Rebel News Podcast


Texas judge sentences hair salon owner to prison for working. Will we see that in Canada？


Summary

In Texas, a woman opened her hair salon because her staff needed the work. The judge didn t like that and called in the salon owner and said, apologize to the politicians you're disagreeing with and call yourself selfish, or go to prison. Well, she wouldn't say it. And she was sent to jail.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. In Texas, a woman opened her hair salon because her staff needed the work.
00:00:07.240 They were starving, she said. Well, the judge didn't like that and called in the salon owner
00:00:11.600 and said, apologize to the politicians you're disagreeing with and call yourself selfish
00:00:19.420 or go to prison. Well, she wouldn't say it. And she was sent to prison. I'll give you the full
00:00:27.700 updates. I'll show you the video of how it went down in the court, and I'll tell you what the
00:00:31.920 governor, attorney general, and others have to say. That's ahead. Before I let you hear that,
00:00:37.620 can I invite you, please, to become a premium subscriber? Go to rebelnews.com. It's eight
00:00:41.560 bucks a month. You get the video version of the podcast. I hope you do because I want you to see
00:00:47.200 what this woman sounded and looked like, and the judge, too, in the court. Okay, here's the podcast.
00:00:57.700 Tonight, a Texas judge sentences a hair salon owner to a week in prison for working. Will we see
00:01:15.700 that in Canada, too? It's May 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail
00:01:22.940 when you're a biggest carbon consumer? I know. There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give
00:01:28.200 them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my
00:01:33.800 right to do so. Let me show you a video from a courthouse in Dallas, Texas. A woman named Shelly
00:01:44.580 Luther owns a salon in Dallas called Alamode. She was dying, but not from the virus, but from
00:01:50.540 the over-the-top political reaction to the virus that had shut down her business and was threatening
00:01:56.140 to throw her entire staff into deep poverty. That's what I mean by dying. So I know this is
00:02:02.300 shocking. She let her staff come in and cut some hair. It was voluntary all around. Her staff
00:02:07.800 desperately wanted to do it. Her customers obviously wanted to, but the police came and dragged
00:02:12.700 her to court where a hard left-wing judge named Eric Moyet sentenced her to prison.
00:02:18.180 But not for being open during the pandemic, but for not apologizing to the politicians who had
00:02:26.040 shut her down, for not apologizing for, quote, being selfish. This judge didn't just want to shut
00:02:33.380 her down, didn't just want to fine her $500 a day, destroying what's left of her business. He demanded
00:02:39.580 that she morally, psychologically, emotionally denounce herself and praise the politicians who had shut her
00:02:46.960 down. Politicians who themselves haven't lost a day of pay. I can guarantee that. This judge himself
00:02:52.280 surely makes six figures a year. I wonder how long he'd go without a paycheck, but since she wouldn't
00:02:57.960 call herself selfish, since she wouldn't apologize to the politicians, he threw her in prison.
00:03:05.180 You watch a clip from the court TV. It was actually done by video, this hearing, so you can see who's who on
00:03:12.160 the screen. Watch this first video. You can see the judge with his mask on. The lady in her home in the
00:03:18.440 top left is the court reporter working from home, I think. She seems to have a very lovely home. I don't
00:03:22.960 think she's been missing any paychecks. And Susan Luther, the salon owner, she's not in the witness
00:03:28.880 box in the top right because, I don't know, probably it's too close to His Holiness, the judge. He'd get germs
00:03:34.440 from her. So she's sitting down in the box on the bottom left. Anyways, listen to this.
00:03:38.160 That you now see the error of your ways and understand that the society cannot function
00:03:45.680 where one's own belief in a concept of liberty permits you to flaunt your disdain for the rulings
00:03:52.360 of duly elected officials. That you owe an apology to the elected officials whom you disrespected
00:04:01.100 but flagrantly ignoring and in one case defiling their orders, which you now know obviously
00:04:09.420 apply to you. That you understand that the proper way in an ordered society to engage concerns which
00:04:19.380 you may have had is to hire a lawyer and advocate for change, an exception or an amendment to laws
00:04:26.760 it you find offensive. That you publicly state that this is the way that citizens in this state
00:04:34.600 should behave. And that you represent to this court that you will today cease operation of your salon
00:04:43.400 and not reopen until after further orders of the government permit you to do so. This court will
00:04:51.480 consider the payment of a fine in lieu of the incarceration which you've demonstrated that
00:04:57.720 you have so clearly earned. Is there anything you would like to say? Now I understand the point. Either
00:05:03.400 we in Canada and our American friends and the Brits, either we're countries of laws or we're not.
00:05:09.320 We can't each pick and choose which laws we follow. There's something to that. But that's not really what
00:05:15.480 he said or did, was it? He said her freedom, the difference between her going home or going to prison,
00:05:22.360 was based on her denouncing herself as immoral and praising the political class as moral.
00:05:29.400 I'm sorry, that's not a law. That's not the rule of law. That's not law and order. That's not the rule.
00:05:32.840 He just made that up. Was the offense that she opened her store or that she wasn't obedient to her
00:05:39.240 superiors, of which the judge clearly regards himself as one. Oh, and I love that. Hey, you're
00:05:44.360 teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Your staff are begging you to get some work. Well, just hire
00:05:49.480 a lawyer and lobby the government for change or file a lawsuit, maybe in six months or a year or two.
00:05:56.200 You'll get a court hearing when the courts open up again finally, and we'll talk about all this then,
00:06:01.320 okay? Well, Shelley stood up to reply. You can see here in this next video, standing up in the box on
00:06:07.880 the bottom left. She's very respectful, very polite, calls the judge, sir, many times,
00:06:14.520 and says what was actually motivating her, not selfishness, but feeding the children of her staff.
00:06:19.080 They're starving. She says, take a listen. Judge, I would like to say that I have much
00:06:23.880 respect for this court and laws, and that I've never been in this position before, and it's not
00:06:34.120 some place that I want to be, but I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I'm selfish,
00:06:42.840 because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hairstylists that are going hungry
00:06:50.440 because they'd rather feed their kids. So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids
00:06:56.680 getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.
00:07:02.120 So, literally, off to prison for a week, in prison, seven-day prison sentence plus $500 a day
00:07:10.600 in fines. I tell you, I wouldn't have been that polite to the judge. Then again, I'd probably have
00:07:15.880 been sentenced to a month in solitary confinement for making a joke about the judge. Sure, you don't
00:07:22.120 need a hair salon, Kojak. I might have said something dumb like that. I'm not as polite
00:07:27.480 as Shelley Luther. America's funny. Different branches of the government aren't afraid to
00:07:31.320 criticize each other, though, and unlike here in Canada, politicians aren't afraid to criticize
00:07:35.240 judges in particular, especially extremist judges like this one. Now, in Canada, we have extremist
00:07:39.880 judges, too, making extremist rulings all the time. Can you even remember once when a politician
00:07:44.520 called out a judge? Well, look at this by no one less than the Attorney General of Texas,
00:07:48.680 Ken Paxton. I find it outrageous to not have touched that during this national pandemic,
00:07:53.880 a judge in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19
00:08:00.840 would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family's table.
00:08:07.240 The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther. His order is a shameful abuse of judicial
00:08:12.440 discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms. Luther
00:08:17.880 immediately. All right. Apparently, this same county released a thousand hardened criminals,
00:08:24.760 so at least they'll have room in prison for Shelley Luther. Ken Paxton, the Attorney General there,
00:08:29.960 he's a Republican, and so is the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. I think he's a pretty great governor,
00:08:35.320 but it was his law that was applied by the judge here, so what does that say about him? What does he
00:08:41.000 have to say about that? Well, scratch that. Who cares what any of these politicians say? Who cares what the
00:08:45.560 attorney general says? Boy, it sure was nice of Ken Paxton to put out a tweet, a virtue signaling tweet,
00:08:51.400 that showed how much he cared. Shelley Luther was still in prison, though. Well, I looked up the
00:08:55.960 Texas Constitution, Section 411b. In all criminal cases, except treason and impeachment, the governor
00:09:03.080 shall have power, either after conviction or successful completion of a term of deferred adjudication,
00:09:08.840 community supervision on the written signed recommendation and advice of the Board of
00:09:14.920 Pardons and Paroles, or a majority thereof. It's a rambling way of saying, if I read that right,
00:09:22.440 the governor can pardon Shelley Luther. He just needs to get a majority of the Board of Pardons and
00:09:27.640 Paroles to sign a recommendation. Great. Get on the phone with him. Have a five-minute conference call,
00:09:31.640 sign the piece of paper, get Shelley Luther out of prison. Now, just before I walked in to record this
00:09:37.320 video, I saw some breaking news. The governor had weighed in personally, not with a pardon,
00:09:42.200 but with a blanket removal of jail as a penalty for violating any of his health orders. Let me read
00:09:47.160 this from Greg Abbott. Throwing Texans in jail whose businesses shut down through no fault of their own
00:09:52.680 is wrong. I'm eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders.
00:09:59.560 Criminals shouldn't be released to prevent COVID-19, just to put business owners in their place.
00:10:04.600 All right. Now, that looks good, but it would, you know, take an expert in Texas law, which I am not,
00:10:10.920 to let me know if this would work, because I understand that Shelley Luther was sentenced for
00:10:15.320 contempt of court. You saw the judge because she wouldn't say what the judge told her to say.
00:10:21.880 She wouldn't call herself selfish. She wouldn't praise politicians. The whole thing's nuts. So will
00:10:27.720 the governor's retroactive rule have anything to do with this order for what I think was a contempt
00:10:34.120 court order? Now, just one more thing. I just walked in and I got another update this afternoon.
00:10:40.760 Apparently, the Texas Supreme Court literally ordered that Shelley should be released. And then there's
00:10:46.680 another court date in the future to talk about it again, I think. Now, look, there's a lot going on,
00:10:52.520 probably even more happening now that I'm recording in the studio. I love Texas.
00:10:57.480 How can you not? One of my first Rebel videos five years ago was going down to Dallas and having some
00:11:01.880 fun getting some proper cowboy gear and, of course, going on a barbecue odyssey across the state. I
00:11:06.680 can't even remember what I was actually supposed to be doing down there. Oh, yeah. Doing some videos
00:11:10.600 about fracking and how they do it in Texas. So that's, you know, what's not to love about Texas?
00:11:14.760 Cowboys, oil and gas, amazing barbecue, and a love for freedom. Sort of like Alberta,
00:11:20.200 if Alberta weren't under the thumb of Ottawa. So while a Texas judge throws Shelley Luther into
00:11:26.360 prison, and while Texas politicians dither and blather, ordinary Canadians tried, ordinary Americans,
00:11:32.760 sorry, tried to fix this. They put together a GoFundMe crowdfund campaign for her. And in less than a
00:11:39.560 day, it raised half a million dollars. That's amazing. That's a pretty good barometer of public
00:11:44.280 sentiment, isn't it? And wow, will that ever help Shelley and her staff. But that doesn't take a
00:11:50.120 away the wrongness of what the government did to her. I love Texas, but the fact that this tyranny
00:11:54.840 could happen even there, in what is arguably the freest state in the union, shows the depth of the
00:12:01.240 problem. It's not just Shelley Luther. She made a particularly passionate plea. The judge was
00:12:07.720 particularly cold. And fortuitously, it was captured on video. But there are surely thousands
00:12:14.360 of cases like this, perhaps not in prison, but there are thousands of cases of tickets and arrests,
00:12:21.640 even in Canada. I mean, we're representing Canadians who got outrageous fines for walking in the park,
00:12:26.920 or feeding the homeless, or even having dinner at home with their friends. But none of them
00:12:30.360 have been thrown in prison yet in Canada that I know of. So how can this be in Texas? Well, it shows
00:12:37.480 us that part of the human mind that allows authoritarianism to flourish, the bullying gene,
00:12:43.080 the tyrannical gene, if you will. It's in all of us. Don't think that there aren't plenty of people in
00:12:49.480 our society, in the US, in Canada, the United Kingdom, who wouldn't love to have China-style
00:12:56.360 authoritarianism here. There are people amongst us who would thrive in that culture, informants,
00:13:02.200 snitching, complaining, punishing, gloating. They don't have that part of their personality
00:13:07.240 under control. I think it's worse on the left by far. Here's Chicago's mayor the other day.
00:13:12.680 Now, I've directed Superintendent Brown to order all police districts to give special attention
00:13:18.840 to these parties. And this is how it's going to be. We will shut you down, we will cite you,
00:13:25.560 and if we need to, we will arrest you, and we will take you to jail. Period. There should be nothing
00:13:33.320 unambiguous about that. Don't make us treat you like a criminal. But if you act like a criminal,
00:13:40.600 and you violate the law, and you refuse to do what is necessary to save lives in the city,
00:13:46.360 in the middle of a pandemic, we will take you to jail. Period.
00:13:51.000 Yeah, pretty easy to see her doing just fine in a dictatorship. Thank you very little. Oh,
00:13:56.360 and she had a sneaky visit to the hairstylist too, you see, because she, get this, cares about her
00:14:01.240 hygiene. That's what she said. That's why she needed to visit the salon. I love that. It's a hygiene
00:14:05.640 issue. But you, you can't get a haircut. Just her. And I guarantee you, her hair salon won't be thrown
00:14:12.600 in jail. Here's another case from Texas this past week. Lots of Texans have guns. That's a good guard
00:14:19.800 against government tyranny when things finally get really bad. But even local cop shops, well,
00:14:25.480 they have tanks. Take a look at this video. Keep your hands up. You with the hand, green shirt.
00:14:32.120 Put your hands up. I can't see them. What was supposed to be a peaceful protest quickly took a wrong turn.
00:14:38.040 Get back. Me and I have a white shirt. Get back.
00:14:40.760 Here at Big Daddy Zane's, a local bar in West Odessa, owner Gabrielle Ellison opened up her doors,
00:14:47.320 despite Abbott's latest order. We can't take it no more. We're not going to make it.
00:14:53.080 At risk, she says she understands all too well, but it boils down to feeding her family.
00:14:59.080 I am aware of what's going on down the road. I'm shocked. And I had customers come through,
00:15:04.200 you know, they've got SWAT built up. They got SWAT built up. Why would you bring in SWAT on a peaceful
00:15:09.000 situation? But Ellison says the risk of staying closed outweighs the risk of any virus and potentially
00:15:15.560 getting in trouble with law enforcement. The possibility of getting my license taken,
00:15:20.520 heartbreaking, but they've already tooken my income. Oh my God. I know whose side I'm on.
00:15:27.000 By the way, this is a real picture, not a Photoshop of some of Ector County's finest.
00:15:31.640 Looks like they haven't missed a meal in this whole pandemic. They haven't missed a paycheck.
00:15:36.120 Look, I shouldn't poke fun at people for being fat, but their teeny tiny bulletproof jacket sort of
00:15:40.760 reminded me of when I go to the lake and the only life jacket left is a kid-sized
00:15:45.480 life jacket and I try and put it on. What's the point, fellas? It ain't going to help.
00:15:49.960 So yeah, which side are you on? Which side are you on here? Me?
00:15:55.320 I'm with people who want to work, who want to live. Stay with us for more.
00:16:08.200 Welcome back. I'm very excited to have our next guest today. He's so many things. He's a comedian.
00:16:19.960 He's a commentator. He's a public speaker. He's an author. He's Robin to Jordan Peterson's Batman
00:16:27.400 in Jordan Peterson's World Tour. He is Dave Rubin, and he joins us now via Skype for his new book,
00:16:34.160 Don't Burn This Book. It's called Dave Rubin. Great to have you on the program. What a pleasure.
00:16:40.560 Ezra, I'm glad to be with you. You know, it's funny you're making a DC Comics reference with
00:16:44.560 Batman and Robin right there, because I was about to say to you that you're sort of in what I consider
00:16:49.440 the Avengers of Canada, the free speech Avengers. It's sort of you and Jordan Peterson and Lindsey
00:16:55.280 Shepard and Gad Saad and Yasmin Mohammed and a couple other people. So we got a little Marvel DC thing.
00:17:01.440 We can work it out throughout the interview. Right on. Well, what I like best about you,
00:17:06.000 I mean, I think you've got a winning style. You make everyone comfortable when you debate
00:17:12.880 uncomfortable things, and that's a real personality trait. And I'll just say, I mean,
00:17:18.000 obviously I'm a fan. You can hear it in what I'm saying. What I like about you and what I wish there
00:17:22.400 was more of is liberals who would engage with conservatives rather than shun them, cancel them.
00:17:28.880 Frankly, I think you've become a little more conservative over time yourself. But I mean,
00:17:34.080 you come from a very liberal place. You worked for the Young Turks. That's a that's a left wing show.
00:17:39.280 You were an intern even with the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. How did you resist the temptation just
00:17:46.720 to blacklist, blackball, ignore and unfriend people you disagree with? How did you overcome the virus of
00:17:54.960 the left? Yeah. You know, it's interesting because we could go back even further than that. I mean, I
00:18:00.160 I come from a true liberal in the good sense of liberal family. I mean, I was born in Brooklyn,
00:18:06.560 New York before it was hipster Brooklyn, when it was still old school Brooklyn, which was, you know,
00:18:11.120 this mismatch of, you know, of Jews and and Greeks and Irish and Italians and blacks and Latinos and this
00:18:19.600 this real thing that was the sort of beauty of America, the stew of America. And then I grew up
00:18:25.840 in Long Island and I went to college in upstate New York. I lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side,
00:18:30.880 which is like the lefty liberal paradise of of the world. But, you know, as a Jew, I sort of grew up
00:18:38.560 with you debate stuff. That's just what you do every holiday. Ezra, I'm sure it's the same for you and your
00:18:44.560 family. Every holiday, it's like you get 30 people around the table. No topic is off limits. And then
00:18:50.480 what would happen in my family, everyone would be screaming the entire meal. And then the second
00:18:54.400 the second dessert was served. It was like, all right, that's it. Nobody's angry at anybody. So
00:18:58.400 what? You're for abortion. You're against abortion. You're for high taxes or for low taxes. It was just
00:19:03.120 like it was let go. And I think I didn't realize it, honestly, until writing the book that that piece of
00:19:09.840 me really was born there. It was born very young. I remember being 11 or 12 years old and trying to
00:19:16.160 get to the adults table because I thought something interesting was happening there. So I always felt
00:19:20.560 that that piece of about debate. And I would also say that this is where the word liberal
00:19:25.920 and lefty have just been conflated and confused because, you know, there were good liberals. I know
00:19:31.280 you know this, but, you know, there were good liberals like JFK Jr. Ask not what your country can do
00:19:35.440 for you. Ask what you can do for your country. There were good liberals in New York. We had Daniel
00:19:39.520 Patrick Moynihan, who was a proud defender of the Constitution. We had Mayor Ed Koch in New York
00:19:45.360 City, who was the mayor for a city of eight million people from every walk of life and treated everybody
00:19:51.040 the same. What unfortunately happened in the last five years is as progressive identity politics and
00:19:57.840 groupthink and collectivism grew, they saw the weakness of liberals. And it's very hard for me to admit
00:20:03.680 in a way, but liberalism in and of itself has a weakness that conservatism does not. Liberalism,
00:20:09.680 because of the innate desire to be open-minded, will let in basically any idea. And I think
00:20:16.080 progressives saw that. They saw that, oh, we can sneak identity politics in. We can sneak all of this
00:20:22.000 giant government stuff in, guise it as we're being nice to everybody. And in effect, they decimated the
00:20:28.160 liberals. And I think you're a bit of a Star Wars guy. And I always compare it to Order 66 in Revenge
00:20:34.480 of the Six, because basically the last remaining liberals have pretty much been annihilated in
00:20:40.480 America. You know, Bill Maher is trying, you know, I'm trying, but I have no problem when someone says
00:20:45.520 to me, hey, you know, you're more of a conservative. Now, if anything, I think in some respects that I'm a
00:20:50.960 modern conservative, meaning I believe in the base ideas of conservatism, meaning individual rights
00:20:57.280 and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I don't have to agree with conservatives on
00:21:01.600 every single issue. As you know, in my book, I lay out a pro-choice position. And if that can be
00:21:06.960 accepted by those on the right, then I see that as wonderful, fertile ground for ideas. And
00:21:11.920 unfortunately, the left has just decided to purge all the free thinkers. Well, let me ask you about
00:21:17.120 what you said about Brooklyn, because you listed the mix of people there. And you mentioned race
00:21:23.760 and ethnicity and things like that. And I know what you mean. But it's become a more recent thing
00:21:30.000 to say as a Jewish man, as a black woman, as a transgender. And they started arguing, they, people,
00:21:39.200 I think, typically on the left, as a fill in the blank, my identity politics here, I believe. And I think
00:21:45.280 that does two things. First of all, it's a false authority. I mean, it's not an appeal to facts or
00:21:52.400 even an argument. It's, listen to me because I have a certain characteristic, not because my ideas are
00:21:57.840 good. And second of all, it immediately implies that to disagree with that, you're not disagreeing
00:22:04.320 with the idea, but their blackness, womanness, transness. And I think that's probably very different
00:22:11.840 than what you meant back in Brooklyn 40 years ago. Well, Ezra, I would even go a step further and say,
00:22:17.920 when people do that and use their identity first, well, first off, they're using it as a cruddle
00:22:22.800 because they're using it to try to gain some advantage over you. But I would argue that it's
00:22:26.240 even anti-human because none of us want to be judged on our immutable characteristics. It doesn't
00:22:31.120 matter to me that you're a cisgendered man. It's what comes out of your mouth, your ideas,
00:22:36.480 your actions that matter. When I, when I say it, and I know, I know you understand this when I say,
00:22:41.520 oh, there were, there were blacks and Latinos and Jews and Greeks and Italians and Irish.
00:22:45.840 My point was that that was, that's the beauty of the stew of America. Nobody back then
00:22:52.160 walked there, nobody in 1940s, 1950s, Brooklyn in the, in the craziest melting pot that you could
00:22:58.480 possibly imagine with all of these people whose many were first generation immigrants or second,
00:23:03.440 whose parents came here with nothing or grandparents, or they came with nothing.
00:23:07.040 Everybody was just thrown in to Brooklyn or the Lower East Side. I mean, this is the quintessential
00:23:11.440 American story. And nobody walked around saying I'm Italian. So give me this. I'm,
00:23:15.760 I'm Jewish. Give me this. I'm Irish. Give me this. My point was you threw all of these people in,
00:23:20.640 they had their little communities, they had their, their foods, their traditions, their holidays,
00:23:25.680 all these things. And guess what? They all started really learning to live together. And that
00:23:30.080 doesn't mean there weren't fights. There weren't, you know, some level of racism and bigotry and
00:23:35.440 some of that old world stuff, but what happened there. And I think there's a, you know, it's,
00:23:40.160 it's actually a very special thing because you can look at, you know, lists of famous authors and
00:23:45.360 philosophers and comedians and actors. And so many of them were Brooklyn born, uh, Larry King,
00:23:50.640 who of course is Brooklyn board. He has a bagel shop here in, in Beverly Hills. It's called Brooklyn
00:23:54.880 water bagel. And he has plaques of just all of the famous people, politicians, everything born in
00:24:01.520 Brooklyn. And there's a reason for it because it represented the beauty of America, not because
00:24:07.040 they were Irish first or Jewish first or Italian first, but because they, they took all of that
00:24:13.120 stuff that had, that had been, uh, the gestalt good word of their families and then blended it into
00:24:18.960 America. And that is what is so special about this place. Yeah. I think you're right. I mean,
00:24:22.800 they, people came together. I mean, as the motto says, out of many, one in pluribus unum,
00:24:28.960 I think that we're, we're dividing people. I mean, Trudeau up here never stops talking about
00:24:34.080 diversity. He wants to pigeonhole people and give them racial or gender identifiers, even when they
00:24:40.800 don't want it. But let me ask you this. I remember in college, I'm a few years older than you, but back
00:24:45.600 when I was in college, there was a spirit of debate. And if you were on the left or on the right, and there
00:24:50.560 was a debate on some issue, you were sort of expected to be at the debate. And if you declined,
00:24:57.680 it was a sign that you really weren't interested in public affairs. So the idea that, that one group
00:25:04.800 would boycott the debate if another was there, that just wasn't thinkable because that would be seen as,
00:25:10.240 A, you're chickening out or B, oh, then you're not really serious about this conversation since you're,
00:25:15.680 you just want to have a monologue. The idea of de-platforming that new word, it didn't even
00:25:20.160 exist back then. Tell me a little bit about de-platforming issues. And I know that you were
00:25:26.560 on Patreon, which is a kind of crowdfunding. We do it a little differently up here, but tell us a little
00:25:31.920 bit about de-platforming censorship and your Patreon story, if you don't mind.
00:25:36.800 Yeah, there's so much there. I mean, look again, this goes to sort of what I would describe as the
00:25:42.880 death of old school liberalism, which, which I am trying to reignite and give life to in my book,
00:25:49.840 because I believe that classical liberalism has good principles that in many ways were the founding
00:25:56.080 principles of the United States, you know, individual rights and light touch of government.
00:26:00.000 That's, that's a very founding principle here. But as the progressives came in, they said,
00:26:03.920 you're all bigots and racists and everything. And then that gave them in their mind,
00:26:07.440 a license to say, well, we don't have to debate any conservative, because if you're
00:26:11.520 a conservative at any level, meaning you're for low taxes, or you're not for the welfare state or
00:26:16.000 something else, that is evidence that you are a bigot and a racist. And why would I platform or appear
00:26:21.680 on a stage or anything else with a bigot and a racist? And, and for some reason, and again,
00:26:26.560 this goes to that sort of weakness of the open mind of a liberal, the good liberals just sort of
00:26:31.920 stood there and got executed and no longer exist. I just simply don't know where they are. Again,
00:26:36.960 with the exception of Bill Maher, and maybe, maybe a small smattering of handful of other people.
00:26:41.760 But as far as de-platforming, you know, this idea that if a college invites a speaker,
00:26:48.160 if an accredited group at a university invites a speaker, I believe that it is incumbent on the
00:26:54.160 university to let that speaker talk. Now, that doesn't mean you agree with the speaker.
00:26:58.560 It doesn't mean that they don't have odious views, but that must be allowed to happen. Now,
00:27:03.360 especially at a public university, a private university, look, they can do their own thing,
00:27:07.200 whether we like it or not, whether we feel it's a, uh, assault on free speech or not,
00:27:11.360 but a public university, of course. And, and just to show that I'm not just saying these things,
00:27:16.080 I believe it, but so Linda Sarsour, who I believe to be a truly bad actor and, and a, and a true
00:27:22.720 racist in, in the way that progressive racism has become a sort of the new pernicious acceptable
00:27:28.720 racism. She was invited to speak at the city university of New York about two years ago.
00:27:33.360 And I defended her right to speak there. If they, I, everything being equal, I would prefer
00:27:37.920 that. I guess no group invite her because her ideas are terrible, but you know what,
00:27:42.320 if somebody invited her, you got to defend her right to speak. So it's not just something I preach
00:27:46.720 about. It's something that I actually believe in as far as Patreon, you know, there was an interesting
00:27:50.960 moment about a year and a half ago where there was a, an internet guy that I, I'm guessing you've
00:27:55.360 probably spoke to him at a point, Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, who, uh, you know, he was one of
00:28:00.160 the first sort of lefty people on YouTube about six years ago, who was saying, Hey, lefties,
00:28:05.440 there's something wrong here. We're not liberal anymore. And he actually helped me kind of go on
00:28:10.240 my path because when I started saying the same things, a lot of people said, Hey, you got to talk to
00:28:13.920 this guy. He's, he's been doing it for months now. And basically he was on Patreon, which is the
00:28:20.480 crowdfunding site. And that's where he was supporting his YouTube page. And then it turned
00:28:25.840 out that not on his Patreon nor on his YouTube channel, but on another YouTube channel, he was
00:28:32.320 being interviewed. Uh, and he said the N word and he said it not to use it as a racial pejorative,
00:28:38.960 but to use it to mock the people who use those words to mock the alt-right in effect. Right.
00:28:43.680 And Patreon, Patreon decided to cancel his account. And I felt along with Jordan Peterson
00:28:49.600 and then Sam Harris, that that was a bridge too far because it wasn't just that, uh,
00:28:55.600 that they were going after language, which I would prefer they not go after anyway. It was that it
00:28:59.600 wasn't even his Patreon nor his own channel that he was funding on Patreon. It was a word he said
00:29:04.960 on something else altogether. And they said, we're not going to let you have a livelihood and we're going
00:29:09.280 to shut you down. And by the way, in, in, in effect, as far as I know, he's doing okay. Uh,
00:29:14.480 but that is what spurred me on to create locals.com because I believe in competition and we're building
00:29:20.800 digital homes for creators. Uh, we're, you know, because you don't own your stuff on YouTube,
00:29:25.840 you don't own your stuff on Twitter, and you're basically renting space from a landlord who could
00:29:30.720 cut you off at any moment. And all of us are kind of sitting ducks there. So I created that.
00:29:34.960 That's going to, you know, it's my best effort to solve some of these problems. You know,
00:29:38.720 and that's very interesting because we've had similar problems. We haven't yet been de-platformed,
00:29:43.440 but we've come close and we're always under attack. Here's my question for you. Even if you were to
00:29:48.560 create a new app or a new website, there's always a deeper level of internet infrastructure,
00:29:56.320 payment processors. There's only a few of them and behind that banks and, and then the deep structure
00:30:02.480 of the internet suddenly, I mean, three years ago, we got a, an email saying, we're going to
00:30:07.360 kick you off your, I think it was called a DNS server. Forgive me if I have the technicalities
00:30:12.000 wrong. Yeah. Basically they said in 24 hours, you're being kicked off your website. Uh, good luck.
00:30:17.840 And I mean, I had even heard of this company. I had no idea we were dealing with them. So
00:30:23.520 even if you have a top level fix, there's some risk to the basis of the internet. How do we fix that?
00:30:32.240 When it's a handful of companies who don't care about political squawking, who are so unbelievably
00:30:39.760 rich and now they just care about being woke. Like you can't fight with Zuckerberg or Google.
00:30:45.600 And I'm not even talking about them, but people, we don't even know who they are.
00:30:49.120 Right. That's, that's the crazy part. So it's a great question. It's the, it's the trillion dollar
00:30:53.440 question. I would say, because when it's fully solved, I actually think it's a trillion dollar
00:30:57.120 business. Um, what I've been telling people about locals is we've solved 95% of the problems
00:31:03.520 for 95% of the creators. So in other words, I can't solve Alex Jones's problem. Now I'm not saying
00:31:08.960 I want to be in business to solve Alex Jones's problem. That's not even a condemnation of Alex
00:31:13.040 Jones. I would prefer he be on all these platforms. And if you don't like him, don't watch,
00:31:16.400 that would be my personal preference. But in other words, when you ask about payment processors, so
00:31:22.240 through locals right now we're using Stripe and yes, if Alex Jones wants to join locals, well,
00:31:27.840 he can't go on Stripe. So there's no way for us to pay him or there's no way for him to get paid.
00:31:32.560 We actually let you use your own Stripe account. So that's what I mean by 95% of the problems for
00:31:37.120 95% of the creators. The direct answer to your question is this is all going to be decentralized
00:31:41.360 and it's going to be a lot of crypto blockchain stuff. We're working with some companies on some
00:31:45.520 of that on the payment side, but you know, the next evolution of all this also is that it's going
00:31:50.080 to be decentralized storage. Uh, because you know, you won't be able to trust just that your server,
00:31:55.280 if you're using Amazon servers or whatever server you're using, that they won't cut you off too.
00:31:59.680 That's your point. So we're going to actually have to get to the point where it's decentralized video
00:32:03.680 and audio too. There are a couple of companies that are doing some interesting stuff with that,
00:32:06.800 that we're talking to. Um, but you know, I think one of the problems is for the, for the people that
00:32:11.200 understand these issues, it's like everyone wants the solution tomorrow. And it's like, you know,
00:32:16.000 if it was possible tomorrow, it would have been done. Trust me. I'm friends with a lot of the,
00:32:21.120 the key people in the, in these spaces that understand this stuff. And there's, as you're
00:32:26.000 saying, there's so many complex issues that when you solve one issue, you actually create three
00:32:30.960 more problems. So we're working on it. And I think we have, we have the right team and I would
00:32:36.560 welcome any of your viewers to check out what we've done with locals.com rubin report.com is really
00:32:41.600 the first project of local. We have iOS app. We have a Android app. We've built out a great
00:32:46.800 community there. There's no trolls and there's no bots. We have our own video player, our own audio
00:32:51.360 player this week. I think we're adding it today. We're adding live chat. So we've done, you know,
00:32:55.840 there's no algorithmic manipulation of the newsfeed. We've done something really, really nice and sleek.
00:33:01.440 And my hope is if I can solve my problem, that we can spawn that off to solve other people's problems.
00:33:05.840 And I'd love to work with you guys, uh, at rebel on it. So we should talk separately about that.
00:33:10.560 Well, thank you very much. I know you've got to go, but I think I have 60 seconds left. You got
00:33:14.320 so many books. It's amazing. The book is called don't burn this book. The guest is Dave Rubin.
00:33:19.600 You can buy that book on this website at the link, the Amazon link below the page. Let me ask you one
00:33:24.800 last question. That was a great technical answer, but let me bring it back to the larger feeling of
00:33:29.600 your book. You know, we talked about being de-platformed in debates and political places, but
00:33:34.720 I see stories of men and women getting divorces because he's a Trump supporter and she's not.
00:33:41.680 I see people writing about such things in the New York Times. And that's a bigger problem than just
00:33:47.280 politics. Give me your thoughts on relationships, personal, long time friendships being ended this
00:33:54.400 way. Maybe it's always been that way, but it seems to me to be particularly acute. Give us your last
00:33:59.360 thoughts and then we'll set you free to continue your book tour, my friend. Well, first off, I wish
00:34:03.680 we had more time to do it. And for sure, you know, I've been saying to you forever, I wanted to get
00:34:07.360 you live in studio. So we'll do it via Skype since that's how we're all trapped at the moment. But
00:34:12.080 I am actually deeply concerned about what you're talking about right now, because the amount of
00:34:16.240 emails that I get literally from people saying my wife is divorcing me because I'm a Trump supporter,
00:34:22.800 or my friends have abandoned me. I tell some stories about the types of things that happened to me when I
00:34:27.840 just started saying, Hey, there's something wrong with the left. And literally people that were
00:34:31.920 invited to my wedding telling me I'm a racist and a bigot, and they don't even know why they're
00:34:35.600 saying it. I asked them why, have I said anything racist? And it doesn't even matter. They think
00:34:39.440 because they say it, that is evidence of its truth. So I'm deeply concerned about that because,
00:34:44.960 you know, as you know, we're in an election year here in the United States,
00:34:47.600 Corona has everybody kind of confused and up in the air as is. And one of the things that I try to
00:34:53.360 do in chapter 10 in the final chapter of the book is, is, you know, we shouldn't be permanently
00:34:58.800 political. Uh, I find if your whole worldview is just through a political lens, meaning the left is
00:35:04.960 this, the right is this, this happened today. And that happened today. And they voted on this.
00:35:09.600 It will lead you to endless misery because politics is about power and, and a game of power.
00:35:15.600 It's sort of like game of Thrones, game of Thrones, basically everyone dies at the end. And the couple
00:35:19.520 guys who are alive, they're not that happy because everyone they know is dead. And, and I sort of
00:35:23.840 think that that is what politics is. So you need to have a framework for life that is outside of
00:35:29.760 politics. I lay out what I think is a pretty decent one in this book. But if, if, if you want to really
00:35:35.120 dense read on that, we'll turn to the most famous man in Canada, turn to Jordan Peterson and read 12
00:35:40.320 rules for life. Outstanding. Well, I can hardly wait to tuck into the book. What a great read.
00:35:45.680 It's like the story of my life, uh, being deep platformed and, and wanting to debate and just
00:35:51.040 very interesting. Dave Rubin, we're big fans up here. Good luck with the book tour. Once again,
00:35:55.840 folks, you can buy, don't burn this book at the Amazon link below. And we'll email this video out
00:36:01.680 to our readers too. Good luck, Dave. Thanks, Ezra. All right. Bye-bye. There you have it, Dave Rubin.
00:36:07.360 What a good egg. Oh, I wish more liberals had his open-minded approach to debate. Stay with us. More ahead on the run.
00:36:15.680 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about China calling Canada a giant baby. Bill writes,
00:36:29.440 it's obvious to everybody but Trudeau that she doesn't respect him and won't give him the secretary
00:36:34.320 general job. No, no, no, no. Um, I think that it's like, um, you know, when a horse has a kind of,
00:36:43.920 I don't know, what's that called? Like a harness on their head that has a stick with, you know, bait
00:36:48.880 ahead and the horse keeps following the bait. I don't even know what that's called. That's Trudeau.
00:36:54.320 Xi Jinping keeps saying, well, just give us a little more. Give us a little more. Here's the bait. We'll give
00:36:58.720 you a seat on the UN Security Council. And then if you're a very good boy, we'll have to be
00:37:02.400 secretary general. So I think he's being trained. He's being conditioned. So he's getting sticks and
00:37:08.400 carrots, not a lot of carrots to be frank, but he's being obedience trained by the Chinese. So, um,
00:37:15.520 I think the, they're abusing him psychologically, politically, culturally, economically to get him
00:37:21.920 conditioned to accepting that. And like a Pavlovian response to whatever they have to say. I don't
00:37:27.120 know, maybe that sounds a little too amateur psychological, but once you think of, once
00:37:31.520 you look at Trudeau's foreign policy through the lens of how do I get on the UN Security Council for
00:37:37.600 a country, how do I become the next secretary general to get out of this prime minister gig,
00:37:41.680 then a lot of things make sense. Bernie writes, ever since Trudeau became prime minister,
00:37:46.480 I decided my car was going to be special. The delivery guy, three doors up tonight, stopped at
00:37:51.600 the end of my driveway and asked if he could put something on my car. Then he tells me I made his day.
00:37:55.840 No, he made my day. I thought I would share my car with you. Well, you are certainly expressing
00:38:00.800 yourself. And, um, I think it'll be interesting to see what cops do. I think most beat cops would
00:38:07.120 like your car, but it wouldn't shock me if you found an authoritarian bully who punishes you for
00:38:12.640 your car. I'm sorry. That's just my prediction. On my interview with Lauren Gunter on Trudeau's
00:38:17.920 firearms ban, Gore writes, do you think I'm going to let this tyrannical trust fund unaccomplished boob disarm
00:38:23.200 me? The liberals over and over have made me a criminal overnight. I'm getting used to it.
00:38:27.280 Many say Molen Labbe. I mean it. I think that's the Greek way of saying, hands off my guns, or
00:38:34.560 it's more or less what that means. I don't think it means guns. It's like, don't tread on me. It's sort
00:38:38.480 of a gun rights credo. Um, I tell you, when you disarm a population, you can do a lot of things to them.
00:38:46.560 I think Canada has been psychologically disarmed. I'm disappointed by how meekly people have gone
00:38:52.240 into various authoritarian regimes, house arrest, banned from parks, can't go for a walk outside,
00:38:58.400 get $800 tickets for walking your dog. I'm disappointed how many people have accepted that.
00:39:04.960 And we're still a semi-armed society. What happens if there's no
00:39:09.440 panic button, no emergency plan, no firearm there? And the government goes all the way and say,
00:39:17.280 try and stop us. Just watch me. I don't think we're there yet, but you can see how things slip
00:39:23.200 away, especially if there's a crisis as a pretext for it. Trudeau, his worst instincts came out in the
00:39:29.280 crisis. He wanted to effectively abolish parliament. He has abolished question period and press conferences
00:39:37.040 de facto. Um, he's spending and passing laws without a vote. He wanted to bring in censorship
00:39:43.600 specifically about the virus. He's seizing guns unrelated to the virus. Every authoritarian
00:39:48.880 instinct is there. That's what he got away with in two months. Imagine what he would get away with
00:39:54.320 in two terms. Folks, that's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at
00:39:59.840 the Rebel World headquarters to you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for freedom.