redbloodedamerica:

Leaving the Left

Protesters don’t want this man to
speak.  The speaker is Dave Rubin.  He was once a leftist. 

You and I both started on the left.  Why did you switch?  “Oh, I woke
up.”  He woke up he says after he started doing a podcast and interviewed guests
like Larry Elder.  “And he just beat me with fact over fact over fact about
how systemic racism doesn’t exist; not that racism doesn’t exist.” 

The more people
they interview the more he questions his former beliefs.  “I realized that not
everyone that these people disagreed with could be a racist and a bigot and a
homophobe and a sexist.  And that was the argument that was constantly being laid
out.  If there was a Republican that gave a speech and said, ‘We should lower taxes,’ their answer was ‘he’s racist.’  Now, that actually makes no sense.” 

Rubin now
considers himself a classical liberal.  On his podcast, he tries to interview
people from the left and the right.  Rubin was surprised that many people on the
right were willing to debate.  “For all the differences that we might have, I’m pro-choice; most of them are pro-life.  You know?  I’m against the death penalty, most of them
are for the death penalty.  They’re all willing to sit down and discuss ideas.”   When I went from left to libertarian, the right was willing to argue.  “If you
believe in the individual then you fundamentally understand that individuals
are different.  So you are willing to sit down with someone different than you.” 

Some of his podcasts last one or more hours.  I never thought that people would listen to
interviews that long, but millions of people watch.  “I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I started doing more of these long-form interviews and people kept
watching.   And then suddenly I realized:  Whoa! There’s a lot of people that are
thinking the things that I’m thinking.  Not just me by the way.  There’s Joe Rogan
and there are others.  We’re allowing people to go, ‘Alright, let’s really listen to
something, let’s really unpack an idea.’  You don’t learn anything when you watch
CNN.  You will actually be dumber having watched CNN.”  

Because the Rubin Report features some controversial guests and because he sometimes criticizes leftists – and
maybe because his podcasts are so successful – his former colleagues now hate him.  “You know, the right-wing loves him now because he’s a puppet for the right-wing.  He
was lazy when he worked here, he’s lazy now with his ridiculous show,” Ana Kasparian said of her ex-colleague of The Young Turks.  She just
sounds envious.  “I lost friends.  I still lose friends now.  I mean it’s incredible, because because this goes to the laziness of the argument of the left.  They
believe that if you disagree with them that you’re evil.”

Evil is what these
protesters call him.  They say just allowing him to speak is a form of violence.  This
woman said Rubin’s insensitive to the victims on campus.  “It’s an ‘Oppression Olympics’.  It’s a
hierarchy of oppressions.  You’ve got to figure out how
you are oppressed.  If you have a limp, you’re this much oppressed; or if
you’re a Jew, this much oppressed; or Muslim, this much oppressed.  Everyone wants to
be oppressed.” 

There’s truth behind it.  Blacks have been oppressed, women are sometimes suppressed.  “No society is perfect, but the United
States, by and large, has given more freedom to more people from every walk of
life – regardless of your skin color, your sexuality.  Do we have problems?  Yes.  We
can talk about all of those things.  But to tell me those are things because you
are oppressed, it ain’t true.  And that idea needs to be decimated.”