Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Ask Dave Rubin: Have You Been Called a Racist/Bigot? | DIRECT MESSAGE | Rubin Report
Aired: 2015-12-31
Duration: 05:30


=== Depressing State of Affairs (04:33) ===

[00:00:02]  Hey guys, we're doing a little Q&A here.
[00:00:04]  You guys submitted your questions on Aura.tv and on Twitter, and here we go.
[00:00:09]  Solomon Hatcher asks, what did you think of President Obama's Oval Office address regarding the San Bernardino shooting and the American response to ISIS?
[00:00:17]  I thought his speech was actually, it was kind of depressing.
[00:00:21]  It struck me as very depressing, and he seemed kind of exhausted and sad.
[00:00:27]  I don't know that we really have a plan yet.
[00:00:29]  I hope that we do, but we're in this very weird place right now.
[00:00:33]  If you watch my direct message from last week, you'll see my thoughts.
[00:00:37]  We're in this weird place where everyone's sort of afraid, but not sure what to do.
[00:00:40]  And I just hope that that doesn't lead us all to splintering against each other
[00:00:44]  and letting the bad voices take hold.
[00:00:48]  So as for our response, it doesn't seem like we really have a response.
[00:00:51]  I was happy that he said that he'd like to get congressional authorization.
[00:00:56]  It would be nice if we had that for wars these days.
[00:00:59]  @seriousriri on Twitter asks, "Do you celebrate Hanukkah?
[00:01:03]  "Why or why not?
[00:01:04]  "I always feel atheists should ask themselves these things."
[00:01:07]  Yeah, I mean, I don't believe that there's some magic sky God
[00:01:10]  who's watching me and doing these things.
[00:01:11]  But as I've said before, I'm Jewish the way an Italian person's Italian
[00:01:14]  or the way a Greek person's Greek.
[00:01:16]  So yeah, these are just some traditions basically for me.
[00:01:20]  So yeah, I lit some candles, gave some gifts, got some good stuff.
[00:01:24]  All right, atron7 said, you keep talking about regressives, but you never take on the fact that POTUS, President of the United States, and John Kerry are extreme regressives.
[00:01:34]  What is your take on this, and what would you say to people saying Obama allowed a great deal of U.S.
[00:01:40]  foreign policy to regress?
[00:01:43]  You know, the John Kerry one's interesting, because if you heard a couple weeks ago, he sort of excused the Charlie Hebdo shooting, saying that, well, they sort of had a reason to kind of do that.
[00:01:51]  That's as regressive as you can possibly get.
[00:01:53]  It sort of slid under the radar with the media.
[00:01:56]  As far as Obama...
[00:01:59]  You know, look, we do play in all these identity politics things, and I think he does add to that.
[00:02:04]  Being the president is not easy.
[00:02:07]  But I don't think he's a regressive in the worst sense of it.
[00:02:11]  But yeah, I think in general our politicians can and should try to do better.
[00:02:15]  At Steven G Hubbard asked, what do you think of Sam Harris' idea that we shouldn't label ourselves atheists because it gives theocrats something to fight against?
[00:02:25]  Is atheist an important part of your self-identity?
[00:02:28]  You know, I never even identified as an atheist or even said it.
[00:02:32]  I'm pretty sure that the first time I actually ever said it was on this show when I was talking to Milo Yiannopoulos.
[00:02:39]  It's irrelevant.
[00:02:40]  I base my thoughts and my feelings on what's going on in my brain and that's pretty much it.
[00:02:46]  So, you know, atheists, there's no doctrine.
[00:02:49]  This is the irony of all these people, especially the regressives, that keep taking the atheists and saying, "They're new atheists."
[00:02:56]  New atheists are just atheists who are speaking up.
[00:02:58]  There's no doctrine that would link atheists together other than they generally don't believe in God
[00:03:03]  or are waiting for some evidence for it.
[00:03:05]  So I don't think it's that important to label it.
[00:03:07]  And I think the reason they're trying to label it so much is 'cause they're trying to pin a lot of problems on us.
[00:03:11]  @TK421 asked, "Who influenced you the most politically?
[00:03:16]  Who, if anybody, inspired your liberalism?
[00:03:19]  You know, I come from the comedy world, so I'd say Bill Maher, George Carlin probably more than anybody else.
[00:03:25]  And the interesting thing about George is that he really, people didn't know about his politics per se,
[00:03:30]  except that he just thought that the whole system was warped and corrupt, which I completely believe.
[00:03:35]  I try to talk about things within the system so that we can hopefully make them better.
[00:03:40]  But I would say those two on the comedy side of things were my two biggest influences.
[00:03:46]  @GavWoodworth, "On a weekly basis, how many times do you get called a racist bigot,
[00:03:51]  et cetera, for your apostasy?"
[00:03:53]  You know, fortunately, because I think we've built something really good here,
[00:03:57]  I get a pretty long leash, even on social media, that I don't get called that stuff that often.
[00:04:03]  However, since we've started doing this show...
[00:04:06]  And I'm talking about this stuff more.
[00:04:08]  I have lost several friends.
[00:04:10]  Several at this point.
[00:04:10]  A couple weeks ago it was probably two.
[00:04:12]  Now I've lost a couple more.
[00:04:14]  I've had people that I know, the people that know me really well call me bigot and all kinds of awful things.

=== Real World vs. Nonsense (01:09) ===

[00:04:20]  I've seen some of the tactics that I always talk about being used on other people now being used on me.
[00:04:24]  So it just sort of sucks.
[00:04:26]  But if anything it makes me double down more and, you know, want to do the right thing more.
[00:04:30]  So they're not gonna beat me.
[00:04:32]  I mean, I would basically say that because I'm a free speech absolutist, you could say anything.
[00:04:35]  between completely uncensored discourse and completely censored speech?
[00:04:40]  How can we judge how sensitive we should be without lobotomizing our ideas?
[00:04:45]  I mean, I would basically say that because I'm a free speech absolutist,
[00:04:49]  you could say anything. You can absolutely say anything.
[00:04:52]  Yeah, you should not instigate people into violence and should not be pushing violence and pushing people to
[00:04:59]  want to do violent acts.
[00:05:01]  But beyond that, say whatever you want and then have the battle of ideas.
[00:05:05]  That's what we need to have more of here instead of just running to safe spaces and having trigger warnings and all of that nonsense.
[00:05:12]  Because guess what?
[00:05:13]  These kids that are in college now that they're doing that, they're going to get into the real world and that shit doesn't exist in the real world.
[00:05:18]  And then we're going to have a whole generation of people that are going to come up at the same time believing in that stuff and it's pure nonsense.
[00:05:24]  And finally, at Corpsemen, what's your favorite gay sex position?
[00:05:29]  That would be the reverse Wookiee.