Dave Rubin on Finding Truth in Media

TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS 'DIRECT MESSAGE' WITH DAVE RUBIN:

Published on Ora TV on May 4, 2016:

We hear about the 24 hour news cycle all the time -- the reality is, due to our fast paced lives and ever splintering attention spans, stories really only stay in the news for 24 hours. And when stories do stick around for more than 24 hours, the cable news shows and online outlets feel the need to deliver it to us in the fastest, flashiest and often sloppiest fashion possible. In the political world, this need for excitement leads us to going from scandal to scandal or he said / she said, instead of focusing on the real issues that affect our every day lives.

I mention this never-ending matrix of information because I find along they way, instead of talking about the right things, our national conversation almost always talks about the wrong things.We debate on whether Trump's wall is racist, rather than discussing whether a nation should protect its borders as it sees fit. We talk about a 15 dollar minimum wage without questioning whether it will lead to McDonald's replacing all it's employees with iPads. We argue about income inequality without really taking the time to think about what the role of government should be. On top of all this, we then get our news from a pundit class filled with former politicians and campaign people who pretend they're neutral, when they usually couldn't be anything further from that. Of course, in this election, the pundits almost all predicted everything wrong the whole time, especially on the Republican side, but for some reason we still turn to them to predict how the future of America will play out.

When you add up the fast news cycle with networks who just want views and online creators who just want clicks, you get exactly what we're left with -- a lot of noise. Often it's seemingly impossible to figure out what is true, or even who is trying to tell you the truth. Throw in an American education system which has been co-opted by safe space and trigger warnings instead of critical thinking, and you have a toxic mess designed to cater to the simplest and worst parts of ourselves. The more you scream, bloviate and demonize, the more it somehow seems you are right. Righteous indignation has become the new truth but it's actually just a bunch of bullshit... which is why on The Rubin Report, I try to focus on big ideas and not get bogged down in the daily grind of nonsensical news stories or the endless horse race of the political season.

My guest this week is Yaron Brook, the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. Just by saying the name 'Ayn Rand' there, I know some people's heads will explode. Ayn was an author and philosopher best known for her books 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged.' She created the philosophy known as Objectivism, which she described as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Ayn and her work are revered by many people on the right and despised by many people on the left. People on the right tend to love her emphasis on the individual while people on the left tend to revile her dismissal of the collective. So much of what's happening in this country, from the Bernie revolution, to the social justice warriors movement to the rise of Trump can be explained, or at least discussed, within the prism of Objectivism. I'm going to dive deep into it with Yaron and see if we can come up with some answers to solve the problems of today. What is man's highest pursuit? What is the role of government? Can we live for ourselves and still help others? These are just a few of the questions I want to get into. Whether you agree or disagree with all the answers that you'll hear is largely irrelevant. We need to discuss big issues so that our conversations aren't dominated by little minds.