Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Dave Rubin Talks About 'Echo Chamber' Mentality | DIRECT MESSAGE | Rubin Report
Aired: 2015-09-30
Duration: 02:27


=== Battle of Ideas (02:25) ===

[00:00:02]  Hey everyone, we're going to be doing something a little different this week.
[00:00:04]  I've got Majid Nawaz jumping on a Skype call shortly.
[00:00:07]  He and Sam Harris are co-authors of a new book about Islam, and Majid is a former Islamic extremist himself.
[00:00:14]  A ton of you guys have been asking us to sit down, but he lives in London, so we thought we'd give the Skype thing a shot.
[00:00:19]  Actually, he's in New York at the moment.
[00:00:20]  I saw a picture of him and Morgan Freeman in a mosque yesterday, so I'm going to ask him about that and much more in a little bit.
[00:00:26]  But first, let's do a little housekeeping.
[00:00:28]  I want to talk about some of the principles we laid out in the first episode and some of the reaction to last week's show.
[00:00:33]  It seems that a bunch of you weren't thrilled with my guest Jimmy Dore.
[00:00:36]  Jimmy is a hardcore lefty progressive and uses some of the tactics I mentioned that I wouldn't be using on the show.
[00:00:42]  First, let me just say that I can only hold myself to the rules that I laid out.
[00:00:46]  If I stopped and mentioned saying every time a guest said something that goes against my personal rules, the show would be incredibly slow and horrifically painful.
[00:00:54]  More importantly, as we build a community based on tolerance and other ideas, it's important that we remain tolerant of ideas we don't like.
[00:01:02]  Jimmy is a great friend of mine.
[00:01:03]  We've worked together on-air for years, we've done stand-up gigs together, and I've had him and his wife over for dinner numerous times.
[00:01:09]  Yeah, we don't agree on everything, including some pretty big issues, but I think life is about more than just scoring who is right on everything all the time.
[00:01:17]  The most interesting part of last week's response was that some people said the episode was an echo chamber and I didn't push back enough.
[00:01:24]  Other people questioned why I even had people I disagree with on it all.
[00:01:27]  And that's the beauty of the internet, right?
[00:01:29]  We can all be part of the same exact conversation and still see it through our individual prisms.
[00:01:34]  Good journalism is the search for truth.
[00:01:36]  This show will be a battle of ideas, not just having our own ideas reinforced.
[00:01:41]  You know, there's so much intolerance of the other on both sides, and I think we can create something that's so much better than that.
[00:01:47]  Actually, I don't just think it, I know it, because I see it already happening.
[00:01:51]  Last week I had a hardcore progressive lefty.
[00:01:53]  This week I have a former Islamist extremist turned moderate trying to reform his religion.
[00:01:58]  Next week I have a gay conservative from Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos.
[00:02:02]  I won't agree with all of them all the time, but I most likely won't shout them down either.
[00:02:06]  I have enough faith in you guys that if we have an honest conversation here, the truth will present itself.
[00:02:11]  This of course reminds me of the Galactic Republic in the early days of the Death Star.
[00:02:15]  Grand Muff Tarkin wanted to stifle debate because they had the most powerful super laser in the universe.
[00:02:20]  Of course, let's not forget that Darth Vader said that the Death Star was nothing compared to the power of the Force.
[00:02:26]  The Force is on our side.