If you support a majority of 535 people in Washington,
coercively, controlling the lives of 330 million Americans,
you do not support a quality. Nor.
Do you value progress? Welcome to Keith's night.
Don't tread on anyone in the libertarian Institute today.
We have Dave Rubin of what might be the most important book to
read on a day like today, don't burn this book.
Mr. Ruben. Thank you for your time.
Keith, thank you for the kind words on page 53.
You say censorship is not a solution to bad idea.
Silencing people never reforms them.
It simply pushes their bad ideas Underground when they're allow
where they're allowed to fester and grow.
So we know it's nice to do, but why should I someone who has an
ideology care about listening to other people's ideas?
Well, you know, it's funny because at some level you don't
have to care, but if you don't care and you just let bad ideas
puller if or proliferate, that's a that one got me for some
reason. If you just let these bad ideas
proliferate, if you just let them spread all over the place
and you don't counter these bad ideas.
Well, then bad ideas will will come for you.
Right? The the bad ideas of
authoritarianism of big government of state power of
top-down view of the world. These Things will come and get
you. So on one hand, you don't have
to listen to them. But you better watch out on the
other hand, you what you don't want.
Is people coming in and saying, you can't say these things.
Now look, we have very, very specific laws, laid out in the
Constitution around speech in effect.
You can say anything except for direct threats of violence.
You can't yell fire in a crowded theater with the intent of
causing chaos, and then we have, we have extremely extremely
Wrecked libel and slander laws that are almost never used
because they're so strict and cost so much money to get
through the legal system beyond that.
You can say whatever you want. What we're watching happen right
now, without getting into all of the specifics of what happened.
At the Capitol. The other day is that people are
being basically, D person. People are being wiped out from
the internet Order 66 from the internet right now because they
are not woke. That is a huge difference.
We're watching giant, Tech monoliths.
A hey, We and many ways are more powerful than the government
right now and will decide who can speak and eventually it'll
be decide. It'll be who can have a phone
and who can bank and who can be seen at restaurants and
everything else. So we're in a very dangerous
spot. This is exactly what I was
warning against in the book and that is not to say that.
There aren't bad people out there with bad ideas as I
referenced earlier, of course, there are, but if you just push
these people all the way, if you just say, okay.
Well, here's the Main Avenue of communication.
Asian and this huge chunk of people which by the way will be
an ever-expanding chunk of people.
Right? If you just say these ideas are
okay. Well, then you're constantly
going to be going. No.
No, actually I got to make this
idea now, okay, this idea now, okay, and then you got everybody
else on the outside. And if you say to people you
can't speak. You can't go to work.
We're going to lock in your house.
You get, you're going to get on, no files and are those, what are
you going to leave people with? It's some pretty bad stuff and
that's what we should be watching out for, and I fear
that the people that are that are doing these digital
assassinations right now. Now don't quite realize the road
that they're going down. Exactly.
So say that. Well, I am someone who believes
in social justice activism. I won't listen to Dave Rubin for
a whole hour, but maybe I'll give him 30 seconds to a minute,
just to maybe get a bird's-eye view.
What would you say? If you had a third of a quick
elevator pitch to the social justice activist, what would you
tell them? I believe in individual rights?
That is the foundation of the United States and that's what I
believe. I don't care what color you are,
it. Here with skin color you are.
I don't care what gender you are.
I believe, if you're a citizen of the United States, you should
be treated equally under the law.
Just like everybody else. What?
I don't believe in is equity. What I believe in is equality,
and those are different things. Meaning one is equality under
the law. Everyone's treated the same, but
then you got to work hard, some of its luck.
Some of us are born with more. Some of us are born with less.
Some of us have great physical Talent, some of us don't
etcetera, Etc, versus equity, which is where the state can
come in and rejigger Society. Where it's constantly dragging
these people up, which kind of sounds good.
But what that means is you also have to push these people down
and we're seeing that right now, just in the last day, Joe Biden,
gave a speech saying that when they start coming around for
covid help, economic help. They're going to help Black and
Hispanic and Pacific Islander businesses first, what does that
have to do with the government? That's actually
anti-constitutional. I think.
And I hope he sees some pushback legally, but in essence, if
you're a social justice Warrior, and you don't like, what I'm
saying, about identity politics, you should just think about.
What identity politics mean? Do you want to be judged
exclusively on your immutable characteristics?
The answer is nobody wants to be and yet so many people are
confused by these ideas. It's incredible.
The people telling us about equality are the wealthiest
people. You know, Obama AOC has
tremendous amount of wealth Now, The Young Turks who get billions
of views. Well, that's a few more views
than I think. I have they're the ones talking
about equality. There was a professor at
Diversity of Nevada. Las Vegas who said the elites
push equality, because it's undefinable and unachievable, so
they could always keep ushering in new Solutions under equality.
Why is it that the people who have so much attention?
So much airtime are the ones telling us about equality?
Yeah. Do you mean a quality or do you
mean Equity there just to be totally clear?
I'm equality of outcome. So I think are quite okay.
So, a meaning that meaning that we're Racing but in the end
Equity will make sure that we're all at the same spot.
Again. That sounds nice.
But what it is is its communist. What it says.
It means that we're gonna have to do all of these tricks
throughout Society to punish people who don't deserve to be
punished. I don't think any white person
is born guilty and should thus be punished because of the color
of their skin when they promise you, equality of outcome and
Equity, that's what they're basically telling you.
We have to punish these people. It's deeply dangerous.
The reason though that the elites love it that they love
Equity is because what they're telling you is we're going to
keep our success and our Elite people at this high level, that
no one will ever touch. Everyone else is just going to
rise to here. Now, what would happen in a
society that was about a quality which is what we've had in
America. For 250 years is you're going to
get all sorts of people, but the the lowest people will always be
rising and we know that that the poorest person in the United
States is lucky. By any standard in most of the
rest of the world, but what you'll have is you'll have great
disparity. So yes, we're going to have some
poor people and in America, we've had a very solid middle
class, but then you also get billionaires right?
You get super rich people. By the way, I don't begrudge
them that money. That's what you get in a society
that's based in a quality. People are going to be able to
get to that Elite level, what the elites now are saying is,
hey, we got what we need. We're good to go.
We're closing the door behind us.
The rest of you will just get Equity.
You're just going to get whatever.
Peanuts. We throw you and unfortunately
because these all these ideas sort of sound right?
Everyone should end up with the same thing.
Everyone should be equal in the sense of having the same stuff,
young people are Bamboozled by it.
And the thing is that time and again has shown that these
Marxist communist and socialist ideas are the worst ideas
throughout time. On page 172 you say, if you
admit that you don't know, something, you no longer have
the stress of lying to yourself, or anyone else.
You can enjoy the learning process and make it a mutual
exchange of ideas. Why is humility important?
Well, I think it's probably more important now than it's been in.
Let's say the last 20 years. Because everybody, because of
social media pretends, that they know everything about everything
at all times. Right?
Like the Iran nuclear deal, get signed suddenly people.
All Anonymous avatars on Twitter or suddenly telling you
everything you need to know about yellow cake.
Uranium. I mean, you know, whatever the
news of the day is net neutrality.
Somehow, people are all experts in internet service providers.
We have the parrot, climbers Accords, people who couldn't tie
their shoes. Suddenly can tell you everything
you need to know about CO2 emissions.
Everyone is constantly pretending.
They know everything about everything and I'm a Believer as
somebody that has interviewed an awful lot of bright people over
the years and I've been able to To attain more information from
them and no more and have a wider world view.
I don't know everything. And if I did know everything, I
certainly wouldn't be interviewing people for a
living. It would be the most boring
thing. You could possibly do.
If you really knew everything, I try to bring on people that I
can learn a little something from, and I suppose I've been
pretty good at it. The lack of humility is, it's a
Human Condition. It's an ego condition, but it's
also exacerbated by the social media condition, and we got to
get past it. We Get past it because we're
going to be just run by egomaniacal idiots.
If we don't, and maybe where they're already on page 182, you
say you say, every socialist or communist state tried to replace
god with government. Can you expand on that?
Yeah. This is one that it took me a
long time to come around on, and I explained it a little further
as I talked about how Jordan Pederson affected me, but I
think one of the things we're seeing right now is it seems
like Western Society is collapsing.
It seems like our institutions are collapsing.
Our media has absolutely collapsed.
Our trusted voices are collapsing.
Our educational system is collapsing or as my friend, Ben
Shapiro would say disintegrating as these things are happening.
It's not a coincidence. This what we're seeing in many
ways, and this, it saddens me to say this, as someone that just
wrote a whole book defending Classical liberalism, which in
many ways, is modern-day libertarianism.
We're seeing the end of liberalism.
We're seeing the end of a society that is purely secular
and that's a hard place for me to argue from Not a place that I
usually comfortable sitting in, but what it has become obvious
to me. Is that for a society to
operate, it must believe in something, bigger than itself.
We have god-given rights. That's what our Founders said.
Our Founders didn't say, we give you the rights and now we're
writing this document to protect you.
They said Freedom exists, humans are free by the divine, right of
God. We can just create a system to
protect that freedom. We've completely moved from that
idea to think that the state. Undo everything and in.
It's funny because even in the last few days, I've seen so many
people, well-known public atheists and Skeptics and
scientists who I've long admired, some who I consider
friends who are suddenly happy that Donald Trump is banned from
Twitter. They suddenly are for
censorship. And I think the reason, the
reason for that, it's not disconnected.
If you don't believe in something outside of yourself,
and you only believe that your own Belief system is enough.
You're going to be able to do a lot of really bad things in the
name of being good. And I think I think society's
need God as an organizing principle to allow people to
flourish, which is why it's very odd, but I find I guess it's not
very odd, but it's a little new to me.
Let's say, I find people of Faith to be much more open and
decent and willing to agree to disagree, then the purely
secular secularists, and we're watching a purely secular.
Eat itself right now. So I think Society needs God.
I see no way around it. My final question about your
book. Specifically, as you make an
excellent case for Classical liberalism in there is a lot.
There are a lot of criticisms of the classical liberal Freedom
position that well in this Society, there could be greed,
corruption, disinformation. And all this terrible stuff.
The problem with these is all of them.
Apply tenfold to government because you can't opt out of
funding government. And they don't face competition.
I'm curious. What is, is there anything
unique about the free market or the idea of voluntary Market
interactions that you think there is anything uniquely wrong
with that justifies coercive State intervention.
The short answer is no in that. I believe in the human mind.
I believe in human Ingenuity. I believe that you Keith will
live the best life for yourself that you're able to do in the
lest coercion that you have involved in that life
meaningful. And the government or whatever
structure is exist, would allow you to flourish the most, the
reason that I that I usually don't say I'm a pure
libertarian, although I love libertarian ideas.
I love even talking to the and cap, guys, like Michael malice.
And in many ways. I, I, you know, Classical
liberalism, we could Whittle it down into how it's different
than libertarianism or not. And I think those are, those are
things better suited for conferences than they are for
sort of the day-to-day political person.
But the reason that I usually don't Not say that.
I'm a pure libertarian is because I view government and I
you're going to see this as a very minor difference.
I view government is just the necessary evil in the system,
but you do need some organizing principles.
So for example, most Libertarians would say they want
no drug laws. I just don't believe that.
And I've debated this, by the way, with with many Libertarians
who do believe that there should be no drug laws.
I know that I don't want someone making meth next door to me.
Now. That doesn't mean that our War
on Drugs, has been good. It has not Doesn't mean I want
to put drug users in jail, I do not but I also think a society
has to have some of these uncomfortable guardrails.
But but to truly answer your question, I mean, Freedom Is The
Answer allowing people to figure out what is best for them?
Is the answer and I and that's why I try not to get lost in
these little differences at the end of the day.
If you feel slightly differently on how I feel about the drug
thing or generally Libertarians, are more open borders than I am.
Those are great debates to have and if we can keep our humanity
and then we can keep debating those things.
And by the way, Libertarians are extremely good about debating
ideas and very rarely. Will you end a debate with a
Libertarian? Where he's at the end telling
you you are you're a horrible person.
You try that with a leftist. It's a whole other thing.