Comedian and author Rob Schneider joins me to discuss his new book, "You Can Do It," and why he decided to turn from a liberal to a conservative in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We talk about the decline of the Hollywood star system, the rise of the right to free speech, and what it means for the future of comedy.
00:01:34.200We discussed, well, to some degree, the origins of comedy in Hollywood and the collapse of the Hollywood star system.
00:01:43.340We talked about the direction in which entertainment is likely to go in the near future.
00:01:47.600We talked about the role of Hollywood in its own demise, preferring the politically correct pathway to the pathway of genuine artistic commitment and also genuine humor.
00:02:00.960We talked about our hopes that maybe that is coming to an end.
00:02:05.060Our curiosity about what the comedians, especially the successful comedians on the center right, let's say,
00:02:11.860the podcasters, for example, who've been spectacularly successful over the last five or six years,
00:02:18.240what they're going to turn to now in the aftermath of the Trump victory.
00:02:22.040What role are the comedians as critics going to play now that the tide has turned and there's a new king in town, so to speak?
00:02:30.380So that's going to be very interesting.
00:02:31.960We talked about, well, we talked about Rob's book, which is a testament to the power of free speech.
00:02:39.060We talked about the fact that he decided to turn in the conservative direction for a liberal relatively early on in the course of the culture war,
00:02:51.980really starting to get involved in the political and not in the typical Hollywood manner by about 2014.
00:03:00.060And we discussed why that happened and what it meant and what the consequences have been for his career and potentially for the future.
00:04:04.880Well, I think it's important to terms seem to be, as you well know, seem to be an imposition for people.
00:04:17.220In other words, they want to, in this tribal nature that we find ourselves in our society, people seem to group themselves and identify themselves very strongly, whether it's liberalism speaks to young people.
00:04:31.800Whereas, and what I want to do is, because I think of words have been manipulated and have been.
00:04:44.700Well, the word Nazi has gone from someone who is a member of the National Socialist Party and someone who is a, who, or a neo-Nazi would be someone who still adheres to the policies of some things that are the National Socialists and the anti-Semitism and so forth.
00:05:00.380But now it has devolved to the point, you're a Nazi if you have taken up two parking spaces with your Elon Musk new truck.
00:05:29.140And if I am traditional liberalism, I think you'd have to define it as someone who is for civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, equality.
00:05:38.920Don't judge a person by the color of their skin.
00:05:41.100It's pretty basic traditional liberalism.
00:06:00.420So let's delve into that a little bit.
00:06:01.980I mean, I think one of the compelling differences or the compelling definitional features of classic liberalism is the insistence that it's the individual, that human beings should be regarded as individuals first and foremost, right?
00:06:18.100Is that the fact of your singular individuality is the defining hallmark of your identity.
00:06:25.140And I think both conservatism and progressivism can, what would you say, diverge from that.
00:06:32.040The progressives diverge in that they insist that group identity trumps individual identity.
00:06:38.660But the conservatives have that proclivity too, right?
00:06:41.200Because they might prioritize, especially the more traditional conservative types, as you move farther to the right, they might prioritize religious faith or national identity.
00:06:51.860And I certainly have always believed that the primary level of analysis when you're dealing with human beings should be the individual.
00:07:02.200But one of the things that I've wrestled with in the last 10 years is maybe the realization that that only works if the bedrock of society is in place, right?
00:07:15.180So when the Scots invented liberalism, I think that's a reasonable historical proclamation.
00:07:24.040There was some unstated elements to their liberalism.
00:07:28.680And the unstated element was, well, we all share a set of presumptions that we don't have to talk about.
00:07:35.780We hold these things as self-evident, right?
00:07:38.360Like the founders of the United States.
00:07:41.880And if that's the case and it remains the case, then we can be free and be defined as individualism.
00:08:08.140But I felt like the state was under attack.
00:08:11.260You did feel like some of the foundational principles of our country recently was under attack.
00:08:17.000The attack on freedom of speech, which is something that you just, you know, moving on in your 20s and 30s, you just think it's never, it's not going to be an issue in your life.
00:08:26.800That your freedom to speak your mind is going to be something, especially someone who is in the public eye and is a comedian.
00:08:57.780It lasted for the free speech in France, lasted for four years before they started cutting off people's heads again.
00:09:03.420Well, in the United States, it's lasted a long time.
00:09:06.260So it, it has become something that we did take for granted.
00:09:10.300So when it was attacked in relatively short order during the pandemic, you realize that this is not something that is just going to take care of itself.
00:09:20.140That it's just a piece of paper, ultimately our constitution and our bill of rights.
00:09:24.480And if people don't stand up for it, yes, it can be taken away.
00:09:28.400And when you have potential leaders like Kamala Harris and Tim Wall's paper say that the, the free speech, our right to free speech is a privilege.
00:09:40.620They're not a, a guarantee, guaranteed.
00:10:04.260I didn't think it was something that I needed to worry about.
00:10:07.740So as a comedian, I just assumed that this was just going to continue.
00:10:12.720However, with the consolidation of powers, especially in the tech, the tech industries with these so-called liberals in mostly in Northern California,
00:10:24.800they seemed to have a, got a grip on the culture and on communication and on power and the consolidation of that.
00:10:33.860And that became something when they started to make decisions that affected the society at large.
00:11:12.980So when the pharmaceutical industry can buy off or can pay and be the largest contributor to not only a federal, a senator on the federal level or a congressman, but also on the state level, then that is power.
00:11:29.580When they can actually write the legislation and hand it to a state legislature through the medical board that they control, all of a sudden, these freedoms that I just assumed we had are illusory.
00:11:46.380And we are told what to do by this group.
00:11:49.760So that was a point to me around 2014 where I realized that there really was a problem, a fundamental problem.
00:11:59.840And then when Obama put in allowed to have propaganda within the United States from government agencies in 2013.
00:12:13.600Well, well, they had, well, there was always, you could, the CIA and the, the, the, the spy agencies could always, you know, use propaganda for other countries.
00:12:25.080But then there was, oh, yes, they had legislation passed in 2013.
00:12:29.140I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the name now.
00:12:32.080But whether that propaganda could actually happen to Americans in America.
00:12:36.940So that was seemed to be, that was different.
00:12:39.820I mean, it goes back to like Woodrow Wilson, where he ran on, I kept us out of war.
00:12:47.060And as soon as he got reelected, he got us into war.
00:12:50.260And then there was the propaganda that through the, through Congress, it was, it was approved that they could use propaganda in the United States.
00:13:02.060And so what you really had, you had, you know, the burning of Belgian babies.
00:13:07.640And you had this, you know, we, the Hun is doing these horrible things that they weren't doing.
00:16:55.820And so from that, I think it became an easy, uh, kind of pincer move when the pandemic came in to just kind of continue closing the door quicker.
00:17:04.760So with our rights being taken away and, um, you know, the constitution and the founding fathers had a plague at the time of the, uh, the revolution, but they didn't stop.
00:17:17.420They didn't stop trying to get rid of the Brits at the time.
00:17:19.420So we got to, let's call a timeout here on the revolution because we're having a smallpox epidemic.
00:17:25.060So we're going to ask for a cessation of hostilities.
00:18:08.560You know the, you know the experiment for, for some of your, uh, listeners who don't.
00:18:12.560Um, Stanley Milgram would have somebody, an authority figure in a white coat and he'd be asking him to push a button and there'd be somebody in another room screaming through a glass.
00:18:22.200And so keep pushing, keep pushing it, turn it up, turn it up to the point.
00:18:26.040And even to the point of death, they would, there was a, as an astounding 65% of the people went along with it.
00:18:32.720Now that study had some particular problems, but the majority of it, I think still holds that people will go along if the authorities tell them to do something.
00:18:41.100And I think if anything, the pandemic proved that again, that how well do, would you behave in this situation?
00:18:48.220And you saw people that behaved well and people that didn't, people that were going to be, who finally in a position to be bullies, finally in a position to crush other people and did.
00:18:58.800I remember in Australia seeing somebody getting tackled and thrown to the ground by this brute, just for the offense of not having a mask.
00:19:07.320I mean, maybe he could be asked to leave if that's the law of the land.
00:19:10.960Maybe he can be asked to go outside or maybe he can be provided with a mask in that particular environment.
00:19:16.680However, for him to be tackled, thrown onto the ground and given a concussion seems to be a...
00:19:22.560A bit of an overreaction, you might say.
00:19:25.320So basically, your observation is that a variety of, there were a variety of causal factors that gave rise to what happened during the pandemic and the pandemic crystallized it.
00:19:41.800Well, the potential for society to always get to a, to a, to an ugly place, I would say, to a place...
00:19:48.740Well, as you point out in your book, it's a, it's a pronounced minority of people in the world who have anything approximating the right to free speech, right?
00:19:58.880So the fact that we take it for granted is something like a miracle.
00:20:02.440It's a foolish miracle in a way because the fact that it's barely existed throughout human history and barely exists now attests to the difficulty of establishing a state where that's the, where that's the, what, expectation.
00:20:18.380I mean, we've had 117 billion people who've been alive in the history of the world.
00:20:23.220Of those, how few were, were able to be granted the, the grace and the, and the, the great gift of being able to speak their mind.
00:20:34.240And that was what's so interesting about the United States and why, you know, Alexander de Tocqueville really appreciated America was,
00:20:43.040here was this, these group of farmers, basically, ignorant farmers who were able to say that their, people who ran their government were fools and idiots and were able to speak their mind.
00:20:55.440I mean, that was something from somebody from coming from France and not too far removed from Napoleon, seemed to be a unique civilization.
00:21:04.560So I think, um, see, it's a funny thing too, because it isn't only that you have the right to free speech.
00:21:14.500It's actually, because you would only characterize it that way if you believe that free speech was something like a hedonic pleasure, right?
00:21:23.020I can say whatever I want, but that's, that underplays the importance of the principle because you have a responsibility to free speech.
00:21:32.400And the fact that you can speak freely might be desirable to you.
00:21:37.040And it might even make you happy, although sometimes it wouldn't provide a living too.
00:21:50.800But so it's a new year, 2025, and you're thinking, how am I going to make this year different?
00:21:56.780How am I going to build something for myself?
00:21:58.380I'm dying to be my own boss or see if I can turn that business idea I've been kicking around into a reality, but I don't know how to make it happen.
00:22:05.000Well, Shopify is how you're going to make it happen.
00:22:56.000Part of the, there's a huge advantage to me that you have the right to free speech because I get to hear what you think.
00:23:05.340And so if you're wrong, I can learn how things are wrong.
00:23:09.480And if you're right, then I can listen to you and not have to suffer through whatever you had to suffer through to become wise in that manner.
00:23:46.340But the founding fathers actually thought that even more than guns, the way to protect our citizenry and our republic from tyranny was unfettered free speech.
00:23:58.460Well, it's also the way to ensure that not only that society is protected from tyranny, but that it thrives.
00:24:05.540Because from a psychological perspective, there's very little difference between freedom of speech and the right to think.
00:24:17.420And thought is how you adapt to changing circumstances.
00:24:21.280And so the fact that the United States is the most dynamic economy in the world is a direct consequence of the fact that free speech rights are so well protected here.
00:24:31.820Because there can be people like Elon Musk here.
00:25:11.340But, I mean, the, that's what was so worrisome to me is that the, you know, the neocons who, we don't really know who has been running the country, the United States government.
00:26:48.960Like for instance, um, when I was making a movie in Amsterdam, people were able to complain to parliament very quickly so that I couldn't shoot the next day in the same location.
00:26:58.220They, uh, so it's very responsive, but, um, the good thing about this Republican, um, is that we really do have these safeguards that are pretty strong.
00:27:09.740Like for instance, you don't hear any Democrats today talking about expanding the Supreme Court or about, um, abandoning the filibuster because they're no longer in power.
00:27:21.000So there, there's no call for that, but those are safeguards, you know, and we do have a system.
00:27:26.880It's, it is susceptible to bad faith actors for sure, especially in our culture, in the broad culture, but in our, in our government itself, it's a pretty good system.
00:27:36.360I mean, the, the Supreme Court, um, that is a good backstop for a lot of the craziness that can be tried by our government.
00:27:44.120It is a last, uh, last gasp and, and they do have to respond to that.
00:27:48.500And so, unfortunately, since 9-11 though, that's one of the, the things that I think have led to our potential, to, to our particular problems that we've had now and our attack on our Republic is the Congress has abdicated their legislative powers and they've just given it to the president because of the Patriot Act.
00:28:09.640So basically the Patriot, I mean, the, the, the founding fathers had never designed our, our government to, for the president is just, you know, rule as an emperor.
00:28:19.840Yeah, well, it's an odd thing that the worst possible consequence of a terrorist attack is that it isn't the attack itself.
00:28:28.720It's, it's, it's the reaction to the attack that makes the attack successful.
00:28:34.000Well, I mean, a lot of, well, you know, I hate airports.
00:28:39.240Like I, I was unbearable to travel with, with my wife for like 10 years.
00:28:43.560We finally figured out how to work it out.
00:28:46.320But every time I went into an airport after 9-11, I thought they're training everybody to accept the doctrines of a totalitarian state.
00:28:55.580You have to line up like sheep to do stupid things that mean nothing, that give you the illusion of security, implemented by faceless authoritarians and then acted out by powerless minions.
00:30:14.420Well, the billions of dollars they put on and the machines.
00:30:17.640What happens is there becomes the machine that comes into place and that takes advantage of certain situations like this.
00:30:26.620The machine that gave the president these new powers in the Patriot Act, the machine that now became part of the surveillance state, that doesn't want to go away because that machine is making money.
00:30:39.960So the machine at the security is going to keep going because that makes money for some company and they're going to keep coming.
00:31:15.020But as far as the Congress giving the powers to the president, neither party wants to get rid of it because they know they'll eventually have those.
00:31:24.360They want that kind of unfettered rights to just put in their laws that they want.
00:31:28.600I think it was 125 the first week executive orders that Biden put in.
00:31:32.580And the Republicans don't want to get rid of it either.
00:31:35.220They don't want to get rid of the Patriot Act because they won't have the same powers.
00:31:38.300So you really have an entrenched political machine in both parties that don't want to give up these powers.
00:31:52.040But then you have, like, what happened after 9-11 as well, this security apparatus to—because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
00:32:01.280Because you can massively gather all Americans' communications and then try to look for certain keywords, you know, by these supercomputers.
00:32:22.260Well, you have a constituency that's agitating for it desperately, right?
00:32:26.800Because, well, they're very dependent upon it once it's in place.
00:32:29.340Well, the spy system is there, the system of surveillance, and that's an outreach of it, a very low outreach for people.
00:32:36.520The idea that, you know, that there are these many people who want to take a plane down and crash them into a building, I would say that's very few.
00:32:57.480It's like, no, like almost no one is a potential hijacker.
00:33:02.580No matter who you single out, the probability that you're wrong is overwhelming.
00:33:07.380And, yeah, the question is, how much damage do you do in that false pursuit of security?
00:33:11.840I mean, in London, many of the buildings—there's a bit of this in New York, but many of the buildings in London have the same sort of security that airports do.
00:33:21.320People just get more and more accustomed to it.
00:33:23.580And that is a sad—that is a sad reaction to—and in some ways, I remember when these happened, I said—and a lot of people said, well, the terrorists won.
00:33:39.580I haven't heard that in a while, but it's true.
00:33:41.480A sad thing that Andrew Doyle, our good friend, journalist and comedian, was saying that during the bombing in England at Ariana Grande concert, that they—the police or security saw a man with a backpack that was suspicious.
00:34:00.780And they didn't go up to him because they were afraid it might be considered a racist.
00:34:11.520So you have an overreaction to this security state system that is a surveillance system that's put in place.
00:34:18.800And then you have an underreaction by people who think, well, this could be racist.
00:34:22.960And that ended up being somebody that they should have checked.
00:34:25.440So we're in a weird position in Western culture now where we're under attack from all sides at the same time.
00:34:32.900So let's delve into that a little bit conceptually.
00:34:35.800So one of the things that's worth pointing out with regards to the precursors for the COVID authoritarian lockdown, let's say, is what I—again, what happened in the universities.
00:34:46.720Because people don't understand this, and it's really important.
00:34:49.980Because people generally look at the universities, and they think that there's a battle raging in the universities about who should be allowed to speak freely.
00:35:02.340That radically understates the significance of the actual battle.
00:35:07.940Because what is poorly understood by people, especially the moderates on the left, is that the postmodernists dispensed with the idea of free speech itself.
00:35:20.180They don't believe that progressives should have the right to free speech, and no one else should.
00:35:25.520They believe that the metaphysics of the idea of free speech is false.
00:35:30.140So for the typical postmodernist, so the Enlightenment, or maybe even the Judeo-Christian assumption is that you're a sovereign authority of sorts as an individual with inalienable value.
00:35:47.360And one of the consequences of that is that you have a viewpoint, and that that viewpoint has intrinsic value.
00:35:55.280And so—and I'm the same sort of being, and that means that if I listen to your viewpoint, we can come to an accord with one another that might be of mutual benefit.
00:36:05.340And so exchanging our ideas is not only beneficial, it's possible.
00:36:11.060That isn't what the postmodernists think.
00:36:17.840And so no matter what I say—you made reference to this earlier—where you're the unwitting oppressor.
00:36:23.820Well, that stems logically from the tenets of postmodernism, because the postmodern insistence is that the only game in town is one of power.
00:36:33.720It doesn't matter what you say you're doing.
00:37:32.600So it's an interesting way to get to it because they went through the educational route instead of through the traditional route through the worker.
00:37:43.040It was an easier turn to – and actually it was more susceptible to get to the culture and degrade Western civilization through academia than it was through the worker.
00:37:55.760Because the worker knows that if he works hard, his life is going to be better in a capitalist system.
00:38:12.100However, in this utopian promise of the progressives is that the system is inherently evil and bad, and it's – you're a bad person for participating in it.
00:38:24.580Therefore, it needs to be deconstructed completely.
00:38:27.600And to get to the better utopia, which is always leading to mass murder.
00:38:32.560But the academia was the place where you could have somebody like Kamala Harris's father with Stanford University have a Marxist studies.
00:38:46.700And at that time in the early 70s, I think it was considered odd, but definitely like inclusive.
00:38:56.180Not that anybody would like – they thought there was genuine ideas that we should put into our – into Western civilization.
00:39:04.040It was completely – we'd seen that it's collapsed in what it was capable of doing.
00:39:09.460And at that time, what it was doing in the Soviet Union and in China, that this is a system that we don't want.
00:39:14.780But we'll still have it as part of the academia.
00:39:17.280Well, you talked about a kind of sleight of hand that – and I still haven't been able to puzzle this out entirely because the French postmodernists were the first, the most influential thinkers who levied this challenge to the metaphysics of the West.
00:39:34.800But they did ally themselves with the Marxists, which is very strange because the first dictum of the postmodernists is that there's no uniting metanarrative.
01:38:38.060So that balloon of hate and disparaging Donald Trump is not taking off.
01:38:45.640So that is where we, that's where we're at.
01:38:49.000That's a very good place to stop and also well-timed.
01:38:51.860And I think what we'll do, by the way, for everybody who's watching and listening, if you want to join us on the Daily Wire side, I think we'll spend half an hour there talking about Rob's experiences specifically in Hollywood.
01:39:02.600And what he sees on the horizon for comedy and also for entertainment in general.
01:39:08.220So if you're inclined, join us on the Daily Wire side.
01:39:11.780This is Rob's new book, in case you missed it at the beginning.
01:39:15.340You can do it, which is a good message.
01:39:17.580And also a necessary one, because even though you have this remarkable cadre of people in charge on the Republican side under Trump, they're going to need help at every possible level.
01:39:30.760And, you know, your whole culture here in the United States is predicated on the idea that not only can you do it, but you should.
01:39:37.900And if you don't, then all hell will break loose.