Glenn Beck and Dave Rubin analyze the perilous state of American politics, comparing modern divisiveness to historical conflicts between Jefferson and Adams while warning that algorithmic "digital ghettos" could silence dissent. They critique postmodernism's erosion of truth, advocate for empirical reason over trivial cultural battles, and highlight figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer as models of resistance. Ultimately, Beck argues that transformative pressure from political attacks fosters necessary national growth, expressing optimism that America's exploratory spirit will overcome current polarization before mass AI-driven unemployment strikes in 2030. [Automatically generated summary]
I know you're here for about 10 minutes and then you're, I think you're going to probably be on the moon and then a stop at Mars and... You know a little bit about traveling a lot.
I want to spend a lot of time talking about this book here, Addicted to Outrage, but let's just do everything.
So right now, we're about two and a half weeks away from this midterm election.
I suspect something completely bananas over the next two and a half weeks.
I mean, you can already just see between the Kavanaugh stuff that we've been dealing with, the general outrage and all the things you're writing about here.
When I'm out there with Peterson, often people say, okay, you know, everyone says we've never been more partisan and we're angrier than ever and all of these things.
Because I'm actually worried about the amount of people, you see this on Twitter all the time, people saying, oh, Civil War is coming, you know, there's this murmur about What would be the most horrific possible outcome of all of
So remind me to talk about the window, because I think we have a window right now.
But we have been worse.
I mean, if you look at Jefferson and Adams, you know, Adams was called a hermaphrodite
by Jefferson.
Jefferson, his campaign, called him a hermaphrodite.
Adams said back that if you elect Thomas Jefferson, there will be blood in the streets and the heads of our children and your daughters will be on pikes into every town.
But it all does go to just in the last couple weeks, you know, there was this Hillary Clinton line on CNN talking to Christiane Amanpour about how we can't be civil because these people, meaning the conservatives or Republicans, are so against our values.
Yeah, it's so interesting because one of the themes that keeps coming up as I'm on this tour is people keep asking me about this.
How much worse is it going to get before there's some sort of reset and all of these things.
And it's like, man, I don't want two months from now or four years from now to look back at right before the 2018 elections and go, boy, weren't those the good old days.
Because we've gone on the train to hell.
So you think there's actually no way to stop it at this point?
So impeachment just means, we're taking you to court.
So that's day number two.
Day number three, Trump has already filed with the Supreme Court saying, I'm not testifying.
I'm not turning over my tax records.
I'm not doing this.
Well, Kavanaugh has already said he's already seen that.
That's a distraction.
The president shouldn't have to.
So, day number three, when Trump has brought it to the Supreme Court, then the House says, wait a minute, Kavanaugh should recuse himself.
We're looking at a year where the three branches of government, the administration, plus the House and the Senate, both of them will be fighting with each other.
They'll be fighting with this branch, and they'll be fighting with the Supreme Court.
When Kavanaugh doesn't recuse himself, they will file articles of impeachment for him.
So I think if you have, if they don't win the House, if you win the House, God forbid, if they win the House and the Senate, then it's chaos.
But if you win the, if they win the House, the Democrats, that scenario is going to play out in some form or another.
So that just gets worse and worse and worse.
I was talking to a friend of mine just last night about this, and he said, you know, just exactly what you said, and I followed it up with what you said.
I mean, I remember before the election, I kept saying, And this is when I still considered myself on the left and someone that had basically only voted Democrat my entire life.
I think the one time I voted Republican was Bloomberg's third term in New York City after he had flipped like 87 times over or something.
I'm not even sure if he was Republican at that point.
But I kept saying before the election, if you keep calling Trump Hitler, then no matter what he does, and no matter what reality is, you'll never be able to get yourself out of that little place you've painted yourself.
I think this might be the first time I disagree, but I put, I think, because... Well, for people that didn't see it, basically he said that what would probably be best, and he did this in a tweet, which is never the best way to do it, and he's already had his mea culpa on that and released a clarification in a blog form.
But basically, he said the best outcome would be that Kavanaugh gets confirmed, but then steps down.
And what he meant was that wasn't saying that Kavanaugh did do anything or didn't do anything, but if there's any chance for a little bit of healing, where everyone gets a little egg on their face, but also gets a little bit of dignity to walk away with, and the country doesn't come apart at the seams.
That was what he tried to do in a tweet, and in his blog post, he's acknowledged that trying to do that in a tweet, probably not the best thing.
Trying to do that in a tweet, where the people who are reading it are generally all about politics and tearing each other apart.
Bad idea.
That's why I put, I think.
Because knowing Jordan the little that I do, he's a deep, philosophical thinker.
So my feeling was, and it turns out it was right, that he's looking at that and saying, In a normal world, in a good world, where we're all really trying to do the right thing.
And if we really were all trying to do the right thing, I agree with him.
It would have been the best thing to have Jordan say, or to have Kavanaugh say, thank you.
Thank you.
Now, let's bring the country back together, nominate somebody else, and let's go through it.
But the other side would have gone through exactly the same thing.
You would have rewarded them in the end because they got it.
Because we're talking about the machines of destruction.
So reality doesn't play a role.
At some point, this 70% of America is going to stand up and say, shut up, both of you.
So that goes to I brought my family in 2011 to Auschwitz, and I did it, again, because I see over the horizon, I think.
And we stood outside of the gates, and we had a prayer, and then I said, We are here because we have to look at the ugliest thing man has done, and we have to decide who we are, who we're going to be.
Because if you weren't prepared, and I don't mean prepare for that kind of stuff, I mean really know who you are, you will not stand When the jack-booted thugs come down the street, you have to know who you are and what you believe.
So I had them read a story of the righteous of the nation.
They could pick anyone who saved Jews.
And really try to get into their head.
I lined up just a family kind of conversation with this sweet woman.
She just died, I think, last week.
90 years old.
She was a Christian.
She was 16 years old when she saved the first Jew.
Her whole family did it.
It was remarkable.
And we talked about it.
Two things I learned on that trip.
One, As we were leaving, I said to her, look, I have a responsibility that's different than most because I speak to so many people.
And I said, I believe that people have that tree of righteousness in them.
I think they have that goodness.
They want to do the right thing.
How do I water it?
She told me something so profound.
It's so game changing.
She looked at me so puzzled and she said, You misunderstand.
The righteous didn't suddenly become righteous.
They just refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.
All you have to do is remember what you've always believed was true.
And they just stand and just go, no, you guys are crazy.
You don't have to be a hero.
You're not a hero.
She was looking at me.
She wouldn't let me film her.
She only let me take one picture of her.
She wanted nothing because she was like, I'm not a hero.
Do you think that the default position of humanity is to cower?
That in these moments, it seems like it's a lot easier To cower, right?
I mean, even now.
Like, that's the thing, when people say this to me about how do I get braver or whatever, it's like, we live in the freest place in the history of the world.
And if you're afraid now, imagine the second that thing gets turned a little bit, how afraid you're going to be.
So it seems like fear, and I'm sure there's a psychological component to this, that fear does something in the brain that maybe bravery or Or maybe it really is about just knowing what you are and what you're made of.
I meet with him and I said, how, out of all the millions of people?
And he said, you're thinking that's a small number?
He said, that's an incredible number of people.
You're in a scary movie, you look away.
When something like this is coming, it is human nature to look away or to dismiss.
We have this gift of fear that warns us, but we use logic and sometimes we use it just to protect ourselves.
Because Dave, I don't think people are afraid of standing.
I think they're afraid of knowing the truth.
Look at the people who stand.
The people who stand are the ones who are going, you know, I learned something new.
I learned something.
It's changed me.
You're not standing because you're brave and I'm going to take a stand.
You're saying, wait a minute.
Scales fell off my eyes.
I just learned something.
When you are inquisitive, When you are based in, wait a minute, I really want to know, you have already prepared to
Yeah, but do you really?
You and I, I know you know this.
I think we've talked about it.
I went through it and you went through it.
You do come to a point to where you're saying, if I take another step, everything in my life could change.
My friends might change.
They might look at me differently.
And you take that step and say, yeah, I want to know the truth.
That's where people fail.
If you can't take that leap, And that's why I really think you're seeing people like you, you're seeing the inquisitive, because that's in their nature, to question, question, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't make sense.
And if you're like that, you most likely have already passed that line of uncomfortability, because you've had things that you realized and you went, oh crap, okay well, I guess I don't believe that anymore.
So, I know it's very easy to always be like, okay, both sides are going crazy, they're equally horrible, and all of those things.
That's sort of like the easy way of doing it.
I'm not saying that's what you're doing here, but that's sort of the easy way to do it, and we all fall in that trap sometimes, right?
Because, just for brevity's sake, sometimes it's easier to say that.
But it seems to me that for all the people that absolutely despise Trump, that hate everything about the right, the right basically has been in power for the last two years.
There's a lot of good things happening in the country related to economics and the fact that we're not entering foreign wars and there's some interesting things happening with North Korea and a series of other things.
And the state has not used its power to silence anyone.
What I fear And this is why I don't think it's an even, oh, both sides are crazy thing, is that the left is about state power.
And what I fear is they've said, well, half of the country is Nazis.
We cannot be civil with them because they're coming to get us.
And if these people took power, well, now we have everything that you just laid out because they don't mind using the apparatus of the state to accomplish their goals.
And I'm not saying Republicans are always right about this stuff and they screw up all the little government things that they should care about and all of that.
Not that I was going to give Google a lot of... The left is concentrating their power in Silicon Valley.
And that's where you can really silence people.
The guy who wrote IBM and the Holocaust.
Gosh, I can't remember his name.
Really brilliant guy, well thought out.
We were talking and talking about how the Germans, how they silence people and how they cordon people off and then just get smaller and smaller groups.
And then they eventually put you behind a wall in a ghetto.
Well, they would build the wall higher and higher so people couldn't hear or see.
Isn't that what Google and Facebook are doing?
We're building digital ghettos.
We have the ability now.
You can speak all you want, Dave, but I'm changing the algorithm and you're not going to be heard.
I mean, you look at what the deal with Facebook was.
I promote them.
I give them my 10 million listeners.
And I say, hey, you can find me at Facebook.
Let's communicate.
Then they take those listeners that said, I want to hear from him.
And then they change the algorithm and I can't communicate to my own people.
Yeah, and we know this is happening across the board.
You probably saw my insane tweet thread about all of, I just started retweeting all of these people, real people, not Russian bots and avatars.
I was taking purposely real people with real names or real pictures, and they're all saying they're unsubscribed.
There were people who pay, it wasn't just the free people, it was the people who pay for YouTube Red or YouTube TV still getting unsubscribed.
And it's like, what did we all sign up for here?
But dare I do a, you like the biblical analogies, I'll do one here.
There was David versus Goliath.
And I think Dave can take down Google.
This Dave.
I think there's a chance.
I mean, I think that story, I'm being slightly hyperbolic, obviously, but I think that these things have become so big, I mean, this, I guess, is what the essence of the story was, right?
That this Goliath, this Google, has become so big that it will crumble under its own, under the weight of its own crap, basically, that there will be enough people inside the broken machine that will wake up that- I hope.
Yeah, and you're three to five years away from it being a cage.
I mean, their behavior with China, which I outline in the book, is pretty horrific.
What the road China is going down is terrifying.
And Google is right there with them.
And that is evil.
That is evil.
They say, don't be evil.
Well, that is the definition of it.
If they just slowly, you know, the guy who closes the door on the gas chamber was most likely a guy that was fixing trucks before the war and a normal guy.
You don't suddenly become evil.
You slowly move into it, especially if you're surrounded by a group of people that are all absolutely convinced that they are right and the other voice is wrong and therefore we just have to filter them out.
With AI and the way they are gobbling, it's really disturbing.
And the problem is going to happen, you know, we're going to start hitting massive job loss, probably 2020, 2021, 2022.
That's when you're going to really start to feel the effects of AI.
When that happens, if you look at history, and we know it, all the politicians now are saying, I'm going to get those jobs back from China.
Alright, so I think the first time we sat down, I think I asked you this, so this seems like the right segue for it.
So for everything that we've talked about here, and the addiction to outrage and all that, there's going to be a certain amount of people that are watching this and going, wait a minute, Glenn Beck was one of the people that was peddling this stuff.
I think I know you pretty well right now, and I feel like you are honest in your beliefs, and you've had some mea culpas about some of the things you've said.
You got into something on Twitter with my friend Majid Nawaz, and he sent you a clip of something that you did about him a couple years back, and you apologized immediately.
You said, I'd love to talk to you and learn more, and all of those things.
Is there anything you can add to that about just sort of how you've changed?
Like, do you remember a moment?
Was there something about that?
Because maybe there are people that are going down that road right now that still want more of the outrage and still are, you know, as they call it, shitposting on Twitter and the rest of it, if you were trying to get somebody to turn back.
No, because they were really personal experiences.
I went from that global poll that comes out around Christmastime, most admired man in the world.
I was tied with the Pope just behind Nelson Mandela.
That's insane.
That's insane.
Twelve months later, I'm no longer on that list, and I'm hated.
I was saying the same things on CNN that I was saying on Fox.
So that was confusing.
You know, you can't be hated by half of the country.
I mean, unless you're just a, you know, maniacal, you know, egomaniac that's just beyond any kind of redemption.
You cannot be hated by half of the country, you know, a false hero for the other half of the country, and not go, okay, I'm not that.
I don't think I'm that!
So who am I?
What part of it?
Most people will go, well they spent millions of dollars to destroy my reputation, to take things out of context, and they did!
But I also did things because my philosophy at the time was, if I can get enough eyeballs, If I can get people to watch, which puts me in Lederhosen, you know, singing, hey little vice.
If I can get people to watch, then I present them with facts and my opinion of where it's going.
Forget about everything else.
They'll hang on to the facts and someone in the press will go, I hate that.
We have to understand that a lot of the book is about postmodernism and how that works and what its goals are.
What does postmodern even mean?
What's the modern world?
It's not about a machine.
It's about the scientific process.
It's about exploration and empirical data and testing A and B and living with the results.
That's what the modern world is.
So, when you realize... So you would say postmodern really is anti-modern, in essence, because it's going against the ways that we've been able to measure anything, the way we've been able to look at... You can only, you can, when you don't understand postmodernism, and you read the headline, which I did, math is racist.
You either go, these people are out of their f***ing minds and I can't take it anymore, or you can say, how?
How did they get there?
When you ask that question, you start to go and peel the layers down and you see the core of this idea, good or bad, that what came out of the modern era, the enlightenment, was this.
And anything that holds this up must be destroyed.
If that's math, if that's you, doesn't matter.
If you understand that it's all about deconstruction, and deconstruction is all about chaos, you must not do anything to hasten the chaos.
You have to restrain yourself.
The best way to fight, this isn't about Gandhi.
Oh, I want to be just like Jesus.
No, I want to win.
And the best way to win is to restrain yourself from adding any of the chaos.
Be clear, be soft-spoken, be the person that everybody in the room, when everybody is arguing, they kind of look around the room and there's maybe three people over there that are just laughing and having fun and just... Because you will be the one that will control the room in the end.
Everybody else will kill themselves.
But the majority of people will go, oh, I hate this.
And they'll make their way over to you.
That's what we have to do.
We have to stop fighting on the stupid stuff.
The stupid stuff.
Gay wedding cakes.
Good God, man.
They're killing homosexuals right now, today, in parts of the country.
What do you say we start there?
What do you say we talk about something that really makes a difference?
And now it's like we have these phones, we have endless distractions, to the point that perhaps 20 years ago you might have a moment standing on a corner waiting for a friend to go to dinner where you'd have to think.
But we can distract ourselves to the point where we actually never have to think anymore.
When was the last time you just stood somewhere?
I mean, I know you're aware of all of this stuff, but when was the last time you, Glenn Beck, just stood somewhere on the corner waiting for your wife to meet you and you weren't looking at your phone or you weren't, you know... I try to do what you did, but I can't do it for a month.
Don't make it every time, but just... I'm not going to be online.
Do not pick up your device.
Go out on a date with your wife and do not carry a device.
Don't have it with you.
That's important.
And it's important, Dave, because I learned something with my alcoholism.
I was struggling with so many things when I was younger.
anger.
That I didn't want to think about.
I didn't want to think about it.
I didn't want to think about the things that I had done in my life, the things that I was, oh poor me, about.
I just didn't want to think about it.
And I would turn on the radio, and I'd turn it up loud, and I'd be driving my car.
And I never really consciously connected the two.
It got to the point where it was so bad that if I didn't have something to distract, I would literally be by myself and I'd go, la la la la la la la la la la, just to block out my thoughts.
Okay?
That's a problem.
And I realized when I was finally no longer, I was sober and not just not drinking, Was the time that I was driving someplace and I must have been driving for about an hour and I hadn't turned anything on.
And I realized at one point I'm just driving and I kind of come to, you know, kind of come to thinking, you know, about what's in the car, what's happening.
And I'm like, Oh, I wonder what's on the rate.
Oh my gosh.
I've been alone with myself and my thoughts for an hour.
So in the book, in the foreword, you very graciously, and I'm humbled that you did it, you included me in a list of names of people that you put in there.
So I thought, I don't want to make this about me, so the one that I thought was most interesting there actually was Sam Harris.
Because I suspect you guys probably, if he disagrees with Jordan Peterson on everything, pretty much everything, policy, existentialism, meaning of life, the whole damn thing.
You guys probably disagree on everything plus one.
I don't know if we went through... Is that great?
No, and I thought, well this is what it's all about.
This is what it's all about.
But would you have ever, I mean 20 years ago, if you were writing a book, you still would have done that sort of thing?
I told my wife when she married me, this is one reason I lucked out so much, my wife hates fame, she hates wealth, she hates red carpet, she hates all of it.
Because she married me and her family was like, you're not going to marry him, he is a loser.
He's not going to amount to anything.
When she married me, because I'm the first Out of every generation that we can find going back, I'm the first male that has not become a baker.
So, generally speaking, do you feel, it's funny, the first half of what we've done here was sort of firing brimstone, sort of, or laying out, you know, this thing could really go off the rails.
I think the last 20 minutes or so it's been a little more hopeful.
You do not want me, you do not want to be anywhere near me on the Titanic until we get to the iceberg.
As we're going to the iceberg, I'm saying, are you kidding me?
Have you counted the lifeboats?
There's not enough lifeboats.
We're headed into cold area.
If there is, if these people, they're going to be irresponsible.
They're not going to pay attention to the ice, but they're arrogant.
They're going to hit the iceberg and all going to die.
Okay.
Soon as we hit that iceberg, I'm there.
We're going to make it.
We're going to make it because I believe that when people are awake, They will awaken to who they truly are, and I think Americans are different.
We have this spirit in us of exploration.
We're the people who cross the oceans.
We're the people that cross the Rockies.
I have to tell you, if I were alive during the time when we were exploring, I don't even think I would have made it past the Missouri, but definitely I would have gotten to Denver and went, okay, guys, I am not going any, we're not crossing those, okay?
I always think every time I'm on the, what is it, the five?
That goes by the the Getty Museum, which which is that's all the 405.
Yeah, I I see the Getty Museum up there and I think if I were a pioneer and I made it this far I would have built my house in this valley and people would have been on the top of the hill going You should see what's on it.
I'd be like I'm done but generally people are Explorers, and they're good, and they're hearty, and they want to live.
I think that about the Palestinians and the Israelis.
When, if you could, and I've done it, I've done it, when you don't have a camera in somebody's face, and nobody knows you're talking, You sit down in a house of a Palestinian, and most likely, average person, they're like, I don't really care.
The Russians, believe it or not, the Russians, one of their campaigns happened when Uh, I don't remember which, was it the last, the last Star Wars movie I think?
But what I'm saying is We have outside influences that are trying to make everything about politics.
Read the book Defying Hitler.
It's the best, best explanation of what happened in Germany ever.
Written by a guy, at the time, as a warning to the West going, you don't know what, you don't know where we've been, you don't know what's happening here.
Warning!
And so he really gives you a look at what was happening prior to, and you can see it.
You're like, oh my gosh, that's the World Trade Center going down.
Oh my gosh, that's this.
You can see it.
We're repeating it.
And he says right around 1933, Nothing is not political.
I mean, just, you know, I never watch cable news anymore and I don't even watch sports channels anymore because it's all political, but when I'm doing cardio I'll just flip channels.
Everything you go to is political.
The View is now always political if you're watching women's, you know, basically women's television in the morning.
The ESPN now is political all the time.
I mean every channel.
You'd probably turn on the Food Channel and there's some political situation happening.
Is that the best argument for basically sort of classical liberalism or libertarianism, that if we could just rein this thing in, That not only could you live however you wanted to live, basically, if the government was just protecting your life and your property, your rights, right?
That not only would that be good because you could do what you want, but it would actually save you money.
I remember saying, I remember saying to people, there's going to come a time when you will not recognize your country.
What you thought was solid will be liquid.
What you thought was real will be false.
You're not going to recognize it.
We're not only so far past that point now, to where you're like, I don't even know who anyone is, I don't know what is real, I don't know up and down anymore.
We're so far past that.
But what's incredible, and this is a good thing, or could be a good thing, because of technology, By 2030, you're not going to recognize anything.
Nothing will be the same.
Nothing will be the same.
It will be the difference between looking at our lives in 2030, looking back and going, Dave, you remember 2018 when we sat?
It will be as different then as if we were sitting in now and going, man, can you imagine what 1920 was like?
You know, this reminds me of a line I interviewed Peter Thiel a couple weeks ago, and he said that crypto is for libertarians and AI is for authoritarians.
And I think that that sort of gets to the heart of what you're saying, because maybe what's going to happen here is that as our institutions, our political institutions, academic institutions, media institutions, as they become so big They can't sustain themselves anymore, so maybe we will sort of break off into smaller communities, whatever that means, and we'll sort of... That's what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution encouraged!
Because I push that idea constantly and it's like...
You know, just that the laboratory should exist so that if you want low taxes, you go here, but then if that screws over the schools, then go somewhere else, or whatever it is that that play.
But people are really afraid of that, that somehow we're not actually America if we don't live under the same exact laws everywhere.
Which, as you said, is the antithesis of the founding documents.
I think people just have been convinced that people are not trustworthy.
People aren't trustworthy if they never get in trouble.
Banks are not trustworthy if they never have to pay for their own mistakes.
They're not trustworthy.
When you have to pay for your own mistake, you learn.
People generally become trustworthy.
You brought up Peter Thiel.
People ask me all the time, are you concerned about de-platforming?
Yes, I'm concerned about de-platforming.
Big time.
Especially, Dave, with what's coming with deep fakes and all the... There is trouble on the horizon.
Peter, every time somebody says something, I always say, you know the guy who can solve this?
It's Peter Thiel.
Because we need a platform, and I mean left and right, a platform whose charter is the Bill of Rights.
That's it.
If you agree with the Bill of Rights, and you're not trying to shut anybody up, You believe in these things, these human principles, what make us human?
Come on, put your thing on here.
We're not going to kick anybody off.
We're not going to do anything.
This is a place where speech will be protected because thoughts are supposed to be dangerous.
It's only the dangerous thoughts that led us to the moon.
It's only the dangerous thoughts that invented television or the internet.
Do you think that If we get out of this thing, and it's basically okay, out of this sort of morass that we're in right now, and that it's basically okay, that we'll look back on this and think, whoa, there was something really good that came out of it.
You don't know You don't know what it's like to come under attack until the President of the United States, and I've had two of them now, is coming after you directly and using the force of his friends and allies to come after you.
Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been some of the best things that's ever happened to me.
And I don't mean financially or, you know, whatever.
I mean as a man.
Because they've both taken me by the lapels and shoved me up against the wall and said, what is it you really believe?
We are so blessed.
Do you know that Really, even my father's generation, he came at the end of, you know, he was born in 26, so he, you know, he saw World War II and stuff.
But anybody who really grew up and lived from 1946 until now, we really have been very blessed, but we've also been cursed.
No one has had to have everything about them challenged.
I'm a better man.
You're a better man.
Because every time somebody throws you up against the wall, we will be a better country.
We'll be a stronger, more vibrant, more free people if we behave ourselves and learn from what's throwing us up against the wall.