Dave Rubin’s ode to the so-called ‘independent thinker‘

Tek

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Don’t Burn This Book is not a serious work. It is, in fact, extremely lazy, bearing all the hallmarks of a project that was knocked together over a few wet weekends. The host of the Rubin Report can be an engaging, likable interviewer; he obviously has a knack for setting his guests at ease. Alone, however, he is both less substantial and more grating.

Rubin loves to talk about ‘ideas’ as an abstraction, yet he does not love to talk about ideas themselves. For example, he constantly rails against the progressive left, yet quotes almost no left-wing thinkers — the ‘almost’ is generous, because I am not sure such luminaries as Ben Affleck and Cenk Uygur qualify. We therefore find such odd assertions like that the ‘left’ believes ‘Democrats = good, Republicans = bad’. Can anyone who lived through the recent Democratic primaries look me in the eye and say ‘the left’ united around the universal virtue of Democrats? These people hate each other. That this bogus premise leads Rubin to warble on for pages about Democrats backing slavery in the past only makes it more preposterous.

Rubin wants to offer readers who are disaffected with left-wing ideology ‘classically liberal principles that stand the test of time’. He references his classically liberal inspirations — ‘some of history’s greatest thinkers, including John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Jefferson’. He then proceeds to never mention their works again, let alone discuss them. John Stuart Mill is referenced once, while Canadian comedian Steven Crowder is referenced twice (though as ‘Stephen’ and ‘Steven’, so perhaps Rubin thinks there are two Canadian comedians with the surname ‘Crowder’).

For Rubin, classical liberalism is a vague commitment to the principle ‘live and let live’. Why? ‘Individual rights’! Where do those rights come from? Who knows! What are their boundaries? Well, Rubin thinks we should legalize marijuana, for example, but he thinks heroin should be banned.

 

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