop a couple of times and reread some chapters. But really I, I wish I,

01:06:30.960 if I wanted to know one thing about Trump a little bit more is I, I sense he has a great

01:06:35.520 understanding of people. I sense he loves America. He's brash. He's bold. He's an egomaniac. All of

01:06:40.720 those things. I wish I had a better understanding of, does he really understand what the principles

01:06:48.080 are that made us free? Like, I think he has a feeling for why America is great. Um, but I wonder,

01:06:55.040 does he really understand what individual rights are separation of powers, the philosophical

01:07:01.760 underpinnings of the things that led us to freedom in a weird way? I don't even know if it's that

01:07:06.880 important that he would read it because again, he is the battering ram that is saving these things.

01:07:11.840 So even for someone like you who liked Ted Cruz, who's, you know, a more constitutional conservative,

01:07:16.880 I can completely get on board that. There's no doubt in my mind that Trump is a far more effective

01:07:23.600 leader than say someone like Cruz would be because Cruz, uh, even though I believe he knows the

01:07:28.880 constitution could probably read half of it to you, you know, off the top of his head. Um,

01:07:33.760 I don't think he would be as effective as someone that could fight through the media,

01:07:38.080 fight through the BS and the nonsense where Trump could. Um, that being said, I think if Trump maybe

01:07:44.240 had a little bit better breadth of understanding of some of the core principles, it probably would be

01:07:49.920 good. It would probably be a net good. The thing I like about Trump though,

01:07:53.760 is that he seems to know his own limitations. So things I've heard from people who work in

01:07:57.360 the administration, that kind of thing is that he has good instincts and he'll sort of say,

01:08:01.600 you know, this is what I think about China and Hong Kong. And then he'll kind of just let the people,

01:08:05.520 let the, the top scholars and let the people running, you know, do their thing and enable them the

01:08:11.840 space needed. So, I mean, you know, I, I think that Trump is in a good position, but of course,

01:08:17.520 for me, I wish that he would just like give up Twitter. I wish that he would take,

01:08:22.160 he gives, he gives Twitter too much power. Like Twitter, Twitter is surviving and doing well

01:08:26.000 because of Trump. And I don't know that they really deserve that, that kind of, uh,

01:08:30.320 you know, treatment because of him. Yeah. I hear you on that, but you know,

01:08:33.520 it's a catch 22 because Trump accomplished the thing that nobody thought anyone could accomplish

01:08:39.440 by becoming president. So even though I agree with you in principle, like when I see him fighting with,

01:08:44.960 you know, um, uh, you know, what's his name on CNN, Jim Acosta or somebody it's like, man,

01:08:51.200 you're the president, like, let it be. But on the other hand, he was the one that figured out how

01:08:55.760 to use the system to become president when everyone said he couldn't. So I always, I'm like, ah, you know,

01:09:02.480 can we really tell him to ease up on it? Like we couldn't have done what he did. So it's a bit of a

01:09:07.200 catch 22, but I hear you. Yeah, you're right. If, if it's not broke, don't fix it. So let, let Trump be the

01:09:12.000 magical, crazy person that he is. And, and yeah, hopefully he can continue to do, to do good. Uh,

01:09:18.080 this one comes from Evan. He says, will the left ever turn back towards some sense of normalcy?

01:09:23.440 Do you think classical liberals will ever take back the democratic party?

01:09:27.360 Well, I mean, I would say we sort of answered that before where if these guys completely implode,

01:09:32.320 maybe a couple liberals wake up and there's a return to old school liberalism, you know,

01:09:37.200 more of a JFK who was a democratic president, ask not what your country can do for you,

01:09:41.600 ask what you can do for your country. That's the reverse, obviously. Then it's a 180 reverse,

01:09:45.920 actually, uh, uh, what Bernie Sanders says. I don't sense that there's in the short term,

01:09:51.280 any hope for that. If you, if you are a left leaning person, or if you're an old school liberal,

01:09:57.040 or you just want there to be a healthier other side, the best you can do is stay with the conservatives,

01:10:03.760 with the libertarians and, and within that construct fight for what you believe. So,

01:10:08.560 you know, I, I'm begrudgingly pro-choice. That's obviously one of the hardest

01:10:13.200 issues to talk about publicly. And for conservatives, it's like the biggest no,

01:10:16.880 no that they don't accept. And yet I'm able to debate that with Ben Shapiro and with Glenn Beck and

01:10:21.920 with many other people. And I'm not here to convince conservatives to be pro-choice. I'm truly not.

01:10:27.680 What I'm here to do is have those conversations with them so that they can understand where

01:10:32.400 some of the other people in the country, uh, where they lie politically or why they think

01:10:38.720 what they think. And you can, you have a chance to do that there. The chance that this thing can

01:10:42.880 be saved on the left. I just see no evidence of it. I see no evidence of it.

01:10:47.680 And it's good to know where people are coming from, because it does help you even improve your

01:10:51.200 own argument. If you, if you're actually able to sit down with someone who has a different view on

01:10:55.200 something so sort of sensitive. I mean, here in Canada, most conservatives have even just given

01:11:00.000 up on that issue because it's so divisive and the, you know, the, the, the meme that you hate women,

01:11:04.640 if you, if you don't believe in having unrestricted abortion laws, it's, it's, it's, it's effective.

01:11:10.240 And so people just sort of step back. And even now the people running for leader of the conservative

01:11:14.480 party, I don't think any of them, uh, are pro-life at this point. So, well, look, think about it this

01:11:19.200 way. Think about it this way. These people that say, okay, you can have eight month abortions.

01:11:22.880 It doesn't matter why you want an eight month abortion. You can have an eight month abortion. Well,

01:11:26.000 now generally those are the people who also will tell you that they're for gay people.

01:11:29.520 Now, when science is able to actually identify the sexuality of a child and now a Christian

01:11:35.120 conservative, forget Christian conservative, and anyone says they, oh my, I found out that

01:11:41.040 I'm eight months pregnant and my child is gay, but I don't want a gay child. I should be allowed to

01:11:44.640 have an abortion. The lefty is going to say yes. I don't know. They're going to have to pick.

01:11:48.400 Am I for gay people or am I for abortion? So you have to confront them with these ethical dilemmas.

01:11:54.640 And usually you'll watch their heads explode because they're not that good at, at thinking these things through.

01:11:58.640 Well, the, the boiler point ones are a lot easier. The, the slogans are easier than the actual.

01:12:04.240 You hate all women is always easier. Yeah.

01:12:06.720 It's easier. Okay. We've got a few more here. So Ryan asks, you've had your struggles with big

01:12:11.360 tech companies from patron to YouTube. How can we reign in left wing tech companies? And what is

01:12:17.360 the future for conservatives on these tech companies?

01:12:19.920 Yeah. It's, it's a big question we could do an hour on. I mean, in short, I would say I,

01:12:24.320 I fundamentally believe in competition. Uh, I started locals.com. We're building

01:12:30.640 digital homes for creators. You guys should be on there. We give you the tools to build a community

01:12:35.760 that you own the video, you own the audio, you own the user data. We have live chat. We're working

01:12:40.480 on live video streaming. We're not building a platform the way Twitter or YouTube is a platform.

01:12:45.360 We're building you a home. So rubin report.com is my digital home that I control all the information.

01:12:51.200 And it's, it's behind a paywall because I actually believe if you charge people a couple bucks,

01:12:55.200 they'll treat it a lot better. So we have no trolls or bots. And it's a pretty beautiful system

01:12:59.280 that, that we're building. And anyone can sign up to create a community for themselves at locals.com

01:13:03.360 or check out some of the people that are on locals. Um, but I also believe that, you know,

01:13:07.360 Trump probably did the right thing by, by rescinding some of the protections, um, that social media

01:13:12.640 companies have. I don't like the idea of government regulation, the idea that a government regulator,

01:13:17.360 uh, is going to understand how to regulate YouTube properly. That just seems crazy. You don't take one

01:13:22.240 big problem of big government and combine it with another big problem of big tech. Um, but if you

01:13:27.600 remove some of their protections, now that's probably good. Um, so we have a big battle to fight and in

01:13:32.640 many ways it may, the battle may be too far gone, but look, there are, there is hope, you know,

01:13:36.880 Parler seems to be gaining some, uh, some momentum right now. So anything's possible.

01:13:42.960 Are you on Parler yet?

01:13:44.880 I am now at Rubin report on Parler. I got my name. I think I've only sent out one message so far,

01:13:50.560 but I'm at least there and I'm just going to kind of hang out and, and we'll see what happens. But,

01:13:55.200 you know, Dan Bongino, who's one of the guys behind it, I just had a phone call with him yesterday.

01:13:59.040 And, and, uh, you know, I believe that there's many ways to skin a cat. So if Parler can do something

01:14:04.880 good and locals can do something good and somebody else can figure out something with blockchain and

01:14:09.600 we all can tackle this in a different way, look, David beat Goliath. So I think there's a chance

01:14:13.920 that Dave could be Google. I really do. Well, I hope so. Okay. We've got two more questions here.

01:14:18.480 This one's actually from my husband, Kaz. So he asks, he says, there's been an exodus of free thinkers

01:14:23.680 leaving both Northern California and the East coast for Los Angeles. You have Peter Thiel, Elon Musk,

01:14:28.960 Lucky Palmer. And then you also have these sort of, you know, conservative, uh, free thinkers,

01:14:33.920 Joe Rogan, Dennis Prager, the daily wired guys, et cetera. So why, why is everyone going to Los

01:14:38.720 Angeles and what's, what's making Los Angeles so special in terms of a sort of bastion of free

01:14:43.360 thinking? Yeah. It's funny because Shapiro was born here. So he's been here forever. Prager's

01:14:48.240 been here for quite some time. Um, Thiel did move here from San Francisco about five years ago. I think

01:14:54.000 a lot is back and forth, but mostly in LA. Um, I do sense that people are going to start leaving LA too,

01:14:59.200 because, um, you know, you've seen the riots and everything else. And our mayor is a super

01:15:03.680 progressive and all that on top of the fact that the taxes are crazy and everything else.

01:15:07.200 I think really what happened was San Francisco went so bananas with leftism that people decided

01:15:13.760 to leave. And the fact that Peter Thiel, who's a billionaire thought this is unsustainable here

01:15:18.640 for me to have a company to hire truly intellectually diverse people, as opposed to diverse,

01:15:24.560 uh, you know, their immutable characteristics, diverse of their diversity of their immutable

01:15:29.280 characteristics, um, that he said, I've got to get out of here. Uh, you know, we've become

01:15:33.680 pretty friendly and it's like, there is something brewing here. I would say, you know, center, right,

01:15:39.520 uh, in Los Angeles that I'm very happy to be part of. And, you know, a lot of people have been begging

01:15:43.920 me to move to Texas, but I want to stay and fight here for a little while and see if we can turn this

01:15:47.920 thing around. Well, good. I mean, California used to be Republican. It used to, you know, even not too long

01:15:53.200 ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor and there was, you know, a middle-class opportunity

01:15:58.880 for people to own a house. I know that just doesn't really exist in the Bay Area. It's so expensive

01:16:02.880 because of left-wing policies, but people don't really see that.

01:16:06.320 Exactly. That right-wing radical, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was once governor of California,

01:16:12.240 not too long ago. It's only about 10 years.

01:16:14.400 Well, it's crazy how fast, uh, Democrats can destroy a society, but it, it happens.

01:16:21.440 Okay. We've got the final question here, Dave, you, you voted for, and I think you endorsed,

01:16:26.160 uh, Gary Johnson in the 2016 election. Would, would you go for a libertarian or an independent

01:16:32.000 again, or do you think you're ready to, uh, jump on the Trump train and endorse Trump?

01:16:37.200 Um, so my thinking behind the Gary Johnson thing was that, you know, I had, first off,

01:16:40.640 I had had him on the show and I thought he was a totally nice guy. I admitted in the video that I did

01:16:45.200 where I said I was going to vote for him. Um, I admitted that he was not a great libertarian candidate.

01:16:50.560 You know, he wanted to force the baker to bake the cake for the gay wedding. That's just such

01:16:53.760 a reverse libertarian principle. He, you know, the Aleppo moment, he had a couple of really

01:16:57.680 terrible gaffes, but he was being ignored otherwise. So he only made news when he had a bad moment.

01:17:02.240 So I, I sympathize with that. And I think he's a decent guy. I just don't think he was a great

01:17:05.680 candidate. Although he was quite a good governor, uh, of New Mexico, actually. Um, as far as this year,

01:17:12.080 I will not vote for a third party this year because I, I can't, I, you know, at some level,

01:17:17.840 my public persona or existence has become too big that I can't tell people what I think for

01:17:23.600 a living all the time. And then, and then take the easy way out because the easy way out, of course,

01:17:27.760 would be, would be voting for the libertarian candidate. You know, Joe, uh, is it Joe Jorgensen

01:17:32.400 or Johnson? I'm, I'm blanking actually is the libertarian candidate. Uh, I think Jorgensen,

01:17:37.440 Joe Jorgensen. I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know. You're not even sure. That's fine. It's

01:17:41.200 America. It's American politics. You don't need to know, uh, until we invade, which is coming next

01:17:45.840 summer. Um, Joe Jorgensen, I think she's the libertarian candidate. I'm going to have her on the

01:17:49.920 show, but I know, you know, I know what the libertarian things she believes in, you know,

01:17:54.080 in effect, I see no way if you care about liberty or freedom or the constitution or not burning all our,

01:18:02.640 uh, burning down all of our institutions, destroying every monument, ransacking every

01:18:09.440 library and everything else. If you care about any of those things, I don't see how you could

01:18:13.120 vote for a Democrat, whether it was going to be Biden or whoever they're going to replace him with,

01:18:17.840 or whoever actually is the VP who will really be the president, because it's obviously not going to

01:18:22.480 be Biden or it's just the party leaders behind him that are, that are running the show. Um, so yes,

01:18:28.160 in effect, I see no way around voting for Trump, which by the way, uh, I think a lot of former

01:18:33.360 Democrats feel it's like, if think about it this way, if it's, if you voted for Trump in 2016,

01:18:39.680 is there any chance you're looking at the other side right now and going, yes, that seems right.

01:18:44.240 I'm going to vote for them. You may not be thrilled with everything Trump did. You may have lost your job

01:18:48.480 because of COVID. You may be upset about all sorts of things, but I can't imagine someone who voted for

01:18:53.840 Trump saying, oh, I'm going to vote for senile Biden and the Marxists. It just doesn't make sense.

01:19:00.160 What I could see is a lot of good people going, you know, I begrudgingly voted for Hillary or even

01:19:05.520 I really liked Hillary, but the Democrats now are completely bananas. And I don't believe

01:19:10.720 in this socialist lunacy. Nobody's going to stand up for it. Certainly not Biden.

01:19:14.640 So I'm going to kind of hold my nose and vote for Trump. So I think, you know, it's a little hard

01:19:20.400 to say still, we got months to go and there's going to be a wacky summer and COVID and everything else.

01:19:24.720 So it's hard to predict. But I see no way around voting for Trump at this point.

01:19:30.480 Well, Dave, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time and coming on the show. And hopefully

01:19:36.720 when the lockdowns end, we'll get you up and you can do some, some kind of a book tour or something

01:19:41.040 in Canada. Cause I know you have a lot of fans up here. A lot of people who love your show and love

01:19:45.520 the fact that you had Maxine Bernier on and gave him a bit of a platform, but also

01:19:50.240 obviously that you're, you know, you're, you're, you're so open to talking to Canadians and also

01:19:54.400 you have such interesting guests and you're constantly sort of pushing things forward.

01:19:58.080 So we appreciate all you do. You've got lots of fans up here and we appreciate your time today.

01:20:03.440 Candace, thank you very much. I've enjoyed talking to you. Tell Mad Max that I said hello,

01:20:07.280 and yes, I will get to Canada hopefully sooner rather than later.

01:20:11.840 All right. Take care, Dave.

Juno News - July 09, 2020

Ep 10 ｜ Dave Rubin ｜ The radical left’s crusade against western civilization

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