Ep. 32 - Free Speech Hour ft. Dave Rubin
Episode Stats
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Summary
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report joins The Michael Knowles Show to discuss all things free speech and Star Wars. Plus, Allie Stuckey and Jacob Berry join the panel of deplorables to discuss Anthony Weiner in the can and NPR s lambasting the unfair exclusivity of women s sports.
Transcript
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Milo's free speech week at Berkeley is a bust, and President Trump is calling out knee-dropping NFL ingrates.
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We will talk all manner of free speech with our in-studio guest, Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report.
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Then, Allie Stuckey and Jacob Berry join the panel of deplorables to discuss Anthony Weiner in the can
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and NPR's lambasting the unfair exclusivity of women's sports.
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I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I hear Shapiro and Clayton screaming in the hallway.
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It must be at any point on any day of the week.
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So by sheer coincidence, by absurd coincidence, you are here.
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We'd already booked you, and all anyone is talking about today is free speech.
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But before we get into any of it, you have a beard.
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You've gone on this hermitage, this Thoreauian, Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker hermitage.
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Well, I went off the grid for 30 days, literally off the grid.
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Not looking at Twitter sounds like the most fun thing ever.
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And I think everyone, if you say anything about Twitter to people these days, immediately
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everyone kind of rolls their eyes, their body language changes.
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Twitter used to be fun, and now the trolls have taken over.
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But the evil people, it's not the trolls, actually.
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It's the truly, genuinely evil people who just want to burn everything down.
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So even the good stuff about Twitter, where you can get your stuff out there, like just
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staring at your phone all day and scrolling what some anonymous pink cat said about you,
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it's like, this is probably not the best thing.
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But the people have demanded that the beard stay.
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Because if I keep growing out the hair, the beard comes a little bit more.
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The movie before Rogue One, whatever that was, The Last Jedi with the girl.
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That is the most diplomatic way to put it I've ever heard.
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You're telling me you did not like Force Awakens, but you liked Rogue One?
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So that's very conventional thinking right there.
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That's very conservative, conventional thinking.
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Cassidy Andor, Jyn Erso, Baze Malbus, Shira Imwe, and K2SO.
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The thing I liked about it is that it was new, though.
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It wasn't just a remake of A New Hope, you know?
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That scene in the middle where Vader comes out and he, like, sashays out there,
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It's called Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch, and it talks about this.
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It says there are five decision-making policies.
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You could either have the fundamentalist principle, what I say is right and what everyone else
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You can either have the simple egalitarian principle, everyone has their own idea and
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The radical egalitarian principle, only oppressed minorities—only their views matter.
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The humanitarian principle, don't hurt my feelings, and the liberal principle, which
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is throw out your idea, it's going to be viciously debated, and then the right idea
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Liberalism at its core, classical liberalism, true liberalism, having nothing to do with
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the modern American left or the Democratic Party or certainly progressivism, means live
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I genuinely do not care what you do in your life outside of the conversation that we're
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Yeah, but whatever you do in the confines of your home, whatever you do, it has nothing
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to do with me, as long as whatever you're doing is not impeding on me.
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That's actually liberalism, the idea of the individual and using logic and reason.
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Unfortunately, it's been compounded by leftism and progressivism into this sort of monster
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We'll convince you against all that stuff later.
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But the irony is I'm welcomed here in this building where I got Shapiro and Klavan and
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you and all these guys because you guys actually are tolerant of different thoughts.
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And we like to debate ideas and talk about ideas.
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Sure, and I get invites from colleges all over the country, and they're always from
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I have zero invites from liberal, supposed liberal or progressive or democratic groups.
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So, all right, now you have to piss off your entire fan base.
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What do you think about this Kaepernick, NFL-wide, and President Trump calling it out?
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So look, they are welcome to exercise their freedom of expression and free speech however
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Now, at the same time, when you have free speech, that doesn't mean it doesn't have
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So ultimately, if all these guys take a knee, so again, they can do it 100%, I back their
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ability to do it and use their own mind to make a decision with what they want to do
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Now, if you're an employer and you realize that the audience is turning against them
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and may not buy tickets, may not buy as much food, may not watch, all those things.
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By the way, the one guy, the Pittsburgh Steelers guy who did come out, you know, the whole team
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stayed in the locker room, the one guy came out.
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So he probably helped his career while some of these guys heard it.
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Now, it shouldn't just be about your career and money and all that.
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Their employers can then decide if they want to keep them or not resign them at the end of
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As far as Trump, look, I tweeted out yesterday, look, the beauty of America is that the players
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The president can say what he wants and so can you.
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Now, a lot of people are angry, but the president said fire them.
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Look, he can say whatever he wants if he starts putting that into law.
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If he goes to Congress, well, everyone thinks the president's allowed to write laws.
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He's actually not, but I've sort of given up on that one.
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Barack Obama thought that too, though, in his defense.
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I meant that as a broad sense of what has happened with the office of the president.
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They all think that they can write laws and we've sort of let them.
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And Congress is such a bunch of do-nothing losers that they've just abrogated all of their
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Now, what he can't do is start passing laws that would infringe on the First Amendment.
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They can't start passing laws that would force companies to fire or stop people, jail people
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Or even to stop people from burning the flag, according to the Supreme Court, according to
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I mean, at the end of the day, I would always err on the side of freedom.
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Sometimes people are going to kneel and you may not like it.
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Sometimes they're going to burn the flag and you may not like it.
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So everything that happened yesterday, while everyone's screaming about, oh my God, this
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And we're all, we all, actually, it showed the strength of America.
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But the point is, that's kind of a beautiful thing.
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Everyone exercised their freedom of expression.
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Now, there may be consequences that come from all of that, but the government didn't stop
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And by the way, when I say that, I don't like what Trump tweeted.
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I don't like that he's put, he's sort of making it seem like the government is against
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And I know he purposely goes to the line and he's kind of trolling the media and all of
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I would prefer, I would much prefer a president who I think really cared about ideas and I
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really understood what his political ethos is and all that stuff.
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That isn't the president we've got, but it doesn't mean you have to be dishonest in
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Now, what do you, so the NASCAR came out strongly against this.
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The Hall of Fame driver, Richard Petty said, quote, anybody that don't stand up for the
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What do you think about the content of this protest?
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Even though the NFL has fined players for making other protests, wearing socks honoring
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They're not even allowed to dance in the end zone, right?
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What are your thoughts on the content of the kneeling?
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Look, in my opinion, we live in truly the greatest country, probably in the history of
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More people have come here for more freedom than anywhere else.
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Every single one of us, unless you're a Native American or an African American whose ancestors
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were brought here as slaves, every single one of us came here with nothing.
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Our ancestors, I'm sure your great-grandparents or whoever it was, came here with nothing, as
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Hopefully, you'll be able to move up and up and up.
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Now, that being said, are people allowed to protest?
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I mean, so I think it's slightly misguided in a way.
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We have the perfect storm of a president who will keep pushing them and this movement that's
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And we just have this perfect thing that's just going to keep blowing up.
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But ironically, I think a certain amount of people are just going to tune out.
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I think a certain amount of people will just stop.
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I mean, even the idea, I used to, I mean, I love sports.
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I never watch SportsCenter anymore because basically you're just watching what happened
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So I think that there's a short, look, the other thing is, so you take the Pittsburgh Steelers,
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Again, they are welcome to do that and they may pay consequences from the team.
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Let's say Trump does a few things that they want him to do, whatever that is, right?
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Well, how do you in three weeks from now show up and you're all out there again as if it
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So they're all pinning themselves into an intellectual corner, which I think is dangerous.
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The country has allowed people to have this thriving middle class, to ascend as ever more
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And the fact that they can take this protest without facing consequences from the government
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is evidence that they shouldn't protest the country.
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They should maybe protest the cops or protest this or whatever they want.
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Well, I also think that the danger is that politicizing everything is incredibly dangerous.
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That's a difficult thing to imagine, but sure, I'll do my best.
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You're dribbling the ball, you're playing ball, and now guys are screaming about politics
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I think this whole example actually is another reason why I believe in limited government.
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We need a government that's small enough that if it's going to make decisions, it can't
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I think that would be a much better government to have than the government that is willing
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So again, Trump, yeah, he's towing the line of what I think is legal and what I think
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But as far as I know, he's not pushing any laws.
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And unfortunately, people just don't understand what the basic, you know, you tell people,
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Yeah, he's gone completely, Chris Sezilia has completely gone off the deep end.
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But he's talking about, he's tweeting about, you know, you have the freedom to not have
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You have the free, and it's like, no, that's the reverse of what you have.
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I'm slightly butchering what the exact tweet was, obviously.
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But like, people just don't understand the basic concepts.
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It's almost as if we're not smart enough anymore because of the failure of our education
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So I would say this is all a flow of education, actually, more than anything else.
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Certainly, that's, yes, absolutely, that's right.
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And it brings us into this other issue today, which is free speech week.
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We'd all gotten all the tweets about it and invitations and things like that.
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This was Milo Yiannopoulos' plan, his big comeback.
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One, would there have been a purpose to this free speech week?
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I like your little pause there because it was like you had eight questions to ask at
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I think maybe they were going to intentionally try to make more crap happen and just get more
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You know, Ben, obviously, who's become a friend of mine, who I'm sure you're a friend with,
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and I've had him on my show, you know, he went to Berkeley.
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So Ben, who I think is in this building right now, this is what I've said publicly.
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He's welcome to burst in here and attack me if he doesn't like any of it.
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Ben basically is a mainstream conservative thinker.
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All the positions that Ben stakes out are just mainstream stuff that's on the right, basically.
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People were saying after the event, they were like, well, you know what?
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It actually wasn't that violent because only, you know, five people were arrested and only
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They were like, oh, so it shows tolerance and it's pretty good.
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But that's after $600,000 had to be spent to secure this.
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So what the real threat is, it's not only that eventually for a guy like Ben or for many
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other people, that they just won't want to deal with it.
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Jerry Seinfeld doesn't perform at colleges anymore.
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Seinfeld, who no one knows his opinion on anything.
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Try to think of one political position that Jerry Seinfeld had.
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I don't see a lot of Seinfeld political rants anymore.
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Yeah, and yet he thought that colleges were too politically correct.
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So the idea is you either just people, you know, not everyone will have the intestinal
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fortitude of Ben Shapiro to keep showing up to these things and staking out unpopular
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positions, but also the schools simply won't be able to afford it.
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So the threat about free speech and free expression is now coming from many directions.
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Ironically, very few of these directions are because of the government.
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So I fear more that we are taking it away from ourselves.
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We're allowing college students to dictate what they're taught.
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We've allowed this diversity stuff, the James Damore memo, we've allowed this to just infect
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What we need is more people willing to talk it out and say, all right, we agree, we disagree.
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I would much rather live in a society where we disagree on some stuff, but we don't kill each
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other than the society where we all just accept nonsense because we've been guilted into it.
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I'm pretty sure that Nazis don't bring their own kosher food.
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Ben gave his speech, and there was a lot of content to the speech.
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Arguments about free speech, about classical government.
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For some people, it seems to me the speech is just about the speech.
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You're just waiting for these crazy kids to jump up and yell, and then you make fun of
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So there's a certain amount of people that are just flamethrowers, right?
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And you remember in the second Batman, when Heath Ledger's Joker, Michael Caine is discussing
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the idea behind the Joker, what this guy's trying to do.
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He says, some people just want to see the world burn.
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So I think we actually do have a lot of those type of people right now, which I think is
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really unfortunate, especially in the system that we live in, that has given so much to
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If you're watching this show in America right now, pretty much you could go to your supermarket
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Pretty much there's water running at your house.
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Except that you live in Flint, Michigan, there's a problem.
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But pretty much in a society of 350 million people, this thing's basically working.
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And if you travel outside the country, I was just in Cuba, people traveled all over, there
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There is relative poverty to people, because people are so rich in America.
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And that doesn't mean that there aren't poor people.
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But we have to figure out how to have an honest conversation about that, not just either
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throw money at everything where we consistently find it doesn't work, which we consistently
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The more money you throw at things, the less it actually works.
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And you actually create a decision where people are now dependent on this and never want
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to get off it, which is a horrific position for anyone to be in.
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And that's what I'm afraid of right now, is we're really, I mean, everyone's talking
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about this, but it's significantly worse than it was two years ago.
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We are all cordoning ourselves off in our little teams.
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And I think one of the reasons that what I'm doing is working is I'm really trying not
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And I'm trying to spend as much time with a guy like you as I would with a lefty.
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I think sometimes maybe logic and reason is going to be the sacrifice in this thing.
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And that might make you a trans political thinker.
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Does that get me any social justice credit on that?
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Yeah, I don't know where that puts you on that.
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The issue that I think it seems like a trivial issue, it seems completely unimportant, but
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it's where a lot of the cultural battle is and the language battle and the battle over
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Do people have a right to insist that you call them by a pronoun that doesn't match their
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Well, I would completely on this one take Jordan Peterson's position.
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And I'm sure much of your audience knows Jordan.
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If you don't, you know, if this thing doesn't burn down by the end, I'll put in a good word
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What egomania to think the world is going to end on your...
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All these people that are like, oh, the nuclear war is coming, you know, North Korea
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is going to nuke us now, or all the religious people that think, oh, end of time.
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Anyway, in answer to your question, I would take Jordan Peterson's position on this, which is,
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I do not go out of my way to offend anybody, ever.
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Let's say you're walking down the street, right, and somebody's walking towards you.
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Now, if that person turns out to be a woman, but you thought it was a man, well, it's not
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Like, I think what we're getting caught up in is all just language nonsense here.
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What if it is, this is the real issue, because we have friends who identify as transgender,
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It seems to me that a man cannot become a woman simply by wishing it, because he has
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a psychological condition that makes him think he's a woman or makes him very much want to
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So, let's say he's a man, but he wears dresses, and maybe he undergoes some surgery even.
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My view of the world, my view of reality tells me he is a man, and I shouldn't...
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It's not good to play into a delusion that he isn't a man.
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But my politeness tells me, call him a banana if he wants to be called a banana.
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Well, I think that's going to get you in trouble.
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There's something in general, like we have two realities, which is one is what the law
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I'm not talking about with pronouns specifically, but we have what the law is and then how we
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So, when people talk about the free speech thing, for example, yeah, we have the First
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Amendment and the First Amendment protects the government from taking away our free speech.
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But then there's also just how we have to all behave with each other.
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There's basic societal things that you can be part of or not be part of, but that there's
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a social, there's a sort of unspoken social construct and, or social contract, I should
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So, I would say basically, if you see someone and you, I would say, do your best to treat
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But I certainly, I'm not going to pass any laws like they want to pass in Canada that
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are going to affect, that are going to, you know.
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Or that they have it as policies at universities right now.
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You'd be in trouble if you use the wrong read, write pronoun to refer to somebody.
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I mean, all of this language policing and any law that you would put in or any statute
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Of course, this is just, it's not only is it abject drivel, but also for the people that
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will be sympathetic to trans people, which I think is a perfectly fine and just cause,
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you're going to actually drive a lot of them away.
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When you come in with some sort of authoritarian thing and you're going to have to say this,
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and if you don't, by the way, we're going to call you a transphobe or a bigot or a
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racist or all these things that don't even make sense.
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But that, but of course, all of these things, everything gets lost in all of this nonsense.
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So I would say, yes, try to be a decent person, but in no way should we be making laws about
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The law doesn't say anything about how someone has to treat you.
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Yeah, I was going to, I was going to go dirtier there, but what's the language policy around
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We're very politically correct and family oriented.
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But you know what, if you're not decent, as long as you're not doing anything illegal,
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Because it seems there's this, the premises of it.
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I think he makes very good points, but he would probably prefer to be referred to as
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And I struggle with this question of, it's a small point, but if in a public space like
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this, if we give the premise, if we grant the premise of transgenderism and of subjectivism,
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of the relativity of reality, then haven't we given away the whole farm?
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So this is where I think that you as a conservative and me as a liberal have just a different view
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And see, it's funny because I know a certain amount of people would watch you say that.
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Now, Blair, if you look at Blair, she looks like, you know, she's beautiful.
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Now, a certain amount of people are going to watch you and go, wait a minute, wait a minute.
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He's going out of his way to be mean to this person.
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That was the first time we had met in person, but, you know, sort of nowhere.
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I think that, and I think this is a fair liberal position, you gain nothing by doing what you
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And, like, you just don't, like, I get what you're saying that, yes, this person, first
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off, I think that trans is still listed as some sort of psychological disorder or something.
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So, look, if Blair was sitting here, I'm pretty sure she actually wouldn't be offended
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She would argue, no, but even by you calling her he or whatever.
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I think she would have a principled position to argue against.
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And I would say this is the best example of why it's about the individual.
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That if you were sitting here, and you and Blair were having a great political discussion
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about anything, I think by the end of it, you would go, you know what, next time I will
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I get what conservatives are kind of doing here.
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And this is also what I think conservatives missed on gay marriage, which is that now it's
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All the conservatives now, they all take the libertarian position, which is, oh, I didn't want the
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government and blah, blah, blah, blah, but none of you were saying that before.
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Not you specifically, but the whole slew of conservatives, who many of them I'm friends
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with now, nobody was taking the principled position.
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Rand Paul, who's more of a libertarian, obviously, he could have taken the most principled position
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But I don't particularly care one way or another about gay people, but I want everyone to be
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And if two people want to enter a contract, it doesn't matter what sex they are.
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It would have been a great principled position and something that the right and that I think
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conservatives and limited government people all could have latched onto in an honest way.
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So I would say in this case, it doesn't really matter.
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So I guess maybe your pushback is that somehow what?
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That society's chipping away at a little inherent truth or something?
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That there's a question of who gets to define reality?
00:26:17.420
The premise that says that a man can become a woman by sheer force of will or the people
00:26:23.400
who say there are difficult facts and there are difficult psychological conditions and we
00:26:29.440
ought to be compassionate and we ought to walk with people and be as nice as we can without
00:26:36.480
So I think you can actually meld both of those into one thing, which again, it's about the
00:26:41.260
So of course, if a biologist was sitting here, they would say you can't change your chromosomes.
00:26:45.120
I don't think that most, even the most, patience, patience, right.
00:26:48.680
But I don't even think the most far left trans advocate is saying that they're changing
00:26:52.300
But I would say what you can do is try to treat the individual with respect.
00:26:56.300
And I think that's really the fertile ground that we need to be spending more time in as
00:27:02.340
Americans right now, because we're all just, we're picking positions, we're fighting from
00:27:10.260
Intellectually interesting, but socially irrelevant.
00:27:14.680
I think 20 years from now, if trans people, it should be what's happening to gay people
00:27:19.300
right now, where they're, the left is turning on gays right now because they don't view them
00:27:29.560
When I, but three years ago, when I didn't have the same ability to get married that you did,
00:27:33.460
well, then there's something to fight for because we weren't equal under the law.
00:27:37.420
You and I are completely equal under the law right now.
00:27:39.680
And that means you can treat me as crappily as you want to.
00:27:43.820
We should be treated equal under the law so you can treat everyone.
00:27:46.800
But if you have a group that is not treated equally under the law, well, then they have something
00:27:50.920
Get us to that base level and then everyone can be totally awful people to each other if
00:27:58.560
Now, speaking of the morality of being completely awful people to each other, we have to get
00:28:05.060
This is a segment that I have dubbed Save Dave's Soul.
00:28:09.440
Now, Dave, you're an atheist, vaguely an atheist, agnostic.
00:28:16.140
I had never publicly said that I was an atheist.
00:28:18.240
Then I had a bunch of well-known atheists on my show.
00:28:23.880
We were talking about atheism and, you know, he rails against atheism.
00:28:26.800
And basically, my belief is that if you told me, I just don't believe in things without
00:28:30.560
So if you told me that LeBron James dunked from half court last night, I'll go, well, I
00:28:36.780
So I don't think that there's some magical being out there that cares who I have sex
00:28:40.600
with or is watching my every move or anything like that.
00:28:43.120
That being said, so I sort of, I kind of said that, all right, that's what my atheism is.
00:28:50.160
I don't want to get too lost in atheism versus agnostic.
00:28:53.440
Yeah, you would say, if you get to heaven and God is there and you say, why don't you
00:28:58.860
And I could agree with Bertrand Russell on almost everything.
00:29:02.520
So what I would say is just a couple of weeks ago after I did this little hiatus that I
00:29:06.880
did, I got back and I said something, how I don't want to use the word atheist anymore
00:29:11.940
I mean, there are moments in life when you have beliefs and things that you can't quite
00:29:17.740
And just that we all just can't literally explain every little thing.
00:29:22.020
That being said, I will play along with your game to the best of my ability.
00:29:24.920
Well, I'm glad you brought, it is providential that we brought up Bertrand Russell.
00:29:28.940
So what I'm going to do, I'll just run down a few arguments for God.
00:29:36.200
This was an argument that Bertrand Russell, an atheist to the day he died, said that he
00:29:41.840
He famously threw his tin of tobacco in the air.
00:29:50.240
You need your, you should have, this is only, only your divine lawyer.
00:30:00.540
The argument is, we'll define God as the maximally great being.
00:30:04.280
He comprises all of the great making characteristics and none of the corrupting characteristics.
00:30:09.500
Then in, in modal logic, as a principle of modal logic, there are necessary truths and contingent
00:30:15.460
So this is necessarily a mug and the mug is on the table.
00:30:23.380
I, and the mug is on my head because of the whimsy of the cosmos.
00:30:27.140
Now, if God is a maximally great being, then he exists necessarily, right?
00:30:37.740
So if he exists necessarily in some possible world, then he exists necessarily in all possible
00:30:45.460
If he couldn't be the maximally great being and only exist in some possible world, it would
00:30:49.560
Now, if he exists necessarily in all possible worlds, then he exists necessarily in this
00:30:59.380
And Bertrand Russell was reacting to a different version of that argument.
00:31:03.560
He said, there's, it's, it's impossible to point out the flaw.
00:31:15.480
I mean, these are, you know, these are premises that can't be proven empirically.
00:31:19.060
But so if I'm willing to go along with that logic, then I, then I suppose you have something
00:31:24.820
I had, I had Dennis Prager on with Michael Shermer debating God and morality.
00:31:32.000
If you haven't checked it out, you should go over it.
00:31:33.840
Look, Google this, the Prager and Shermer debate on Ruben Shermer.
00:31:37.320
Yeah, it was, it was really, it was really interesting.
00:31:38.680
And by the way, two guys who I totally respect, who I've broken bread with both of them.
00:31:42.920
I mean, I, I think we did something really nice, something that I think we need a, we need
00:31:47.180
But the crux of the argument to me, I thought, got to one place that I, I still am not totally
00:31:52.200
sold on, which is Dennis said to Michael, you know, Michael's talking a lot about science
00:31:56.020
and, and rational belief and not, you know, things that you can't prove that you shouldn't
00:32:00.420
And Dennis basically said, you know, that, that's all good.
00:32:02.980
What Dennis was arguing was that on a macro level that society needs these sort of, these
00:32:10.020
unspoken or these bigger than I, you know, these ideas bigger than just the literal
00:32:16.660
This is a little bit of what Peterson's talking about, by the way.
00:32:20.220
And this, this map of meaning that he talks about.
00:32:23.500
And I think that's really interesting that at the micro level, we can all use our brains
00:32:27.340
to figure all this stuff out and hopefully find morality and all that stuff.
00:32:31.120
But perhaps as a, on the larger scale, on the macro scale, that we do need a little bit
00:32:40.920
I, I, I wish, I'd like to believe that if we all just relied on our intellect and science
00:32:45.740
and logic and reason, that we could build a functional society that way.
00:32:49.260
I don't know that there's really any evidence that we have.
00:32:54.320
Although, you know what, all the good things about America, you know, which a lot of times
00:32:57.400
people say, these are just Judeo-Christian values.
00:33:00.740
If we could really grab onto enlightenment values, I think we could build a great society.
00:33:05.440
I don't know that it has enough legs in a day where so many people want to burn the
00:33:10.680
I don't know that being a calm sort of centrist who's open and decent and is willing to debate.
00:33:19.400
I mean, really, there's so many things happening right now that whether God is sitting here judging
00:33:24.120
you one way and judging me another, or whether he's playing racquetball somewhere else.
00:33:30.940
I don't know that I answered your question in even the slightest.
00:33:36.140
Everyone wants to burn down these enlightenment values.
00:33:38.620
And I think part of that is because the enlightenment values are undergirded by the Judeo-Christian
00:33:47.060
The natural rights come from natural law, and natural law comes from Christianity.
00:33:52.280
So without that, one wonders if the society that's based on that, all of the good things
00:33:58.080
that came out of that, can continue in those good things if it's no longer animated by the
00:34:03.660
same thing that created them in the first place.
00:34:05.420
Well, so that I think is really interesting, because the question really is, so do we have
00:34:08.120
God-given rights, or does the government give us rights?
00:34:11.440
Now, so without getting too lost in what God is, whether it's this conscious being or-
00:34:19.160
Right, so for a huge amount of people, that's what he is.
00:34:22.060
But whatever he is, whether it's the Buddha, whatever that God is to you-
00:34:25.440
The first, the unmoved mover outside of time and space, unfathomable.
00:34:28.800
Meaning that we have rights as human beings, and this is a science and enlightenment argument,
00:34:34.720
that by the very essence of your birth and your ability to have a brain that can think,
00:34:45.140
You have dignity, you have rights to be in this cosmos, and that freedom is the-
00:34:51.200
I think I'm about to quote Optimus Prime, freedom is the right of all sentient beings.
00:34:54.380
I watched Transformers last night, I cannot believe I just quoted Optimus Prime.
00:34:57.360
The argument from Prime, the Prime mover argument.
00:35:03.180
The point is, but that freedom and your ability to think and all these things, these are God-given.
00:35:07.360
Now, whatever you want to say God is, but that they're before government.
00:35:13.800
I like that much more than I like that the government is giving us these things.
00:35:20.500
So the idea that the government is giving me my freedom?
00:35:23.660
No, no, we can deal with what the government gives us.
00:35:27.500
I think it should give us a lot less, but the government doesn't give me my right to be
00:35:32.580
So again, this is where, whether you're talking about the Judeo-Christian God or whether we're
00:35:38.000
talking about, you know, I'm sure there are thinkers that may be a little more left-leaning
00:35:44.360
I haven't encountered them, but sure, yeah, I mean, hypothetically they might exist, sure.
00:35:47.680
But there might be people that are a little more atheist in their thinking that would
00:35:53.260
agree with that concept without it having to do with, like, sort of a conscious God.
00:36:04.920
I do notice that with you conservatives now that I hang out with you people.
00:36:12.080
Wouldn't it be funny if I was actually making you guys all more liberal and you didn't even
00:36:17.600
I think I've made you people a lot more tolerant.
00:36:28.440
People, I think, forget that the science, Western science is a product of the church, basically.
00:36:37.360
They all knock the Catholic church because of Galileo.
00:36:45.100
My question here is, some of the compelling arguments for God these days are more science-based.
00:36:52.280
It was a Catholic priest who discovered the Big Bang, George Lemaitre.
00:36:56.500
And he was mocked because people thought there was a static universe, the Aristotelian universe.
00:37:02.780
One of the most compelling arguments, didn't get me, but it's a compelling one, is fine-tuning.
00:37:07.660
That if you change the calculations of the strong or weak nuclear forces by just slight degrees, the different forces in the universe, life would be impossible.
00:37:19.140
Do those scientific arguments, the prime mover, you need a beginning, a mover that isn't contingent or physical.
00:37:29.200
Do any of those move you toward a God that isn't just an unconscious thing, as you just said, but has a teleology, a purpose behind it?
00:37:41.720
We got to get a couple drinks in here on this guy.
00:37:47.420
I don't know that it is even part of what the human experience is to understand that.
00:37:52.980
I think we can do, I think there are people that are religious, that can spend their entire lives trying to figure out what the meaning of the universe is.
00:38:01.360
I think there are scientists who can try to find the God particle or figure out through physics or mathematics what the real design of the universe is.
00:38:09.960
I think that actually is much more of what being a human is about than knowing it.
00:38:17.820
Look, maybe we will get to a point one day where we will know there will be a big, booming voice in the sky that everyone is going to suddenly know, and maybe it'll be alien.
00:38:31.520
It depends how far you want to run with all this, but I would say that not knowing—
00:38:34.340
It could be metaphysical outside of time and space.
00:38:37.900
Maybe suddenly everyone was going to wake up with a big, like, G on their forehead, and we'll all go, well, what happened?
00:38:43.280
And it'll be God, you know, I'm sending you a sign or something.
00:38:45.280
But I would say that the question of not knowing and being okay with that and not having that stunt your growth as a human, whether you want to think of things in a religious way or in a scientific way, I think that's what being human is all about.
00:39:00.800
And you should, ideally, you'd meld the two together.
00:39:04.020
I think a lot of people say that faith and science are in conflict, but of course, that is a very modern idea, that none of the founders of modern science would have said that.
00:39:12.320
Newton spent 30 years of his life interpreting scripture.
00:39:15.340
Well, look, Einstein said, you know, God doesn't play dice with the universe.
00:39:18.180
I think that's an interesting way of saying it, because there's an implicit belief there that he's saying, well, something, God, he's saying God doesn't.
00:39:24.840
And Einstein said George Lemaître's Big Bang Theory, it was so beautiful.
00:39:28.280
That's what he was, it was so simple and so beautiful.
00:39:30.680
It just all seems kind of, like, smug and arrogant to me in a way.
00:39:36.460
You, Michael, know, seem very smug and arrogant.
00:39:41.740
That's a lot better than what we get called on Twitter.
00:39:46.480
This one I don't think you could possibly disagree with.
00:39:53.500
The argument is that Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president.
00:39:59.740
There was a 99% chance that Hillary was going to be president, according to Princeton University, the night before the election.
00:40:06.600
Then, and this is just my own empirical observations, my own experiments, a blank book making fun of Democrats became the number one bestseller in the world.
00:40:14.700
Now Ben Shapiro serenades my dates with roaming millennial.
00:40:22.680
The mystery of the universe is enfolding right in front of you, and you just got to keep rolling with that.
00:40:31.820
And sometimes I think you're a little more in line with it, and sometimes you're not.
00:40:46.460
You know, like we always find signs when it works to us.
00:40:49.040
But all day long, there are signs that have no meaning to it.
00:40:51.920
It is a wicked generation that looks for signs and wonders.
00:40:54.420
But it is a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders.
00:41:01.240
We have got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:41:12.300
But we have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:41:16.860
If you're a subscriber, go over to dailywire.com right now.
00:41:39.080
It is the most beautiful vessel for carrying leftist tears.
00:41:41.860
Right now, there's a beautiful vintage that we're serving up.
00:41:44.860
It's ever since Politicon we've been serving up Dave Rubin's old boss.
00:42:12.900
On the NFL, the league has apparently entered into a golden era.
00:42:16.360
It has now been 23 days since one of its players has been arrested.
00:42:19.860
The average time between arrests of NFL players is 23 days, but the charges typically include
00:42:28.880
Those other charges include domestic violence, assault and battery, gun violations, disorderly
00:42:32.760
contact, resisting arrest, theft, burglary, rape, and even murder.
00:42:40.480
If only Roger Goodell cared as much about domestic abuse and traumatic brain injury as he does
00:42:49.440
Allie, is there a little man in the mirror issue here?
00:42:55.260
Is there a connection between these guys' moral defects and their virtue signaling about
00:43:05.920
And that raises a really good point that we're not just seeing in the NFL, but we're seeing
00:43:10.760
all across America when it comes to virtue signaling.
00:43:13.700
All of a sudden, because of the polarized politics that we're seeing now, the sense of moral vigilantism
00:43:19.280
has bubbled up in people who before didn't care about morality at all, and in fact, probably
00:43:24.700
would have said that they are moral relativists.
00:43:27.060
But because politics has come into play, and because it's become popular and trendy and attention
00:43:31.640
and grabbing to take a political stance, all of a sudden, we have people who care about
00:43:36.800
And they are exemplifying those virtues by making a political point when they should
00:43:48.160
He's perfectly willing to punish football players when they honor 9-11 victims and heroes,
00:44:05.840
That when it comes to things like 9-11 and Dallas cops being killed by Black Lives Matter
00:44:16.220
And you're like, oh, we just don't want politics.
00:44:18.100
But then all of a sudden, Colin Kaepernick takes a knee and we have whole teams doing it.
00:44:23.900
But it shows, to me, the disconnect between the people who are upstairs and then their
00:44:33.980
And Dave is going to cancel ESPN for that, so he's going to stop watching the shows.
00:44:41.620
This is the most football that I've ever been subject to in my life.
00:44:44.840
Anthony Weiner has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for sexting with a 15-year-old
00:44:50.400
girl, Dave, is Anthony Weiner's continued existence on this earth the final proof that
00:44:59.020
Well, I guess, yeah, technically they should have taken him out a long time ago or at least
00:45:02.980
gotten rid of the laptops or whatever Huma was doing over there.
00:45:06.140
Look, you know, let's move on from Anthony Weiner.
00:45:09.940
We have so many problems right now, this politicization of everything and sports being corrupted by
00:45:16.660
politics and all of the authoritarian stuff and all the social justice stuff.
00:45:22.340
Like when I saw this headline this morning, it was just like, let me just put that one
00:45:28.980
You know, we only have so much brain power for all this stuff.
00:45:39.760
He's so pathetic in the court and crying, and he's obviously got this sickness, this
00:45:55.300
But now when you say that, when you think about the fact that he is actually very sick,
00:45:59.200
maybe in some kind of way, but he also had the opportunity to get help a long time ago.
00:46:03.960
So you have to think that after this many mistakes and after this much time, if you haven't gotten
00:46:08.560
the help that you need, then it's very hard to feel sorry for you, especially when it comes
00:46:14.080
to children and pedophilia and things like that.
00:46:17.940
Forgive me, but I don't have a whole lot of compassion.
00:46:21.840
And then I look at the pictures and I think, all right, throw him away.
00:46:25.060
In an article on Sunday, NPR lamented, quote, gender segregated professional sports as being
00:46:36.160
Allie, if we start admitting people who are biologically men, but identifying as women
00:46:41.960
and on hormone treatments or whatever, if we start allowing them to compete in female
00:46:51.000
So here's the foundational problem with this article.
00:46:54.080
One of the quotes said something like, oh, the reason why traditionally male and female
00:46:59.260
sports have been separated is because males and females play sports differently.
00:47:07.080
I have this whole bet with my brother-in-law saying, do you think that if I train for an entire
00:47:12.440
three years to dunk a basketball, I think I could do it?
00:47:15.920
And he said, no, he would pay any amount of money to bet that I could never dunk a basketball.
00:47:21.940
It's not just because I play basketball differently, but because I play basketball a lot worse than
00:47:30.840
And so just to say that there are differences in how we play sports, it's a fundamental
00:47:35.460
misunderstanding of how God made the human body.
00:47:38.400
So unfortunately, women are going to get the short and the mistake here.
00:47:40.400
As an unathletic male, I appreciate your confidence in me.
00:47:42.820
Dave, this appears to be an internal conflict on the left.
00:47:47.760
On the one hand, there are these immutable, innate identities that we couldn't ever possibly
00:47:53.900
And on the one hand, sex doesn't seem to matter.
00:47:56.940
You can go from a man to a woman, a woman to a man.
00:47:59.680
So either it's the core of our identity or it doesn't exist at all.
00:48:02.700
Is there any way, as our resident former leftist, I suppose, always liberal, is there any way
00:48:11.260
You know, my Twitter bio says wanted to be in the NBA.
00:48:14.740
So if what this is leading to is the chance that I could maybe play in the WNBA, where
00:48:20.120
I actually think I could be an all-star, then I'm completely for this.
00:48:24.340
But the truth is, I mean, think about it this way.
00:48:26.200
I don't know a ton of female basketball players.
00:48:28.320
But if you took Lisa Leslie, who was one of the biggest stars in the league, she could
00:48:37.560
She would be crushed simply by the size and strength of these guys.
00:48:43.480
That's just understanding that we have different biological differences.
00:48:49.780
Of course, now they're going to try to have women play in the NBA.
00:48:55.980
It doesn't mean that one's better or one's worse.
00:48:59.360
And it's just reality, which I know is scary to people.
00:49:01.860
I can't believe that we have to end on such a note of horrifying bigotry as reality.
00:49:10.000
Ali Stuckey, Jacob Berry, Dave Rubin, the nicest guy in politics.
00:49:17.720
None of the people disrespecting the national anthem and none of those cheering them on
00:49:26.100
has made a coherent case for the protest, which I suspect is because the protest is incoherent.
00:49:33.140
The disrespect shown is explicitly toward the national anthem, which is itself a symbol of the country.
00:49:39.580
If these football players were to kneel or turn their backs on a police officer, their disrespect would be toward the police and the protest toward any alleged police brutality.
00:49:49.120
If they were to kneel or turn their backs at the sight or mention of President Trump, their disrespect would be toward President Trump and the protest toward his administration.
00:49:59.740
But they're kneeling for the national anthem, and so the disrespect and protest are pointed toward the country itself.
00:50:08.060
We pay these grown men tens of millions of dollars per year to run around and entertain us.
00:50:12.860
These men then turn around without any fear of prosecution and insult the country that has given them more wealth, equality, and freedom than any citizenry has ever enjoyed in the history of the world.
00:50:23.260
That prosperity, equality, and liberty are not the natural state of things.
00:50:31.900
To undercut that foundation is to make impossible all that that foundation secures.
00:50:37.060
To quote Chesterton, there is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped.