The Daily Signal - Dave Rubin Warns of Cancel Culture, Mob Mentality

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Dave Rubin, who hosts "The Rubin Report", joins the podcast to discuss the differences between political liberalism and classical liberalism, his recent encounter with Antifa, and the cancel culture phenomenon. We also cover these stories: The Senate impeachment trial continued on Wednesday with senators getting to ask their first questions. Security personnel for President Donald Trump say they could stop the publication of former national security advisor John Bolton’s forthcoming book . President Trump signs U.S. Mexico Canada Trade Agreement into law. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, January 30th. I'm Rachel Del Judas. And I'm Kate Trinco. Today, we're featuring our colleague Virginia Allen's interview with Dave Rubin, the host of the Rubin Report. Rubin, a former liberal, discusses his political changes, his recent run-in with Antifa, and cancel culture. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. The Senate impeachment trial continued on Wednesday, and senators got their first chance to ask questions.

The first question, read out loud by Chief Justice John Roberts, came from Republican senators, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney. To give you a taste of what the proceedings are like, we're going to play a longer clip from C-SPAN, first of Justice Roberts reading the question, and then the answer, which was given by one of Trump's lawyers, Patrick Philbin. This is a question for the counsel for the president. If President Trump had more than one motive for his alleged conduct, such as the pursuit of personal political advantage, rooting out corruption, and the promotion of national interests, how should the Senate consider more than one motive in its assessment of Article 1?

Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, in response to that question, there were really two layers to my answer, because I'd like to point out first that even if there was only one motive, the theory of abuse of power that the House managers have presented, that subjective motive alone can become the basis for an impeachable offense, we believe is constitutionally defective. It is not a permissible way to frame a claim of an impeachable offense

under the Constitution. But I'll put that to one side and address the question of mixed motive. If there were a motive that was a public interest but also some personal interest, we think it follows even more clearly that that cannot possibly be the basis for an impeachable offense.

And even the House managers, if they have framed their case, they have explained, and this is pointed out in our trial memorandum, that in the House Judiciary Committee, report, they specify that the standard they have to meet is to show that this is a sham investigation. It's a bogus investigation. These investigations have, there's not any legitimate public purpose. That's the language, any legitimate public purpose. That's the standard they've set for themselves

in being able to make this claim under their theory of what an abuse of power offense can be. So it's a very demanding standard that they've set for themselves to meet. Security personnel for President Donald Trump say they could stop the publication of former National Security Advisor John Bolton's forthcoming book unless Bolton removes content in the book that the National Security Council says is classified. Per USA Today, the National Security Council has said that it will work with Bolton to get the classified parts removed. President Trump officially signed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement into law on Wednesday. Here's what he had to say via ABC. Together we're building a glorious future that is raised, grown, built, and made right here in the glorious USA. And that wasn't all.

This is something we really put our heart into. It's probably the number one reason that I decided to lead this crazy life that I'm leading right now, as opposed to that beautiful, simple life of luxury that I led before this happened. Trump also touted with the deal. would do via Fox business. The USMCA is also a massive win for American manufacturers and auto workers. Under NAFTA, companies were given huge incentives to produce cars in foreign countries and ship them to America tax-free.

No tax, no nothing. We lost our jobs. We closed our factories and other countries built our cars. But we've changed that and we're now setting records. The USMCA closes these terrible loopholes and includes strong provisions to ensure that new cars are fashioned by American hands. Heritage Foundation President K.C. James said in a statement, the USMCA puts American families, businesses, workers, and farmers first

by reducing prices on goods, increasing exports to our neighbors in the world, and creating more and higher-paying jobs as a result of all the increased economic. activity. The U.S.MCA continues NAFTA's tariff-free treatment of many goods and services, but also opens up new markets for American farmers to sell their goods. The U.S.MCA promotes the development of more new and innovative products by strengthening protections for intellectual property rights. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told media during his trip to London that the country should evaluate its decision to work with Huawei, the Chinese technical company. During a flight to London, Pompeo said, according to Reuters,

there is also a chance for the United Kingdom to relook at this as implementation moves forward. We will make sure that when American information passes across a network, we are confident that the network is a trusted one, he said. Our view of Huawei is this. Putting it in your system creates real risk. Klon Kitchen, who leads tech policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a recent op-ed for the Telegraph, the decision taken today to allow the Chinese, particularly the Huawei Telecommunications Company,

to build your 5G wireless networks as a terrible mistake. He added, Huawei is an extension of the Chinese government and a part of Beijing's explicit civil-military fusion strategy, where government and industry work together to expand the power and influence of the Chinese Communist Party. According to Reuters, the company has helped Chinese intelligence steal secrets, which Huawei denies. The World Health Organization is sounding the alarm about coronavirus. Dr. Mike Ryan, who heads the organization's health emergencies program, said Wednesday, per CNBC,

these developments in terms of the evolution of the outbreak and further development of transmission, these are of grave concern and has spurred countries into action. Meanwhile, the virus is already affecting travel. British Airways, United Airlines, American, Airlines, Air Asia, and several other airlines have either ceased flying to China or are temporarily reducing the number of their flights to China during this time. That's according to CNN. Next up, we'll have Virginia's interview with Dave Rubin. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government,

it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues. America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. I'm joined on the Daily Signal podcast by Dave Rubin, a former liberal and now host of the Blades TV show Ruben Report. Dave, thank you so much for being here. Thanks. It's good to be here. For the record, believe it or not, even at a turning point student action summit, I still do consider myself a liberal

in the true sense of liberalism. I always feel that that's important to say. Well, let's start there. Define what that difference is. Well, it's funny because in essence, a true liberal, a classical liberal, means that you really believe in two things, most importantly. You believe in the individual, so you want individual rights for everybody, meaning that everyone that is in this great country of the United States with 340 some odd million people, I want everyone that is here legally to have equal rights regardless of gender or sex or color of their skin or national origin as long as they're a citizen, et cetera, et cetera. So you believe in the individual above the group.

So you believe in the individual above collectivism, let's say, and that you want the light touch of government. So I know that doesn't sound very far from conservatism. And by the way, it's actually not very far from conservatism, which is why I always say now that defending my liberal principles is becoming a conservative position. So unfortunately, the left and progressives have really mangled the word liberal because actually I think if you whittled down what most people here, the 3,000 students at this conference believe, most of them actually, when they say that they're conservatives, they now are trying to conserve some essence of liberalism. So I know that's a little technical and sometimes not the most fun thing to talk about, but it is important because liberalism has nothing to do with leftism. And that's, I think the thing that I started talking about a few years ago that woke a lot of people up. Yeah, no, that's a very important distinction to make.

So for you, was there a certain moment when you realized that the progressive ideologies that you had held to that they no longer really represented you? There were a couple things that happened over a couple years, actually. You know, at first, I think what happens is, you know, leftism and progressivism and wokeism and identity politics, all these things, these are just the factory settings that we're all sort of set off with. So especially for you guys in college now, it's like you guys are inundated with somehow Democrats, good, Republicans bad, lefties nice, conservatives care about money and war, lefties like poor people, you know, all of these things that are not true. but between culture and the way the media works, they all start sort of feeling true, and to break out of those factory settings is very dangerous. I would prefer that the factory settings be that we're all individuals,

and we would prefer that the government not do everything for us and take care of us like we're incapacitated, but that there are moments where we need some government involvement. That's the way I would rather the base point be, but we seem to do it the other way where the government's supposed to do everything, and if you can escape the government, you're okay. That's actually much more of a socialist, collectivist view of the world. For me, there were a couple things that broke me out of it, which I've talked a lot about.

So I'll give you a different one because I talked about a few of them in my speech earlier. One of them was when the Charlie Hebdo attacks happened in January of 2016. Charlie Hebdo was this incredible magazine, satire magazine in France, that had been fighting the power and making fun of government and making fun of religion and making fun of all the institutions in France forever. France has an incredibly rich history of satire. And as you may remember, several Islamists, jihadists in effect, broke into their offices and killed a bunch of cartoonists.

And what I saw happen on the left suddenly was everyone was saying, oh, we shouldn't draw cartoons about things that upset people. We shouldn't talk about these issues, all of these things. And I thought something is deeply wrong here. We have to be able to talk about bad ideas. we have to be able to make fun of things. That's the essence of what makes us free. That's just one of many things that sort of woke me up to what was happening on the left.

And really, in a broader sense, it was identity politics more than anything else. The idea that I could sit across from you and say, well, okay, here is a white girl of, say, 20 years old. I must know what she thinks about these things. What a horrible way of looking at the world. You know, I would hope and I suspect that you have all sorts of thoughts that you've come up with on your own and that you like to sort of battle out ideas, and hopefully we'll do some of that right here. And that is what you're supposed to do to do as a human.

And unfortunately, what the left is offering is, oh, you're born with certain characteristics. That's how you're going to be treated forever. By the way, that Martin Luther King Jr. guy, that was the reverse of what he said. Yeah. So for you, as you battled out those ideas and tried to figure out, you know,

okay, what do I think about these issues? what were some of those maybe individuals that you really gleaned from or listened to or books that you read that were really, really helpful for you? Well, the most famous one is that I did an interview with Larry Elder when I was still holding on to some of my lefty stuff. And Larry Elder, who's a conservative, who happens to be black, that's just a piece of it, just beat me over the head with facts. I said something about systemic racism. He turned it on me. I didn't know what I was saying. And he bludgeoned me with facts until I finally sort of had to wave the white flesh.

and go, man, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. I had to start reevaluating things. So I would say that interview with Larry Elder probably single-handedly woke me up more than anything else. And by the way, there are millions and millions of views on dozens of clips on YouTube of this. And it's hilarious because they all say, you know, Larry Elder destroys Dave Rubin. But then if you look at the comment section, everyone's like, you know, I kind of like

Dave. He actually took the hit and changed after that. So it became a really nice moment. So, you know, I don't know how many people can say that their best and worst career moment we're at the exact same time, but I can truly say that. I would say reading any of Thomas Sol's books on economics on the libertarian side truly changed me. Randy Barnett, who's a constitutional law professor from Georgetown University, who talks a lot about the foot vote, why we need states' rights, really affected me. And, you know, people like Peter Thiel, obviously Jordan Peterson,

having debates with Ben Shapiro, even on, you know, the things that we disagree on. What I found is that people on the right generally are pretty open and decent. And just because you disagree with them, they don't think you're evil. And that's very refreshing these days. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you talk a lot about how critical it is for us to be standing up for free speech at this point in time. And this is something that we kind of take for granted in America. You know, we're born with it. It's just, oh, of course we have free speech. But, you know, how do we really stand against this progressive movement that we're seeing increasingly on college campuses to really, you know, tamper free speech. Well, there is only one answer to it, and it sounds cliche, but I truly believe it's the only

one that will work in the long term, which is be brave. Be brave. If you are 1920, you're in college right now. You live in the freest society, in the history of the world, and if you walking around right now are self-censoring yourself, well, we've lost already. And maybe we have. I don't think we have. And if we have, I'm still going to keep doing it. So that's just, that's just my burden, I suppose. But you must be brave. Everyone, the world over, is envious of the United States. We have the First Amendment. That means the government cannot jail you for speech. The government cannot compel your speech. And we're suddenly walking around, afraid to say what we think, afraid to say simple things. I'm not even talking about crazy over-the-top

things or racist things or being evil or mean. I'm talking about, I meet young libertarian. all the time who will say something like, you know, I'm for low taxes and someone will say, well, then you're racist. And it's like, what? And they'll, they can explain it. They'll say, well, if they say you're for low taxes, that means you don't want to help poor people. And if you don't want to help poor people, that somehow means you don't want to help black people,

even though there's more poor white people than black people. I mean, a series of nonsensical things that they've created. But you better be brave enough to say what you think, because you're right. Freedom doesn't just magically appear. The founders ingrained freedom in the documents that have

fostered more freedom in these 200 years than anywhere else. But it doesn't just stay forever. It doesn't just stay because it's a piece of paper. We've got to keep fighting for it. And I think it's on you guys now. The college age, conservative, or I would say even just more liberty-minded people, it's on you guys to fix this thing because,

unfortunately, the people before you have sort of mucked it up. Yeah, yeah. And you've spoken about not too long ago, you were in Canada for an event. And you had an encounter with Antifa. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, Antifa, which, you know, they liken themselves as anti-fascists, right? That's what Antifa is supposed to mean.

But they actually use the tactics of fascists. Fascists use violence to silence their opponents. That's exactly what Antifa does. But they flip everything on reality, so they'll call you a fascist. The event that I did was, I was with Maxime Bernier, who's basically, he's from the People's Party of Canada, which is in effect their Libertarian Party. So this is just a guy who wants people to live free. I've never heard him say anything racist or anything like that. He's a very lovely man.

The opener of the event was a Muslim from Canada who emigrated to Canada, who gave a wonderful speech. Then you have me up there. We had us talk about freedom and all these decent, lovely ideas. There was nothing mean or racist or homophobic or transphobic or any of these other buzzwords. But Antifa was outside. They were stopping people from entering the clip. that went viral was a woman, a 70-some-odd-year-old woman in a walker was trying to cross the street, and they're in her face screaming that she's a Nazi and a bigot. Meanwhile, they're screaming

at her husband also who fought the Nazis in World War II. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And these people have become empowered and emboldened because governments and media sort of just let them get away with it. And it's super, super dangerous, and we need to start calling it out for what it is. you are welcome to protest. You know, when I do talks, as I did here today, I ended the talk, and what did I say? If you disagree with me, come up first. I always do that. But you can't stop people from entering a venue.

You can't shout people down. The more you do that, you shred the very social contract that we have that allows a society to exist. And a lot of people want to burn things down right now. I would rather build things. Yeah. It's a good perspective to have. Yeah, why not, right? It's a little harder, but I would rather it.

Yeah, yeah. All right. culture. That's a term we're throwing around a lot, we're hearing a lot about. You've spoken very boldly on this. Can you first define cancel culture and then explain why it is so dangerous? Well, cancel culture is basically the idea that if you say anything that's against progressive orthodoxy of the day, and that's the key part of it, that it's of the day, whatever they believe to be okay on any given day, that you could be canceled. And in effect, what canceled means is that the Twitter mob usually, it starts on Twitter, will assault you. And then

they'll go to where you work. They will go to your sponsors if you're a public person. They will make your life hell until you apologize. And everyone knows the apology is always inauthentic. Everyone knows the apology is nonsense. But they want you to bow forever. What they're trying to do is make you submit so that you'll never say anything again. So the great example of this is what's happening right now, as we're doing this, is two days ago, J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. She tweeted in effect that men and women have different biological differences. Of course everyone knows that to be true. That's not an anti-trans statement. The woman's a lefty. She's a progressive.

Nobody wants trans people to be treated differently under the law. But you can't deny biological reality. That is not a bigoted statement. But the mob descends on her. Suddenly media starts writing pieces about how she's a transphobe and a bigot and Glad comes out against her and the human rights campaign

comes out against her. So far, from what I can tell, she's stood up to it. But other celebrities that all they did was like her tweets. Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker. The whole point Star Wars is to stand up against fear. He had to apologize for liking her tweet. These people

are embarrassing. It's embarrassing. You're going to apologize for saying that men and women have differences. We have differences that are biological. Doesn't mean I'm better than you? Doesn't mean you're better than me. But in essence, cancel culture is this idea that if you take any

non-woke statement and you put it out there, that they can come and get you for it. And we all need to stand up against it. Yeah. College campuses have become such a bastion of this very progressive thinking. So what advice do you have to young people who are conservative but find themselves living among so many liberals, so many people like we defined at the beginning, not classical liberal, but really that progressive thinking. Yeah, so two things, and this is exactly what I said in my speech. Number one, be a little bit better than them.

That doesn't take a lot of work. It really doesn't. I mean, these people are often outraged and angry. and hostile. There's a reason they're screaming. Be a little bit better, meaning turn the other cheek. Don't be a pushover. But just when you get into a heated debate with one of these people and they're screaming at you, don't scream back. Really try your best at all times to be as calm and rational and decent as possible. I think you can actually affect people that way. You know what I mean? If they're just pushing, push and push and you give them a little room, sometimes they'll just run out of push because they often don't know what they're talking about. So I'd say be a little bit better, but not to be a patsy, you know what I mean? That's number one. And number one.

Number two, and this is the important one, we have a massive bravery deficit in this country right now. Good people, I suspect many of these people that are watching us right now, who are not bigots and who are not racist, have been cowed into silence because they don't want the cancel culture and the mob to come for them. They're praying on that silence. That's why when they, so, for example, when they try to take out Tucker Carlson, he's one of the ones they try to take out all the time. I have differences with Tucker. I really disagree with him on the big tech stuff right now, where he wants government intervention and I don't. I don't think that makes him a bad person.

I think we have a different political opinion. But when they're trying to take out Tucker, it's not really Tucker that they're trying to take out. What they're trying to signal for the daily signal, what they're trying to signal to everybody else is see, if we can take out Tucker, we can take out any of you. And that's what, especially when you're college age, you'll never be braver than you are right now. You will never be braver than you are right now.

You don't magically get out of college and hopefully you're going to find someone that you love and get married and have kids and maybe you'll have a dog and a car payment and a mortgage. And then you're not going to suddenly be like 28 and be like, now I'm brave and I'm going to take on the world. Right now you can do whatever you want. You're young. You've got like all of your life ahead of you where you can define what the world that you're going to live in will be. Well, go ahead and do it because you won't magically, it doesn't get easier. It's not easy now, but life is not easy, right? What would Jordan Peterson say, right?

You know, this is chaos. This is turmoil. You can figure out a way to put together some pieces here that will make sense. But you better do it. Otherwise, they'll come for you. It just is how it is. Yeah. Dave, thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, my pleasure. I've enjoyed talking to you. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify.

and please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, the Leah Rampersad, and Mark Geinney. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.