Ep 142 ｜ Dave Rubin
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Summary
In this episode of Relatable, my friend Dave Rubin joins me to talk about his political positions, what he thinks about what's going on with the state of our dialogue in political media, and how to talk to people that you disagree with.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today I am talking to my friend Dave Rubin. We are going to talk about
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his political positions, what he thinks about what's going on with the state of our dialogue
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in political media, and we are going to learn from him as he is an expert on how to talk to people
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that you disagree with. Dave, thanks so much for joining me. Allie, it's good to be with you.
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Okay, so for the few of those out there who might not be completely familiar with where you came from,
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but just have seen maybe over the past few months especially that you are almost constantly
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in the spotlight or you're almost constantly getting some kind of hate on social media,
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and they don't know that you've actually been in this game for a really long time,
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just tell everyone your background and how you came to kind of fill this space.
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Well, if you listen to Vox or Media Matters or BuzzFeed, I'm some sort of alt-right extremist
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And if you listen to sort of average, sane, decent thinking people, I host my show called
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The Rubin Report where we do long form conversation, sort of old school Larry King-esque conversation,
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and I try to have an honest conversation with somebody about ideas and what they think,
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and I try to talk to people all over the political map, the social map. I'm really willing to talk to
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anyone that doesn't attack motives, doesn't attack people personally. That can really be tough these
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days, especially the way social media is. But before that, I did stand-up comedy in New York for 12
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years. I had a show on SiriusXM. I do the same things as you. I go out and I talk to college kids.
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I toured for a year last year with Jordan Peterson. So, you know, I'm just out there doing
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my thing. I like what I'm doing. I think I'm doing something decent. And I really, what I enjoy more
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than anything else in the last six or eight months is that I have bridged a lot of the divide with
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people like you. And, you know, you guys, the scary conservatives, are always getting, you know,
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attacked by mainstream media and lied about all these things. And now I see the way it's kind of
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turned on me just because I'm remotely pleasant to you guys. So there's a real interesting alignment
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happening or realignment, I should say. And I'm just trying to navigate my way through it.
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Well, I'm a classical liberal. I believe that we should have individual rights. I believe in logic
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and reason. I believe in limited government, laissez-faire economics. And I would always prefer
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that the private market deal with whatever your problems are. That doesn't mean that there is no
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answer for government. So people always ask me, well, Dave, it sounds like you're a libertarian.
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Now, I don't mind if someone said to me, Dave, you're a libertarian. It doesn't bother me. If
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someone says you're all right, now there's a racial connotation and all sorts of things they're trying
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to destroy your career. In effect, they're trying to destroy your career, but it's also they're trying
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to destroy you as a human and all those things. So, okay, that's one thing. But if someone said
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to me, you're a libertarian, I basically, I believe in individual liberty. I believe in limited
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government. I believe in states' rights, all of those things. What I would say the little difference
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between a classical liberal and a libertarian is, is that we do see a little more utility for the
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state. Now, intellectually, I love exploring the ideas of how much of the state could be disassembled
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and what could we do privately that we currently do publicly. But I do think that there are some
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legitimate reasons for the state. I think most people do. So I, I basically would just, I think
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most people at heart actually are classical liberals if they really understood what the ideas are.
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And then we could have, you know, differences on the margins when it comes to certain issues and
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that that's just fine. But if you believe that it is your life to live, the government did not give
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you freedom, but, but it could take it away. And you want to do what you, you want to work hard and
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earn and keep what you earn and all of those things. And you want to respect differences and live and
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let live. Then you're basically a classical liberal. And that's what I would say that I am.
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Have you always considered yourself that, or was there some, at some point, did you consider yourself
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firmly on the left side of the political aisle?
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Yeah. Well, well, look, leftism and liberalism have really been conflated. And I think one of the reasons
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that I'm sort of on the map now is because I was one of the first people about five years ago to say
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the left is no longer acting liberally. Right. I mean, I did that video, I did that video on Prager
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U, which now you've toppled me as I think the number one Prager U video, but it's got about 10
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million views. Last I saw why I left the left. And the point is that I, look, I grew up in a family
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of liberal Democrats, liberal in the best sense of it, in, in the sense of JFK liberals, ask not what your
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country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Uh, that, that liberal, uh, JFK cut
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taxes. He was anti-war. I mean, that liberal really has been gone. And what it's been replaced by is
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the democratic socialist who will just drop democratic soon enough once they're in power.
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I mean, basically socialists who believe that the government should do everything. So this is
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Elizabeth Warren. This is obviously Bernie. I mean, basically the whole crew on the, on the left
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right now are just trying to outwoke themselves and it's going to be real bizarre what they do
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to Joe Biden. I mean, just wait till you see what they try to do to him because he is a little bit
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of a, of an old school Democrat at least, but he's going to have to go bananas to get the base
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and they're going to destroy him for it, by the way. Um, but wait, what was the question again?
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I went off. I went off. No, I, you were answering the question. The question was whether or not you
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considered yourself on the left and it sounds like you did when leftism meant something differently
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than it does today. But something that I've heard you talk about, and I think that we agree with is
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that, okay, it's not just that I disagree with some people on the left, their thoughts about welfare
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and things like that. That would be an interesting conversation to have. It's that they're so dogmatic
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about if you disagree with me on policy or how big the government should be, or if you don't believe
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in Medicare for all, you're a terrible person that doesn't have any compassion in your heart.
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And then, then we just can't have, we can't have any kind of discussion. So is that part of why you
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found yourself saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't think that I can associate with this side anymore.
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Yeah. So now to, to now link it to the previous question. So I was part of that. Look, I was on the
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Young Turks. They're a far left progressive network. I did buy into a lot of that stuff. Now I,
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you can watch old videos of me. I never was fully doing the all Republicans are racist,
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all white men are evil, Christians are awful, all that. Did I do some of it because of lazy thinking?
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I'm sure I did. I honestly don't even really remember at a certain level. I don't think back
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on it that often, but I was part of that, that thing. And what I started realizing was,
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wait a minute, it can't be possible that everyone that they disagree with is a bigot,
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is a racist, is a homophobe, is a transphobe, all these things. I never heard arguments. All I ever
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heard was that everyone that they disagreed with was awful. And then once you start waking up to
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what that really is, I mean, all it is, is lazy thinking. You know, their answer to everything
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is, well, more taxes and it's more, throw more money at this and government should do this and
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this should be free and all these things. All these things sound good. If you're not really
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thinking about things, it sounds good to give more money to poor people. It sounds good to give free
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everyone. It doesn't mean that any of it works. It doesn't mean that any of it's even right or
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based in law or anything else. Um, but it all sounds good. And once you start really thinking
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about the issues, you realize it crumbles pretty quickly, which by the way, is exactly why they
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call everybody these labels because they genuinely do not want to debate. This is a very sad thing for
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me to say, by the way. And this doesn't mean that everyone on the left, look, I have guys,
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some of my favorite guests on my show have been the Weinstein brothers, you know, Brett,
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the biologist and Eric, the economist, Sam Harris, uh, I think still thinks he's on the left. I mean,
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there's plenty of these people that, that they're, what I would say they are just old school liberals
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who are basically struggling right now because they understand that the left as it stands has
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really gone bananas. Um, but I think certain people, and I don't even mean this as a knock to
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these guys, but I think they're a little more afraid of building bridges to people like you,
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where I personally have just seen nothing but tolerance and decency out of conservatives and
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libertarians. And I go, I go to these college gigs. I talk about all my differences with them
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and I get standing ovations and people come up to me respectfully after, and I never see anything
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negative associated with any of it. Uh, so it's, it's just a fascinating time if you're paying
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attention to politics, if you see what's going on right now. Do you think that it's possible
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for us to get to a place to where we can, an average conservative can sit down with an average
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liberal or with maybe even someone on the far left who is a socialist, who loves Bernie Sanders,
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AOC, all of that. Do you think that we can get to a place to where we can sit down,
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have a conversation about ideas and policy? And if you do think that's possible,
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how do we get there on either side? In that I've done it, I think it is possible,
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but I would say it's becoming increasingly improbable. Um, if you paint your political
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opponents as Nazis, I mean, you can watch videos from before Trump was president, where I kept
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saying I was giving people all sorts of reasons not to vote for Trump and I did not like Trump,
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but I kept saying, you know, if you keep saying that this guy, that all his supporters are Nazis
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and that he's Hitler, what you're doing is you're painting yourself into an intellectual corner
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where you can't get out of that. Because then if it's two years later and it's, I mean,
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I sort of predicted it because it's like now we're two and a half years later, let's say
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the economy is doing pretty well. We're not in any extra wars. Um, he's done a lot of good when it
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comes to the United Nations and cutting taxes and deregulation, all of these things. Well,
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you can't suddenly be like, you know, that Hitler guy, remember that guy I was calling Hitler all the time?
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He's not that bad. He's actually, that Hitler, he's pretty good. I mean, and, and that, because of
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that, because that concept of, of using these labels to silence people and then de-platform people
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and all of these things, because that has become such a integral part of leftist thinking, it's
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making it increasingly hard to talk to these people. So for example, uh, you know, I reach out
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to all sorts of lefties, politicians, Democrats, progressives on Twitter. And then suddenly the
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mob jumps in and goes, Oh, you're going to talk to alt-right Rubin and blah, blah. And then they get,
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they get scared regardless of what they may or may not think of me. And then they won't come on the
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show. And I would just say one other thing, which is there are occasionally some more like trolly
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YouTuber types on the left who, you know, endlessly talk crap about me and then demand debate me.
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And it's like, I'm not in that game. I'm really not like, I have a certain, I think this is
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probably very similar for you. I have a certain set of rules that I try to live by. Do I always
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do it? No. Do I fail sometimes? Yes. But I have a certain set of rules. I really try not to attack
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people's motives. I try not to attack people personally. I mean, hear what we've done for
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these few minutes. I've tried to talk about ideas. Yes. Occasionally you're going to muddle some of
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that stuff. We're just human, you know? Um, but I'm just not, I'm not interested in talking to
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people just for the sake of clicks or to make a little more money or any of that stuff. I'm,
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I'm just simply not. Yeah. You think that it's going to be a productive conversation and that
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you, them, and the people watching are actually going to get something out of it. And I think
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that engaging, like you said, a lot of the YouTube trolls or whatever, who say debate me, there's just
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nothing, there's nothing to be that that's productive out of that. So what about on a, what about on a
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personal basis? I get the question a lot from people who say, you know, my cousin or my best
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friend or my mom, whoever, they disagree with me. And every time I try to bring up abortion or
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politics, whatever, they just shut down and they won't have a conversation with me, but they want
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to. These are people who really want to engage their friends and family on these things. Do you have
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any advice for them just on a personal level, how they can engage the people that they love in a way
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that is productive? So I think there's a couple of tricks you can use. And I get this question a
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lot of colleges. And one of them is that a, just be a little bit better than they are. You know,
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often they're preaching about tolerance and they're preaching about acceptance, but they very rarely
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actually do it. So for, for anyone that asks you this question, it's like, you might say you're for
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low taxes and what do they say? They'll say you're racist. And you'll go, what? And they'll go,
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well, if you're for low taxes, that means you don't want to help poor people. And if you don't want
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to help poor people, that means you don't want to help black people. And that means you're racist.
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And you could say to them, no, but actually there's, there's more poor white people than
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poor black people. And that these social programs actually have hurt the black family. And you could
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go into a litany of those things, but it's hard to really, that policy stuff doesn't wake people up.
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What I find is that if you can do, you have to do something very personal, especially if it's a
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friend or a family member, you really have to get that. I mean, get in their face, get two feet away
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from them and say, look me in the eye and tell me that you think I'm racist because I'm for low taxes
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or I'm for state's rights or, or, or, um, you know, pro-life or whatever it may be. I mean,
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really tell me that you think I'm racist or I'm a homophobe. I have an irrational fear of gay people
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or a transphobe because I don't want the government to tell me which pronouns I can and cannot use,
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uh, without the threat of fine or jail. I mean, really crazy stuff. So you really have to
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get them to really say it to you because they really won't because that forces them to have
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to think for a second. I would say that one. And the one that I really use on college campuses all
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the time that I find very effective is I say to them, does anyone in this room have it worse than
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their grandparents? You know, because you've got a set of people that tell you America's this evil
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patriarchy and you know, we're, we, it's true. We've done some things wrong over time. We had slavery.
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Uh, we, so, you know, obviously black people couldn't vote. Women couldn't vote. I mean,
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that we've gone to wars that we shouldn't have gone to. There's no doubt that we've made mistakes
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along the way, but virtually everyone in America, I mean, I've asked this question now probably of
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hundreds of thousands of people. One guy once raised his hand, literally one guy, this was
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actually at my last, uh, talk. I think this was university of Delaware. This guy says, well,
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actually I did have it worse than my, uh, my grandparents because they grew up in China
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and the communists took away all their stuff. And I was like, that's, that's actually a beautiful
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example of what I'm talking about here. Everyone in America, we all come basically from the same
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story of immigrants. It doesn't matter if you're first generation or fourth generation, nobody was
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given anything here. And were, were people prejudiced towards people? Yes. Were people mean towards
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people? Yes. Did everyone have everything equally? No, but the arc of justice always bent towards more
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goodness. And that's why everyone still wants to come here. Nobody wants to leave. And the same
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people who are screaming about what an evil, racist, patriarchal society we are, they want open
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borders, which it's like, well, why would you want everyone to share in the horror that you're
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constantly talking about? So I think if you, if you say that to people and you say, do you have it
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better than your grandparents? And everyone will say yes. You know, you might've been an oil,
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maybe your grandparents were oil barons that lost all the money. I mean, and then, then the left would
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love it because they don't like accumulated wealth either, but I have yet to meet that. I have yet to
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meet that person too. But the point is if you can get people to really think for a second, think,
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picture it. I mean, I stopped them. I say, picture your grandparents, picture what they had to go
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through. Both my grandfathers fought in world war two. I didn't fight in a war. I didn't have to fight
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in a war. Um, all of these things that everyone knows are self-evident. I think you really have to
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get people to think, where would you like to go? That is better than America. Yeah. And sometimes
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they'll say Sweden and Sweden's got a whole slew of problems that it's not worth getting into now.
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Um, but it's like, all right, if you can choose one tiny, uh, Scandinavian country,
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even if I grant you that one, although I wouldn't really grant you it, it's like,
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well, then I think we're still kind of doing something good here. So really get people to
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understand how great it is here, how great freedom is here that anyone can come here and do whatever
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they want with their life. Look what you and I do with our, with our life. We share ideas. How cool is
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that? We're able to spread the things that we care about and, and hopefully make a decent living for
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ourselves while we do it. And it's up to our, our fans and our audience to decide if what we're
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saying has value and is worth putting money into or whatever else. It's like, you have an opportunity
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in America to do anything and it does not, no one cares. I mean, this is the thing they've tricked
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everyone into thinking that we all care what gender you are and what sexuality you are and what skin
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color you are. I just traveled the country. I mean, I, I went to some, I had about 120 stops,
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about a hundred in the, in the United States in the last year. And I met great, decent people
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everywhere. I went, whether it was New York city or whether it was Des Moines or Los Angeles.
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And we're just, we just have to strengthen those voices. That's it.
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And I think that we have to start, which we've already said in this conversation,
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we have to start in a place of realizing that the person you're talking to probably,
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probably wants essentially and ultimately the same things that you do. They probably want what's
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good for the country. They probably care about poor people. They probably say they care about
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the vulnerable, but the methods we disagree on. But if we can start with assuming that the person
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on the other side has good motives, um, that's not always the case, but a lot of times it is that
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I think that we can have probably a more productive conversation, but man, it's hard to get there,
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especially with the whole social media world. We've dehumanized the other side to the point to
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where we'll say anything that we would not say to their face, by the way.
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No, no. And I really try not to do that. I really almost, you're, you're pretty good at it too,
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where you don't, I see you don't attack people's motives. You always sort of come back with a sort
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of factual response to people to the best of your ability, right? I mean, this is where we're just
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people. We're just people. And sometimes you can get caught in that loop of craziness,
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you know, just in the last couple of days, I I've been getting a ton of, a ton of hate online.
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And sometimes, you know, usually I just brush it off and I don't think about it. And if anything,
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I think, Oh, I'm actually doing something relevant. And that's why I have haters. I mean,
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that's just, that's how it is. Anyone in the course of time, you're doing anything good. Kobe Bryant,
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a lot of people hated Kobe Bryant. He was a pretty good basketball player. You know what I mean?
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So I try to brush most of it off. Um, but this is getting increasingly hard to do.
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And I would say what, what this, uh, another way you could frame this is sort of what Dennis Prager said
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often, which is that the right thinks that the left is wrong, but the left thinks that the right
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is evil. And that's a problem because look at what you just said there. You made clear,
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you don't think these people are evil. You don't think that they're bigots and racist and blah,
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blah, blah. Now I think a lot of their ideas actually are bigoted and racist and they don't
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realize it. I think that a lot of their solutions are wrong. I think that they don't understand what
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freedom is. They don't understand the basic founding documents of this country. They actually resent
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them, but I don't think it's because they're evil. I think they're seriously misguided because of,
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at this point, I would say generations of brainwashing through academia and media.
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And that's why, by the way, people like you and I and Shapiro and Crowder and a whole slew of other
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people are doing well on YouTube where it's a meritocracy. Well, you know, short of what the
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algorithm's doing to us on any given day, but where people can actually find content. There's a reason
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our ideas are working because young people are so indoctrinated with sort of postmodern nonsense
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that then they hear somebody talking about freedom and it's your life to live. And I don't want to
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take from you. And I just don't want you to come on my property and do anything. And, you know,
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and then these, these basic truths that we know to be self-evident, we say them, they, then young
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people watch, they go, holy cow, that's true, but I don't learn that in school. And then Vox and media
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matters and everyone else calls us all right for saying it. And then it just creates this endless
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sort of my, what I would describe as really in a, this isn't the right hand motion. I'm doing a
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little Peterson right now, but it's more of a, it's an amorphous monster that everyone's fighting,
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but we don't even know where its head is. You know, if it's a video game, you'd have to go for
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the eye or go for the head, but we can't even find it because it's this ever changing set of rules
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that they don't even hold by themselves. And that's why our work is cut out for us. But you know,
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yeah, but like you said, I think that the left underestimates how hungry people are,
00:20:22.880
and especially young people. I found in my experience, how hungry they are for something
00:20:26.920
different, something substantive, not just in conversations, but also just in philosophies
00:20:32.480
and ideologies. They want something that is, uh, has some gravitas to it. I think that that's why
00:20:38.820
they like you. They like Jordan Peterson. Uh, they like Ben Shapiro. They like when I talk about
00:20:44.140
Christianity and the Bible and purpose that is bigger than yourself, because really, if you go
00:20:49.320
over to the left and especially the far left nowadays, all you're getting is this kind of
00:20:54.160
doctrine of self, this doctrine of you define your own truth. You define everything. You define your
00:21:00.400
own morality. There is no higher purpose outside of you. And that's how we get all of these are this
00:21:06.140
idea that the government exists for you, that everyone exists for you, that any kind of inconvenience
00:21:11.440
is injustice. And I do think there's a lot of people that watch our stuff that are like,
00:21:16.640
there's got to be something more than that. There's got to be something bigger than that.
00:21:20.580
You've hit a lot of stuff there. Look, it is a very nihilistic ideology to say that,
00:21:25.160
that you some, I mean, a lot of them, they truly believe at this point that all of their ancestors
00:21:30.580
were racist, that everyone before them was somehow an idiot. Yet they, they in 2019,
00:21:36.600
because of Snapchat and Twitter are so enlightened and so brilliant. And if only they could use the
00:21:42.420
state power the way they wanted, they wouldn't make all the mistakes of the past. They could
00:21:47.120
bring us to utopia, which of course really just brings us to, to dystopia. Um, but this is also
00:21:53.120
where one of the things that, that is, is problem problematic, which is the word I hate, but it's
00:21:57.840
actually problematic about progressivism is that they think that progress for the sake of progress is
00:22:02.800
good, but there are things from the past that are good. I mean, this is where, um, you know,
00:22:08.460
Jordan Peterson has, has helped people, I think through talking about big issues related to purpose
00:22:14.820
and truth through a biblical lens, I think has, has been deeply impactful for quite literally millions
00:22:20.900
of people all over the world, but you could take an issue like, so for you and I, for example,
00:22:25.260
you have a more traditional biblical definition of marriage. Now that was basically the definition of
00:22:30.600
marriage that everyone worldwide had for thousands of years, Barack Obama, you know, the progressive
00:22:36.640
hero, uh, ran at first term against gay marriage. Uh, you know, Hillary Clinton was against gay
00:22:43.840
marriage. Bill Clinton served two presidencies against gay marriage, all of these things.
00:22:47.060
Donald Trump actually is the first president ever to serve who came into office basically for gay
00:22:51.620
marriage. I mean, that's, that's just reality. Now I know we have a different biblical approach to it.
00:22:56.900
And as I say to Ben Shapiro, because although, uh, you know, he's coming from an Orthodox Jewish
00:23:02.080
tradition, which is different than your tradition. Uh, but it's the same sort of biblical route,
00:23:06.400
let's say I've said to Ben many times, and I've had this debate with him many times to me, as long
00:23:11.980
as you guys basically take the libertarian approach that two adults can enter into any contract that
00:23:16.540
they want, then that that's all I care about that. The fact that you have a different belief,
00:23:21.280
um, the fact that you have a different belief system than I do, what, how crazy would it be
00:23:26.900
for me to try to impart as I'm supposed to be tolerant, but I'm also supposed to force you to
00:23:31.480
believe exactly what I believe the second that I believe it. And that's one of the problems that
00:23:35.840
progressives have. The second they believe something to be true, if you don't change the
00:23:40.640
day they change, then you're a bigot, then you're a homophobe, then you're all of those things.
00:23:44.920
And what the real danger of that is, is that over time they will keep going further and further.
00:23:49.820
I'm going, we're using my right hand here. They'll keep going further and further left,
00:23:53.080
which ultimately will, will have to destroy history. This is, this is why Rashida Taleb right
00:23:59.460
now is absolutely making up. Not only is she using true cultural appropriation by using the Holocaust
00:24:05.940
the way she is, uh, that it gives her a sense of peace or something, but she's absolutely lying about
00:24:11.500
what happened during the founding of Israel and, and removing, removing thousands of years of history,
00:24:16.160
but forget the thousands, she's removing just the last 72 years of history and just absolute lying.
00:24:21.100
But they have to lie to get their goals in place. But what they don't realize along the way is
00:24:26.280
that one day, the further that gets, it will come eat all of them because one day they will have a
00:24:31.320
traditional value. They'll have a 2019 traditional value. That'll be thought of as bigoted. They ate meat.
00:24:36.760
And one day the radical leftists will say, they'll look back and they'll say, you barbarians,
00:24:40.960
you ate meat. We're going to take your statues down and the rest of it. And that's why I guarantee
00:24:44.980
you, if I had a crystal ball, it's 2062. The Barack Obama library is going to be burned down
00:24:50.660
in Chicago by leftists because he was against gay marriage. And it's just a, it's a sad race to the
00:24:57.880
bottom. And I'm glad that I've, if I've done anything right on this planet, it's that I've helped
00:25:02.080
wake some people up to this. Yeah, I think so too. Even if someone doesn't necessarily become a
00:25:07.160
conservative from listening to your podcast or my podcast, at least at the very least, someone might
00:25:12.700
say, okay, well, this can be a conversation of ideas and not necessarily a conversation of bashing
00:25:19.960
someone's character because they disagree with me. Uh, has there been one subject or one issue that you
00:25:26.580
can think of off the top of your head that you have changed your mind on over the past few years?
00:25:30.920
Well, I mean the, the most famous one is a couple of years ago. It's about three and a half years
00:25:37.760
ago. Now, Larry Elder was on my show for the first time and millions of people have now seen many
00:25:42.540
versions of this clip. Larry Elder destroys Dave Rubin, Larry Elder owns Dave Rubin. I mean, this is when
00:25:47.420
I was just, I was still waking up to a lot of the, the sort of pre-programmed leftist dogma because
00:25:52.980
that's what it is. It's not that people are really thinking about these things. It's not like everything
00:25:56.980
starts equal. People think about things and then leftist ideas rise quickly. What happens is all
00:26:02.320
the indoctrination is leftist indoctrination. So the, the right or conservatives, you guys are always
00:26:07.440
playing. And, and, and I don't even mean to say you guys in this regard, anyone that cares about
00:26:10.760
freedom is always catching up because those, you have to think about those things where one is just
00:26:16.800
handed to you as the default position. So in my interview with Larry Elder from about three and a
00:26:21.400
half years ago, when I was still, I still considered myself part of the left. I hadn't done that Prager
00:26:25.500
You video yet. Um, and I said something about systemic racism because it was just the default
00:26:32.860
position. America is a systemically racist country, meaning it's in the system. There are laws that
00:26:37.220
are racist. Larry absolutely bludgeoned me with facts. I mean, he beat me senseless and I, and I've
00:26:43.260
talked about it many times, but I view it as, I view it as simultaneously the best and worst moment of
00:26:49.200
my career. It was the worst moment of my career because I wasn't armed with facts. I said something that I
00:26:53.840
just believed because it just comes through the ether. America is racist. We're systemically
00:26:58.380
racist. That's not to say there aren't individual racists. Of course there are, and there always
00:27:02.560
will be by the way. Um, but, but that the system itself is not racist, that the system has laws
00:27:08.640
that treat everyone equally. Could we do more things on prison reform? Could other things, things,
00:27:13.300
ancillary things that can be done? Sure. But anyway, he beat me senseless. And I would say it was my
00:27:16.660
worst moment because I wasn't armed with facts. It was my best moment because when I went into the
00:27:20.480
control room after the show and we were at OROTB at the time and we had a big staff, I had several
00:27:25.040
people say to me, you know, you got to take that out. We got to edit that out. That can't be in
00:27:29.160
there. And I said, no, it's not my best moment. It's embarrassing. It's actually pretty awful,
00:27:34.440
but it's real. And in retrospect, I think it's one of the best things that I've ever done because
00:27:39.580
by that clip showing, going around, it showed people, you know, we watch CNN, we watch all these
00:27:45.140
awful shows. I mean, I don't watch them, but I assume somebody watches them. And all it is,
00:27:49.540
is people yelling at each other and destroying each other. And, you know, people that have never
00:27:52.580
accomplished anything, but if only they had the power, they could do everything. And it's so
00:27:55.920
stupid, but there's never a learning moment. There's never a learning moment for you as an
00:28:00.100
audience member. And there's never a learning moment that happens to someone on screen. So
00:28:03.680
the fact that I, I allowed a learning moment to, to just be, uh, I think was, was pretty impactful to
00:28:09.800
people. And, uh, and it did, you know, change my mind on things. And Larry's now a good friend and
00:28:15.280
I'm very proud of that. I think probably a lot of people don't appreciate the fact that you
00:28:19.080
actually deliberately allowed that to go public. Probably think some people probably think that
00:28:23.960
it just kind of leaked out there and that you're all embarrassed about it. But I think that that's
00:28:28.020
a good lesson for a lot of people. Um, okay. Final thing. If you can just give an optimistic
00:28:33.520
piece of advice to people who may be in a, in a smaller, less public position than you,
00:28:38.920
but they feel like they are constantly, uh, dealing with the onslaught of you're a bigot,
00:28:44.740
you are a racist because you're a conservative or because you think differently of me than me,
00:28:49.720
whether it's college campus work, whatever it is, I get these messages all the time. I'm sure you do.
00:28:54.620
What is, uh, what is your advice to them? What should they, what should they do?
00:29:00.380
My advice is be brave. That is all you can do. Be brave. What kind of person are you really?
00:29:08.940
Are you the type of person that bows to the mob? Are you the type of person who doesn't speak up?
00:29:13.260
Are you the type of person who doesn't fight for what you believe? Or are you someone who will try
00:29:18.600
to create a world that you want to live in? And I understand all of the social pressures and the
00:29:24.180
financial pressures and the familial pressures of just kind of going with the flow and never really
00:29:30.600
pushing anything one way or another. And what that will do is create a situation where you will be
00:29:35.440
the frog in that slowly boiling pot. Yeah. One day, one day, all of your freedoms will be gone.
00:29:41.320
All of the things that you care about, uh, will be, will be removed. Humor will be killed. I mean,
00:29:48.200
really everything that makes us human, our ability to agree to disagree, our ability to create all of
00:29:53.580
these things will slowly be taken away. If people self-censor themselves because they think that
00:29:59.780
will keep the, the, the mob at bay for another day. So I think, I mean, this is something that really
00:30:05.440
in the last year by being with Jordan on tour, it really did hit me. I mean, I think I've,
00:30:10.100
I've tried to live my life this way. Um, and, and definitely failed at it sometimes, but
00:30:14.600
it is your life. And if you don't speak up for yourself, then why should anyone else speak up
00:30:22.060
for you? And it's like, for people like you, Ali and me, and for, you know, let's say the 30 or 40,
00:30:28.460
uh, you know, YouTube podcast types that are talking about similar issues. It's like,
00:30:33.660
I can say this for myself. I don't think I'm special. I think for whatever reason, I'm okay
00:30:38.700
with talking about these ideas. I wonder about it sometimes. And I'm like, man, is this doing,
00:30:43.480
you know, when I get a certain amount of hate or whatever, it's like, is this really worth it?
00:30:47.980
But I know that I could not live another way. Uh, so fight for what you believe in because the
00:30:54.380
people who would love to take things from you, they're fighting pretty damn hard. So don't just
00:30:58.800
think it's all going to remain good forever. Cause it won't. Yeah, I agree with you. I think
00:31:03.060
that's a great piece of advice to end on. Um, if you could just tell everyone, uh, where to find
00:31:08.920
you social media and your awesome podcast. Yes. Well, for now I'm still on all social media
00:31:15.080
platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Uh, it's at Rubin report on all of them and you can, uh, check out
00:31:21.660
Dave Rubin.com and, uh, you know, podcasts, Apple, Spotify, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you hit a
00:31:27.120
million subscribers not too long ago on YouTube. Big deal. Yeah. We hit a million subscribers and
00:31:32.100
they're just crushing us in the algorithm now. I mean, it's just, that's a, that's a whole other
00:31:36.960
mess that we should talk about some other time, but you know, dealing with the tech companies and
00:31:40.660
what, I mean, if you want to do it for two minutes, maybe we should just real quick, but, uh, you know,
00:31:46.440
where, if you're a limited government person right now, it's like, they've really pushed my
00:31:50.480
libertarian ideas to the end, to the end of the road, because they could kill all of us.
00:31:55.520
They could digitally assassinate all of us right now. And we're just hanging on by their good graces
00:32:00.700
and who knows what's going to happen before the election. And it's like, do I want the government
00:32:04.420
to come and take control or regulate these things? I mean, I live in California.
00:32:07.780
What do you think? Well, I paid my property taxes on a California state website. It looks like
00:32:12.580
prodigy in 1983, in 1993. I mean, it's a nightmare. So, but at the same time, there is the platform
00:32:18.520
versus publisher debate. And it's very clear that they've become publishers more than just
00:32:22.560
platforms. And as someone that's on the wrong side of this, in that I do see that, you know,
00:32:29.180
my, I get emails every day. People are unsubscribed. They don't see my videos. I know Twitter is messing
00:32:33.620
with me now. We know that they do all of these things. It's not that we're conspiracy theorists.
00:32:38.560
It's like, maybe something does have to happen here as much as I don't want to give any extra power
00:32:43.900
to the state. I'm still conflicted by it. I know. And the more that they label someone like you
00:32:48.440
alt-right, the more of a justification they have to lump you in with the people that they have
00:32:54.020
already banned. So they can say, well, you're the exact same as Alex Jones. You're the exact same as
00:32:59.980
anyone else. That's kind of what they're priming the pump for. It seems like, um, and you can say
00:33:05.600
all you want to, I'm not all right, but it's kind of like, if you're a crazy person or you've been
00:33:10.440
accused of being crazy and you say, I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy. People just think that you're
00:33:14.420
crazy. And so you almost feel powerless. And so I totally, I understand that I don't want the
00:33:20.700
government to get involved because the government is rarely on the side of conservatives. Um, but
00:33:26.440
you know, platform versus publisher, all of that, it's really hard to know what exactly the solution
00:33:31.100
is because it is scary. It's our livelihoods. Yeah. I would say one other thing, which is that I
00:33:36.720
think perhaps if we treat these things like utilities, I don't really love the idea because
00:33:42.000
again, that has some sort of then government control over what they're doing, but this is
00:33:46.240
the way we communicate in, in 2019 in modern times. And if everyone should be allowed to have a
00:33:53.260
telephone, then I think everyone should have access to this. Now, if you're breaking the laws of the
00:33:58.340
United States, meaning directly threatening violence or yelling fire in a crowded theater, or we have
00:34:02.260
extremely stringent slander and libel laws. I mean, if you're breaking laws, you know, you're
00:34:06.840
planning a terrorist attack or something, then fine. But without, you know, within, within that
00:34:11.140
framework, I would have everybody be on here. Um, because once you start handing that stuff off,
00:34:17.200
yes, are there bad people out there? There are, but who are the people in charge and do you trust
00:34:22.240
them? I don't. Yeah, I know. It's a really interesting debate. We'll have to talk about it more,
00:34:27.620
another, uh, another time, but thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate
00:34:32.140
it. Yeah, my pleasure. I'll talk to you soon. So I did want to say one thing after the conversation
00:34:40.200
that I had with Dave, he brought up something that, uh, I wanted to talk a little bit more about. So
00:34:45.180
I'm just going to mention it now. He asked a really interesting question. And that question was,
00:34:49.900
is your life better than your grandparents, than your grandparents and, uh, than your grandparents'
00:34:55.600
lives were. And you might have different, you might have a different answer to that than I do.
00:35:00.240
My answer is undeniably. Yes. My grandmother, uh, was raised on a cotton farm. My parents were poor
00:35:07.340
when they first got married. My life is much better than my grandmother's was, uh, when she was my age
00:35:14.440
and when she was growing up. And I think that the other question that I would ask someone in that
00:35:20.860
from a conservative perspective, I would want to say, what makes your life better than your
00:35:27.700
grandparents? What happens, uh, what went on that created a better life for you? Because I don't think
00:35:34.580
it's just the circumstances surrounding all Americans. Yes. America is much richer. We have
00:35:40.460
more opportunities. We have more freedom, more flexibility than we ever have, uh, in human history.
00:35:45.380
But I would be interested to know what choices were made, uh, in your grandparents' lives and in
00:35:53.220
your parents' lives that led to where you are now, or if your life is worse than your parents' life,
00:35:59.500
or if your life is worse than your grandparents' life, can you point to what happened? Um, because
00:36:05.480
the fact of the matter is a lot of people on the left will tell you that you are where you are because
00:36:09.860
of circumstances beyond anyone's control. And that might be true for a lot of people. People fall on
00:36:15.260
hard times through no fault of their own. But many times, I would say most times where we are,
00:36:20.960
are a product of either our choices or someone's choices. And for me, I can say without a doubt that
00:36:26.660
the reason my life is better than my grandparents' lives when they were my age, or my parents' lives
00:36:32.160
when they were my age is because of the choices that my grandmother made as a young woman in the 1950s
00:36:38.960
to make sure she was the first person to graduate from high school, the first person to graduate from
00:36:43.820
college in her family to go on to get her master's and work full time as a teacher. She was raising
00:36:47.960
four kids. My dad's decision to work for 10 years while he was going to school. I'm going off on a
00:36:53.940
tangent here, but, and my mom's decision too, to make sure that she didn't get pregnant until she got
00:36:59.320
married. All of these decisions that made my grandparents or my grandmother and my parents
00:37:04.260
stand out among their families. I can point to those decisions and say, that is why my life is so much
00:37:10.340
better. And I think that would be true for a lot of us. If we looked at the trajectory of the
00:37:15.120
generations before us in our own lives, it's, uh, I would say by and large, a product of choices.
00:37:21.260
And that is a part of the American dream. And that is a part of why I'm a conservative because I
00:37:25.800
believe in the power of the individual more than I believe in the power, at least in this country
00:37:30.820
of circumstances, uh, beyond our control. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that
00:37:36.480
because I didn't want to go off on a tangent with Dave, didn't want to take up all this time,
00:37:39.780
but I did want to make sure that I left you with that thought. And one more thing, um,
00:37:45.860
Dave and I have talked before. And the reason why we didn't get into a lot of our differences today,
00:37:50.860
like obviously we differ on gay marriage. He brought that up. We have gone in depth on our
00:37:55.500
differences, uh, uh, particularly our theological differences and our differences on gay marriage
00:38:00.540
and things like that in an episode that he posted on his channel. So I've been on his podcast
00:38:05.720
before. So you can go to the Rubin report YouTube channel. You can see our long, more than an hour
00:38:10.900
long conversation about all of that, where I really talk about, uh, my theology and my religious
00:38:15.660
perspective on all of that. So I didn't want you to think that we kind of just brushed over that it's
00:38:21.460
because we've had this conversation in depth before. So you can go check that out if you would
00:38:26.080
like, and that's it for today. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode and I will see you again soon.