Aug. 6, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| America as a nation is founded on ideals that are universal And are built one of their largest freaking economy and a lot of military However, I think that the people those who have lived under prosperity for a long time And that's one of the main contradictions is that they start turning against ideas that made them prosperous at the moment and so so one of I would say the ideals of Ideas beyond borders is making sure that the American ideals spread that they can continue Kind of like when you send the humans to Mars, so in that | ||
| way humanity can continue. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's the same with the American ideals all over the world. | ||
| So in that way, these ideals will continue. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and we are On Location here at the local studios in Miami and I am joined | ||
| by the founder of Ideas Beyond Borders, but more importantly, a brand new American and | ||
| and my old friend Faisal Said Al Mutar. | ||
| It is good to see you, my man! | ||
| Thank you so much for having me again. | ||
| It's been a journey. | ||
| Faisal, we were just discussing. | ||
| Well, first off, you've been on this show You know, there's the Jordan Peterson, like, 15 times. | ||
| There's the Gad Saad, probably 14 times. | ||
| The Douglas Murray, probably about 14 times. | ||
| You're close. | ||
| I'm close, yeah. | ||
| You're a top fiver, for sure. | ||
| Let's make it 72. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was a virgin joke. | |
| That was a virgin joke. | ||
| Maybe that will make me closer to heaven, yeah. | ||
| Every time I sit down with you, it's just an absolute joy because you come from a place in the world. | ||
| You come from Iraq. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| Give everybody the one minute recap on your life. | ||
| Can you do it in a minute? | ||
| The life story? | ||
| Because then we'll get into all the other stuff. | ||
| But I think it sets up such a beautiful story that you're now, what did you say, one year American? | ||
| 2019. | ||
| It's been four years. | ||
| You've been a citizen for four years? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then COVID hit. | ||
| I've been treating you like a brand new citizen. | ||
| Well, let's keep it that way. | ||
|
unidentified
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Introduce me next time to the best barbecue in town. | |
| Give everybody the one minute story that gets you to America. | ||
| So I was born in Babylon, in Iraq, south of Baghdad, under the regime of Saddam Hussein. | ||
| So I lived first under Saddam Hussein, and then after the war, Al-Qaeda took over my neighborhood. | ||
| I decided to be outspoken against those crazies at the time. | ||
| And then I ended up on a death list, also losing many members of my family. | ||
| I left to Lebanon, Lebanon to Malaysia, Malaysia to eventually be accepted in the United States as a refugee in 2013. | ||
| And for me, the reason why when I moved here and seeing people, I thought at the beginning that people would appreciate the values that I used to fight for when I was in Iraq. | ||
| And now 10 years later, I think is that I was wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
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That is a condemnation of your new country! | |
| It's not a condemnation of the country. | ||
| I would say, and that's again the journey, is that I've had an amazing, pleasant experience in America. | ||
| I'm so grateful to be here. | ||
| And in fact, the word grateful is even an understatement. | ||
| A year after I moved in, I was hosted by an American family for a year in Northern Virginia, in which they treated me as their kid. | ||
| The amount of support from people like you and friends and others who like elevated my voice and and made me part of like the scene I don't think this if I immigrate to another country, I would not have that experience. | ||
| So I'm amazingly grateful and that's what I think is the kind of the Contradiction is that there's my experience and I know it's experience of many thousands and not in the size of immigrants And then there is those like kind of champagne socialists in Williamsburg and other places who will be like, oh this country sucks and I cannot get my latte at 2 p.m. | ||
| and not only that is that this country is, they try to speak on behalf of those who claim that they are the victims and that pisses me off. | ||
| To say the least. | ||
| To say the least, yes. | ||
| So one of the things that I've been kind of thinking about is that how the people here, | ||
| we need to figure out a way to make them realize what they're taking for granted. | ||
| And I think it's not just my voice that matters, but I think, even with your show, you've interviewed | ||
| a lot of people, you've interviewed Yomi Park, you've interviewed a lot of the voices that | ||
| are perhaps speaking the same message. | ||
| Because the thing is, we don't even have to speak it, it's just true. | ||
| So sometimes I try not to speak so much because it's self-evident, as written in the US Constitution, | ||
| or Declaration of Independence, I guess. | ||
|
unidentified
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Bye. | |
| You are an American. | ||
| Studied for the test. | ||
| I got it. | ||
|
unidentified
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I got it. | |
| Look, the first time we met was the day that you did my show for the first time, right at the beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| So this was, I think, October of 2015, if I'm not mistaken. | ||
| And Melissa Chen, our mutual friend, introduced us and she said, you know, you should just have this guy on the show and just talk to him. | ||
| And I was like, all right, let's see what happens. | ||
| And here I met this guy who is roughly new to America. | ||
| But I was like, he loves freedom. | ||
| You want to talk about classical liberalism and ideas, which now you've turned into this Non-profit and all of this stuff. | ||
| So, you just freaking love this country. | ||
| I mean, it just comes through very clearly with you. | ||
| Yeah, and the thing is like, I loved this country even before I came here. | ||
| Even though my experience with America is mixed bag. | ||
| I mean, my first introduction to America was a Humvee in front of our house with U.S. soldiers. | ||
| What year was that? | ||
| That was 2003. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Because I was born at the first war, so I guess my parents were busy when there was | ||
| no electricity and I was at sex and I was born. | ||
| So you were born during the original Gulf War. | ||
| The first Gulf War. | ||
| So that was 92. | ||
| End of 90, 1990 and then 91 is when I was born. | ||
| And then the second war is 2003, and I remember that day very vividly, is that we were watching the local television, and there was also Iranian television was intercepting in Iraq, and they were telling us that the U.S. | ||
| military is being defeated in the south, and there are all these soldiers being killed, and the Iraqis are winning, and stuff like that. | ||
| And then my brother was in the second floor, and he's like, there are American tanks in front of our house. | ||
| And then within half an hour, the American tanks were bombing my elementary school, which has a military base of the Iraqi army. | ||
| And within a couple days, that was in early April, pretty much all of the highway, our house was in front of the highway where the U.S. | ||
| military came into Baghdad, and that was my first introduction to the Americans. | ||
| So, what did you think of America then? | ||
| Honestly, it was more like an alien feeling. | ||
| I'm like, who are these people? | ||
| And then, I mean, thank goodness, my parents studied in the UK, so I was able to speak English, even though my English is still terrible. | ||
| Depends on how much margaritas I've had during the day. | ||
| I was going to get to margaritas later, because the true way that I know you're an American, you love a margarita more than anyone I know. | ||
| And that was, yeah, thanks to Texas. | ||
| Technically Mexican, but we'll... Well, it's a melting pot. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And so, yeah, so the first, I would say, the first interaction with American was an American soldier. | ||
| And they were, like, very friendly. | ||
| They were kind of very curious. | ||
| And they were, oh, here, we are here to, like, defeat Saddam Hussein. However, things escalated badly very | ||
| quickly. So the reaction of the American army to Iraqis became more negative as they | ||
| started getting more attacked. However, one of the benefits that came in after the war was the | ||
| internet. And I was, I mean, 2003, 2004, the internet was not as advanced as it is today. | ||
| But I was able to just explore the world through the internet and see what America is like and what the values of America were. | ||
| So when all of that civil war was happening, I was sitting at home reading Thomas Jefferson and The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine and Common Sense and stuff like that. | ||
| And I was like, these are And the story, like, of America, at least the beginning story, and even, like, the Europe 33 years war, et cetera, or the origin of the Enlightenment, is what I think is what the Middle East is facing right now. | ||
| So it's like, it's the founding of America and the civil wars that it had, and the European civil wars with Protestants and Catholics, stuff like that, is what I witnessed. | ||
| So it's just like we're 300 years behind. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And my goal is to bring those values into the region that I came from, which I think And you quite literally are doing that with your life. | ||
| thousands and hundreds of thousands of people are prosperous are the values that founded | ||
| America which I think our values were spreading. | ||
| And you quite literally are doing that with your life. | ||
| That's what Ideas Beyond Borders does. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I think is that even with my disappointment, I mean in a theoretical world, let's say | ||
| if America turns against America, let's say, I think that these values are still worth | ||
| So I think it's that spreading the values of freedom. | ||
| America is itself an idea as well as a country. | ||
| And that's, I think, what is very unique about this country is that there is, I mean, with all my love for my Canadian neighbors, but there's no Canadian idea. | ||
| But America as a nation is founded on ideals that are universal. | ||
| Uh, and are built one of the largest freaking economy in the military. | ||
| However, I think that the people, those who have lived under prosperity for a long time, and that's one of the main contradictions, is that they start turning against the ideas that made them prosperous at the moment. | ||
| And, uh, so one of, I would say, the ideals of ideas beyond borders is making sure that the American ideals spread, that they can continue Kind of like when you send the humans to Mars, so in that way humanity can continue, is to send the American ideals all over the world, so in that way these ideals will continue. | ||
| Does it blow your mind, I mean, when you go back, you were just in Iraq not too long ago, and you travel the world, obviously, when you go to the places where it's not okay to say what you think and all of these things, and you're translating books so that people can read these great texts in the countries that aren't as open, And then you compare that to the people here who are fighting against freedom or not really aware of how good it is. | ||
| It must drive you nuts. | ||
| It does. | ||
| I think it's because that's, again, one of the contradictions is that when you live under freedom for a long time, you start becoming cynical. | ||
| I think one of the main things that I dislike about Kind of a specific section of Americans, obviously not all of them. | ||
| As I said, I think most Americans are apolitical and to some extent they don't know what they have and they don't necessarily appreciate what they have. | ||
| It's a function of the success. | ||
| I'm more like those who are cynical. | ||
| I remember I gave a speech at UC Berkeley and I was talking about my first experience of a suicide bomber and how the ecosystem that allows this thing to happen. | ||
| And one of the students was like, oh, we have the same thing here. | ||
| I'm like, Where? | ||
| All I see is like a shawarma restaurant that's fucked up. | ||
| I mean, the shawarma is like, I don't know, made from rabbit meat. | ||
| You're telling me a Berkeley shawarma place isn't the best? | ||
| No, I recommend other places. | ||
| So I was like, OK, seriously, how delusional you must think that you think that life in America is as bad as it is in other places. | ||
| I mean, some places obviously are developed, like Norway. | ||
| I just was in Norway. | ||
| It's a pretty cool country. | ||
| It's also a very small, largely homogenous country. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And when they start having more immigrants, even in Denmark and other places, they get confused, right? | ||
| Because they are very homogenous. | ||
| That's why even systems like democratic socialism, whatever it's called, can operate because it's more like a tribe that became a country. | ||
| But the idea in America is you have all of these people from different parts of the world, most of them able to coexist and function. | ||
| I think it's pretty wonderful. | ||
| Because I come from a country, a region, in which diversity is actually a curse, not a blessing. | ||
| So many people fight for a homogeneous place. | ||
| The Kurds are fighting for their own place. | ||
| The Assyrians and the Christians want their own small territory. | ||
| The Shias want their thing. | ||
| So in a way, what I come from, diversity is a curse. | ||
| And while here, Because the identity of the country is built on ideals, and unfortunately now there's a whole identitarian identity politics world in which everything is about race and stuff, but I think the founding of America was about ideals, and we've seen it functioning for 300 years, and I think it's | ||
| Really worth preserving. | ||
| I mean, I'm definitely not giving up, and I'm trying my best now, 10 years later, to be more involved in the locals' conversation, even though, at the very least, it's enough headache. | ||
| I mean, I've had my fair share of tequila every couple of days. | ||
| It's never enough, but I think as a duty of now being a citizen and being welcomed by this wonderful country, I think it's also part of my duty to contribute here in any way I can. | ||
| What's going on in Iraq now? | ||
| I feel like we don't talk about Iraq. | ||
| Nobody knows what's going on. | ||
| You know, people look back in hindsight at the war in a very... Mostly negative. | ||
| With very different glasses than at the time. | ||
| You actually, in retrospect, you're happy that... I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think essentially happy that the Americans liberated from Saddam But that may not be connected to exactly what's going on now. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I support, I wouldn't say in a direct way that I support the war, but I think it's that the options that are available, I mean, I look at Iraq from kind of the lowest of standards, and mostly because of its history. | ||
| Iraq started with a king that the British installed after the Ottoman Empire. | ||
| The king was killed by the communists, and then the socialists killed the communists, and then Saddam Hussein killed the socialists, and then Saddam Hussein was hacked. | ||
| That's the history of Iraq. | ||
| In seven seconds! | ||
| So when you're trying to look at the ecosystem of the history, that's the history. | ||
| And Saddam Hussein in the last years, after the first Gulf War, was his worst and was leading the country into explosion. | ||
| The alternative, I think that if the Iraq war never happened, or the U.S. | ||
| didn't intervene, we would end up exactly like Syria. | ||
| Which is, in a weird way, now when I came back to Iraq, now there are Syrian refugees who live in Iraq. | ||
| So imagine how bad Syria is that they come to Iraq for refugee status. | ||
| So I went back to Iraq after 13 years, and I mostly went to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, even though I was slightly on the borders of federal Iraq and Mosul. | ||
| It is really mind-blowing how the country, at least a part of the country, has become. | ||
| Iraq significantly has been stable relatively over the past couple of years. | ||
| The reasons are kind of somehow sinister because, but it's also A reason I guess of application of Milton Friedman theories is that now the political parties of the Sunnis and the Shias and the Kurds have enough investments in the country. | ||
| So like some of them own shopping malls and restaurants and all that stuff. | ||
| So pretty much all of them now are interested in keeping the country stable. | ||
| So now because they have vested interests They no longer support suicide bombers and stuff like that. | ||
| That's why you don't hear about Iraq on the news. | ||
| As far as I know, there has not been a suicide attack since the defeat of ISIS. | ||
| As a result of that stability, there's now investments and people coming in. | ||
| Weirdly, but not weirdly, the Kurdistan region asked us, so when I went back to Iraq for the first time in 13 years, so I met with the government of Kurdistan, at least a representative of them, and they were like, we would love for you to open an office in Ideas Beyond Borders in this place. | ||
| We are very open to Western ideas, we would like Like, whatever America has, we actually want some of it. | ||
| We want to learn about the experiment, like translate more books, work with our universities. | ||
| We started like a small kind of venture fund called Innovation Hub that supports startups and things like that. | ||
| So, moving towards privatization. | ||
| So, in the grand scheme of things, I think Iraq is doing Much better than I left it, which is itself a low standard, but I think is that it definitely has the potential of becoming really, I mean, significantly much better country, even much better than during Saddam Hussein. | ||
| So, I think when people try to I had a debate on Slate magazine, which Christopher Hitchens used to write about the Iraq war, but Slate went far left after Hitchens. | ||
| Pretty much all the websites. | ||
| And the thing is that most of the conversation was I mean, many of the people who oppose the war, and some are right reasons, some are bad reasons, but however, most of them they try to connect to domestic affairs. | ||
| Oh, Bush sucked, we don't trust Bush, and therefore, oh, we don't trust the Republican Party, and things like that. | ||
| So, eventually, I mean, many Americans cannot even name four provinces in Iraq. | ||
| Oh, I bet 99% can't name probably one. | ||
| But at the same time have very strong opinions about it. | ||
| It's definitely a complicated subject. | ||
| Al Anbar province, how about that? | ||
| Pretty good. | ||
| That's a good one. | ||
| I mean, that's the one where America did not have a good time. | ||
| But yeah, with that being said, we've seen that also with Afghanistan. | ||
| And that's, I would say, is like one of the reasons why I think people like me have to take a lead. | ||
| I mean, I don't believe in saviors. | ||
| I think that people from the region have to fix their own region. | ||
| And, which is the reason I started my organization, is the reason why I started supporting organizations in Iraq and stuff like that. | ||
| In fact, my goal of my organization is ceasing to exist. | ||
| We don't want to build a bureaucracy in which you just want to advocate for the cause and you keep raising money just because there's an organization you want to maintain. | ||
| So eventually, I think the people there have to... I think America, with all its mistakes, allowed the room for that to happen. | ||
| There's now free press, there's free speech. | ||
| That, I think, is the seed of building a functional society. | ||
| It's the seed of innovation. | ||
| It's the seed of progress. | ||
| And not progress towards hell in the way that progressives in America are, but actual progress. | ||
| And I think that America built that city. | ||
| Even in Afghanistan, now we're working with underground schools. | ||
| We built a network of schools of teachers who educate girls underground from different houses all over the place. | ||
| And I was like, why the hell you do what you do? | ||
| What's really the motivation? | ||
| And they're like, we are the first women to ever been to school in most of our tribe. | ||
| And most of the reason why we went to school is because America came to our country. | ||
| So in that kind of 20 years, some of these women went to school, they went to college, etc. | ||
| And now they feel it's their duty to make sure that the girls of tomorrow don't end up being illiterate. | ||
| So that is a success story of the American intervention. | ||
| The American withdrawals, however, that's another story. | ||
| But I think is that I think that we can always talk about the negatives of the intervention, but I am seeing, and I would love to take you to Kurdistan and have a gift from you for Kurdistan, is that you will see that people are appreciative and I think what happens with the Kurds is that they took leadership. | ||
| America did what it can, but then at the same time, they're like, we want our country, our place to be developed, and they took leadership and they made it happen. | ||
| So in effect, they have a... I know it's not technically a country by international standards, but they have a country in essence, right? | ||
| To some extent. | ||
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unidentified
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I mean, it's a semi-autonomous... I mean, not according to Turkey. | |
| Not according to Iraq, I guess. | ||
| But the politics, I mean, that needs like six bottles of tequila. | ||
| But to make it very simple is that, I mean, there are multiple, I know that's not the official narrative, but there are different types of Kurds. | ||
| So that's also part of it. | ||
| I mean, even the Kurds themselves speak different languages. | ||
| Generally speaking, the Kurds of Iraq and Iran speak a similar language, have a similar heritage, and the ones in Turkey and Syria have a different heritage, different language. | ||
| The ones in Turkey in particular were supported a lot by the Soviet Union, so there's a major group called the PKK, which is mostly communist, like, nutjobs, in my opinion. | ||
| And who have extreme differences with the ones in Iraq and Iran. | ||
| So there are a lot of kind of issues within unity for the Kurds. | ||
| However, the Kurdistan region of Iraq is kind of the most successful. | ||
| It's institutionalized. | ||
| They have their own parliaments. | ||
| And it's definitely a success story, which I think many other Kurds from the neighboring places can look up to as a model that they can follow. | ||
| And so if you are an Arab Iraqi, You technically need a residency when you enter the Kurdistan region of Iraq. | ||
| So kind of, it's not a visa, but you need, if you are an Iraqi American, then there's like, even if you're Arab, you can stay all over you want. | ||
| But, so it is technically, I mean the Kurdistan region of Iraq, It's technically, I mean you see more flags of Kurdistan there than if you see flags of Iraq and however there are many Arabs and there are many investors from the Gulf States and others building fancy hotels and restaurants and so the Kurds there found out that it's good to do business with the Arabs and | ||
| And not be in that constant state of turmoil. | ||
| So in some ways, you sort of hinted at this earlier, you basically said it, I mean, capitalism, the ability to just trade with each other, sort of is the first nugget to getting to everything else. | ||
| That people suddenly realize, oh, I've got a shop, I've got employees, there's people around me, like, there's something worth protecting. | ||
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unidentified
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100%. | |
| I'm 100% a believer in the kind of the, how connectedness, I mean, even now with Saudi Arabia, I mean, yes, we can talk a lot about MBS, but if you look at it, From the core like Saudi Arabia because of the fact oil they want to diversify from oil Before they have oil they can say whatever they want like it's our oil you don't like us go to hell Now they are they want to open up for investments to open up for investments. | ||
| You need to liberalize And you need to be open to capitalism and the fact that when you're going to bring in people from Florida and L.A. | ||
| and everywhere, they would like to bring their girlfriend or their wife or they would like to bring their husband. | ||
| So, as a result, they have to. | ||
| So, in a way, the economic freedom or the incentive to create investments is opening up Saudi Arabia, which is the most conservative place. | ||
| In the region. | ||
| So I think that's why I'm wearing this dollar. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's actually the eye of the pencil. | |
| Which talks about how the pencil itself is made from different elements and it needed the work of multiple people from different countries to work together to make the pencil. | ||
| And that, I think, is a central piece if we want to move the region. | ||
| And that's a great thing about investments in capitalism. | ||
| It reduces dependency. | ||
| Most of these regions, and because of these shitty international development organizations like the UN and all of that, what they do is that they create dependency. | ||
| They give, oh, here's Yezidis, here's some food, here's some stuff. | ||
| But then they create a system in which you have to constantly give money to the UN for people not to starve. | ||
| It's just incredible, because it's what we have with all of our welfare state, and then we've exported it into these giant globalist organizations. | ||
| With, in some cases, bad ideas. | ||
| I mean, I think the story, yeah, in Iraq about they built a school for like people who identify as girls or something like that. | ||
| In Iraq? | ||
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unidentified
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And people have no idea how to translate that in the first place. | |
| So there is also a backlash now, a significant backlash I would say, against some of the ideologies that come with these international development organizations. | ||
| That they kind of give you a bag of food, but it also comes with the whole baggage of... But you have to dress your son up like a woman. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, I mean that will go far away in Ambar province. | |
| So there is definitely a backlash and we try to, I mean as an organization that's new and we try to work, we have our ideals but we try to work within the region itself and even now I mean the conversation is very difficult like to tell people to westernize but even if you tell them to westernize What version of the West they should westernize to? | ||
| So the thing is that the main thing is to get people into these ideals and let them make up... And I don't think the ultimate goal of freedom, when people get to know about classical liberalism, they end up subscribing to the work of totalitarian ideology. | ||
| I think it's that they become self-evident and they're like, we want to keep that. | ||
| So that's actually a great segue to where I wanted to go next, which is that when I first met you, there was a really huge sort of secular humanist movement in America. | ||
| Oh, the good old days. | ||
| You and I went to the Reason Rally in D.C. | ||
| together, and I spoke at the National Mall, and this is at the sort of height of Sam Harris, and you mentioned Hitchens before, and Dawkins, and there was this feeling of like you could escape all of the old of religion and create this sort of perfect secular thing, except it's You've pretty much fallen apart and I suspect that most of your support these days is somewhat connected to people of faith more than purely secular organizations. | ||
| Is that fair to say? | ||
| Both. | ||
| I would say most of our support comes from the classical liberal world. | ||
| That would be like Atlas Network and people who support the libertarian classical liberal space. | ||
| I would say very little of our support comes from that humanist world. | ||
| In fact, that secular humanist world generally turned against us. | ||
| They were like, oh you're trying to spread the ideas of capitalism that led to slavery and shit like that. | ||
| So the people that you thought were your greatest allies probably when you got here And me as a liberal back then, they were the ones that ended up turning on us the most. | ||
| And they were supporting, in fact, the groups that were going against us. | ||
| So because of cultural relativism, that was one of the central tenets of these groups that we're associated with, is that they were They hated the values that made this country prosperous. | ||
| So in a way, most of their criticism is of America than other cultures. | ||
| So the moment you say, oh, there's issues happening in the Islamic world or in the Middle East or things like that, they always try to drive it back. | ||
| But do you know America is racist? | ||
| And do you know that... You were usually thinking about that in Iraq in 97, weren't you? | ||
| Come on. | ||
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unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| When I was in 97, I was like, oh shit, maybe I should stay in Iraq. | ||
| Why would I move to New York? | ||
| Right, and so that is generally these kind of groups. | ||
| I mean, there are secular groups, even within the Ayn Rand crowd, the objectivists, that were not originally. | ||
| So the secular world is kind of divided. | ||
| It's between those who are mostly on the left, unfortunately, and there are those who are kind of the objectivists. | ||
| And they're at a clash, and that's why you don't see them being invited to these largely humanist places. | ||
| And I think that It's generally terrible for, because I see a separation between the importance of separating religion from the state, which is, because I've been in the victim when that didn't happen, in which the Sunnis of their own version want to make it the case, and the Shias want to make the case, etc. | ||
| I think that These values can be separated from concepts like the welfare state. | ||
| In America, unfortunately, sometimes many of these things come as a package. | ||
| In order for you to believe in capitalism, in some cases you have to have a stance on abortion, and have a stance on guns. | ||
| These things are all deeply connected. | ||
| The embryos have guns. | ||
| You know, like the embryos have guns and then the... | ||
| So like everything has to be connected. | ||
| I see that like, even within the founding fathers of the United States, when like part | ||
| of the reason why America was established as a secular nation was they were afraid of | ||
| different factions of Christianity would actually take over and then there would be law. | ||
| The Jews are not allowed and the Irish Catholics are not allowed. | ||
| So these concepts, unfortunately, they were champions, for the wrong reasons, by a lot of people within the socialists and stuff like that, who wanted to In order for them to sell the package, they were like, okay, you have to be a socialist and join us. | ||
| And then when I was telling them within this crowd that I actually think that socialism is bullshit, then they were like saying to me, no, you're not a true humanist. | ||
| You're a sellout, basically. | ||
| You're not brown anymore. | ||
| Yeah, I became Betty White. | ||
| So the thing is that I think they have utilized secularism in a way to sell their own bad ideas. | ||
| Because I believe that there can be a separation. | ||
| Even the values that I advocate for, whether in Iraq or America, is mostly co-existence. | ||
| I mean, the thing is that I'm interested, so capitalism, we know for centuries, has been a very driving force of getting people to work together. | ||
| When you connect countries, that leads to more co-existence. | ||
| When you remove the one version of religion to kind of dictate how other people live, That leads to co-existence. | ||
| The socialists don't want co-existence. | ||
| They want dominance. | ||
| So I think that, unfortunately, many of these things get mixed up. | ||
| In America in particular, you can go to places like Norway or Sweden, where these things are a bit separated. | ||
| there is kind of a history of secularism outside the socialist forces and they don't, like | ||
| you can meet a liberal party in Sweden and they are very confident being secular but | ||
| also support free markets. | ||
| There's no, they don't see any contradiction in this. | ||
| But here... | ||
| Even in England, if you say you're a liberal it has a different connotation than saying | ||
| you're a, that's why I can't say it in America anymore with a degree of like... | ||
| Well I just have to then explain it for an hour every time. | ||
| Yeah because I mean they hijack these terms and I think now it's becoming so clear we can see these divisions between kind of the older Democrats and kind of a younger generation Democrats and which those like from the older side who kind of followed what they thought was liberal look at these guys and like guys are crazy. | ||
| So there's divisions here as well and in terms of kind of liberalism but I think I mean, to kind of, if I see the segue of your question, is that kind of the secular atheist world led us to what we have right now. | ||
| And now Peter Boghossian is now having questions about that, because he was, unlike me, he was an advocate for atheism as front and center. | ||
| He wrote a book called The Manual for Creating Atheists, and now most of his friends are usually, well, certainly people of faith, but mostly evangelical Christians, I think. | ||
| Yeah, so he started questioning whether that would be the outcome of what they're fighting for. | ||
| I think there is some truth to that. | ||
| I think it's that we aim to destroy religion but we had no alternative idea. | ||
| We just know what we hated but we know what we stood for. | ||
| And if you look at even Reza Ali and many of these places, I mean, now we're looking at it in hindsight, there were places of kind of hate and resentment. | ||
| They were like, we hate the Christian right, we hate this, we hate that. | ||
| But if you ask them about like, what did they actually stood for? | ||
| It was very blurry. | ||
| What I think is that, but if you think about it now, many of us who were there, you, Michael Shermer, me, Melissa, Peter Boghossian, all of that stuff, who used to be kind of critical of the religious right, all of us moved to become critical of the woke left. | ||
| And I think is that it's not a surprise that is the case because we actually understood what liberalism is and what we stood for. | ||
| And I think is that It should be, more people should be more outspoken than what we have right now. | ||
| Let's finish with this. | ||
| As a proud new American, and you love your American jackets, and your American shirts, and your American hats, and all of those things, when you see the type of political fighting we have now, which we don't have the sectarian sort of house-to-house, we're gonna kill you fighting, we certainly don't have that yet, but we've had our riots, we have our cities burning down at times, all of that stuff, which always feels to me like it could just be turned on at any given moment, you know, there could just be How worried are you that the way we deal with politics or the cultural issues could lead us to basically being this sort of sectarian, you know we're a huge country, but basically being this very odd, sectarian, cannibalized blob? | ||
| I'm worried and not at the same time I mean I not to quote Bill Clinton, but but I mean he said like I think if I'm quoting him Is that the the the worst of America can be solved by the best of America some I? | ||
| Over I mean now I've been to 42 states as well, and I've talked to many people from different people I'll when I became a US citizen there were people who support from that congratulate me there are people support Hillary that support the Democratic Party, so I think is that I mean, America is a wonderful country. | ||
| I think most people, cognitively or not cognitively, understand that and believe that. | ||
| I mean, many people when they're like, I'm moving this country to move to Canada. | ||
| Like, are you fucking kidding me? | ||
| You're not moving to Canada. | ||
| Nobody knows. | ||
| You live in Jersey City and you enjoy your life there. | ||
| Like, don't tell me you're moving to Canada. | ||
| So I think many people, when you take it, when they are pressured, I think they understood that this country is great. | ||
| However, there is kind of a sense of virtue signaling, of cynicism and stuff like that, to kind of give a sense. | ||
| I think that's what the woke kind of give to some extent. | ||
| They give a sense of moral superiority. | ||
| Everybody wants to have that feeling. | ||
| It's kind of like wearing a big cross, walking in the streets of Beirut during the civil war. | ||
| It gives you like a sense of, so I think that, so that's my kind of optimistic side. | ||
| My least, my kind of worried side, is that we have seen this before. | ||
| Is that, I mean I would say, At least within the political arena, we have reached a level of dehumanization. | ||
| encountered terrorism circles is called the level of dehumanization. | ||
| So it's like you look at the other side as kind of the enemy and that | ||
| deserves to be destroyed. That itself is like a seed of the worst things | ||
| that can happen as a result of that. | ||
| You can do almost anything. | ||
| Because that's like, I mean, what we're seeing in the Middle East and even Balkan places, stuff like that, that is like when people reach the humanization level and then the rule of law gets destroyed and then people start killing each other. | ||
| So, I think is that America, at least in the political arena, what is observed, and the thing is that in America everything can become like an industry of sorts. | ||
| So, like, there is an industry of polarization that wants people to destroy each other and then claim that they are the savior. | ||
| I'm saving you from the other side. | ||
| I mean, when I grew up in Iraq, I mean, when people understand, like, how did Al-Qaeda and ISIS spread in these places, right? | ||
| ISIS took over the One third of Iraq in like a couple of weeks. | ||
| And the message of ISIS at the time, how they recruited people, was not that, oh, we're here to destroy the Christian West. | ||
| It was, I am here to defend you from the other side. | ||
| And then, so all of these kind of extremists rise in the ecosystem that allows them to be viewed as the saviors. | ||
| And I think America is not there yet, but I think there are definitely seeds for that to happen, and you're doing your best, and I will do my best to make sure that this doesn't happen, whether it's through my organization, Ideas Beyond Borders, or me individually. | ||
| Or through margaritas. |
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