Dec. 9, 2015 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
04:54
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Alright, there is a ton I have to talk to you guys about this week. | ||
| As you probably know, I was in Israel last week where I was invited to speak at a video conference. | ||
| The remainder of the week was spent wandering the streets, talking to people about peace, and eating ridiculous amounts of hummus. | ||
| Spending most of my time in Tel Aviv, I saw people of pretty much every race, color, religion, ethnicity, and nationality living side by side. | ||
| I heard Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, and several other languages being spoken simultaneously in restaurants and cafes. | ||
| I saw a coexistence in a part of the world that has very little of it. | ||
| I also spent a day in Jerusalem. | ||
| If you saw the video that we posted a couple days ago, I tried to show how close these religious sites are and give a little context to an extremely small yet complex city. | ||
| Walking through the old city of Jerusalem, I explored the Jewish and Christian quarters and stopped for falafel in the Arab quarter. | ||
| I felt it was important not just to talk about these places as we do, but actually to live them as well. | ||
| I exited the old city at the Damascus Gate, where literally a day before, a Jew had been stabbed. | ||
| While there was no doubt the neighborhood was tense, there was also a feeling that this was life, and life goes on. | ||
| Unfortunately, I heard about the San Bernardino terrorist attacks while on the beach in Israel. | ||
| I can't really explain to you guys how incredibly surreal it was to be so far away from something so horrific happening 60 miles away from where I live while I was 7,600 miles away from home. | ||
| Adding to the surreal feeling was that I was in the epicenter of a country that deals with terrorism in some form or another pretty much every day. | ||
| Suddenly I had people asking me what it was like to be in America with all our mass shootings. | ||
| The world felt completely flipped on its head. | ||
| On the 14-hour plane ride back to Los Angeles, I read What's Left by my guest this week, Nick Cohen. | ||
| Nick is a writer for Time, Spectator, The Observer, and Standpoint. | ||
| His first book, What's Left, is an absolute must-read if you dig what we do here. | ||
| Though What's Left was written in 2007, Nick absolutely nails so much of the lunacy We've been talking about on the left these days, from their dishonest tactics of lying about opponents' views to aligning themselves with people who would just as easily have them killed. | ||
| He goes on a journey through history to show how the far left has so often strengthened the very ideas that they purport to be against. | ||
| There were so many passages of the book that I felt like could have been written today that it was almost like reading something from the future. | ||
| He nailed the regressive left before the term was even out there. | ||
| Speaking of the regressives, you didn't think I was going to get through a show without mentioning them, did you? | ||
| Yeah, not going to happen. | ||
| One of the issues I've called them out on consistently is that if they don't stop smearing the liberals willing to talk about Islamic extremism, that they're going to hand our future to the far right. | ||
| We're seeing this right this very second across Europe as far right parties are winning elections and gaining in the polls from France to Belgium to Sweden and more. | ||
| This is clearly coming to the American shores right now, too, as Donald Trump just this week called for denying Muslims entry into the United States. | ||
| Obviously this is idiotic, over the top, and ridiculous, but it can only exist in a climate where fear of real discussion has been stifled. | ||
| If we aren't afraid of talking about Islamism, especially the difference between people and doctrine, then we can finally have an honest conversation about refugees, immigration, and everything else. | ||
| But if we do as the regressives are doing this very second, by making no distinction between people who are trying to talk about serious issues versus people who trade on fear, then we help the real xenophobes and silence the reformers. | ||
| Even as a kid, I always loved John F. Kennedy's famous quote, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. | ||
| It's lofty and big, but it hits something that is extremely human. | ||
| Sometimes fear in things is scarier than the actual thing itself. | ||
| That's not to say that radical Islam isn't scary, but we also feed that fear if we don't deal with it honestly. | ||
| Now though we live in a time when people are incredibly fearful, and much of it is with good reason as we've seen the spread of an evil ideology with no signs of letting up. | ||
| That doesn't mean we have to be afraid to speak out against it or silence those who dare to do so. | ||
| Actually, of course it means the exact opposite. | ||
| Fear is what the regressives and the far right are both going to use to splinter us against each other so they can gain power. | ||
| The world is in a strange, fearful moment right this very second. | ||
| We can either give in to our worst impulses or try to be better. | ||
| I'm pretty sure you guys know which side I'm going to choose. | ||
| As we sat in a packed restaurant in Tel Aviv, I asked a friend how he feels about all the stabbings. | ||
| Without missing a beat, he said, we have to keep living. | ||
| We have no choice. | ||
| I think we could all use a little of that spirit right now. | ||
| Let's not give in to fear fed to us by terrorists or fear fed to us by politicians. |
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