The progressive left of today has deviated far from the “live-and-let-live” ethos of classical liberalism, Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, says in his new book, “Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason.”
Instead of being the champion of free speech—“I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”—the left of today now bans controversial speakers from university campuses and shuts down dissenting speech, Rubin argues.
“It has replaced the battle of ideas with a battle of feelings, while trading honesty with outrage,” Rubin said.
His book is a call to action for the people across America “who bite their tongues and keep their opinions secret every single day” because they’re “living in fear of the woke machine.”
From ‘Woke’ to ‘Awake’
Rubin once considered himself a member of the progressive left. But about four or five years ago, he noticed liberals seemed to have lost the open-mindedness that once formed the crux of their political identity.When he started defending free speech and speaking openly about his own political beliefs, he received a barrage of attacks from not just random Twitter accounts but also people who knew him well, including people who’d been invited to his wedding.
One day while he was getting a haircut, his stylist brought a mirror around to show him the back of his head. He was missing huge chunks of hair. He later discovered he’d developed an autoimmune disorder called alopecia areata, which caused his white blood cells to attack the cells in his hair follicles.
“They don’t know why it happens other than stress,” Rubin said.
Rubin’s doctor told him he might even lose his eyebrows and eyelashes. Rubin then decided to try an experimental treatment, which turned out to be even worse than the hair loss. He became hypersensitive to even mildly warm weather and developed sores and rashes all over his body.
Despite all this, he continued filming new episodes of his show, and it was also around this time that he shot his popular “Why I Left the Left” video for Prager University.
“If you fight and you stand up for yourself, you will get to the other side and you will be better,” Rubin said. Fortunately, his hair has also grown back along the way.
Many people consciously or unconsciously self-censor their opinions out of “fear that you will be destroyed by the mob, that the Twitter people will come after you, that you could lose your job, that you could lose friendships, that relatives will block you,” Rubin said.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, I can just kind of be quiet for a while,’ and this thing will magically get better. Society will magically reset. But it won’t,” he said.
It’s like “the story of the frog and the slowly boiling pot. He kind of thinks it’s OK until he croaks.”
Finding a Mentor
In his book, Rubin offers several recommendations for navigating this “age of unreason,” and one of them is to find a good mentor.In 2018, Rubin went on a global tour with the prominent clinical psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Along the way, he saw how Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life” inspired thousands upon thousands of people. They were standing up straight with their shoulders back; they were cleaning their room first instead of trying to change the world; and they were fixing lifelong habits, addictions, and poor choices.
One night, he had dinner with Peterson and a few others at the London apartment of his friend Douglas Murray, a best-selling author and journalist.
Murray happened to have a pet cat.
“I’m very allergic to cats, so I was avoiding the cat all night, but I kept thinking, ‘If Jordan doesn’t pet this cat, then he’s breaking one of his own rules,’” namely to “pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.”
“I’m thinking about it all night long,” Rubin said, and finally, as they were putting on their coats, Jordan sat down by the cat’s bed by the front door, and repeatedly petted the cat with “long, very comforting strokes.”
Rubin tells the story partly as a joke, but partly to underscore how Peterson lived up to the rules he set forth.
“It doesn’t make him Jesus. It doesn’t make him perfect. But we need more people in the world that try to do that,” Rubin said.
“His message was: Do right by yourself and you could do right by the world. I saw him do that.”
Touring with Peterson had an indelible effect on Rubin’s worldview, as he learned the importance of humility, building his character, and accepting time-tested truths.
Equal Rights, Not Equal Outcomes
“You may be lucky. You may be unlucky. Maybe you come from some money. Maybe you grew up poor, but society can’t rejigger all of those things to make us all equal. And actually, it shouldn’t do that. Because every time it would lift somebody up, it would have to take somebody down,” Rubin said.If one student is admitted to a university because of the color of their skin, another student will be rejected—also because of the color of their skin, he said.
Ironically, it’s the people purporting to be anti-racists, who constantly subject others to a racial lens of looking at the world, Rubin said.
“I don’t think we can create a perfect system because we are imperfect. So I would rather give everybody equal rights,” he said.
In the midst of this pandemic, as people reflect on the things that truly matter to them, Americans should be wary of those who “are just obsessed with burning everything down,” Rubin said.
As the world recovers from this crisis, “let’s remember what was good about the old world. And by the old world, I mean the 2019 world, the beginning-of-2020 world. Let’s remember what was good about it, but then take some of the new things we’re thinking about and build a better world for the future,” Rubin said.
