Aug. 9, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
17:29
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| All right, everybody, this is our first Ask Dave from our new studio. | ||
| We take questions all the time. | ||
| You can go to rubinreport.com slash contact, click Ask Dave right there, and you can ask me a question, and you never know, I might answer it. | ||
| So we got a whole bunch that I wanted to get to today. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Rob says, Twitter and Facebook are accused of censorship of comments and people. | ||
| Apart from someone starting a new social network site, is there anything that can be done? | ||
| Is a boycott stupid or necessary at this point? | ||
| Okay, so there's a lot going on with this, and a lot of you guys have asked me about this, and I'm conflicted in what I think. | ||
| Well, everything that I've built here, which I'm very proud of, we've built on social media sites. | ||
| YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. | ||
| Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, all the things that we're doing, we're part of this. | ||
| I need these things to get my message out. | ||
| And they've done great things. | ||
| They've connected me with people literally all over the world, and they've connected you guys with the ideas that we talk about here. | ||
| So I love these things. | ||
| Putting that aside, there is a massive problem with censorship right now. | ||
| You guys all know, of course, that Milo is the first person that has ever been officially banned from Twitter. | ||
| You could just go on Twitter right this very second, you can find all kinds of crazy Nazi memes. | ||
| And you can find all kinds of people telling people to kill themselves and kill other people, and all kinds of ISIS supporters and all this stuff. | ||
| But they felt that this gay conservative should be the first one officially banned. | ||
| Now, I am not defending every idea that Milo has ever pushed, as I have said to him when he sat right across from me here. | ||
| I'm not defending all those ideas, but it has very little to do with the specifics of what he said and what's going on behind the scenes here. | ||
| They felt getting rid of this gay conservative, who is getting extremely popular, was a good move, and it's a terrible move. | ||
| If you don't like what Milo says, I say this all the time. | ||
| You don't like what someone says, use your speech to destroy it, right? | ||
| Really, destroy it with your own ideas, with your better ideas. | ||
| But banning people just pushes bad ideas and the grotesque parts of society, the more you push them down, They're going to come up and bubble up in weird ways. | ||
| So I don't know what we do about this. | ||
| I've seen just in the last couple of weeks, my friend Faisal Syed Al Matar, who's been on the show, and Melissa Chen and Ali Rizvi, all who have been on the show, they've all had things removed on Facebook. | ||
| So there's a problem here. | ||
| The companies are trying to deal with it. | ||
| They are all... | ||
| Infiltrated hugely with a lot of these social justice warrior people and politically correct people and we just have to keep pushing. | ||
| You just have to keep pushing your good ideas out there and who knows maybe some other site will spring up that's fully based in free speech and all that good stuff and I'll jump on there as well. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Someone in the UK, anonymous in the UK, says, "What's the deal with the regressive left | ||
| and religion, particularly their defense of Islam? | ||
| Aren't the left supposed to be atheists? | ||
| Do you think they actually understand religion or are confusing race and cultural issues?" | ||
| So I don't think the left are supposed to be atheists, per se, but generally speaking, | ||
| people on the left are—the left, the way we think of it here in America, are supposed | ||
| to be more secular in nature. | ||
| The right is thought of as more traditional and religious. | ||
| Those lines are being blurred, as I talk about here all the time. | ||
| As far as the regressive issue with Islam, yeah, it's a huge problem. | ||
| Why do people on the left, the so-called progressives, Relentlessly defend Islam, which is the reverse of all of their progressive values. | ||
| You can go through the progressive values. | ||
| We're for gay people. | ||
| We're for women's rights, minority rights, etc., etc. | ||
| These are all things that everywhere that Islam, the set of ideas known as Islam, is allowed to spread, it's a terrible place for all minorities and women and gays and Jews, etc., etc., and Christians now. | ||
| So, why do the progressives put them at the top of the Oppression Olympics? | ||
| I wish I had the answer to that, but that's the point. | ||
| That's why we have to keep pushing them on this. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| This—Oppression Olympics and picking ideas, and depending on what group you're in, you should be grouped a certain way, either above or below another group. | ||
| It's just silly. | ||
| And what we should care about is the individual, because as Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, the ultimate minority is the individual. | ||
| And I would only want to be judged on my thoughts. | ||
| And I would assume that's how you would want to be judged as well. | ||
| Michael says, what's that Sega Genesis game on your shelf and are you a gamer? | ||
| So over there, I've got Herzog Zwi. | ||
| It is one of my favorite all-time Sega Genesis games. | ||
| I think perhaps the most underrated video game of all time. | ||
| It was a split-screen strategy game, sort of an early version of like Warcraft and Starcraft and all those games. | ||
| And when I was a kid, My brother and I, my friends, we'd have sleepovers, and we didn't want each other to see the split screen, because then if you could see the other person's screen, you could figure out what they were doing. | ||
| We would build this crazy contraption with cardboard and a string, and we'd play literally for all night long. | ||
| If anyone out there plays Herzog Zwi, I'd love to hear from you. | ||
| It's one of my favorite games. | ||
| Oh, and if I'm still a gamer, I was a gamer for a long, long time. | ||
| I really don't have that much time anymore. | ||
| I really don't, but whenever I have a chance and I'm at my nephew's or my cousin's or whatever, and I can get at PlayStation 4 or whatever it is, I always love it. | ||
| Franco says, Hey Ruben, I'm really interested in hearing what your thought was on the most interesting part of your conversation with Tino Sanandaji. | ||
| So for those of you that didn't see my interview with Tino, Tino's an economist out of Sweden, and a lot of people had said that I should talk to him about the immigration situation there. | ||
| in the migrant situation, because Sweden is an extremely politically correct society. | ||
| They've let a lot of people into their borders, and now they're having problems. | ||
| The system is having problems. | ||
| There are rape problems. | ||
| There are all kinds of problems. | ||
| And Tino is one of the few people speaking out about it. | ||
| What I think struck me more than anything else—and I fully, I really enjoyed talking | ||
| He's really, really smart, and if you haven't seen it, I hope you'll check it out. | ||
| But what struck me more than anything was that a lot of people said that, you know, the reason people in Sweden don't speak out is because they don't want to be labeled a racist and a bigot. | ||
| You guys know all about this, right? | ||
| And it was like, there was nothing. | ||
| Watch that interview. | ||
| I think we did about an hour. | ||
| There was nothing even remotely racist or bigoted about what he said. | ||
| He was laying out complex issues and saying, can systems, can state systems function when they bring in a lot of people who have a different set of beliefs, or maybe that isn't that much of a A society that has had a lot of different people there, so then they bring in all this, and then do the people that have been there, maybe they do have some prejudice. | ||
| Like, he really ran the gamut of what the true situation is. | ||
| And a lot of the things that most of Europe's dealing with, and that I think we're going to have to start dealing with here, and we have to have these hard conversations, and the more you label everyone a bigot that disagrees with you, you hand it to the people that don't want any immigration or want to kick people out or stop people from coming in. | ||
| Winfield says, when it comes to forming the new skeletal structure of non-mainstream media, is there a system you feel will be inherently better to provide accountability and transparency and quality reporting? | ||
| Do you see a way to scale up what you do, or do you feel there is another, even more superior structure to bring freelancers and reporters together in a reputable but powerful way? | ||
| I think the thrust of the question here is, do you see mainstream media crumbling, and what do we do to make online media good? | ||
| So, to the first part of that, yes, the mainstream media is crumbling, and they should crumble. | ||
| They are just garbage. | ||
| Watch any of these news channels. | ||
| And they are putting on former campaign operatives to argue with people that are superdelegates, to argue with people who are still on payroll sometimes, and, you know, Donna Brazile, who Who's, I'm sure, a very lovely woman. | ||
| I have nothing against her personally. | ||
| But she was a Democratic superdelegate who was an analyst on CNN. | ||
| Then they get rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC, and then they hire her to then replace her. | ||
| So now you have someone who's been analyzing, is now the head of the DNC. | ||
| And then, you know, she's sitting across from David Axelrod, who is an Obama campaign adviser. | ||
| And then you have your one Trump guy over there. | ||
| And it's like, this isn't news. | ||
| This isn't analysts. | ||
| This is back-and-forth dribble. | ||
| So, the important thing is that we get more voices out there, which is what I'm doing, and I think you guys dig that, and that's great. | ||
| But we also have to figure out—this is the Wild West now, because anyone with a webcam or a microphone or whatever can get your voice out there. | ||
| And while that's great, that doesn't mean everyone's going to hold themselves to high journalistic standards or high standards of truth or whatever else. | ||
| So, as far as what we do here, yeah, this thing is scalable because this Patreon thing that we did, you guys have given us, you know, the runway to build something great, and we have huge plans. | ||
| I want to start a weekly news segment. | ||
| I want to do some livestream stuff. | ||
| We want to do more interviews. | ||
| I mean, we now, because of what you guys have done on Patreon and PayPal, I don't have | ||
| to worry about making a deal with a corporation that I didn't want to deal with or the company | ||
| I didn't want to work with or feel that the message would be changed in any way. | ||
| I can do deals that I want to do, so that makes it fully scalable, and I'm very proud | ||
| of it, and I thank you guys for it. | ||
| Jona says, "If you take a step back and look at yourself in the mirror, so to speak, where | ||
| would you rate yourself on the regressive spectrum from zero to 100 a year ago, two | ||
| weeks ago, and today?" | ||
| So look, I guess, look, I've always considered myself liberal. | ||
| I was in it with the progressives for a while. | ||
| You know, look, there's plenty of video of me for many, many years now out online, so you're welcome to find some and see if you thought I was regressive. | ||
| I don't think I did much of the name-calling in terms of bigot, racist, homophobe. | ||
| I've always tried to take people's intentions and understand, well, why do they think this, without automatically going to the worst thing. | ||
| I would say I see it all much cleaner now, and as I've sort of had my political awakening in the last year or two, once you start seeing it, once you start seeing what's really going on here, and you can break through the nonsense—on both sides, by the way, once you can break through that nonsense and get a clearer sense of what's going on here, everything starts to fall in place. | ||
| I don't have every answer, but I'm willing to have the conversations about it. | ||
| Jeremy says, if we really broke everything down just to singular issues and we blocked out all forms of tribalism, I would think that most Americans would fall on the same centrist spectrum. | ||
| With that in mind, what do you think can be done, if anything, to lift people out of the shackles of identity politics? | ||
| Again, this is a theme with a lot of the questions you guys ask me. | ||
| And it's a huge problem, this identity politics thing. | ||
| Judge people, as Martin Luther King said. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You want to be judged by the content of your character, not the color of your skin. | ||
| And that meaning that if you're gay, you should be judged by the content of your character, not your sexuality. | ||
| That translates into every minority thing that you want to go to. | ||
| We have to break this thing. | ||
| I think that's why a lot of people that are supporting Trump like him, because he's calling bullshit on all of that. | ||
| And we have to—I don't know that Trump is certainly going to give us all the answers on all that, but I understand what the issue is with those people, why they're attracted to it. | ||
| I think the most important thing we can do is keep talking about it. | ||
| Keep talking about it until people that are trapped in this way of thinking force themselves to break out of it. | ||
| And it will happen, because I see it happening all the time, and you guys email me all the time that it's happening to you. | ||
| Rory says, if any, what issue have you most profoundly shifted your position on since the show has started, and who is responsible for changing your mind? | ||
| I don't know that there's an issue, a specific issue, right, so I think the same things that I think about gay rights or about abortion or taxation or things like that, but I would say I focus more, and I try to think of things now, a little bit through the lens of what the role of government should be. | ||
| And that's why I talk about that a lot. | ||
| You know, we have two candidates right now. | ||
| Whether you love Trump or you love Hillary or you hate them both, they're both kind of big government people. | ||
| Trump says, I'm the only one who can stop, you know, Islamic terror, radical Islamic terror. | ||
| And Hillary seems to want the government to give you a lot of stuff. | ||
| And Bernie wanted the government to give you more stuff than even Hillary wants to give you. | ||
| I would say the best government is one that we don't have to talk about that much, because it's just working. | ||
| We pay fair taxes, and our roads work, and we have a strong defense, so hopefully we don't have to use it. | ||
| And we don't have to go on fanciful wars and nation-build and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| We give people health insurance, and we try to have an economy that works, but it really works for small businesses and not crony capitalism. | ||
| So I think the role of government is something that now sort of encompasses a lot of things that I talk about now. | ||
| Jonathan says, would you ever think about creating a think tank to spread the ideas of classical American liberalism and classical American conservatism? | ||
| I believe that the two points of view can be taught together and have a great impact on our country. | ||
| When we have these ideas working together, our country reaches its highest potential. | ||
| I mean, look, I think this is the future, which is why I've said a couple times right now, if nothing else at the moment, If you are not happy with Trump or Clinton, support Gary Johnson, just for now at least. | ||
| Get this guy to 15%, even if you don't think he's a good libertarian, and a lot of libertarians don't like him for this reason or that. | ||
| But let's get some other ideas in there about, as I just said, the role of government and what is classic liberalism. | ||
| and what is real libertarianism. | ||
| Let's get some other ideas at the table. | ||
| So I'm going to try, at least for the next couple weeks, to help. | ||
| He has to get into an average of 15 percent of the polls to get into the debate. | ||
| Is the guy going to be president? | ||
| No. | ||
| Is he going to get into a second debate after that? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| But let's have a bigger conversation than we're having, because our conversation is | ||
| dumb and everyone's pissed. | ||
| Everyone's looking around. | ||
| Everyone's pissed, angry. | ||
| They feel stupid. | ||
| Being smart should not be counterculture, but it is right now. | ||
| Let's make it mainstream again. | ||
| Barry says, "Have you ever received anything resembling to a death threat, dox attempts, | ||
| or to get you banned, basically any of the worst actions of the regressive left?" | ||
| Well, first off, I would say that those things can come from everybody. | ||
| You know, I don't like the regressives, but that can come from far right, too. | ||
| It can come from literally anyone of any political belief. | ||
| And I have had some of those things. | ||
| I've never been doxed, thankfully, but I have had some of those things. | ||
| I think it's probably a fact. | ||
| Michael says, Can you tell us about your first gig, or can you tell us about your worst stand-up experience overall? | ||
| So, I used to be funny. | ||
| That's a thing. | ||
| I was funny for a long time. | ||
| I did stand-up in New York for about 12 years, and at one time I think I was the youngest comic ever passed at the Comedy Cellar, which is the one really cool comedy club down in in the East Village. | ||
| And I did stand-up like six nights a week, two shows a night for many years. | ||
| And I used to stand out in Times Square. | ||
| I'm sure many of you have seen this, these barkers. | ||
| We used to hand out tickets for two hours to get on show. | ||
| We did it in rain or sleet or snow. | ||
| And the worst experience I ever had doing stand-up, I would say, you know, I only got | ||
| stoned maybe like three times ever before I got on stage. | ||
| I never got drunk before I got on stage or anything like that. | ||
| I was always very—wanted to be as present as I could be for the crowd. | ||
| And one time I got on stage stoned, and I was just paranoid and awful, and I bombed terribly. | ||
| But I am writing some stand-up again, and my funniness will return. | ||
| Islamism, not hilarious. | ||
| That's what I've learned. | ||
| Carrie says, how will we survive the onslaught of negativity from both parties that seem to do nothing to change a person's opinion on the candidate, but rather ignite more hate towards the other? | ||
| I mean, this is a great question, and again, a through-line through so much of what's going on in the country right now. | ||
| We need to stop hating everybody. | ||
| We need to stop. | ||
| I sometimes get lost in some of it on social media, too. | ||
| And again, this also goes to the role of government stuff. | ||
| Trump says, I can do this, and Hillary says, I can do this, and Hillary at the thing. | ||
| All the speakers kept saying, Hillary's gonna fix this, and Hillary can do this, and Hillary can do this. | ||
| And it's like, well... | ||
| You worked for Obama. | ||
| Did he not think of doing any of these things? | ||
| So, we just have a sort of dishonest dichotomy and a dishonest balance in the way our parties treat each other, the candidates treat each other, the media treats them, they treat the media. | ||
| It's a big game, but it's being unmasked right now, and people are waking up to it. | ||
| And I think the best thing that you can do is keep talking to people about your ideas. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| Campbell says, What can ordinary thinking people do to join the battle of ideas? | ||
| Aside from just liking and sharing videos online or speaking to our friends, what can we do? | ||
| Well, if you've got a webcam, put your ideas out there. | ||
| Do a better show than I do. | ||
| I think this is pretty good. | ||
| I'm doing the best I can, but if you can beat me to it, I will gladly concede one day | ||
| when there are a thousand people doing better shows than me, based on the principles that | ||
| we've set forth here. | ||
| So I would say that. | ||
| But really, the things that you addressed really are the things that the average person | ||
| can do. | ||
| Keep sharing these ideas. | ||
| Don't be afraid. | ||
| If you are afraid right now, in 2016, to share something because it's not politically incorrect, | ||
| or because someone's going to call you a bigot or a racist or a homophobe or an ableist or | ||
| or another buzzword that doesn't even make any sense. | ||
| If you're afraid of that now, what do you think it's gonna be like in four years? |
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