April 26, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
08:58
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| People often ask me just how dire I think the state of free speech in America really is. | ||
| In the last two weeks I've spoken at several college campuses in California, Arizona and Texas, as well as attended a conference in Dallas primarily focused on free speech from an academic perspective. | ||
| I spoke to dozens of professors who feel that the ability to truly exchange ideas or even to express unpopular opinions on their campus is at a perilous crossroad. | ||
| The University of Berkeley, once the home for the free speech movement in this country, quite literally went up in flames when Milo Yiannopoulos spoke there. | ||
| People with fairly moderate opinions like Professor Jordan Peterson and historian Charles Murray are shouted down by self-righteous students on college campuses all the time now. | ||
| Ann Coulter was first barred by Berkeley and then told she could only speak on a day when students weren't actually having class on campus. | ||
| These safe spaces and trigger warnings, concepts designed to protect feelings instead of dealing with facts, coupled with constant smearing of any intellectual opponent as racist or bigoted, has birthed a generation who are increasingly intolerant of tolerance. | ||
| I should also be clear here, it really is one side who's being far more intolerant on campuses these days. | ||
| Just think for a second, if any college campus invited a far left Marxist or Communist who wanted to end capitalism and ultimately destroy the United States, there would be virtually no outcry. | ||
| The Marxists and Communists would have their event, with maybe a couple curious people challenging their ideas in the Q&A, and that would be it. | ||
| The absolute reverse is happening all over the country when a conservative or any non-leftist speaker are invited to college campuses. | ||
| Ben Shapiro, a friend and former guest of the Rubin Report, has been banned from DePaul for sharing his brand of pretty mainstream conservative thought. | ||
| Antifa, the self-proclaimed anti-fascists who actually use fascist tactics to silence their opponents, and who also happen to dress like Cobra soldiers from G.I. | ||
| Joe, issued a statement and threatened to protest Portland State University when Christina Hoff Sommers, Peter Boghossian, and I spoke there. | ||
| Apparently at the last second they found something more anti-gay and more anti-woman right before we started, so they moved their protest somewhere else. | ||
| And of course, as I always say and will continue to say, you have every right to protest and use your speech to counter someone else's speech. | ||
| What you don't have is a right to silence someone by using violence or intimidation. | ||
| This is why I talk so much about self-censorship and the chill effect around free speech. | ||
| Violence not only silences the speakers of today, but in essence it silences the speakers of tomorrow who will quiet themselves instead of dealing with the protests and smears and everything else that comes with being someone who thinks outside of the group. | ||
| What's being stolen from these college students is the ability to learn how to think about complex issues while in university so that they can be equipped to engage with a diverse set of ideas in the real world. | ||
| And that diversity, diversity of thought, is far more important than diversity of immutable characteristics, be it race, religion, or sexuality. | ||
| Last week I spoke at the University of Arizona with my friend and former guest Michael Shermer. | ||
| It turned out that there was a trans holocaust denier in the crowd. | ||
| Yes, apparently trans holocaust deniers do exist. | ||
| Not only did we not silence her, but we opened up the floor for her to ask us the first question when we did the Q&A. | ||
| Michael, the editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine, who specializes in debunking conspiracy theories, is an expert in debunking Holocaust denial myths, and he answered her questions clearly and with facts. | ||
| The students in the room didn't attack her or kick her out, despite her abhorrent beliefs. | ||
| It was actually a beautiful moment, which shows why free speech is so important. | ||
| We exercised our right to talk openly at a public event, which anyone was welcome to join. | ||
| She then shared her ideas, which then we countered with better ideas. | ||
| While I suspect Michael didn't change her mind on Holocaust denial, we put our principles of free expression to the test. | ||
| This open discussion with a wide array of opinions is how you expand knowledge and figure out what you believe, not by silencing, shaming and defaming your ideological opponent. | ||
| Sadly, the true tolerance that we experienced in that room that night is an increasing rarity on college campuses these days. | ||
| I know I don't have to sell you guys on the lunacy that's happening at college campuses. | ||
| You see it every day with the language police telling people what pronouns to use and the endless stream of insane stories coming from America's campuses showing how intolerant the so-called tolerant side has become. | ||
| What I'd like to focus on here for a second is the creeping groupthink and obfuscation around free thought and free speech that is now creeping up into the political echelon. | ||
| Just this week you may have seen new Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez say that the DNC won't back any politicians who aren't pro-choice. | ||
| While I have no problem with a party having a set of beliefs as a guideline for its policies, that's the whole point of a party, this type of intolerance to other ideas, even if they're incredibly difficult topics like abortion, set a terrible precedent for the exchange of ideas in a pluralistic society. | ||
| This specific event isn't a direct threat to free speech, but it does go to the heart of how intolerance by the left is driving otherwise liberal people to the center and even to the right, or as the left calls it, the neo-Nazi alt-right white supremacist far-right. | ||
| The more egregious assault on free speech in the last couple days, however, was from the former head of the DNC and one-time presidential candidate Howard Dean. | ||
| Dean is a progressive who at this point really sums up why this ideology is not truly for progression of freedom and liberalism, but for regression of them. | ||
| After hearing that Ann Coulter was going to be banned from Berkeley, Dean claimed that Coulter's hate speech was not protected by the First Amendment. | ||
| Well actually Howard, it is. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Absolutely full stop. | ||
| First off, Dean uses the amorphous term hate speech, which sounds like something but doesn't actually exist. | ||
| Yes, you can't call for direct violence to a person or a group, that's a criminal offense, but you are allowed to say hateful and mean things. | ||
| That's the very part of free speech that we have to protect, because the definition of hate speech will just keep expanding until it includes any speech that veers ever so slightly away from groupthink. | ||
| Beyond Dean's confusion about hate speech, he also apparently doesn't know what the First Amendment actually is. | ||
| As I know you know, the First Amendment is about prohibiting the government from making any laws prohibiting free speech. | ||
| It has absolutely nothing to do with the speech of a private person, or hate speech, or a university deplatforming a speaker. | ||
| If you truly care about minorities, college Republicans, I hate to tell you, are a minority at most universities and they deserve to be heard from, just like anyone else who has been offered a platform. | ||
| Sadly, Dean is a progressive thought leader, while he seemingly has no idea about the very constitution our political leaders are supposed to defend. | ||
| With this in mind, I still absolutely believe the best way to beat the violent tactics of Antifa or the intellectually challenged ideas of Howard Dean is to counter them with better ideas. | ||
| We shouldn't stoop to their level of violence or try to take away their free speech. | ||
| We should teach the ideas of liberty, freedom, and true liberalism. | ||
| Yes, they'll always scream louder than us or act more hysterically, but I believe our game is a long one and our better ideas will win if we actually put them into practice. | ||
| With this in mind, we're continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty this week. | ||
| And joining me is Brandon Turner, a professor of political science at George Mason University. | ||
| He's an expert in political theory with extensive knowledge of the writings of everyone from John Stuart Mill to Karl Marx. | ||
| We're going to explore political thinkers from all across the map to see which ideas stand the test of time. | ||
| Right or left, Democrat or Republican, male or female, gay or straight, every single issue starts with our ability to discuss it and figure out what we believe. |
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