The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 32 - Free Speech Hour ft. Dave Rubin

00:00:00.420 Milo's free speech week at Berkeley is a bust, and President Trump is calling out knee-dropping NFL ingrates.

00:00:07.440 We will talk all manner of free speech with our in-studio guest, Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report.

00:00:13.600 How lucky am I?

00:00:14.520 Then, Allie Stuckey and Jacob Berry join the panel of deplorables to discuss Anthony Weiner in the can

00:00:19.560 and NPR's lambasting the unfair exclusivity of women's sports. 1.00

00:00:24.740 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Dave, thank you for coming.

00:00:36.860 Thank you for coming on.

00:00:38.020 You've made the trek.

00:00:38.980 It's like three or four blocks all the way.

00:00:40.800 I made the trek already.

00:00:43.120 I hear Shapiro and Clayton screaming in the hallway.

00:00:46.260 Oh, it must be any time of the day.

00:00:47.720 Yeah.

00:00:47.840 It must be at any point on any day of the week.

00:00:50.440 So by sheer coincidence, by absurd coincidence, you are here.

00:00:54.440 We'd already booked you, and all anyone is talking about today is free speech.

00:00:58.360 The Milo thing, the Trump thing.

00:01:00.780 One might say it's providential.

00:01:02.500 You're an atheist. 0.76

00:01:03.160 We will talk about that later.

00:01:04.780 But before we get into any of it, you have a beard.

00:01:07.600 It's an astounding beard.

00:01:08.780 It's a manly beard.

00:01:09.660 People are very excited about the beard.

00:01:10.740 They're very excited.

00:01:11.840 You've gone on this hermitage, this Thoreauian, Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker hermitage.

00:01:16.400 What did you learn?

00:01:17.620 Well, I went off the grid for 30 days, literally off the grid.

00:01:20.680 My phone was locked in a safe.

00:01:22.680 I did not know what time it was.

00:01:24.140 I don't have a watch anymore.

00:01:25.060 You're a very fancy guy with a watch.

00:01:26.400 Yeah, so I'm a fancy guy.

00:01:27.300 I haven't had a watch in probably 20 years.

00:01:29.620 So for 30 days, didn't know what time it was.

00:01:31.960 Didn't look at Twitter.

00:01:32.820 Didn't know about the news.

00:01:34.160 I was in Mexico.

00:01:34.900 I was working on my book.

00:01:35.740 I had some family come over.

00:01:36.960 Not looking at Twitter sounds like the most fun thing ever.

00:01:39.380 You know, Twitter is a nightmare.

00:01:42.640 I mean, it truly is a nightmare.

00:01:44.160 And I think everyone, if you say anything about Twitter to people these days, immediately

00:01:49.280 everyone kind of rolls their eyes, their body language changes.

00:01:53.040 Twitter used to be fun, and now the trolls have taken over.

00:01:57.040 I like a good old-fashioned trolling.

00:01:59.180 But just the sort of, right, exactly.

00:02:01.460 But the evil people, it's not the trolls, actually.

00:02:04.180 It's not the trolls.

00:02:05.180 It's the truly, genuinely evil people who just want to burn everything down.

00:02:09.380 Malicious, malicious.

00:02:10.420 And there's just a lot of those people.

00:02:11.740 So even the good stuff about Twitter, where you can get your stuff out there, like just

00:02:15.140 staring at your phone all day and scrolling what some anonymous pink cat said about you,

00:02:20.380 it's like, this is probably not the best thing.

00:02:22.200 I need to know.

00:02:22.380 I need to know.

00:02:23.160 Yeah, absolutely.

00:02:23.960 But anyway, so I didn't shave for a month.

00:02:25.600 And then I came back.

00:02:26.380 I did a live stream.

00:02:27.140 And my intention was to shave the next day.

00:02:29.060 But the people have demanded that the beard stay.

00:02:31.260 I kind of dig it now.

00:02:32.240 I demand it, too.

00:02:33.060 It looks great.

00:02:33.840 Thank you.

00:02:34.160 I may roll it into Last Jedi in December.

00:02:37.060 You know what I mean?

00:02:37.380 Good.

00:02:37.620 Because if I keep growing out the hair, the beard comes a little bit more.

00:02:39.840 I've heard the Hamill thing before.

00:02:41.300 Well, it can't be worse than that.

00:02:42.740 The movie before Rogue One, whatever that was, The Last Jedi with the girl.

00:02:46.980 And it was just terrible.

00:02:48.340 You did not like Force Awakens?

00:02:50.340 That is the most diplomatic way to put it I've ever heard.

00:02:52.880 It was so bad.

00:02:54.780 The best acting in it was Peter Cushing.

00:02:57.140 And that was just a computer-generated robot.

00:02:59.160 No, no, no.

00:02:59.560 So you're talking about...

00:03:00.580 I don't mean to insult you.

00:03:01.520 Obviously, you performed in the movie.

00:03:03.240 Hold on a second.

00:03:04.300 Force Awakens.

00:03:04.980 You're telling me you did not like Force Awakens, but you liked Rogue One?

00:03:07.600 Absolutely.

00:03:08.160 So that's very conventional thinking right there.

00:03:10.500 That's very conservative, conventional thinking.

00:03:12.860 I mean, Force Awakens was pretty fantastic.

00:03:15.000 And Rogue One kind of sucked.

00:03:15.540 I love watching the first Star Wars.

00:03:17.580 Yeah, I love re-watching.

00:03:18.280 So you liked Rogue One?

00:03:19.220 That's what you're telling me?

00:03:19.860 I liked Rogue One.

00:03:21.160 Name three characters.

00:03:22.420 I don't know.

00:03:23.740 Well, okay.

00:03:24.320 Name three people.

00:03:25.220 Come on.

00:03:25.980 Cassidy Andor, Jyn Erso, Baze Malbus, Shira Imwe, and K2SO.

00:03:30.020 Listen to this guy.

00:03:30.500 I don't know who that is with Google.

00:03:32.060 Okay, someone's got Google.

00:03:33.220 Very impressive.

00:03:33.920 Yeah, that was impressive.

00:03:35.060 He did bail me out.

00:03:36.360 You're right.

00:03:36.960 I can't name the characters.

00:03:38.340 The thing I liked about it is that it was new, though.

00:03:40.480 It wasn't just a remake of A New Hope, you know?

00:03:42.780 That scene in the middle where Vader comes out and he, like, sashays out there,

00:03:46.440 don't choke on your words.

00:03:48.260 It's like, I like a good pun.

00:03:49.680 I really do.

00:03:50.400 But, like, ugh.

00:03:51.260 Yeah, it put James Bond to shame.

00:03:53.260 Yeah.

00:03:53.700 Anyway, okay, so that is—

00:03:55.500 Are we going to do anything else besides—

00:03:57.120 That's only one point of disagreement.

00:03:59.600 I need to hear your take.

00:04:01.080 So I was—you're a liberal.

00:04:02.320 You're an old-school liberal.

00:04:03.680 You're not a leftist, a regressive leftist.

00:04:06.840 You left the left.

00:04:07.800 You had this great PragerU video.

00:04:09.600 Now, I was reading a book over the weekend.

00:04:11.860 It's called Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch, and it talks about this.

00:04:16.620 It says there are five decision-making policies.

00:04:21.020 You could either have the fundamentalist principle, what I say is right and what everyone else

00:04:24.940 says is wrong.

00:04:25.820 You can either have the simple egalitarian principle, everyone has their own idea and

00:04:29.240 it's all fine.

00:04:30.260 The radical egalitarian principle, only oppressed minorities—only their views matter. 0.94

00:04:35.660 Yeah.

00:04:35.860 The humanitarian principle, don't hurt my feelings, and the liberal principle, which

00:04:40.180 is throw out your idea, it's going to be viciously debated, and then the right idea

00:04:44.940 will come out of that.

00:04:45.800 You fit into the latter category.

00:04:47.220 Well, absolutely.

00:04:47.900 Liberalism at its core, classical liberalism, true liberalism, having nothing to do with

00:04:52.800 the modern American left or the Democratic Party or certainly progressivism, means live

00:04:57.360 and let live.

00:04:58.380 I mean, at my core, that's what I believe.

00:05:00.120 I genuinely do not care what you do in your life outside of the conversation that we're

00:05:06.460 having right now.

00:05:07.120 You seem like a nice guy, but like whatever—

00:05:08.900 That's going to be deceiving, Dave.

00:05:09.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I have no freaking idea.

00:05:11.240 Yeah, but whatever you do in the confines of your home, whatever you do, it has nothing

00:05:15.340 to do with me, as long as whatever you're doing is not impeding on me.

00:05:18.500 That's actually liberalism, the idea of the individual and using logic and reason.

00:05:23.160 This is a beautiful thing, liberalism.

00:05:25.240 Unfortunately, it's been compounded by leftism and progressivism into this sort of monster

00:05:30.260 that it is now.

00:05:31.380 But it's funny.

00:05:32.060 I'm a liberal.

00:05:32.820 I mean, I am gay married, okay?

00:05:35.420 That's about as liberal as you get.

00:05:36.940 I'm not even gay.

00:05:37.600 I just did it to prove a point.

00:05:38.940 You know what I'm saying?

00:05:39.880 But that, I'm pro-choice.

00:05:41.540 I'm pro-legalization of marijuana.

00:05:42.780 I'm not for nation building.

00:05:43.740 I'm for a strong public education.

00:05:44.740 We'll convince you against all that stuff later.

00:05:46.340 I'm for euthanasia.

00:05:46.660 All of those things.

00:05:48.060 But the irony is I'm welcomed here in this building where I got Shapiro and Klavan and

00:05:53.120 you and all these guys because you guys actually are tolerant of different thoughts.

00:05:58.800 And we like to debate ideas and talk about ideas.

00:06:00.780 Sure, and I get invites from colleges all over the country, and they're always from

00:06:06.120 conservative groups and libertarian groups.

00:06:08.020 I have zero invites from liberal, supposed liberal or progressive or democratic groups.

00:06:13.580 So what does that show you?

00:06:14.720 I mean, who are the tolerant people?

00:06:16.360 Who are the liberals?

00:06:17.040 Who are the liberals even?

00:06:18.260 So, all right, now you have to piss off your entire fan base.

00:06:21.400 What do you think about taking knee?

00:06:22.800 What do you think about this Kaepernick, NFL-wide, and President Trump calling it out?

00:06:27.040 Yeah, well, all right.

00:06:28.280 I have to have consistent principles here.

00:06:30.580 So look, they are welcome to exercise their freedom of expression and free speech however

00:06:35.720 they want.

00:06:36.740 Now, at the same time, when you have free speech, that doesn't mean it doesn't have

00:06:39.520 any consequences.

00:06:40.900 So ultimately, if all these guys take a knee, so again, they can do it 100%, I back their

00:06:46.420 ability to do it and use their own mind to make a decision with what they want to do

00:06:50.040 with their lives.

00:06:50.460 Okay, fine.

00:06:50.940 Now, if you're an employer and you realize that the audience is turning against them

00:06:55.680 and may not buy tickets, may not buy as much food, may not watch, all those things.

00:06:59.240 Audience down 8%, 10%.

00:07:00.840 Which we consistently see.

00:07:02.380 By the way, the one guy, the Pittsburgh Steelers guy who did come out, you know, the whole team

00:07:06.800 stayed in the locker room, the one guy came out.

00:07:08.140 Now his jersey's selling like crazy today.

00:07:10.280 So he probably helped his career while some of these guys heard it.

00:07:13.380 Now, it shouldn't just be about your career and money and all that.

00:07:16.120 The point is that-

00:07:16.660 It also has to be a wealth and stuff.

00:07:18.200 Yeah, of course.

00:07:18.920 Absolutely.

00:07:19.560 Absolutely.

00:07:19.880 A true capitalist.

00:07:21.120 Okay, look, they can do it.

00:07:22.620 Their employers can then decide if they want to keep them or not resign them at the end of

00:07:27.840 the season or any of that.

00:07:29.040 As far as Trump, look, I tweeted out yesterday, look, the beauty of America is that the players

00:07:33.420 can do what they want.

00:07:34.280 The employers can do what they want.

00:07:35.520 The president can say what he wants and so can you.

00:07:37.860 Now, a lot of people are angry, but the president said fire them.

00:07:40.040 Look, he can say whatever he wants if he starts putting that into law.

00:07:45.700 Demanding.

00:07:46.200 If he goes to Congress, well, everyone thinks the president's allowed to write laws.

00:07:48.680 He's actually not, but I've sort of given up on that one.

00:07:51.980 Barack Obama thought that too, though, in his defense.

00:07:54.540 No, no.

00:07:54.840 I meant that as a broad sense of what has happened with the office of the president.

00:07:59.060 They all think that they can write laws and we've sort of let them.

00:08:01.440 And Congress is such a bunch of do-nothing losers that they've just abrogated all of their

00:08:05.700 authority to them.

00:08:06.700 But okay, that aside, Trump can say whatever.

00:08:09.840 He has a right to free speech too.

00:08:11.500 Now, what he can't do is start passing laws that would infringe on the First Amendment.

00:08:15.780 They can't start passing laws that would force companies to fire or stop people, jail people

00:08:21.160 for using their first music.

00:08:22.040 Or even to stop people from burning the flag, according to the Supreme Court, according to

00:08:25.560 Antonin Scalia.

00:08:26.660 Which I agree with.

00:08:27.560 I mean, at the end of the day, I would always err on the side of freedom.

00:08:31.940 Let's give more freedom.

00:08:33.180 And guess what?

00:08:33.620 Sometimes it's going to suck.

00:08:34.560 Sometimes people are going to kneel and you may not like it.

00:08:36.920 Sometimes they're going to burn the flag and you may not like it.

00:08:38.500 But that's the point.

00:08:39.580 So everything that happened yesterday, while everyone's screaming about, oh my God, this

00:08:42.680 is the most polarized we've ever been.

00:08:44.480 And we're all, we all, actually, it showed the strength of America.

00:08:47.320 Nobody got killed yesterday.

00:08:48.420 Nobody got mauled yesterday.

00:08:49.640 Right.

00:08:49.860 Because they weren't at Berkeley.

00:08:50.960 Yeah, they were.

00:08:51.660 Right.

00:08:52.040 Wait, wait till this week.

00:08:53.180 But the point is, that's kind of a beautiful thing.

00:08:55.080 Everyone exercised their freedom of expression.

00:08:57.740 Now, there may be consequences that come from all of that, but the government didn't stop

00:09:01.640 anybody.

00:09:02.040 Even Trump.

00:09:02.540 And by the way, when I say that, I don't like what Trump tweeted.

00:09:05.420 I don't like that he's put, he's sort of making it seem like the government is against

00:09:10.460 this stuff.

00:09:10.920 And I know he purposely goes to the line and he's kind of trolling the media and all of

00:09:14.420 those things.

00:09:14.800 Certainly on this issue.

00:09:15.980 I would prefer, I would much prefer a president who I think really cared about ideas and I

00:09:19.840 really understood what his political ethos is and all that stuff.

00:09:23.260 That isn't the president we've got, but it doesn't mean you have to be dishonest in

00:09:27.040 your criticism of him.

00:09:28.140 That's what I would say.

00:09:28.840 Now, what do you, so the NASCAR came out strongly against this.

00:09:32.460 The Hall of Fame driver, Richard Petty said, quote, anybody that don't stand up for the

00:09:37.900 anthem ought to be out of the country, period.

00:09:39.860 We got them.

00:09:40.680 What got them where they're at?

00:09:41.700 The United States.

00:09:42.540 I couldn't agree more.

00:09:43.840 What do you think about the content of this protest?

00:09:46.840 So they have the right to do it.

00:09:48.080 Even though the NFL has fined players for making other protests, wearing socks honoring

00:09:53.540 9-11, that sort of thing.

00:09:54.980 Or even dancing in the end zone.

00:09:56.400 They're not even allowed to dance in the end zone, right?

00:09:58.380 Yeah, they should not be allowed to do that.

00:09:59.840 What are your thoughts on the content of the kneeling?

00:10:04.120 Look, in my opinion, we live in truly the greatest country, probably in the history of

00:10:09.760 the world.

00:10:10.220 More people have come here for more freedom than anywhere else.

00:10:13.840 Every single one of us, unless you're a Native American or an African American whose ancestors

00:10:19.860 were brought here as slaves, every single one of us came here with nothing.

00:10:24.300 Our ancestors, I'm sure your great-grandparents or whoever it was, came here with nothing, as

00:10:27.800 mine did, they build and build and build.

00:10:29.660 We build a strong middle class.

00:10:31.140 Hopefully, you'll be able to move up and up and up.

00:10:32.900 That's a beautiful thing.

00:10:33.880 Now, that being said, are people allowed to protest?

00:10:38.020 Of course.

00:10:38.900 I mean, so I think it's slightly misguided in a way.

00:10:42.880 And now we have the perfect mix.

00:10:44.880 I mean, this is what it is.

00:10:45.760 We have the perfect storm of a president who will keep pushing them and this movement that's

00:10:51.260 going to keep pushing this way.

00:10:52.360 And we just have this perfect thing that's just going to keep blowing up.

00:10:56.100 But ironically, I think a certain amount of people are just going to tune out.

00:10:58.920 I think a certain amount of people will just stop.

00:11:00.100 They'll literally tune out of the game.

00:11:01.720 That's what I mean.

00:11:02.380 I mean, even the idea, I used to, I mean, I love sports.

00:11:05.260 I never watch SportsCenter anymore because basically you're just watching what happened

00:11:08.700 in crime and what happened in politics.

00:11:11.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:11.900 So I could just watch MSNBC for that.

00:11:13.960 So I think that there's a short, look, the other thing is, so you take the Pittsburgh Steelers,

00:11:18.140 the whole team, except this one guy did this.

00:11:20.240 Okay, fine.

00:11:20.900 Again, they are welcome to do that and they may pay consequences from the team.

00:11:25.640 But how do you backtrack out of that?

00:11:27.600 Let's say Trump does a few things that they want him to do, whatever that is, right?

00:11:31.920 Or the atmosphere changes a little bit.

00:11:33.880 Well, how do you in three weeks from now show up and you're all out there again as if it

00:11:37.020 all got better?

00:11:37.920 So they're all pinning themselves into an intellectual corner, which I think is dangerous.

00:11:41.340 That's exactly right.

00:11:42.380 And you make the great point too.

00:11:43.600 The country has allowed people to have this thriving middle class, to ascend as ever more

00:11:50.880 fair, ever more free, ever more equal.

00:11:53.520 And the fact that they can take this protest without facing consequences from the government

00:11:58.840 is evidence that they shouldn't protest the country.

00:12:01.900 They should maybe protest the cops or protest this or whatever they want.

00:12:05.440 Well, I also think that the danger is that politicizing everything is incredibly dangerous.

00:12:10.380 People watch sports to escape, right?

00:12:12.800 Why do you watch sports?

00:12:13.980 Why do you play sports?

00:12:15.200 Imagine if you were playing basketball.

00:12:16.520 That's a difficult thing to imagine, but sure, I'll do my best.

00:12:19.400 Work with me here for a second.

00:12:20.320 Imagine if you were playing basketball, okay?

00:12:22.220 You're dribbling the ball, you're playing ball, and now guys are screaming about politics

00:12:25.900 when you're on the court.

00:12:27.060 You would never play with those guys again.

00:12:29.140 We need a break from politics.

00:12:30.820 I think this whole example actually is another reason why I believe in limited government.

00:12:34.540 We need a government that's small enough that if it's going to make decisions, it can't

00:12:38.640 affect us in that many huge ways.

00:12:40.940 I think that would be a much better government to have than the government that is willing

00:12:44.920 to overreach.

00:12:46.000 So again, Trump, yeah, he's towing the line of what I think is legal and what I think

00:12:50.740 is right.

00:12:51.660 But as far as I know, he's not pushing any laws.

00:12:54.300 And unfortunately, people just don't understand what the basic, you know, you tell people,

00:12:57.660 well, First Amendment and that free speech. 0.86

00:12:59.040 I saw all these people.

00:13:00.020 Chris Sezilia, what's that guy's name?

00:13:02.200 Yeah, he's gone completely, Chris Sezilia has completely gone off the deep end.

00:13:05.120 The guy who's wrong about everything.

00:13:06.620 But he's talking about, he's tweeting about, you know, you have the freedom to not have

00:13:10.100 consequences or something.

00:13:11.380 You have the free, and it's like, no, that's the reverse of what you have.

00:13:15.020 I'm slightly butchering what the exact tweet was, obviously.

00:13:17.060 Yeah.

00:13:17.500 But like, people just don't understand the basic concepts.

00:13:19.820 It's almost as if we're not smart enough anymore because of the failure of our education

00:13:23.220 to deal with difficult issues.

00:13:26.240 So I would say this is all a flow of education, actually, more than anything else.

00:13:29.780 Certainly, that's, yes, absolutely, that's right.

00:13:32.300 And it brings us into this other issue today, which is free speech week.

00:13:38.700 We were all looking forward to it.

00:13:40.120 We'd all gotten all the tweets about it and invitations and things like that.

00:13:43.320 And it's completely falling apart.

00:13:44.860 This was Milo Yiannopoulos' plan, his big comeback.

00:13:50.660 One, would there have been a purpose to this free speech week?

00:13:54.240 And what is that purpose?

00:13:55.400 I like your little pause there because it was like you had eight questions to ask at

00:13:58.920 once without throwing anyone near the bus.

00:14:01.220 Look, I don't know what the purpose was.

00:14:02.780 I think maybe they were going to intentionally try to make more crap happen and just get more

00:14:07.300 violence and all that stuff.

00:14:08.760 You know, it's funny.

00:14:09.320 You know, Ben, obviously, who's become a friend of mine, who I'm sure you're a friend with,

00:14:13.320 and I've had him on my show, you know, he went to Berkeley.

00:14:16.160 It cost them $600,000.

00:14:19.340 It was like the president came to town.

00:14:20.620 They shut down the city.

00:14:21.480 So Ben, who I think is in this building right now, this is what I've said publicly.

00:14:24.220 He's welcome to burst in here and attack me if he doesn't like any of it.

00:14:27.760 Ben basically is a mainstream conservative thinker.

00:14:30.600 All the positions that Ben stakes out are just mainstream stuff that's on the right, basically.

00:14:36.900 Some of it I agree with.

00:14:37.860 Some of it I disagree with.

00:14:39.440 People were saying after the event, they were like, well, you know what?

00:14:41.600 It actually wasn't that violent because only, you know, five people were arrested and only

00:14:45.080 one ATM was destroyed in a couple windows.

00:14:47.420 They were like, oh, so it shows tolerance and it's pretty good.

00:14:50.900 But that's after $600,000 had to be spent to secure this.

00:14:54.760 So what the real threat is, it's not only that eventually for a guy like Ben or for many

00:14:58.980 other people, that they just won't want to deal with it.

00:15:01.200 You know what I mean?

00:15:01.840 Jerry Seinfeld doesn't perform at colleges anymore.

00:15:03.740 Seinfeld, who no one knows his opinion on anything.

00:15:06.020 You know what I mean?

00:15:06.480 Try to think of one political position that Jerry Seinfeld had.

00:15:08.740 I don't see a lot of Seinfeld political rants anymore.

00:15:11.420 Yeah, and yet he thought that colleges were too politically correct.

00:15:14.880 So the idea is you either just people, you know, not everyone will have the intestinal

00:15:19.360 fortitude of Ben Shapiro to keep showing up to these things and staking out unpopular

00:15:23.840 positions, but also the schools simply won't be able to afford it.

00:15:27.300 So the threat about free speech and free expression is now coming from many directions.

00:15:31.880 Ironically, very few of these directions are because of the government.

00:15:35.320 So I fear more that we are taking it away from ourselves.

00:15:38.900 We're allowing college students to dictate what they're taught.

00:15:42.840 You know what I mean?

00:15:43.240 We've allowed this diversity stuff, the James Damore memo, we've allowed this to just infect 1.00

00:15:48.440 everything.

00:15:49.700 And it's actually the reverse of what we need.

00:15:52.120 What we need is more people willing to talk it out and say, all right, we agree, we disagree.

00:15:56.360 But that's the point.

00:15:57.280 I would much rather live in a society where we disagree on some stuff, but we don't kill each

00:16:01.340 other than the society where we all just accept nonsense because we've been guilted into it.

00:16:07.480 It was amazing with Ben at Berkeley.

00:16:09.600 $600,000.

00:16:10.720 They still destroyed a bunch of stuff.

00:16:12.740 They called him a Nazi.

00:16:14.380 I guess a Nazi Jew is what Ben is. 0.95

00:16:16.140 A Nazi Orthodox Jew. 0.95

00:16:17.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:17.920 He doesn't...

00:16:18.880 He didn't...

00:16:19.500 I was at a dinner with Ben a couple weeks ago.

00:16:21.140 He brought his own kosher food.

00:16:22.700 I'm pretty sure that Nazis don't bring their own kosher food.

00:16:27.880 But when I see...

00:16:28.840 Ben gave his speech, and there was a lot of content to the speech.

00:16:31.240 He made arguments about abortion.

00:16:32.520 He made a lot of different arguments.

00:16:33.860 When I see you speak, you make arguments.

00:16:35.840 Arguments about free speech, about classical government.

00:16:38.400 For some people, it seems to me the speech is just about the speech.

00:16:42.880 There isn't actually a speech to give.

00:16:45.920 You're just waiting for these crazy kids to jump up and yell, and then you make fun of

00:16:50.160 the chubby lesbian or something. 1.00

00:16:51.480 Is there...

00:16:52.920 Well, yes.

00:16:53.600 So there's a certain amount of people that are just flamethrowers, right?

00:16:55.840 And you remember in the second Batman, when Heath Ledger's Joker, Michael Caine is discussing

00:17:02.380 the idea behind the Joker, what this guy's trying to do.

00:17:05.020 He says, some people just want to see the world burn.

00:17:07.160 So I think we actually do have a lot of those type of people right now, which I think is

00:17:11.040 really unfortunate, especially in the system that we live in, that has given so much to

00:17:15.540 so many people.

00:17:16.460 Think about it.

00:17:16.920 If you're watching this show in America right now, pretty much you could go to your supermarket

00:17:21.280 your local supermarket and find food there.

00:17:23.800 That's pretty good.

00:17:25.060 Yeah.

00:17:25.280 Pretty much there's water running at your house.

00:17:27.900 There is no...

00:17:28.560 Except that you live in Flint, Michigan, there's a problem.

00:17:29.980 Right.

00:17:30.140 But pretty much in a society of 350 million people, this thing's basically working.

00:17:36.120 And if you travel outside the country, I was just in Cuba, people traveled all over, there

00:17:40.680 is no poverty in America.

00:17:42.000 There is relative poverty to people, because people are so rich in America.

00:17:45.380 Right.

00:17:45.620 There is no real poverty in America.

00:17:46.780 And that doesn't mean that there aren't poor people.

00:17:49.280 There aren't people that need help.

00:17:50.440 Who are struggling.

00:17:50.700 Of course.

00:17:51.260 There aren't all of those things.

00:17:52.160 But we have to figure out how to have an honest conversation about that, not just either

00:17:56.340 throw money at everything where we consistently find it doesn't work, which we consistently

00:18:00.200 find.

00:18:00.620 The more money you throw at things, the less it actually works.

00:18:03.300 And you actually create a decision where people are now dependent on this and never want

00:18:06.520 to get off it, which is a horrific position for anyone to be in.

00:18:09.720 So there's so many things.

00:18:10.900 But this is what the debate's about.

00:18:12.060 And that's what I'm afraid of right now, is we're really, I mean, everyone's talking

00:18:15.640 about this, but it's significantly worse than it was two years ago.

00:18:18.640 We are all cordoning ourselves off in our little teams.

00:18:22.540 And I think one of the reasons that what I'm doing is working is I'm really trying not

00:18:26.460 to do that.

00:18:26.980 And I'm trying to spend as much time with a guy like you as I would with a lefty.

00:18:32.080 And I'm trying to find some answers there.

00:18:34.260 I think sometimes maybe logic and reason is going to be the sacrifice in this thing.

00:18:38.360 And that might make you a trans political thinker.

00:18:40.980 You know, you go from one side to the next.

00:18:42.980 And on that, it seems to me.

00:18:43.940 Does that get me any social justice credit on that?

00:18:45.960 Yeah, I don't know where that puts you on that.

00:18:46.940 I'm a trans thinker.

00:18:48.400 Yeah, how about that?

00:18:49.540 You'll get your own safe space on YouTube.

00:18:52.580 The issue that I think it seems like a trivial issue, it seems completely unimportant, but

00:18:58.280 it's where a lot of the cultural battle is and the language battle and the battle over

00:19:01.740 free speech, the pronouns.

00:19:03.720 Yeah.

00:19:04.060 The pronouns.

00:19:04.780 Do people have a right to insist that you call them by a pronoun that doesn't match their

00:19:11.820 actual biological sex?

00:19:14.140 Well, I would completely on this one take Jordan Peterson's position.

00:19:18.040 And I'm sure much of your audience knows Jordan.

00:19:20.360 Has he been in here?

00:19:21.400 Not yet, but we do want to get him.

00:19:22.800 Okay, okay.

00:19:23.620 I will gladly.

00:19:24.840 If you don't, you know, if this thing doesn't burn down by the end, I'll put in a good word

00:19:28.720 for you.

00:19:28.760 I thought the apocalypse was today.

00:19:30.260 I thought the Christian numeral.

00:19:31.320 Well, we'll see.

00:19:32.140 Oh, right.

00:19:32.320 Some guys said it was today.

00:19:33.200 It was supposed to be today.

00:19:33.700 It's always every day.

00:19:34.360 We'll see.

00:19:34.800 What egomania to think the world is going to end on your...

00:19:37.060 All these people that are like, oh, the nuclear war is coming, you know, North Korea

00:19:40.000 is going to nuke us now, or all the religious people that think, oh, end of time. 0.73

00:19:44.000 You know what?

00:19:44.400 The world's been going on for a long...

00:19:45.600 George Carlin did something about this.

00:19:47.300 It's not...

00:19:47.580 Don't worry about the planet.

00:19:48.520 It's the people, you know?

00:19:49.460 The planet's going to be fine.

00:19:50.640 Anyway, in answer to your question, I would take Jordan Peterson's position on this, which is,

00:19:54.680 first off, I have trans friends.

00:19:56.160 I know trans people.

00:19:57.100 Yeah, me too.

00:19:57.600 I do not go out of my way to offend anybody, ever.

00:20:00.420 Well, I go out of my way to offend everybody.

00:20:01.980 That's one difference, but I'm sorry.

00:20:03.800 No, no, that's fine, though.

00:20:05.100 So, okay, you have...

00:20:07.320 Let's say you're walking down the street, right, and somebody's walking towards you.

00:20:11.460 They drop their wallet.

00:20:13.580 And you're like, sir, you drop your wallet.

00:20:16.020 Now, if that person turns out to be a woman, but you thought it was a man, well, it's not

00:20:19.740 your fault.

00:20:20.700 You know what I mean?

00:20:21.180 Yeah.

00:20:21.260 Like, I think what we're getting caught up in is all just language nonsense here.

00:20:24.840 What if it is, this is the real issue, because we have friends who identify as transgender,

00:20:30.880 man to woman, or woman to man.

00:20:33.200 It seems to me that a man cannot become a woman simply by wishing it, because he has

00:20:38.620 a psychological condition that makes him think he's a woman or makes him very much want to

00:20:42.440 be a woman.

00:20:42.860 So, let's say he's a man, but he wears dresses, and maybe he undergoes some surgery even.

00:20:48.380 Nevertheless, he is a man.

00:20:50.180 My view of the world, my view of reality tells me he is a man, and I shouldn't...

00:20:55.360 It's not good to play into a delusion that he isn't a man.

00:20:58.220 It isn't good for him or anyone else.

00:20:59.480 But my politeness tells me, call him a banana if he wants to be called a banana.

00:21:03.700 Well, I think that's going to get you in trouble.

00:21:07.440 I've already been demonetized.

00:21:09.060 Well, I'm the king of demonetizing.

00:21:10.860 There you go.

00:21:13.200 Look, I would say there's two things.

00:21:14.480 There's something in general, like we have two realities, which is one is what the law

00:21:18.780 is.

00:21:19.420 I'm not talking about with pronouns specifically, but we have what the law is and then how we

00:21:22.260 function as people.

00:21:23.840 And those things aren't the same.

00:21:24.820 So, when people talk about the free speech thing, for example, yeah, we have the First

00:21:28.100 Amendment and the First Amendment protects the government from taking away our free speech.

00:21:32.420 But then there's also just how we have to all behave with each other.

00:21:35.240 Manners, yeah.

00:21:35.800 There's basic societal things that you can be part of or not be part of, but that there's

00:21:40.840 a social, there's a sort of unspoken social construct and, or social contract, I should

00:21:45.660 say, in being a member of society.

00:21:49.140 So, I would say basically, if you see someone and you, I would say, do your best to treat

00:21:57.920 them the way you would want to be treated.

00:21:59.760 But I certainly, I'm not going to pass any laws like they want to pass in Canada that

00:22:04.300 are going to affect, that are going to, you know.

00:22:06.060 Or that they have it as policies at universities right now.

00:22:08.680 Yeah.

00:22:08.780 You'd be in trouble if you use the wrong read, write pronoun to refer to somebody.

00:22:13.620 Yeah.

00:22:13.860 All of these things are complete nonsense.

00:22:15.580 I mean, all of this language policing and any law that you would put in or any statute

00:22:19.880 that you would put in a college.

00:22:20.960 Of course, this is just, it's not only is it abject drivel, but also for the people that

00:22:24.720 will be sympathetic to trans people, which I think is a perfectly fine and just cause,

00:22:30.040 you're going to actually drive a lot of them away.

00:22:32.220 Of course.

00:22:32.500 When you come in with some sort of authoritarian thing and you're going to have to say this,

00:22:35.900 and if you don't, by the way, we're going to call you a transphobe or a bigot or a

00:22:38.740 racist or all these things that don't even make sense.

00:22:40.680 Trans isn't a race, by the way.

00:22:41.940 But that, but of course, all of these things, everything gets lost in all of this nonsense.

00:22:45.680 So I would say, yes, try to be a decent person, but in no way should we be making laws about

00:22:51.300 this.

00:22:51.440 Of course, yeah.

00:22:52.120 We should all be equal under the law.

00:22:53.900 That's it.

00:22:54.520 The law doesn't say anything about how someone has to treat you.

00:22:57.840 And guess what?

00:22:58.420 People are allowed to be, what's the language?

00:23:01.120 Offensive.

00:23:01.840 Yeah, I was going to, I was going to go dirtier there, but what's the language policy around

00:23:05.520 here?

00:23:06.500 We're very politically correct and family oriented.

00:23:10.580 Absolutely.

00:23:11.360 Yeah.

00:23:11.840 Try to be decent.

00:23:12.920 That's all I would say.

00:23:13.680 Try to be decent, sure.

00:23:14.040 But you know what, if you're not decent, as long as you're not doing anything illegal,

00:23:17.160 all right, what am I going to do?

00:23:18.180 Because it seems there's this, the premises of it.

00:23:20.620 I worry with this.

00:23:21.420 You did a great interview with Blair White.

00:23:23.060 I love watching Blair White's videos. 0.84

00:23:25.040 I think he makes very good points, but he would probably prefer to be referred to as

00:23:29.920 she. 0.93

00:23:30.620 And I struggle with this question of, it's a small point, but if in a public space like

00:23:36.860 this, if we give the premise, if we grant the premise of transgenderism and of subjectivism,

00:23:44.240 of the relativity of reality, then haven't we given away the whole farm?

00:23:49.520 So this is where I think that you as a conservative and me as a liberal have just a different view

00:23:54.860 of the world.

00:23:56.280 And see, it's funny because I know a certain amount of people would watch you say that.

00:23:59.080 Now, Blair, if you look at Blair, she looks like, you know, she's beautiful.

00:24:03.020 She looks like a woman. 0.68

00:24:03.880 Okay.

00:24:04.380 Now, a certain amount of people are going to watch you and go, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:24:07.260 He's just going out of his way.

00:24:08.900 He's going out of his way to be mean to this person.

00:24:10.580 To just kind of be mean or whatever.

00:24:11.900 Okay.

00:24:12.360 Now, I know Blair decently well.

00:24:14.560 That was the first time we had met in person, but, you know, sort of nowhere.

00:24:17.540 Now, look, you gain nothing.

00:24:18.880 I think that, and I think this is a fair liberal position, you gain nothing by doing what you

00:24:25.540 did there.

00:24:25.980 You know what I mean?

00:24:26.440 And, like, you just don't, like, I get what you're saying that, yes, this person, first

00:24:29.920 off, I think that trans is still listed as some sort of psychological disorder or something.

00:24:33.880 It clearly is a disorder of some sort.

00:24:36.760 Your psychology doesn't match your body.

00:24:39.500 So, look, if Blair was sitting here, I'm pretty sure she actually wouldn't be offended

00:24:43.340 by you doing that.

00:24:43.680 Blair would agree with that, yeah.

00:24:44.620 She would argue, no, but even by you calling her he or whatever.

00:24:48.460 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:48.700 I think she would have a principled position to argue against.

00:24:51.960 And I would say this is the best example of why it's about the individual.

00:24:55.400 That if you were sitting here, and you and Blair were having a great political discussion

00:25:00.120 about anything, I think by the end of it, you would go, you know what, next time I will

00:25:04.520 have no problem calling you she.

00:25:06.080 Call you whatever you want to be called.

00:25:07.040 Yeah, because it's about the individual.

00:25:09.140 So, yes, at some level, I get it.

00:25:10.860 I get what conservatives are kind of doing here.

00:25:12.760 And this is also what I think conservatives missed on gay marriage, which is that now it's

00:25:17.940 funny.

00:25:18.180 All the conservatives now, they all take the libertarian position, which is, oh, I didn't want the

00:25:21.800 government and blah, blah, blah, blah, but none of you were saying that before.

00:25:24.520 You don't want a defensive marriage act.

00:25:25.500 Yeah.

00:25:26.420 Not you specifically, but the whole slew of conservatives, who many of them I'm friends

00:25:30.820 with now, nobody was taking the principled position.

00:25:33.800 Rand Paul, who's more of a libertarian, obviously, he could have taken the most principled position

00:25:38.960 ever and been like, you know what?

00:25:40.320 But I don't particularly care one way or another about gay people, but I want everyone to be

00:25:45.180 treated equally under the law.

00:25:45.980 I don't care what you do in your own bedroom.

00:25:48.040 And if two people want to enter a contract, it doesn't matter what sex they are.

00:25:50.660 It would have been a great principled position and something that the right and that I think

00:25:54.280 conservatives and limited government people all could have latched onto in an honest way.

00:25:59.620 So I would say in this case, it doesn't really matter.

00:26:03.320 So I guess maybe your pushback is that somehow what?

00:26:05.480 That society's chipping away at a little inherent truth or something?

00:26:10.440 That there's a question of who gets to define reality?

00:26:15.100 Whose premises do we have to believe?

00:26:17.420 The premise that says that a man can become a woman by sheer force of will or the people 0.54

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

00:26:33.740 changing definitions of reality.

00:26:36.480 So I think you can actually meld both of those into one thing, which again, it's about the

00:26:40.740 individual.

00:26:41.260 So of course, if a biologist was sitting here, they would say you can't change your chromosomes.

00:26:44.960 Right.

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

00:26:51.520 their chromosomes.

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 0.71

00:27:06.240 places of sort of an intellectual high ground.

00:27:10.260 Intellectually interesting, but socially irrelevant.

00:27:12.920 But yeah, I just don't think it's that.

00:27:14.680 I think 20 years from now, if trans people, it should be what's happening to gay people 1.00

00:27:19.300 right now, where they're, the left is turning on gays right now because they don't view them

00:27:22.760 as oppressed enough anymore.

00:27:23.700 I like that.

00:27:25.000 I'm okay with that.

00:27:26.160 You don't look oppressed to me.

00:27:27.300 I don't, I'm not oppressed.

00:27:28.660 But you know what?

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.

00:27:36.500 But guess what?

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.

00:27:42.480 That's the beauty of America.

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

00:27:50.020 to fight for.

00:27:50.840 Right.

00:27:50.920 Get us to that base level and then everyone can be totally awful people to each other if

00:27:55.380 you so choose.

00:27:56.560 It's not how I operate, but you're allowed.

00:27:58.160 Absolutely.

00:27:58.560 Now, speaking of the morality of being completely awful people to each other, we have to get

00:28:02.740 into a segment.

00:28:03.440 I've constructed it just for today.

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.

00:28:13.540 I'll give you the 30-second recap on that.

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.

00:28:21.720 And then I had Milo on the 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

00:28:30.200 evidence.

00:28:30.560 So if you told me that LeBron James dunked from half court last night, I'll go, well, I

00:28:34.240 need to see the video on that.

00:28:35.620 I can't just take your word for it.

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.

00:28:48.120 I just don't believe without evidence.

00:28:50.160 I don't want to get too lost in atheism versus agnostic.

00:28:51.980 That's the Bertrand Russell argument.

00:28:53.440 Yeah, you would say, if you get to heaven and God is there and you say, why don't you

00:28:56.500 believe in me?

00:28:57.080 He says, well, there wasn't enough evidence.

00:28:58.280 Right.

00:28:58.860 And I could agree with Bertrand Russell on almost everything.

00:29:01.600 So there you go.

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

00:29:10.540 because there are moments.

00:29:11.940 I mean, there are moments in life when you have beliefs and things that you can't quite

00:29:15.520 explain.

00:29:16.200 When you're odd.

00:29:16.260 The moment of the numinous.

00:29:17.380 Yeah.

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.

00:29:24.660 Good.

00:29:24.920 Well, I'm glad you brought, it is providential that we brought up Bertrand Russell.

00:29:28.840 Yeah.

00:29:28.940 So what I'm going to do, I'll just run down a few arguments for God.

00:29:32.140 Okay.

00:29:32.640 See if they push any buttons.

00:29:34.220 See if you have a rebuttal to it.

00:29:35.920 Yeah.

00:29:36.200 This was an argument that Bertrand Russell, an atheist to the day he died, said that he

00:29:40.020 couldn't find the logical flaw in.

00:29:41.540 Okay.

00:29:41.840 He famously threw his tin of tobacco in the air.

00:29:44.180 He said, the ontological argument is sound.

00:29:46.500 And then he said, well, but I don't know.

00:29:48.000 I'm not convinced anyway.

00:29:49.040 Should I have brought my lawyer for this?

00:29:50.240 You need your, you should have, this is only, only your divine lawyer.

00:29:53.600 Yeah.

00:29:53.880 I should have had a priest, a rabbi, an imam. 0.71

00:29:56.360 That would have helped.

00:29:57.300 Yeah.

00:29:57.460 Only, so this is the argument.

00:29:59.020 Yes.

00:29:59.300 Let's do it.

00:29:59.620 You might be familiar with it.

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.

00:30:08.360 Just the most basic definition.

00:30:09.500 Then in, in modal logic, as a principle of modal logic, there are necessary truths and contingent

00:30:14.980 truths.

00:30:15.460 So this is necessarily a mug and the mug is on the table.

00:30:18.680 The mug could be on my microphone.

00:30:20.500 The mug could be on my head.

00:30:22.220 Now.

00:30:22.460 Put the mug on your head.

00:30:23.380 I, and the mug is on my head because of the whimsy of the cosmos.

00:30:26.920 Yes.

00:30:27.140 Now, if God is a maximally great being, then he exists necessarily, right?

00:30:33.760 He wouldn't exist as a matter of contingency.

00:30:36.560 He would exist necessarily.

00:30:37.740 So if he exists necessarily in some possible world, then he exists necessarily in all possible

00:30:44.280 worlds, right?

00:30:45.460 If he couldn't be the maximally great being and only exist in some possible world, it would

00:30:49.100 have to be in all.

00:30:49.560 Now, if he exists necessarily in all possible worlds, then he exists necessarily in this

00:30:54.900 world, which is among all possible worlds.

00:30:58.160 Therefore, God exists.

00:30:59.380 And Bertrand Russell was reacting to a different version of that argument.

00:31:02.380 Basically the same thing.

00:31:03.560 He said, there's, it's, it's impossible to point out the flaw.

00:31:06.860 Have I made you a Christian? 0.91

00:31:08.060 Are we going to church together this Sunday?

00:31:09.660 Well, you did say if a lot in that.

00:31:12.560 There's a lot of ifs there.

00:31:13.480 Yeah, there are premises, yeah.

00:31:14.360 Those are a lot of ifs.

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

00:31:23.440 there.

00:31:23.720 What I would say is this.

00:31:24.820 I had, I had Dennis Prager on with Michael Shermer debating God and morality.

00:31:30.600 It was one of the, my favorite hours.

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

00:31:46.820 more of.

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

00:31:59.540 believe in all that.

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

00:32:14.940 things to keep society going.

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.

00:32:22.440 It's useful.

00:32:23.160 It's useful.

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

00:32:37.620 of this.

00:32:38.020 I'm kind of, I'm 50, 50 on that truly.

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.

00:32:52.140 There's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

00:32:53.960 Yeah.

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.

00:32:59.100 These are really enlightenment 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

00:33:08.660 system down.

00:33:09.100 So many people want to be hysterical.

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.

00:33:16.080 Yeah.

00:33:16.500 Willing to debate what has got it.

00:33:18.140 It's almost pointless to me.

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.

00:33:27.860 He's judging Marshall the most.

00:33:29.160 I think we can agree on that.

00:33:29.820 Definitely judging Marshall.

00:33:30.940 I don't know that I answered your question in even the slightest.

00:33:34.200 No, a little bit.

00:33:34.760 A little bit you did.

00:33:35.460 Because you're right.

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 0.98

00:33:44.260 religion, by Christianity.

00:33:47.060 The natural rights come from natural law, and natural law comes from Christianity. 0.72

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-

00:34:15.760 He is a gigantic fat man with a beard.

00:34:17.680 That is what he is, all right?

00:34:19.080 I think we've proven that.

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,

00:34:41.820 that you have rights.

00:34:43.860 I like that.

00:34:44.680 You have dignity, yeah.

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.

00:35:00.800 He was a pretty powerful Autobot.

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.

00:35:10.480 A giant fat man in the sky with a beard shirt.

00:35:12.340 Yeah, but it's before government.

00:35:13.800 I like that much more than I like that the government is giving us these things.

00:35:17.880 The government is just a construct of man.

00:35:20.500 So the idea that the government is giving me my freedom?

00:35:23.440 Right.

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

00:35:31.820 a human.

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

00:35:42.760 or a little more not so interrelated.

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.

00:35:57.360 And I would fall somewhere into that category.

00:35:59.680 Now, that's all right.

00:36:00.420 We'll move you over.

00:36:01.480 On the...

00:36:02.460 I like how you think you have work to do.

00:36:03.920 Yeah.

00:36:04.220 Yeah.

00:36:04.920 I do notice that with you conservatives now that I hang out with you people.

00:36:07.960 Oh, I know.

00:36:08.640 You all think there's work to do with me.

00:36:09.680 Come on, the water's nice, Dave.

00:36:11.200 Come on in here.

00:36:12.080 Wouldn't it be funny if I was actually making you guys all more liberal and you didn't even

00:36:15.960 know it, but it could be...

00:36:17.340 I feel it happening.

00:36:17.600 I think I've made you people a lot more tolerant.

00:36:19.660 I know.

00:36:19.980 I feel it happening by the moment, you know?

00:36:22.900 Yeah.

00:36:23.660 So you bring up science.

00:36:26.040 Yeah.

00:36:26.160 And that is everyone...

00:36:27.020 We all talk about science these days.

00:36:28.440 People, I think, forget that the science, Western science is a product of the church, basically.

00:36:35.060 Copernicus was a priest, you know.

00:36:37.360 They all knock the Catholic church because of Galileo.

00:36:41.200 But Galileo was kind of a jerk man.

00:36:43.120 The church was very nice to Copernicus.

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.

00:37:00.580 But he said, no, it had a beginning.

00:37:02.060 It was the Big Bang.

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.

00:37:17.780 Very minor measurements.

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?

00:37:40.440 Not really.

00:37:41.720 We got to get a couple drinks in here on this guy.

00:37:44.940 We can do this after a couple drinks.

00:37:46.600 Not really, though.

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.

00:38:16.340 I suspect that if—

00:38:17.260 Certainly, yeah.

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.

00:38:27.000 They've been real.

00:38:27.640 But you know what?

00:38:28.200 It could be, you see?

00:38:29.560 It could be aliens.

00:38:30.660 It could be, you know what I mean?

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.

00:38:36.760 It could be.

00:38:37.340 I mean, who knows?

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.

00:39:15.100 Yeah.

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.

00:39:30.440 Yeah.

00:39:30.680 It just all seems kind of, like, smug and arrogant to me in a way.

00:39:34.180 Well, that's my, that's what I prefer.

00:39:35.920 Yeah, that's the worst.

00:39:36.460 You, Michael, know, seem very smug and arrogant.

00:39:39.220 That's what I'm trying to say.

00:39:39.860 Yeah, you know what?

00:39:40.340 That's better than what I'm called on Twitter.

00:39:41.740 That's a lot better than what we get called on Twitter.

00:39:42.880 I don't even want to look at this thing now.

00:39:44.420 So there is one final argument.

00:39:46.480 This one I don't think you could possibly disagree with.

00:39:48.980 Yeah.

00:39:49.120 This argument is the argumentus democratus.

00:39:53.500 The argument is that Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president.

00:39:58.280 Donald Trump was not 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. 1.00

00:40:05.000 Yeah.

00:40:05.180 Then we got Trump.

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. 0.99

00:40:18.200 Tell me that God doesn't exist.

00:40:19.980 Tell me that, it's impossible.

00:40:21.560 It's an impossible argument.

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.

00:40:28.300 But that doesn't prove that God exists.

00:40:29.780 It just proves that the universe is here.

00:40:31.820 And sometimes I think you're a little more in line with it, and sometimes you're not.

00:40:35.880 You had a nice little run here.

00:40:37.240 And Hillary was not in line. 0.99

00:40:38.620 Hillary was far away from you. 0.93

00:40:40.040 You got your Trump.

00:40:41.020 You got your book.

00:40:41.940 You got your Shapiro.

00:40:43.060 You got your roaming millennial.

00:40:44.600 But that just means you're doing things.

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.

00:40:57.160 I hope, Dave, that I've saved your soul.

00:40:58.940 That was an excellent segue.

00:40:59.880 I really enjoyed that.

00:41:01.240 We have got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:41:03.240 Listen, guys, we have so much more to get to.

00:41:05.540 We have an incredible panel of deplorables.

00:41:07.720 We have Ali Stuckey.

00:41:08.900 We have Jacob Berry.

00:41:09.940 Dave's going to stick around.

00:41:10.820 Hopefully his meter doesn't run out.

00:41:12.300 But we have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.

00:41:15.160 Thank you to all the current subscribers.

00:41:16.860 If you're a subscriber, go over to dailywire.com right now.

00:41:19.100 You get to watch the whole rest of the show.

00:41:20.560 If you're not a subscriber, hurry up, man.

00:41:22.580 You have like two minutes to do it.

00:41:24.460 It's $10 a month, $100 a year.

00:41:27.220 You get me.

00:41:27.940 You get the Andrew Klavan show.

00:41:29.200 You get the Ben Shapiro show.

00:41:30.400 You get great guests like Dave Rubin.

00:41:32.180 Forget all that.

00:41:32.840 That's nothing.

00:41:34.280 You get this.

00:41:35.340 You get this.

00:41:37.440 The Leftist Tears Tumblr.

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.

00:41:48.440 Schenk Uyghur's tears.

00:41:50.080 I'll take two of those.

00:41:51.400 Yeah, we're sending Dave home with some.

00:41:53.420 Go over there right now.

00:41:54.560 Dailywire.com.

00:41:55.320 We'll be right back.

00:41:55.840 Back to the NFL panel.

00:42:08.460 Thank you for waiting.

00:42:09.300 I was too enraptured.

00:42:10.200 I was lost in Dave's beautiful eyes.

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

00:42:24.580 drunk driving, drug offenses.

00:42:26.740 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:42:27.160 The average time is seven days.

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.

00:42:36.100 In 2013, there were 71 arrests of NFL players.

00:42:39.220 As Donald Trump Jr. put it,

00:42:40.480 If only Roger Goodell cared as much about domestic abuse and traumatic brain injury as he does

00:42:45.660 about disrespecting America.

00:42:47.680 Hashtag NFL.

00:42:49.440 Allie, is there a little man in the mirror issue here?

00:42:53.860 I'm talking about the man in the mirror.

00:42:55.260 Is there a connection between these guys' moral defects and their virtue signaling about

00:43:00.760 these race issues?

00:43:04.460 Yeah, I think absolutely.

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

00:43:35.560 these virtues.

00:43:36.800 And they are exemplifying those virtues by making a political point when they should

00:43:41.780 be honoring our flag.

00:43:42.420 Jacob, Allie makes all excellent points.

00:43:45.580 Why isn't Goodell doing something about this?

00:43:48.160 He's perfectly willing to punish football players when they honor 9-11 victims and heroes,

00:43:53.740 but he'll stand back on this issue.

00:43:56.340 Why the silence?

00:43:57.300 I think it's exactly what Allie was saying.

00:44:00.120 It's just plain virtue signaling.

00:44:02.280 I think she said moral vigilantism.

00:44:04.340 That's perfect for it.

00:44:05.840 That when it comes to things like 9-11 and Dallas cops being killed by Black Lives Matter 0.98

00:44:12.680 sympathizer, it's so tragic.

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.

00:44:22.940 It doesn't make sense.

00:44:23.900 But it shows, to me, the disconnect between the people who are upstairs and then their

00:44:29.180 audience who are watching.

00:44:30.320 It's a disconnect with their fan base.

00:44:33.380 Absolutely.

00:44:33.980 And Dave is going to cancel ESPN for that, so he's going to stop watching the shows.

00:44:38.100 Okay.

00:44:38.400 We talked about the NFL, too.

00:44:39.740 I can't pay attention to these guys anymore.

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

00:44:56.760 the Clintons don't kill people? 0.98

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.

00:45:21.100 We have so many problems.

00:45:22.340 Like when I saw this headline this morning, it was just like, let me just put that one

00:45:25.080 aside, let the guy go to jail, just move on.

00:45:28.980 You know, we only have so much brain power for all this stuff.

00:45:31.480 It is too much Weiner.

00:45:32.780 It is Weiner overload.

00:45:34.520 Ali, you're not going to believe this.

00:45:37.720 I almost feel sorry for the guy.

00:45:39.760 He's so pathetic in the court and crying, and he's obviously got this sickness, this

00:45:45.560 psychological disorder.

00:45:47.240 Should we feel bad for Anthony Weiner?

00:45:52.920 First, when you said that, I was shocked.

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.

00:46:16.640 I just, I don't know.

00:46:17.940 Forgive me, but I don't have a whole lot of compassion.

00:46:20.320 Yeah, I always feel bad for the guy.

00:46:21.840 And then I look at the pictures and I think, all right, throw him away.

00:46:24.480 Get him out of here.

00:46:25.060 In an article on Sunday, NPR lamented, quote, gender segregated professional sports as being

00:46:33.520 exclusive, as being unfair and exclusive.

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 1.00

00:46:45.240 sports, is that just the end of female sports? 1.00

00:46:47.560 Well, yeah.

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.

00:47:04.380 No, males play sports better.

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.

00:47:20.580 And it's absolutely true.

00:47:21.940 It's not just because I play basketball differently, but because I play basketball a lot worse than

00:47:27.480 any unathletic male.

00:47:29.160 It's just true.

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. 1.00

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

00:47:52.820 change.

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. 0.95

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

00:48:08.900 to reconcile this conflict on the left?

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.

00:48:23.520 That's number one.

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. 1.00

00:48:28.320 But if you took Lisa Leslie, who was one of the biggest stars in the league, she could 0.99

00:48:32.320 never make it in the NBA, in the men's league.

00:48:35.700 That is just simply the truth.

00:48:37.560 She would be crushed simply by the size and strength of these guys.

00:48:41.940 That is not putting women down. 0.52

00:48:43.480 That's just understanding that we have different biological differences.

00:48:47.040 So of course, this was all leading to this.

00:48:49.780 Of course, now they're going to try to have women play in the NBA. 1.00

00:48:52.720 But what are you really saying here?

00:48:54.080 We have differences.

00:48:55.160 We can accept them.

00:48:55.980 It doesn't mean that one's better or one's worse.

00:48:58.380 It just is.

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.

00:49:08.160 But panel, thank you for being here.

00:49:10.000 Ali Stuckey, Jacob Berry, Dave Rubin, the nicest guy in politics.

00:49:13.360 Thank you for coming by.

00:49:14.360 Thanks, brother.

00:49:14.800 Great to have you.

00:49:15.700 Now it is time for my final thought.

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.

00:49:31.540 Make no mistake.

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.

00:49:57.660 The symbol has relation to the symbolized.

00:49:59.740 But they're kneeling for the national anthem, and so the disrespect and protest are pointed toward the country itself.

00:50:06.640 There is an irony here.

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.

00:50:27.180 They are uniquely American.

00:50:28.760 They rest on the foundation of America.

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.

00:50:42.480 On that, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:50:43.660 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:50:44.900 Come back tomorrow.

00:50:45.520 We'll do it all again.

00:50:58.760 Thank you.

00:50:59.500 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - September 25, 2017

Ep. 32 - Free Speech Hour ft. Dave Rubin

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