Modern WisdomDAVE RUBIN | Going From Woke To Awake | Modern Wisdom Podcast 164
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 24,178 words- 0:00 – 0:33
Intro
- DRDave Rubin
This is just factory setting thinking. This is just stuff that you get from the media, you get from culture. It's like, Democrat good, Republican bad, Democrats care about poor people, Republicans care about money. There's a million of these nonsensical things, and all that is is factory settings, that through culture, through state education, through all these things, that is where we all sort of baseline start. It's your job to modify your system to something that you like, and that's w- that's what the way you behave with the world should be as well. (wind blows)
- 0:33 – 3:45
Why Dave devoted his book to Ben Affleck
- DRDave Rubin
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report and author of Don't Burn This Book. Dave, welcome to the show.
- DRDave Rubin
Chris, it's good to be with you. We are doing this across the pond over these digital waves that everybody is now stuck on.
- CWChris Williamson
It's all right.
- DRDave Rubin
We thought, we thought we were too online before this thing, then corona comes and this is the only way we can do anything.
- CWChris Williamson
Actually, I wanna be more online now, yeah. First, first things first, Dave, why is your book dedicated to Ben Affleck?
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
Uh, this is either gonna go down as a, as a brilliant marketing ploy or Affleck and the Affleck empire will have me destroyed. We should know the answer in the next couple of days. Uh, but I devoted the book to Ben Affleck because I tell the story in the book about how Affleck actually, believe it or not, was, was a key piece to my political awakening because you may remember Ben Affleck was on Real Time with Bill Maher when Sam Harris, the, the neuroscientist and, uh, really mindful, uh, thinker, uh, was on to talk about his book, Waking Up: A, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, and they started talking about how you have to separate ideas from people, meaning we should be able to criticize ideas and that doesn't mean that you should be bigoted towards people. And they were talking about it in a religious context, so in this case, you should be able to criticize, uh, the set of ideas that is Islam, but what you wouldn't want to do is be bigoted towards Muslim people. And by the way, of course you should be able to criticize any set of ideas, whether it's the set of ideas that make up a religion, Judaism, Christianity, whatever it is, or the set of rules that make up a political party or a set of rules that make up, you know, uh, uh, uh, basketball's rules, anything like that. Uh, Sam calmly laid this out and Bill Maher sort of backed him on this, and next thing you know, Affleck was huffing and puffing and screaming, and in effect he called Bill Maher and Sam Harris gross and racist. And this is about five years now, five years ago, and in that very moment I saw exactly what I had been thinking was wrong with the left, exactly what I had been thinking was wrong with the progressives in, in stark daylight. I had had these thoughts for a while, you know, where you're just calling everybody racist, you're calling everybody a bigot, you're always morally right and that with this indignation and anger, but suddenly to see it turned on this mild-mannered neuroscientist who I, I didn't even know who he was at the time, and then Bill Maher, who really was the standard-bearer of the left, at least in an American context. He's been our basically our biggest, most outspoken lefty. The guy gave Obama a million bucks for his re-election. I mean, he has fought every progressive issue, you know what I mean? And constantly rallying against Republicans, and then Affleck says, "You're gross and racist," and then the next level of it was watching the media just parrot that. Because Affleck said something, just 'cause a Hollywood star said something, next thing you know, Vox and Buzzfeed and HuffPo and all the usual suspects are suddenly saying that Bill Maher and, and this Sam Harris guy, that they're racist, and, and that was really one of the, the... I lay out three key points of waking up, going from say woke to awake in my book, and that was one of them. So, I feel that I owe Ben
- 3:45 – 4:44
Daves favorite quote from the book
- DRDave Rubin
Affleck even though we've never met.
- CWChris Williamson
Thanks, Ben. Um, yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Thank you-
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it interesting that sometimes even though we know things, we need quite a symbolic inflection point to happen so that it, it causes something, right? So, my favorite, uh, quote of the whole book is right in that section, and I'm just gonna read the passage out now. So, you're talking about the particular way in which Ben puts his words across which is compelling to a very particular type of, of watcher, viewer, listener, fan. "This tactic is typical of people who don't know what they're talking about. Instead of having a solid argument based on fact, they simply moralize their way through life, shooting people down and throwing terms around as a distraction. Their over-the-top emotion is enough to convince unthinking people on a base level they've won because it appears as if they're morally right." Man, I, I really, really love that. I thought that's a lot of sense-making going on there.
- 4:44 – 6:23
How TV condenses everything
- CWChris Williamson
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Thanks. Well, you know, it's interesting. So, let's say this is... Chris, this is the first time we've met, right? Now, let's say, uh, I said something in just a moment that was you kind of thought was, like, a little bigoted or odd or racist or something. In a normal situation, the way functioning people behave, you wouldn't immediately call me a racist. You might follow up and ask me something to go, "Oh, maybe I misunderstood you," or, "Are you sure that's what you meant to say?" or something like that. But what Affleck did, and you know this is also partly the way TV condenses everything and makes everything stupider, that these segments are so short that you end up sort of becoming, like, the worst version of yourself, which is why so much in cable news is just, you know, hacking at each other and pounding each other. But in effect, in a normal argument if you met somebody at a bar and they said something, it would take, like, a couple beats before you called them racist. But Affleck, the fact that that was the initial thing that he went to, it shows you what that thing is. It doesn't mean you know what you're talking about, but it seems like you know what you're talking about. And unfortunately for a huge swath of the American population, but I know that you guys are dealing with this in the UK, and it's a, and it's a worldwide phenomenon actually, acting as if you're morally outraged has replaced thinking. So, that's really what I was trying to get to there, and the fact that it was coming from an A-list actor and the rest of it, and what you said.... earlier is right. We all walk around, we're sort of thinking things, and we're- and if you're a thinking person, you're walking through the world, you're trying to piece together a cohesive worldview. Sometimes, though, you need the moments like that, you need
- 6:23 – 7:22
The madness of crowds
- DRDave Rubin
to see Batman call somebody racist-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
... for the, for the whole thing to crystallize, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I love it, man. You'll have read Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds, right? And the intro to-
- DRDave Rubin
Douglas is one of the greatest writers on Earth. As a matter of fact, when I was writing this book, I was reading The Madness of Crowds at the same time, and I have, I have b- all of his books. And I was like, "Man, this guy knows how to turn a phrase." I mean, you guys in general, that's what Americans are always, uh, jealous of Brits in general, but-
- CWChris Williamson
For one thing we've got, yeah, we've got crap weather, but we've got some, some lovely vernacular. Um-
- DRDave Rubin
You do. You do.
- CWChris Williamson
But yeah, man, uh, so, p- you, you were worried about... I've opened the book with "Dedicated to Ben Affleck." You know, he could have chosen a lot of other people that weren't Ben. Um, but Douglas had Nicki Minaj lyrics at the-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... at the start of his book. So if he's-
- DRDave Rubin
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... managed to get away with that, I reckon you can get away with... Next thing, next, second most important thing before we fully get into it. What's your favorite thing about Michael Malice?
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- 7:22 – 9:38
Michael Maas
- DRDave Rubin
Malice, I mean, Malice, I, I call him the, uh, the Willy Wonka of politics, because he's such an over-the-top, um, brilliant thinker that it is so hard to pigeonhole what he really is thinking verse how he's using trolling. Um, he's a brilliant wordsmith. He's one of the few people that I don't hate on Twitter.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
Um, because I'll read something of his and I'll go, "Whoa, that was clever." And then I'll have to read it three hours later, 'cause I'll go, "Man, that was even better than I thought it was."
- CWChris Williamson
Still clever. Yeah, exactly.
- DRDave Rubin
He's, he's just a great thinker, he's fearless. Um, he's staking out positions that are extremely, uh, politically incorrect in many ways, yet are sensible and that he thinks them through. And what I really love about him is he's playing a long game here, where he, he always says that, um, conser- what is- what's the line? "Conservatism is just, uh, leftism at the, at the speed limit," something like that. I'm slightly butchering it, but really that he's thinking about the world in a sort of holistic way, and also is kinda being fun about it and, and trolly. I, I... yeah, he's great.
- CWChris Williamson
Very playful, isn't he?
- DRDave Rubin
Great guy.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you seen the hair purgatory that your show has left him in?
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) I did see a picture after.
- CWChris Williamson
So-
- DRDave Rubin
I know he's having, he's having a lot of hair...
- CWChris Williamson
... for the people, for the people that don't know...
- DRDave Rubin
Well, everyone's having hair problems, well, not you, these days.
- CWChris Williamson
No, this-
- DRDave Rubin
You can't grow hair.
- CWChris Williamson
... went off yesterday. This came off yesterday.
- DRDave Rubin
Oh, yeah?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, exactly. So for the listeners, uh, people that are just listening you're gonna have to imagine it, but this was the day after my, my flatmate shaved my hair. So I've usually got sort of curly hair on top. Um, yeah, so Michael did a little bit of a streak in his hair to do this Tulsi Gabbard look to come on your show.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And his plan was to grow it out and cut it out, but now he's in New York locked down with no barbers or hairdressers available, and he's just stuck in hair purgatory. And he's just got-
- DRDave Rubin
So he looks...
- CWChris Williamson
... this streak in his hair, and he says he's tried every 1920s gent's hairstyle available, and he's going through, like, the side part or, like, the slick back. And I'm trying to get him to do a, a man bun, but he won't, he won't go for it. Um, but-
- DRDave Rubin
He's looking kind of bananas, but it, it fits the overall political worldview.
- CWChris Williamson
That Loki thing, yeah, the p- the political Loki. Um, so-
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... onto Don't Burn This Book. Why, why did you write it?
- DRDave Rubin
Well,
- 9:38 – 12:07
Why I Left The Left
- DRDave Rubin
I wrote it... (laughs) Well, it's interesting. The, I mean, the absolute truth is, you know, although I had been thinking about a book for, for quite some time, when I was on tour with Jordan Peterson, uh, we were in, uh, in Ireland, Ireland, we were doing the Dublin show that night, and I got a call from my agent and he said, you know, "We're getting all these offers for you to do a book. Do you wanna do a book?" And while I had been thinking about it, it's, like, once it was presented to me, then I was like, "All right. Now, now, now I guess I gotta do it, you know? It's time to, to make the move." And I'm a firm believer that when things get presented, if, if you're roughly interested in them, you should take that opportunity, like, take opportunities as life presents them. So when I signed the deal, it was originally Why I Left the Left, and I talk about this right at the beginning, because sorta everybody had sort of associated that phrase with me. I did that PragerU video, it's got, like, 20 million views. And I think that was the idea, like, "Let's get Rubin to talk about why he left the left." And I started writing that, and then I was just kinda like, you know, I've said all of this before. You know, I think part of the reason that people care about what I, what I do and what I talk about is that everyone can sort of see how crazy the left has gone. You guys have a particularly insane strain of it in the UK, by the way, although your last election, you know, hopefully tampered it a little bit. Um, but I was ahead of the curve on that. Like, what I was saying four years ago about the left is now sort of mainstream thought. And when I was writing it, I was like, "You know, I don't wanna write a book that's just about the stuff that I'm against," meaning I'm against leftism, I- I'm against collectivism and progressivism. Um, I wanna write a book about what I'm for. So I actually scrapped it, and I had to talk to, to the agents and everybody to make sure that they were okay with me doing this, 'cause it wasn't the book that I signed up for, and we changed the title and everything else. And then what I really realized was I wanna show people a little bit of an autobiographical how I survived the monster. Once you start actually speaking up, how do you get through the mob? How do you identify fake news? How do you chart a course that is sensible? And, and also talk about the ideas that I think are the correct ideas, which are the ideas of classical liberalism, which in a, in a modern sense have much more to do with libertarianism and even conservatism than, than... well, certainly than progressivism and everything that the, that the liberals from an American perspective have. I know you guys actually have a much stronger tradition. When people say classical liberal, you guys have a much better understanding of that, where in America, the word liberal has just been completely mangled, and that's one of the things I'm trying to clean up a little bit here.
- 12:07 – 12:17
Leftism vs Classic Liberalism
- DRDave Rubin
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What, what is the difference between leftism and liberalism, uh, classic liberalism? Give us the roadmap.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. So-So,
- 12:17 – 18:37
Classical Liberalism
- DRDave Rubin
liberalism, classical liberalism is, is very simple to understand. I mean, the most important thing is individual rights. If you are a member of any free society, meaning you're a citizen of any society, whether it's the UK, whether it's the United States, whatever it is, we have equal rights for everybody. That's it. There is no special treatment based on skin color or gender or any of those things that we have somehow become obsessed with. Equal rights for everybody. And then basically laissez-faire economics, that the light touch of government when needed is, is all that you need. And that, that is basically the formula to allow people to live with the greatest amount of liberty and freedom so that they can, in American context, pursue happiness, right? Pretty, pretty sweet. And by the way, this is the founding, uh, principle that the Constitution was written on and the Declaration of Pre- Independence was written on. Now, in an American perspective, that sounds very much like a libertarian. And what I always say is the only real difference between a classical liberal and a libertarian is if you were to take libertarianism to its nth degree, and this is sort of like a malice-type place, you would be disassembling the government everywhere. I love that intellectually. And by the way, because of coronavirus, I think we're seeing so many inefficiencies in government that I think a lot of people ... I'm seeing lefties right now wake up to all sorts of things, like why do we have federal income tax? Because people need their own money right now. Like, these are really super interesting things, which is, which is pretty great actually. But I would say the difference between a, a libertarian and a classical liberal is that the li- the classical liberal sees a little more need for government, a little bit more. So, I do believe government can, we can have public education. I don't want it exclusively. I also want school choice and charter schools and all sorts of stuff. But I do think the government has some role in keeping a social cohesion. But at the same time, I want most things done by the states. So, I live in California and unfortunately we have super high taxes and the whole thing is pretty inefficient and totalitarian. Um, but I could move and that's a beautiful thing. I could move to Texas and maybe I will, uh, where taxes are lower and maybe the, the people are a little more in line with the types of things I think. That's a beautiful thing because if you don't have states' rights, well, if you don't like it in one state, well then you gotta leave the country. So, America was really set up on this beautiful federal system where there's an ongoing experiment all the time. So, so libertarianism and classical liberalism, it's very close except for those marginal things of where the government should get involved. I would say then the difference between classical liberalism and, and conservatism at this point is that generally conservatives have a little more of a religious view of the world. So then on the, some of the social issues, I think they get a little hung up, but actually not as much as they used to because many conservatives now see gay marriage as whether they're thrilled with it or not, for example, they've just let it be. Like, there's really nobody railing against it. And I think most of their fears, uh, turned out to be unwarranted. Um, and then, and then the difference really, which is your question between liberalism, classical liberalism and progressivism is that progressivism basically means the state should pretty much do everything. So, whenever Bernie or AOC or any of these people talk about anything, or Corbyn from your perspective, it's like they want the state to pretty much do everything. We want free college for everybody. We want the state to tell businesses what they can pay people. There is nothing, you know, free healthcare for everyone. Of course, nothing's free. That, and then the problem with that is that once you start, if your starting point is the state should do everything, this top-down thing, I like bottom-up. I like individuals then can build a system. I don't like, oh, the system then has to basically quash the individual. The problem is with, with leftism, so you could take something like the, the minimum wage, which here in America there's this, this big debate. Should we have a $15 minimum wage? Now, I don't believe in a federal minimum wage anyway because I believe in competition. And I know that I have a ton of people that would love to work for me. People offer to work for me for free all the time. Now, I pay everybody that works for me and we pay 'em quite well actually, but I don't think it's up to the government to decide whether I pay that person $13 an hour, $15 or $20. Now, the problem on the left is Bernie comes out and says, "Well, I'm for $15 minimum wage." And then Rashida Tlaib, a congresswoman here in, in the States comes out and she says, "Well, I'm for a 20 min- $20 minimum wage." And then it's like, well, I guess so because you just made up a number. Why can't I just make up a number? And that's why the government just grows because all they're operating off of is how they feel about any given thing. That is extremely different than saying, "I'm for individual rights," which is what classical liberals and conservatives and libertarians believe. I want everyone to be equaled, equal playing field. It doesn't mean that some people aren't born with more. It doesn't mean that some people aren't lucky, or it doesn't mean that some people won't work hard. But those are all things that, that that's just the human condition and the government has to get outta the way as much as possible. And I think unfortunately, just to wrap this up really quick, the, the progressives saw liberals, liberals that, that are nice and decent and open because that, the, the liberal mind usually is those things. And progressives saw that and said, "We can get in here. There's a weak underbelly and let's get into the system by basically destroying liberalism and taking over the Democratic Party." And I think that's basically what we've seen. There are no good liberals left. I mean there, there's very few. It's like, it's like the Jedi after Order 66.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
They've been, they've been scattered across the galaxy and hunted down, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I get you. One of the points that you brought up was about gay marriage, and I thought this was really interesting. What you mentioned was that being liberal means being sufficiently, uh, liberalism means being sufficiently liberal to support gay marriage and also sufficiently liberal to tolerate people who oppose it.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That on the surface doesn't seem like a tremendously complex point. It again comes back to individual sovereignty. You are allowed to decide to like and dislike whatever it is that you want. And yet if someone was to say, "I disagree with gay marriage," and you don't say-... bigot, racist-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... xenophobe, homophobe, whatever you pick you think. Um, that would be like, well, that, you, you, it just doesn't, doesn't mesh, right? It doesn't seem to make sense.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Well,
- 18:37 – 20:52
Ben Shapiro
- DRDave Rubin
that's, that's where the feelings thing should not be the thing that we're governed by. What we should be governed by is that we're all treated equally under the law. That, that is my underlying principle behind everything else that I would talk about. So, for example, I have had several guests in my studio, which as you know is in my house, I'm in my house right now, I have welcomed in people such as Ben Shapiro who's an orthodox Jew who by his outlook on life, his religious perspective on life, is against same sex marriage. I have had Bishop Barron here from the Archdiocese in LA who from his Catholic perspective is personally against gay marriage. I have had fruitful, honest conversations with them. Now, before gay marriage was passed were either one of them fighting for gay marriage? Of course not. Um, but at the same time, gay marriage has now been passed, and I don't see either of them, either of them trying to legislate it away. So what you have to understand in a free society is there are going to be people who disagree with you. There are going to be people who disagree with your lifestyle and the rest of it. But as long as they don't take that onto your property, as long as they don't try to destroy your job or your life or anything else, then actually you should relish in your differences and the irony. What, what right would I have to tell Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, or Bishop Barron, uh, a Catholic, or, or, or a devout Muslim, what right would I have to say, "You must bend to my will"? I don't want them to have that power over me, so I have to accept that I don't have that power over them. Now, I think what you can do, and by the way I've said this to Ben many times, that what you can do is by, I think by being a decent human being, over time you can show people that maybe some of their views are a little bit backwards. Or I don't even wanna say backwards, that maybe there's some of, some of their traditional views, maybe, maybe the time has passed on some of them or something like that.
- CWChris Williamson
Well perhaps, perhaps their views actually don't align with their values anymore, and they've just grandfathered these old views in by, by way of, "Well, they were here, therefore I'll keep them going." And again, what, what did we say right at the start? That inflection point. Perhaps sometimes you can be that inflection point.
- DRDave Rubin
Well, I, I think
- 20:52 – 26:07
How to get people on your side
- DRDave Rubin
you're absolutely right. It's actually a really great point. So let's say somebody's values don't quite match up with their views suddenly, or their political beliefs suddenly, what would be the best way to get them on their, on your side? Would it be to call them a racist, or would it be to continue to talk to them, continue to have that conversation, and then over time, and this is what I've said to Ben, is, "Ben, you know, when I'm 90 and you're 85 and we've done this for 50 some odd years, I suspect you'll have come around to my position a little more than I'll have come around to your position." He doesn't agree with me now, but like-
- CWChris Williamson
I bet he didn't, I bet he didn't agree with that at the time. Yeah. I bet he didn't.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) Right. But, but there's only one way to find out. And I'll also tell you this, you know, there was a night when, when we were on tour with Jordan Peterson and we did, uh, our second LA show, and it's at The Orpheum in, here in downtown LA, thousands of people, it was, it was one of our best shows, and I brought Ben on as a surprise guest. So I go up and I do about 10 minutes of lobster jokes and getting everybody laughing, and then I bring Ben on. Ben comes on, he brings a little cupcake with him, 'cause you know there's, there was this meme about that he wouldn't bake me a gay wedding cake, as if I would want Ben to bake me a cake anyway.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
So he hands me a cupcake, he does an impression of Jordan Peterson, we, we do a little funny banter back and forth, couple of videos get out on Twitter, and it was so interesting 'cause I'm in a room of 3,000 people, and everyone knows he has a traditional view of marriage, everyone knows that I'm married to a man. We get up there, we're having a great time, there's mutual respect, everyone in the audience is laughing, cheering, screaming, it's great. Couple clips go out on Twitter, and suddenly it's the tolerant progressives calling me a self-hating gay and Ben a homophobe and our audience a bunch of white supremacists. And it's like, you know, I was just in that room. And in that room what America really is about is what was experienced, and you guys from the outside, while you tell us we're all bigots and self-haters and all the rest of it, um, perhaps you might wanna look in the mirror. So I think over the course of time if you're a decent person you can bring more people to your side. And unfortunately that's just really been lost on the left.
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. I, I think this might be a small area, uh, discrimination or perhaps a UK-wide one, although based on some of the stuff we saw in the last general election maybe not UK wide. But I have to say personally as someone from the northeast of the UK, none of this stuff, there's n- th- we don't hear words about... there's no debate about transgender bathrooms, there's no discussion about whether the gender pay gap's this or the gender pay gap's that.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, reading your book feels a lot like a window into a world which doesn't exist. And I know it does exist.
- DRDave Rubin
That's interesting. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It, but it's, it's not one that I can, can really relate to all that much. I'd be-
- DRDave Rubin
Well, that's good.
- CWChris Williamson
I'd be interested to hear for the people in the UK that are listening, tell me if I'm alone with this, right? Just because I, I, I really, I spoke to Zuby, I've spoken to Douglas Murray, I've spoke, uh, num- Andrew Doyle, and you know, these... i- I don't know whether there's certain areas, certain corners of the internet, perhaps after this goes up I'll be just fully feet first into it, we'll see who, we'll see who catches, catches onto this episode, but you get my point, right? It's, it's interesting for me to watch, and I'm super glad that I'm the voyeur in this rather than the person that's, that's, that's getting stuck in. Um-
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Well, I hate to tell you, you can never last as the voyeur too long.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
Like, once you've talked to dangerous Douglas Murray and Zuby and Andrew Doyle and me, I mean, eventually you won't be on the voyeur side of that. But w- but I actually. that's inspiring what you just said, actually. The idea that-
- CWChris Williamson
Thanks. Thanks, Dave. That's what, that's exactly what I'm here for, mate. Yeah. (laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
Well, well, there you go. I mean, that, but that is, that is the truth because look, a, a lot of these bad ideas about gender pronouns and everyone's a bigot and all this stuff-It's not real other than it's pushed on us by the mainstream media all the time and the rest of it. So, when, when Douglas, who I would say is fighting it in the, in the most brave way possible and has been fighting it before everybody, when he's fighting it, it's not that it doesn't exist, but it doesn't mean that it's everyone. It's a really loud yapping dog that we finally have to just, sort of, put in a cage and just say, "Well, you can keep barking but we're not gonna listen-"
- CWChris Williamson
I think it needs to go out, it needs to go out the back in the woods, doesn't it? And just a-
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a shotgun. I, I need to segue here. Have you seen how jacked Douglas Murray's got recently?
- DRDave Rubin
I haven't, I haven't seen him in a-
- CWChris Williamson
Bro.
- DRDave Rubin
... sp- spoken to
- CWChris Williamson
Dave, go onto Twitter.
- DRDave Rubin
... spoken to him for a long time.
- CWChris Williamson
Everyone that's listening right now, go onto Douglas Murray's Twitter and try and find some of the most recent photos of him. That guy has got jacked out of his mind. He's just, I don't know what he's been doing. He's been using coronavirus preparation for, like-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I- I'm not even kidding, I'm not kidding you at all. When we recorded, he'd had, like, a couple of glasses of wine and just looked like a normal dude. And now, he looks like a pro athlete. I'm not, uh, honestly. Go and believe it for yourself.
- DRDave Rubin
I'm gonna, I'm gonna a- I saw, I saw a picture of him with some scruff. I thought, you know, "He's going through like-"
- CWChris Williamson
That's the next level, man. That's the ne- so, he started, he grew the beard and then he's, he's got jacked. So, that's it.
- 26:07 – 29:37
How to leave the left
- DRDave Rubin
easier to walk out of your house and walk into the gym than to leave an ideological echo chamber. What, what these people have done, quite effectively, is trick good people who have very decent views, uh, which probably you share many of, they've tricked them into thinking that they shouldn't say what they think. So, when I say it's a roadmap for leaving the left, I want people to understand that if you want low taxes, if you believe in borders, if you believe in, in American context, the Second Amendment, but certainly also the First Amendment, if you believe in free speech, if you believe in the right to assemble, all of these things, these are, these are beautiful things that for some reason if you talk about them and don't follow every other piece of leftist dogma, you, you are, you are out. You are racist, you are a bigot, you are all those horrible things. And that has cowed quite literally millions and millions of good people into silence. There are, I mean, the amount of email I get from people who are moderates, I mean the most moderate, but might have some perhaps a personally traditional view of marriage or might be for low taxes. So, here, here's, like, the best example I can give you. So, if you, I find this one all the time, I, I speak at a lot of libertarian events and libertarians will come up to me and say, "You know, Dave, I'm afraid of saying in college that I'm a libertarian because people will say I'm racist." And it's like, "Well, what, what does that mean? How did la- racist and libertarian get confused?" And the reason is if you say you're for low taxes, what a lefty will say to you is, "You're for low taxes, that means you hate poor people. And if you hate poor people, that means you hate Black people. And if you hate Black people, you're a racist." Now, first off, you can tell them that, "Well, actually, there are more poor white people than poor Black people. I mean, that's just a fact." They, they won't care about that. And you can also then say to them, "Well, you know, a lot of our programs that are supposed to help poor people actually hurt poor people, which is why the Black community has been so hampered by these handouts in an America- American context instead of helped." All of these things, and people don't wanna be called all of these horrible things. So, what I've tried to do here is lay out a roadmap. You are gonna be called horrible things. There is a chance people will come for your job. The media might do a hit piece on you. You have no idea the ensuing chaos. But if you are a free person living in a free society and you refuse to stand up for what you believe in, you refuse to say what you believe in, well, then you get whatever's coming to you. You deserve whatever's coming to you. And I don't think most people wanna live like that. And by the way, I'm pretty hopeful right now because, you know, with corona, one of the things that's happening is the online, uh, conversation and the mainstream conversation really are converging into one thing. We're watching CNN anchors now, and I'm sure you guys are doing it with Sky anchors and everything else, that are basically broadcasting out of their kitchens. And once you see them without all the makeup, without all the fancy lighting, without all the teleprompters and everything else, and then you see the average guy on YouTube who is just sharing his thoughts, which I would say is something, you know, close to what I've been doing. You go, "Holy cow, these people really are equal. And if anything, maybe this guy even, even knows more." So, there's been a, a democratization of, uh, of news right now. So, I'm, I'm very hopeful that people can start breaking out of this stuff and that the roadmap, as I say in the book, it's like, if, if I give you the roadmap here and then you come out and you're not with me on every one of those issues, you don't believe exactly what I believe about abortion or you don't believe exactly what I believe about gun rights or whatever else, but we basically broadly agree on freedom, then we're in good shape.
- 29:37 – 32:09
What is mainstream media
- DRDave Rubin
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see the most recent, uh, Eric Weinstein on, uh, on Joe Rogan?
- DRDave Rubin
I saw, like, tiny little clips of it.
- CWChris Williamson
You, you should s-
- DRDave Rubin
Been pretty busy around here.
- CWChris Williamson
It's, it's one of those-
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's one of those ones you probably need to dedicate a little bit of time to.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but he talks about this specifically, to do with how, what is mainstream media now? What we're classing as mainstream media, what you could call NBC and ABC and BBC and Sky News and stuff like that, is traditional media. But if we put this video up and this video gets 20 million views, which would be great, um, but if this-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... we put this video up and it gets 20 million views, or Joe Rogan puts an episode up and it gets 20 million views, and Sky News puts a recording up and it gets one million views, who's mainstream media? Like, that's just-
- DRDave Rubin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... a term. We're talking, again, about grandfathered in from the old world because previously, being on a network was a signal, it was signaling. It was a sign of virtue, of integrity-
- DRDave Rubin
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... of production quality, of research, of all the rest of this stuff. And-... as you said before, with Bill Maher and- and- and increasingly now with a lot of news shows, the fact that you've got to squash it into 3 minutes and 43 seconds before the next ad break comes in and, "Well, we need t- to cut to John who's in the parking lot talking about this going on." Like, all that sort of stuff. The fact that you have these constrictions on it inherently means that the quality is going to be lower because you're chopping it up into, like, t- unbelievably tiny little bits. And yeah, I thought that was, that was a really, a really, really interesting, uh, discussion from those two guys.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I, I wanna say something else as well about what you just brought up, which was, um, Douglas Murray mentioned this.
- DRDave Rubin
(clears throat)
- CWChris Williamson
He said that people who don't take ideologies wholesale and take them piecemeal are going to be the immediate targets for anybody on both sides. And the reason he said this was the case was that anything which seems not to fit the prescript- the prescribed bill for whatever the particular stances that you're taking, let's say that you have conservative views on most things but, uh, a progressive view on abortion or, uh, pick your little way of piecing it together, says the nuance and the individuality gets seen as the other side as weakness. It gets seen as-
- DRDave Rubin
So-
- CWChris Williamson
... that's the weak point. That's the Achilles' heel. That shows that you actually don't know what you're talking about 'cause you're supposed to... You, Dave Rubin, because you, y- you're for gay marriage, you're not supposed to do this with, with taxes and you're not supposed to do this with whatever.
- 32:09 – 33:50
Its not exactly equal
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. So there's a lot there. So I would say broadly I agree with, with Douglas' prescription there, but I would add one thing, which is that it's not exactly equal. So on the right, generally speaking, on the right, if you're a conservative, if you're a libertarian, a classical liberal, you're allowed to agree to disagree. I, I mean, I am pro-choice. I talk about it in the book. I'm begrudgingly pro-choice. That is one of the ones that for conservatives is, like, the biggest no-no. That, that more than anything else is, like, the one that they view as, like, the one th- that they cannot budge on, except I am welcomed to their discussions all the time to have that debate. Uh, they're not all thrilled with gay marriage, but I am welcomed to have that discussion. I am against the death penalty. Most conservatives are for it. I am welcomed to have that debate. Now, try to do the version of that on the other side. There's almost none of that, where if you pick one... Try to imagine someone that's on the left that's pro-life. They've made a point now... Democratic politicians make a point of saying it all the time, "There's no room for you if you're pro-life to be a Democrat, to be a lefty." Um, if you don't take their position on, uh, minimum wage as I just mentioned, or you don't absolutely sign up for the Green New Deal and believe exactly what they believe on any given day that the world's gonna end in 12 years as AOC says and all this other stuff. So the, so Douglas is absolutely right that the, that the piecemeal person who's really trying to do what you're supposed to do as a human, which is figure out how to think and why you think what you think, which is exactly what this book is about, the piecemeal person is always gonna take more fire because you have a more complex system there and that complex system is gonna have
- 33:50 – 35:22
The piecemeal person
- DRDave Rubin
some, some weaknesses sometimes because it's a work in art, right?
- CWChris Williamson
We should be-
- DRDave Rubin
I- I'm sorry. It's a wo-
- CWChris Williamson
We should be-
- DRDave Rubin
It's a work in progress.
- CWChris Williamson
... we should be inherently, um, inherently suspicious of anybody who once you know maybe two or three things about their views, you can then extrapolate out the remainder.
- DRDave Rubin
That's-
- CWChris Williamson
That's-
- DRDave Rubin
W- I find that to be the most boring type of person there is, you know. Uh, but again, there is an ability on pe- for people on the right, at least right now, I'm not saying it was always like this, but why is it that I can go out for an afternoon drink with Nigel Farage and agree to a, disagree on a bunch of stuff, and we were pretty drunk and we could-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I guess-
- DRDave Rubin
... agree to disagree.
- CWChris Williamson
... some- that, that guy likes to drink.
- DRDave Rubin
You know, w- why can I sit with Donald Trump Jr. and agree to disagree? Why can I sit with Glenn Beck or Dennis Prager or a million of those other people and, and there's virtually no version of that on the left? I'm not saying that there are no good lefties, right? So you can talk about the Weinstein brothers or Sam Harris or a couple people, but I would say in effect at this point if... I mean, I say this all the time, but defending my liberal principles is becoming a conservative position. And that simply is true. That is what the new conservatives are about. So the left is just purging people and the right is basically standing there and saying, "Join us." And what I wanna do is I don't wanna convince, I don't have to convince any conservatives that I'm more right. I'm not trying to make any conservative more pro-choice. I'm just saying to the conservatives, "Hey guys, carve out a little space over here for us." Because there's an- you, because these guys are bananas. So
- 35:22 – 38:14
Factory settings
- DRDave Rubin
give us a little room to operate over here and a lot of cool stuff can happen. And by the way, that's happening already.
- CWChris Williamson
I get it. Um, so this links in. Why do Republicans or conservatives get labeled as bad and why do Democrats or labor voters get labeled as good? Is it just signaling?
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Y- Oh, it's complete signaling. I mean, I- I have a, a section on this. I mean, this, this is just factory setting thinking. This is just stuff that you get from the media, you get from culture. It's like Democrat good, Republican bad. Democrats care about poor people, Republicans care about money. Democrats are for peace, Republicans are for war. You know, Democrats love gay people, Republicans hate gay people. There's a million of these, of these nonsensical things. And all that is is factory settings, that through culture, through state education, through all these things, you just, that is where we all sort of baseline start. Government good. It's all the baseline stuff. And what your job is... You know, and, and I love the phrase factory settings because it's like when you get a television or a computer, uh, you get a new MacBook, what do you do? It comes with factory settings and then what do you do? You might make it a little brighter. You might change your background. You might have a different sound, do this or that. It's your job to, to, to modify your system to something that you like, and that's, that's what, the way you behave with the world should be as well. So the only reason that those things stick-... is because, unfortunately, the, the media has sort of colluded, I would say, with the Democrats or with the left, to sell a really dishonest meme, and that meme is that Republicans are all bad. And in a weird way ... Or, or conservatives are all bad. And in a weird way, this is Donald Trump's greatest strength. Donald Trump saw it. Like, the Republicans tried it with nice guys. In retrospect, I think most people think John McCain was a nice guy, a decent human being. Mitt Romney, a nice guy, a decent human being. They... and guess what? They both lost. So, Trump just said, "You know what? I'm not gonna play by these rules, because it's not just that as a Republican I have to fight the Democrats." That would be an easy f- uh, uh, an even fight, right? If it was just Democrats versus Republicans, battle it out and to the winner goes the spoils. But what's really happening is it's the Democrats and the media as this huge monster versus the Republicans. Well, that you can never win. So, Trump just went in and said, "Well, I'm just gonna blow up the whole freaking thing."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
And, and that's, that's why what I find... What... The, the people that I'm often most frustrated with are these, these absolute Never Trumpers, because I'm not saying... Uh, first of all, I didn't even vote for Trump, okay? But I broadly like his policies and I understand his tactics, and the idea that this guy is Hitler or any of this other stuff, it's just nonsense. What he's going in and doing, he's doing all the dirty work so that the, the good liberals and the good conservatives can still go to their parties and think that they're nice people, and then they shit on him for it.
- 38:14 – 40:12
Are you a Nazi
- DRDave Rubin
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Um, I have a question. Are you a Nazi dressed in the skin and clothes of a Today Show correspondent?
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) Well, that was a, uh, loose quote from a piece in Der Spiegel where they had me on the front cover of the whole thing saying that I was the grand illusionist of the alt-right, and they had a very scary picture of me. I was sitting in my green roo- green room where I have a, uh, uh, an American flag, and I was sitting under the American flag, and that's really a- an alt-right signal. And they said that... You know, they... The whole article was written as if I was some sort of, like, evil elitist. They talked about my Italian coffee maker, which is an espresso machine.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
You can get it at Wal-
- CWChris Williamson
That was my favorite bit.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And you're like, "It's an espresso coffee maker. It costs about 140 pounds."
- DRDave Rubin
A hundred... Yeah, 140 bucks, you can get it at Walmart. So, uh... But then he... you know, he wrote, and he has New Yorker magazines on his walls. Yes, I do have one postcard from a New Yorker. It's... I got it for $5 on the street in New York City. But the whole piece was a work of fiction, and the, the disappointing part is that this guy k- who visited my home, he watched me do several shows, he came to a live event that I did that night at University of Southern California, um, he, he was the illusionist. He decided to paint me as this evil, racist thing, and, and just lie and fabricate. And, you know, one of the interesting things is... I didn't know this till after, but there is a law in Germany that if, uh, a publication is gonna write about you, they have to run all of your quotes by them. So, this guy spent literally all day with me, from about 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. In that piece in Der Spiegel, there's not one quote from me, because he would have had to have run it by me.
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- DRDave Rubin
So, he... So basically, he spends all day with me, then writes a piece of fiction and doesn't quote me once in the entire thing, even though I spent hours-
- CWChris Williamson
That's insane.
- DRDave Rubin
... talking to the guy. So, that's just... I use that example as just one of the many ways we've watched the media collapse. "Journalists," when I use air quotes, are the ones destroying journalism,
- 40:12 – 42:39
How to spot fake news
- DRDave Rubin
simply-
- CWChris Williamson
So, you're Nazi... Does this mean you're Nazi-adjacent then, or-
- DRDave Rubin
Uh, adjacent-adjacent.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Okay. Yeah, cool, which is 180 degrees, actually.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah, which makes you adjacent-adjacent-adjacent.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, my God.
- DRDave Rubin
So, yep. Yeah, congratulations.
- CWChris Williamson
Fuck. Um, how can we spot fake news? I wanna know.
- DRDave Rubin
Well, I, I loved writing this chapter because I think it's th- it's sort of the most functional in a way, because we are so manipulated by the news. And as we're all stuck right now at home with corona, big tech, which loomed large over all of us, is now even bigger, right? We can't congregate at a bar. We can't go to a political rally. We c- we can't even go out to dinner with our friends. So, big tech, which had all of this power over us, is now way bigger. So, I lay out several types of fake news. The one that I'll, I'll go with for this is one of the pieces of fake news, or, or one of the aspects of fake news that I think is the most insidious is not just that they lie about stories or that the headline is often very different from the article, or they mislead you by cutting a quote in the middle and the rest of it. One type of fake news is the stories that they won't cover because it doesn't fit their narrative. So, months and months go by where mainstream just won't address a story properly. A good example of this would be when Bret Weinstein, who is the professor at Evergreen University, when he was being attacked for being anti-racist. I mean, he... All he did was the school had, had put out a new edict that white students should not come to campus on a given day because... to protest racism. They had always had this day where students of color voluntarily decided not to go to class, and Bret was okay with that. But then on... two years ago, they decided, "No, on this day, we're gonna actually tell students not to come based on the color of their skin." He said, "No, no, no, that's racist," which we all know it is racist, of course, and psychotic for a university to tell a certain type of student not to come to class. I mean, it's actually mental. This thing was blowing up, this story, and then there were roving gangs with bats trying to chase him off campus and a whole bunch of other stuff happening. The New York Times just refused to cover it. CNN refused to cover it. That's a type of fake news. It didn't fit their narrative that lefties are good. And, and the irony is that Bret... I don't know what he describes himself now, but he was a progressive. He was a lefty, lefty, lefty, Bernie-supporting lefty. So, it's like he wasn't even good enough for them. But that, that really goes against the narrative, so The New York Times just ignores it. That in and of itself is a type of fake
- 42:39 – 46:22
The virtue of nationalism
- DRDave Rubin
news.
- CWChris Williamson
It's fake news by omission rather than by commission, right?
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah, ex- I love that. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, you know who he needed in that situation when everyone was roaming around with baseball bats? Jack Douglas Murray.If he'd have-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... jacked Douglas Murray with him, no one was fucking with Bret.
- DRDave Rubin
I like this idea of Douglas Murray as a superhero. I think you're-
- CWChris Williamson
Bro, he's, he's, uh, uh, uh, I'm not lying. I'm not kidding at all. Um, he was something that I was surprised by. Again, I'm, uh, politics isn't, sort of, w- the, the tip of my spear for what I usually get interested in, although I've got exposed to a fair bit.
- DRDave Rubin
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Especially over the last few years. It's difficult to avoid. I didn't know that nationalism was classically liberal.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Well, national-
- CWChris Williamson
Can you, can you explain how that works?
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. So, I, I referenced the book that I have right here, uh, by Yoram Harzoni called The Virtue of Nationalism, and, and I think you guys in the UK have a, have a particularly unique experience related to nationalism because of everything that your last, you know, four-some-odd years were about related to Brexit. It is your right, it is the right, I would say, of a nation to decide what its borders are and to decide to defend itself however it would like to, and to decide who can come, when they can come, how many people can come, and the rest of it. We, the, see, the simple truth is we're all nationalists, we just don't know it. I believe that America has a right to defend itself, to define its borders, and all of those things. Uh, Britains have decided that it is your right to do the exact same thing, that you don't wanna outsource your decision-making to bureaucrats in Brussels. That's a beautiful thing, in my opinion. That is a beautiful thing. You wanna be governed by the people you voted for, not some amorphous bureaucratic commission that isn't even within your borders, right? So, we, uh, this is how, this is how a society can work in the most functional way. There's this idea that somehow the global community must come together and decide what is best, but that's actually deeply, deeply dangerous, because that often removes the autonomy of each individual nation. What you want-
- CWChris Williamson
But what's the point of nation-states if that, if you just do that?
- DRDave Rubin
Well, exactly. What's the point of nation-states? Now, some people would say, "Well, then we should have no borders." I'm completely against that. I want a border. United States has Canada to the north. We got Mexico to the south. I like that we have borders. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't let anyone in. That doesn't mean we should have no immigration. That certainly doesn't mean we should be xenophobic or racist or the rest of it. What it means is we have certain laws. There are privileges. It is a freakin' honor and, and the most spectacular privilege in the history of the world to be an American citizen. You are the freest freakin' thing that our ancestors could never even imagine how ridiculously free we are. We can sit around on TikTok on our iPhones talking about how oppressed we are in the United States. That is a, that is a beautiful thing, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) That's all for freedom you need right there. Yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. That is all the freedom you need right there. So, what you want is you want every nation to decide what's best for its citizens, and then those nations can come together and decide how they wanna work together on things. So, it is a virtue to be nationalistic. What, what unfortunately has happened here is they've, they've tricked a lotta good people into thinking that somehow if you're for your nation that you're a racist. So, this would be why a lotta Brexiteers were called racists. This would be a lotta, why a lotta Trump supporters are called racists. And it simply isn't true. There is a reason you have a lock on the front door of your house. That doesn't mean you hate everyone on the outside, but you're allowed to protect your house. I have a fence, and I have a lock on my house. And why would you treat your nation any, any differently
- 46:22 – 49:58
The moat
- DRDave Rubin
than that?
- CWChris Williamson
Man, I love that. That, that point in the book really did sort of drive it home for me. I have to say, as someone who's British, significantly easier to talk about borders when you're surrounded by water.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, we just have a moat, we have a moat, a 23-mile moat around our country, which makes it a lot easier. You know?
- DRDave Rubin
It makes it a lot easier for those Australians too, but, but yet-
- CWChris Williamson
That's miles away.
- DRDave Rubin
... yet, they still have- (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
No one wants to go to Australia. No one's invading Austra-... There's f-... There's nothing there in the middle. There's just a little bit around the edge, and it's in, it's miles away from everything. No one's going to Australia.
- DRDave Rubin
I know, but those, those beaches are pretty sweet.
- CWChris Williamson
Those beaches are pretty sweet. Yeah, you are, you are correct. Um, I wanna hear... We haven't got long. What can we talk? All right. I want you to tell us the Cliffs Notes version of when you got red-pilled on your own show by Larry Elder 'cause this was just hilarious.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) I mean, Larry Elder beat me senseless with facts.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
And, you know, the funny-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It should've been, it should've been X-rated or, like, R-rated-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... and uploaded onto Pornhub, shouldn't it? (laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah, yeah. You definitely should have to click your age to, to see this thing.
- CWChris Williamson
I am 21 years or older. Yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Um, Larry Elder... Well, what's interesting, and I, I write about this, is that I, I really believe this, that the best and worst moment of my career were at the exact same time. That, that's a pretty rare thing for someone to be able to say. What happened was I had Larry Elder on the show. At this point, it was very early on in my interviewing where I was mostly having disaffected lefties. So, I had Sam Harris on. I had Maajid Nawaz on. I had Douglas Murray. Now, Douglas is more of a conservative, but I think he has the, the right sort of classically liberal lens. I had, had people that were thought of as pretty much moderates and not really on the right really. Larry Elder was really the first guy that I had in that position. Now, Larry Elder happens to be Black. That's all I would say about his race actually. This is a guy who knows what he thinks. He's been fighting for what he believes in forever. And we sat down, and I did what lefties do. I just said a couple things because they sorta sounded right about systemic racism and policing and all these things, and Larry beat me senseless with facts.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) He picked a red, picked a red pill up, bludgeoned you over the head with it, and then forced you to deep throat it. I think that's-
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... what, what, what it said in the book. Yeah.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah. Exactly. Well, you know, I always say to Candace Owens that I swallowed the red pill and she snorted it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
And in effect, yeah, he just, he just, he just beat me with the red pill. It, it, you know, it just beat me into oblivion, took, took whatever was left and reconstituted it. Um, but the reason that that clip matters, and that clip has been clipped many times and seen by millions and millions of people, is that when that interview ended-We were at a, a, Aura TV at the time. It was a bigger network, right? You know, now I'm in my garage, it's totally independent and all that. I had a whole bunch of producers and directors there. And I walked into the green room, uh, sorry, into the control room when it ended, and everybody was like, "Dave, we're gonna cut that. Don't worry about it. We're not gonna air that," blah, blah, blah. And I said, "No. We have to air that. That was real. I get I don't come off great. But if we don't air that, what is the point of having a show about ideas? What is the point of conversing with people if we're gonna ed out, edit out the meat, we're gonna edit out the moment that something really happened?" And I think clearly my instincts were right, and when, when the video went up and I suddenly saw all these clips of it and everyone, "Larry Elder destroys Dave Rubin," and all the versions of that that are possible, it hurt at first. But it was pretty quick until I started realizing that, you know, most people were like, "Whoa, Rubin took the hit, but you can see him evolving." And that moment allowed a lot of other people to evolve too. So, I'm actually very proud of it, and that's why I would say it's my best and worst moment at the exact same time.
- CWChris Williamson
I
- 49:58 – 52:25
Eckhart Tolle ISM
- CWChris Williamson
think you should be. The, the people who hold onto their views and hold onto being right like their very being is on the line, and this is a Eckhart Tolle-ism where he says that during discussions with someone, we have a fear of being proved wrong because it's tantamount to destruction of our ego.
- DRDave Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And especially from doing this podcast, you will be episode 160s, somewhere in the 160s, you know, so having done this many episodes, I've been challenged a lot of times. Not as hard or as deep as Larry Elder did to you, um, but which-
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... would be almost im-
- DRDave Rubin
Let me see what I can do for you.
- CWChris Williamson
Which would be almost impossible. Um, but a nu- a number of times, I've been ... And I'm like, I am having to battle during a conversation with either my position being proved wrong or something which inherently ... Learning about, um, uh, polyamorous relationships or non-monogamy and stuff like that, which just in a, has a visceral reaction from me that makes me think, "Ugh, that's, it's challenging." And at the same time being sufficiently cognizant of it to be able to go, "Right, I can allow this to m- Isn't that interesting? Isn't it interesting that I'm just getting completely dicked on camera by Larry Elder here? Isn't this a, a, like, a, a-"
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"... wonderful situation kind of to be in?" You know? And, uh, I think no matter which side you fall on in any discussion, being able to just take the argument on its own merits and trying to remove that ego from the situation, firstly, you're going to feel so much less pain.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Becau- because it's, it's so much more enjoyable to go, "Wow." And this is why I think that curiosity is one of the s- the most powerful personality traits that you can have. If you're genuinely curious, I was interested to find out what you had to say today. I wanted to ask what it felt like to get red-pilled by Larry Elder, and I, I wanted to ask what it ... To do all this different stuff. And if you're genuinely curious about that, it allows you to transcend that ego. It also breaks down the barrier between you and that other person, right? Because they think-
- DRDave Rubin
Yup.
- CWChris Williamson
... "Dave's here to find out. He's here to upgrade his own programming, and I'm gonna keep on pushing him and see how far I can get. Oh, actually, I've gone too far. He actually has some facts about that. He can push back." And that's what makes it engaging, you know, as, as a listener. And if that's the case, and if professional conversationalists, like you or Larry Elder or whoever it might be, if that's the mode, modus operandi that you're following, then presumably that's the best way for everybody to discuss as well.
- 52:25 – 56:17
Ben Affleck
- CWChris Williamson
- DRDave Rubin
So, to bring this back to your first question, why did I dedicate this thing to Ben Affleck? Because Affleck did the reverse of everything that you just said there. Affleck took a thoughtful moment where w- where it could have been a teachable moment, this idea that we should be able to criticize ideas and yet we don't wanna be bigoted towards people. It's such a fundamentally important concept. And what did Affleck do with it? "You're gross and racist." And what does that do? It shuts down curiosity. It shuts down exchange. It shuts down the ability for people to have that beautiful dance. You know, the only way you know how to map reality, you, Chris, versus me, Dave, right now is that we're talking through these wires, right? And it's like, you can say something, and if you said something completely insane and outlandish, I can now map my reality against that and push back. And hopefully I could say y- I, I could get you to go, "Whoa, maybe what I said was bananas," or, or vice versa, right? Or you could say something wickedly mind-blowing brilliant.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you.
- DRDave Rubin
And I would go-
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. (laughs)
- DRDave Rubin
So, please, throw one at me.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I've been doing it. Honestly, Dave, I've been trying.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs) That was ... No, you've done at least eight of those. Mind-blowing, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Mic drop. That'll take it.
- DRDave Rubin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So, final thing before we finish up. Um, what have you been most pleasantly surprised by so far in 2020? This can be anything.
- DRDave Rubin
Well, what I'm really surprised by ... Well, look, everybody's surprised by corona and the fact that our world feels upli- upside down. So, I'm not pleasantly surprised by that. What I am surprised by in a pleasant sense, I sort of referenced earlier, which is that so many of the things that I talk about in this book are suddenly things that are peop- that people are talking about. When I now see lefties on Twitter fighting for states' rights, I go, "Man, that is a great thing." And by the way, what they're also doing is have you noticed that identity politics has been really dialed down during this crisis? Because when there's a real crisis, when shit really hits the fan, suddenly we don't have time for gender pronoun conversations, and we don't have time for how many Black people are on this panel and how many white women are on this and how many lesbians with a bad knee and all that nonsense. So, I'm pleasantly surprised that identity politics has, has been sort of cooled off, not destroyed, but cooled off. And I'm pleasantly surprised that good ideas, states' rights, people really realizing right now in America, "Maybe I should be allowed to protect myself because our systems and our institutions are shakier than I thought." I love the idea that right now-People that live in big cities are suddenly going, "Whoa! I- is this the best way to live?" Is it, is it the best way to live in a, in a, you know, one-bedroom flat, as you guys would call it, for $5,000 to live in Manhattan, when I could literally live on 50 acres in Montana? How do I wanna work? Do I wanna telecommute? Uh, do I want, is this even the job that I wanna be at? Or, or right now, we're all trapped in our houses and it's like, "Am I married to the right person? Do I like these people that I'm in the house with? Did I raise a good kid?" You know, any of those things. I, I'm so inspired right now because all of this tumult, it's scary. It feels like, will the world ever fully return? I don't know that it'll return. I think we have a new blaze, a new trail to blaze. But I'm excited by the fertile ground right now. Like, everything's kinda messy and w- and out of a mess, that's where beauty arrives, right? Like, out of chaos is what, that's what makes great art and that's what makes great music. And by the way, we haven't had a lot of great music lately. We haven't had a lot of great art lately. I'm not saying none of it, and of course it, it's smattered across the internet. But like, there's a huge human opportunity right now and I think people like yourself, people that are probably listening to this, people that have been a little ahead of the curve and outside of mainstream for a long time, like, I think our day is coming. So, let's grab it.
- 56:17 – 57:51
Outro
- DRDave Rubin
- CWChris Williamson
I love it, man. Yeah, in an absence of a real crisis, we create our own and in the presence of one, we reset our values. That's how I'm looking at this situation.
- DRDave Rubin
That's one of those brilliant things.
- CWChris Williamson
Just, uh-
- DRDave Rubin
See? You made it. You made it.
- CWChris Williamson
I just felt like, I felt like I've got the guy behind Rubin Report and so I just had to mic drop the final bit, you know?
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I can't let you have the last say.
- DRDave Rubin
Hit it.
- CWChris Williamson
Actually, actually I can. Where can people check out your show and the book and, and you online? Where should they go?
- DRDave Rubin
So you can get the book at don'tburnthisbook.com where we have a, uh, Little Brown Books is our UK distributor so it's, uh, you can go to Amazon UK or, uh, wherever else you get books and the show is youtube.com/rubinreport, uh, rubinreport.com, instagram.com/rubinreport. I, my branding guy is pretty solid so we're okay.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Dave, man, it has been fantastic. Hopefully we're gonna get through this, uh, this next few months and I'm gonna hassle you and I'm gonna get you back on. But thank you so much for your time, man. You know what to do. Like, share and subscribe. Links to everything, including Dave's fantastic new book, will be in the show notes below. If you've got any questions or comments or you just wanna hassle us online, go there as well. Man-
- DRDave Rubin
Chris, I enjoyed talking to you and what, what do you think? Should I shave the head too?
- CWChris Williamson
I think top knot.
- DRDave Rubin
You're, you're killing it over there.
- CWChris Williamson
I think top knot. I think you could get away with a top knot, I genuinely do.
- DRDave Rubin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You and Michael Malice both with a man bun? It would absolutely kill it. Let's do it.
- DRDave Rubin
Listen, if, the longer we stay in quarantine I may have no choice, so we'll see.
- CWChris Williamson
Cheers, man.
- DRDave Rubin
Thanks, man. Outfits. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Outfits.
Episode duration: 57:52
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