Rez Crypto
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

“…because he isn’t on your team?”

“…the mere fact you assume he is…”

You’re being rather reductive with these statements and thereby producing what is a classic straw-man.

I could roll my eyes and suggest that you don’t like Stalin ‘just because he isn’t on your team’, but I’d wager that you wouldn’t see that as a particularly useful reduction. You (I assume) disagree with Stalin philosophically, which is why any notional teams exist in the first place. Your disagreement doesn’t exist because of a difference in teams, the difference in teams exists because of your disagreement.

“… the mere fact you assume he is a closet conservative irritates you enough to write this rant?”

He’s stated multiple times he is a ‘classical liberal’ which in the US translates to something akin to ‘right-libertarian’, so he’s not closeted in that respect. He supported Gary Johnson and seems to now be a fan of Austin Petersen. You might (rightly) argue the difference of right-libertarians with mainstream US conservatism, but it’s also clear that right-libertarians caucus and collaborate with the GOP regularly.

“ The reason I believe people are drawn to his show is because he allows the speaker to lay their case and for the viewer to discern for themselves the validity of the claims.”

I would offer that the people being ‘drawn’ are, by and large, politically homogeneous. On one of his videos, he asked something to the effect of ‘who do you trust in media?’ and the comments had a very high degree of uniformity (Shapiro! Milo! Crowder! etc).

The premise that Rubin is doing something new or unusual is somewhat amusing. Decent interviewers that let their guests speak have been around forever.

As far as simply saying whatever they want — I mean, heck, someone like Dennis Prager can go on, say, ‘Fox and Friends’, or Crowder’s channel, or Shapiro’s podcast (etc) and say whatever he wants.

The difference, is that (it seems to me) perhaps some subset of people believe that Rubin is ‘a liberal’ who is ‘finally listening to us’ and just maybe will ‘convert the other the lefty heathens’ by bringing the holy conservative/right-libertarian/new-right word… but the plot twist here is that he’s a ‘classical liberal’ (that is: not a liberal), and doesn’t have much of a liberal or lefty audience, if any at all.

So, he’s just another quasi-trendy right-leaning host, of which there are plenty. But on his set the ambiance (insert French accent) is nice, I guess.