Bishop Barron interviews Dave Rubin on political polarisation, civil discourse, and the state of the American right
Bishop Robert Barron sits down with political commentator Dave Rubin for a wide-ranging conversation about culture, politics, and the decline of civil discourse.
Summary
Starting from his own political journey from the progressive left through classical liberalism to his current support for Donald Trump, Dave Rubin joins Bishop Robert Barron to discuss the deterioration of civil public conversation in America, tracing it from Rubin's own political journey from the progressive left through classical liberalism to his current support for Donald Trump. Rubin argues that the racialization and genderization of political identity — driven by decades of institutional capture — is what transformed ordinary liberalism into the toxic tribalism visible today.
A significant portion of the conversation is devoted to the simultaneous loss of three major voices on the American right: Charlie Kirk (killed on September 10th, 2025), Jordan Peterson (sidelined by serious illness), and Dennis Prager (left effectively a quadriplegic after a debilitating fall). Rubin argues that losing these three stabilising figures in short order left the right without its most effective voices at a critical moment, contributing directly to the infighting and fringe elements now visible on that side of the political spectrum. Rubin describes Peterson in particular as a modern prophet, and recounts in detail the year and a half he spent touring with Peterson across roughly 20 countries — including a vivid Dublin story of a father and son who reconciled after seven years apart having both independently read Peterson's book.
The two also discuss anti-semitism on both left and right in depth: on the left, Rubin argues it flows from intersectional logic that casts Jews as hyper-privileged oppressors, compounded by a fabricated historical narrative about Palestinian statehood; on the right, he identifies a mix of principled isolationism, fringe replacement theology, and a dangerous drift toward positions that are simultaneously anti-Jewish and anti-American. Bernie Sanders' legacy is addressed as primarily cultural rather than legislative: by repackaging socialism with race and gender, he softened the ground for open socialism and eventually what Rubin describes as the merger of progressivism and Islamism now visible in figures like New York City mayoral figure Zohran Mamdani. Bill Maher is presented as an instructive anomaly — a classical liberal who has held his ground against wokeism but whose continued voting alignment with the Democratic Party Rubin finds incoherent.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introductions and the lost art of family argument
Bishop Barron: I'm delighted to be here with Dave Rubin — one of the best culture and political commentators on the scene today, someone I've known for a long time. Glad you came to Rochester, Minnesota to be with us today.
Dave Rubin: I'm thrilled to be here and I appreciate the kind words. Before the cameras started rolling, we were trying to figure out how long it's been since we broke bread — metaphorically speaking, I suppose. It's been about seven or eight years probably, and we had a nice run for about three or four years where we did a lot of shows together. I think we tried to unpack a lot of the mess that we now find ourselves in — probably in a worse situation now. So it's a pleasure to be with you and hopefully we can make some sense of things.
Bishop Barron: We will try for an hour. We can probably solve everything. What do you think?
Dave Rubin: Pretty much everything. Yeah.
Bishop Barron: I first met you about nine years ago. I was auxiliary bishop out in LA and I forget now whether we reached out to you or your people reached out to us. The younger people on my staff said, "Oh God, yeah, Dave Rubin — go on that, that would be great." And I went down to your home in LA where your studio was and we had a great hour-long conversation. And then Rabbi Wolpe and I sat down with you — Rabbi Wolpe, who was Don Rickles' rabbi, that's how I remember him. But we talked about Christmas, Easter, or something along those lines. It was an interesting conversation. And then in an earlier iteration of this show, when I was still in California, we met in Carpinteria, that lovely seaside town, and we had a conversation. Then COVID intervened. Then I was sent to Minnesota and you moved from California to Florida.
Dave Rubin: I moved to the free state of Florida. We're both refugees of California, of sorts.
Bishop Barron: And of course all during those years I was following you, watching your show and listening to your commentary. One of the marks of your style is a willingness to talk to people across the ideological spectrum, which gives you a lot of range and a lot of credibility. But it's also born of the fact that you've journeyed yourself — in the course of your public career — from a more progressive leftist through classical liberalism to now a more clearly conservative position. Maybe let's start with that. Tell me a little bit of that story of how you got from left to right.
Dave Rubin: Before we dive into the purely political version of that, I would say it was born out of something that wasn't political. It was born out of just the way my family always was. During holidays, during birthdays, during any event where we were all around the table, we talked about everything. My dad arguing with my uncle, my aunt arguing with my mom — everybody arguing about everything. It could quite literally be anything: foreign policy, abortion, taxes. We were sort of political in that sense all the time. I'm the oldest of my generation, so I was usually sat at the kids' table, but I was always working my way to the adult table. I would be right at the end and I didn't chime in that much, but I would listen.
The interesting thing — and I think this is maybe where I learned the thing that you're talking about — is that at the end, when dessert was served, everyone stopped. Nobody was angry at anybody. Nobody stormed out. We never had a family breakdown like that. It was just: we're going to argue. It would get heated — you're talking about serious stuff, it would definitely get heated at times — but then everyone could just put it away.
Bishop Barron: But you didn't hate each other at the end of the day.
Dave Rubin: No. And it's a lost art. How do we get that back?
From progressive left to classical liberalism
Bishop Barron: That's the great challenge of our time.
Dave Rubin: It's gotten much worse. When I'm telling you this, I'm a child of the '80s, so we're talking about the '80s — this is pre-internet and everything else. Now the temperature, especially post-COVID and all of the things related to how people respond to Trump, everything has gotten much, much more toxic obviously. But I think that piece I learned from my family — and these were sort of New York, I would say liberal in the classically liberal sense for the most part — meant that you were going to agree to disagree at times. You were going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with people and not take it personally. I was born into that and I don't think I even realized until much later in my life what a gift that was.
Bishop Barron: You can test my ideas, but I don't hate you. I think you're wrong, but I love you. And that's why — people, I think, when we sat down the first time, people were like, "What do you mean you're sitting down with Bishop Barron?" And you probably got some version of, "What do you mean you're sitting down with Dave Rubin?"
Dave Rubin: Why wouldn't we? I'm not that interested in sitting down with someone who is going to be interested in beheading me after — that would be a problem. But I don't mind if we have differences. And I don't even know to what extent we even have huge differences anymore. But if they're theological or political or whatever it might be, as long as we respect each other as individuals — and particularly in an American sense, if we believe in this country and we believe in the sovereignty of the individual and that the country was founded for different people to be here — then it's great. It's actually great. It's what makes America so special.
So I was sort of born into that. And then in terms of my political evolution: basically by the time I was more public about things, I was on radio for a while in New York, I was on SiriusXM, and then I moved to LA in 2013 and was part of the Young Turks network. That's where people started knowing me, and that was hardcore leftism. But it was before wokeism. What it really seemed to me was that the progressives were basically liberals on steroids. Liberals will sit and chat with you and they're pleasant and do what we're doing right now, and it's fine and we can walk away. Progressives were angry. They had this righteous indignation and they were yelling about everything all the time. And there was something very attractive about that — a certain energy, like, "My God, these people are so right about everything and everyone else is of course a racist and a bigot."
But after about a year of working there — now we're rolling into 2014 — something did not add up for me. I started thinking: this can't be right. We can't be so morally and politically right about everything and everyone else be a bigot and wrong about everything. And then also, because I was so in it over there, I started looking around and thinking these aren't the most thoughtful people. They're not the kindest people. All of the things we're told to believe about progressive people, they actually were quite the reverse.
So my evolution happened quite literally on camera. I sat down with people like Dennis Prager. I sat down with Ben Shapiro. I sat down very famously with Larry Elder and he kind of smacked me around about systemic racism. And even though I had differences with them on big things — abortion, all sorts of stuff — what I always found was that the conservatives at the end of the conversation were like, "Boy, that was great. Let's do that again. Let's have dinner. Why don't we continue this and find other ways to explore these ideas?" Whereas the progressives — the more you talked to other people, the more they wanted to push you away.
So at this point, the ideology I believe in as an American is still classical liberalism. But I often say that defending my classical liberal beliefs has become a conservative position.
Bishop Barron: Right.
Dave Rubin: And that's the thing. I think maybe that's why I find common cause with so many people that others think I wouldn't. In a weird way, the liberals need the conservatives to guard the fort. Liberals are very good at — we can have our differences and hopefully we can build institutions. That's what classical liberals really did in this country. But they're not good at ever saying, "Okay, guys, enough's enough." And because of that, the progressives were basically able to take over liberalism.
Buckley, Chesterton, and the collapse of civil debate
Bishop Barron: Something happened. Before we went on camera, we talked about William F. Buckley, whom I used to watch as a kid. What I really admire about Buckley is that he was a great friend with someone like John Kenneth Galbraith — with whom he had profound disagreements about politics, economics, everything. But it's lovely to watch the two of them talk. They obviously liked each other. They were friends and they were disagreeing vehemently, but you knew they went out for dinner afterwards. You knew they had a drink together. Or go way back — another hero of mine, G.K. Chesterton, famously debated with atheists across England, with George Bernard Shaw, but they were great friends. They went to the pub afterwards and they literally danced on the tables. Something happened that made that impossible. And as you say, the righteous indignation, the anger — where did that come from? And why particularly on the left did that become such a problem?
Dave Rubin: First, to the type of person that can do that — who would want it any other way? Would you really prefer to sit around with a bunch of people that you agree with on all things? Even from a religious perspective, I have no doubt that when you're engaged in the conversations you enjoy the most, it's because someone is looking at something and going, "I analyze this a little bit differently than you." And then you get into it. That's quite literally what makes us different from the animals. We have a brain. We can use logic and reason. That is the most exciting thing about being a human. So the idea that we should just sit with people who we agree with the entire time is completely absurd.
Bishop Barron: The tribalism — that's the word, isn't it? Politics has always been a divisive business, but it wasn't tribal the way it is today. Go back to LBJ and his Republican opponents like Everett Dirksen back in the 1960s — again, they could sit down and have a cocktail at the end of the day together. Something turned us into this tribalism.
The racialization of politics and the rise of wokeism
Dave Rubin: I think what happened — first off, most people talk about the long march through the institutions. There was a radicalized several generations, really starting in the late '60s, going through the institutions, where people were being taught radically anti-American ideas, soft socialism, and all of those things. But then I think what really took place was probably around 2010 to 2015, towards the middle to end of the Obama years — when the race part of all of this, which then also turned into the gender part, when they focused on that. Old-school socialism would focus on economic issues, but when they turned economic issues — which they would claim their ultimate goal was equity, meaning equal outcomes — when they added race to that, that's when everything went crazy. Because then people started thinking that their immutable characteristics were the most important thing.
Your skin color is a thing. Your gender, your sexuality — those are not the most important thing. They are a thing. But once you put that on somebody — and this is what they did to really two or three generations of young people — once they said, "Your skin color, your sexuality, your gender, these are the most important things about you, and not only are they the most important things, they will define you and allow you to believe a certain set of ideas" — once they did that, they put people in this horrific box. What a horrific thing to think: I'm a woman, so I must think this way. And what it really did — and now we're seeing the fruits of this — is they basically said if you are a straight white man, you are the worst of all things.
And you may remember our friend Jordan Peterson, years ago — about eight years ago — he was on Joe Rogan and he warned: he said if you think what's going on with this woke left now is bad, wait till you see the reaction to it in a couple of years. And I think we've seen some of that in this past year.
So I think it was the racialization and genderization and sexualization of everything. You can also argue there were internet elements, algorithmic elements, and cultural elements. There were a series of things that led us to this strange moment.
Universities, the long march through the institutions, and 2020
Bishop Barron: Let's talk about universities a little bit, because you mentioned the long march through the institutions. Gramsci's famous line — a long time ago, but then adopted by a lot of more radical thinkers in the late '60s and '70s. If Chris Rufo is right, he argues that a lot of those people didn't go away — they went into the university system as professors. And then you can see the influence of French postmodernism coming into our university system by the end of the '60s and '70s, and you get the Frankfurt School critique. All of that, in my judgment, is what morphed into wokeism. It just stayed for probably a couple of generations in the universities and came pouring out in 2020 onto the streets. But it was a long gestation — this demonization of America, of the West, of Western values, a tendency to divide the world into oppressor and oppressed. All those things we recognize as wokeism just stayed there. True or false? And if true, what's the solution?
Dave Rubin: I do agree with Chris Rufo's commentary on that — that these guys really focused on that. One of the other differences between small-c conservatives and this radical left movement is that conservative-leaning people go out and do things, whether that's building a family, building a business, or volunteering. They're actually doers, generally. Whereas the other side was basically like: our ideological notions come first. So we will just take over institutions slowly to change people into what we want them to be.
And I think that also is what led us to where we are. Because when 2020 hit — first off, there's a tremendous amount of Trump derangement syndrome. And I say that as someone who didn't even vote for Trump the first time. Obviously I'm a huge supporter of the president now, which I'm happy to get into. But then you throw in COVID, which clearly broke all sorts of brains and exposed the mainstream media for lying about so many things. And then it's all to the backdrop of the Charlottesville incident — "very fine people on both sides" — which was a massive hoax, and a series of hoaxes.
And now you've got kids — everybody, but I think it really hit younger people the most — who are missing graduation, missing prom, missing their sports, missing their whole childhood. They're locked in a room. They're online all the time. They're playing video games. Their brains are being muddled. Then you throw in the BLM thing, where suddenly you're being told you have to stay in your house, you can't go to grandma's funeral, you have to mask — but for social justice, you can be out on the streets and you can burn down a Pep Boys. And you have politicians quite literally on their knees at the Capitol with kente cloth. And it was all such an assault on the rational mind. It was so obviously self-contradicting. None of it made any sense.
But unfortunately, the sensemaking apparatus that we had in this country had been obliterated. We didn't have William F. Buckleys anymore. We had some people online. I'd like to think I played a tiny role maybe in helping some people see what was going on. But we didn't have enough people that were going to try to hold a decent center. And then the radicals of the left just saw that. That's why someone like Bill Maher seems like such an anomaly now — because he's still trying to hold the classically liberal position. It's not that I've abandoned that. I happen to think that via voting, Trump is the way to defend most of that stuff. Bill just doesn't agree on that. But it's why Maher is such an anomaly. You hear him speak and you're like, "Oh, that's a liberal." Except it just has nothing to do with the Democratic Party of 2026.
Jordan Peterson as a modern prophet
Bishop Barron: Let's talk about those two figures you referenced — first Jordan Peterson, then Bill Maher. Both interesting characters. 2020, which I call the annus horribilis — this terrible year. And you just delineated exactly why. That summer of 2020, I'm in California and the riots. I watched the news thinking, what is happening in our country? I remember going out to the Santa Inés Mission because there was a mob forming to tear down the statue of Serra. We organized a defense. We went out there and had Mass, and people came, and the Knights of Columbus came on their motorcycles. We just kind of stood our ground and the mob went away and never came back. But that's my image from that summer — the country coming apart.
And I remember at that time, Jordan Peterson had had a huge cultural impact, but I think he was sick then. He was kind of off the stage publicly. And your comment was that that contributed to the struggle right then, because he was providing a certain moral ballast, a certain intellectual clarity, and suddenly he was gone and there wasn't the leadership that was needed. Say more about that.
Dave Rubin: Remember a moment ago I referenced what Jordan said on Joe Rogan's show?
Bishop Barron: Yeah.
Dave Rubin: What Jordan was doing was acting as the dam. Basically, for whatever bad ideas were going to be the reaction on the right, Jordan was the force field against them. I mean that quite literally. As you know, I toured with him for a year and a half. We did about 120 shows in about 20 countries. When I think back on it now, it feels like a dream to me. Did I actually do that? It was so absolutely incredible.
And what I saw — and I think I can speak to you in religious terms on this — I honestly believe he is a modern prophet. I believe that what I saw him do changed the lives of hundreds of thousands, and really millions, of people. But I saw literal examples of it. I'll tell you the best example.
We were in Dublin for a show, in a very old Irish theater — really, really beautiful, kind of run down, but it just felt perfect. It was a really long day. We'd had a ton of travel. We'd just gotten into Dublin that morning. Jordan would do endless press all day long, and he actually wasn't feeling that great at the moment. I remember telling him, "Jordan, you've got to rest a little bit. It's just a lot."
The show ends, and when you're performing in one of these theaters, you don't walk out the main entrance because obviously you're going to get mobbed. You usually just walk out a little side entrance, which is kind of funny because it's usually just in an alley. At this time, we didn't have any security with us. It was me, Jordan, his wife, and a tour manager. That's it. It's now 2:00 a.m. Long day. He does the meet-and-greets, and I never once saw the guy disrespect anybody. He looked everybody in the eye, shook their hand, asked their name, took the picture. Everything I ever saw the man do was an exact avatar for what he wrote about and talked about.
Anyway, we walk out. It's about 2 a.m. We're very tired, and in the dark alley about 20 yards away we see two guys and there's some kind of commotion. For a moment we all froze, thinking there might be some kind of security issue, because they started moving towards us. As they get closer, we see it's a man probably in his mid to late 50s and a young kid, probably early 20s. They both have tears in their eyes. And you will not believe this: they tell us they're a father and son who had had a falling out about seven years before, had not seen each other in seven years, both independently read Jordan's book, came alone to the show, saw each other at the show, and made amends. I just got chills on my spine telling you that. I've told that story 50 times and it happens every time.
What he did right there — what could you possibly ask a human to do more with their life? And so that correction — he basically gave people the tools to clean up your room and sit up straight with your shoulders back. He gave people enough of the tools to fix themselves. So when he disappeared during that period — and it was also the height of COVID, BLM, and everything — he was desperately needed.
And I would say Jordan right now, subsequent to really since August of 2025 — Charlie was killed obviously September 10th of 2025, and Jordan's been gone for all of that — I think a lot of the infighting we've seen on the right has been directly related to losing Jordan Peterson and losing Charlie Kirk. We're also slightly getting Dennis Prager back right now. I did just see him a week or two ago and he's making more appearances, but in essence he's a quadriplegic now. He has his mind, thank God, and he's sharp and his spirit is unbelievable. But in essence, we lost three of our best warriors at the worst possible time, and we lost them in short order.
Bishop Barron: That's very interesting. I didn't see the connection of the three of them. I met Prager for the first time at this gospel thing with Jordan Peterson — a bunch of us around a table just parsing the gospel. Dennis was there and I'd never met him before. Very charmed by him, both his public persona and privately.
But yeah, let's talk about that connection. Jordan Peterson — I've said to him, you live up to your name because you're like the River Jordan. A lot of people cross you to get to religion. I know that for a fact. A lot of people who come to me discovered me through him. Conversations he and I had online, and they thought, "Oh, that's interesting." He himself isn't quite there yet — he'll be very honest about his ability to believe or whatever — but he's conducted a lot of people. And he did it first with what you're talking about, the rules of life, calling upon basic ethical convictions. But then he began opening up the Bible. I remember saying to my brother bishops at a meeting, "Brothers, there's this fellow out there who's not one of us. He's not a cleric. He's not formally trained in theology. But in person, tens of thousands of young men especially, and then millions online, are coming to hear his Bible presentations. He's doing something here that we're not doing as effectively." So he was, in my judgment, a servant of the grace of God.
Jordan Peterson on truth, faith, and Jacob's ladder
Dave Rubin: I think there's no doubt about that whatsoever. Many, many nights on tour when we would do the Q&A, the question that would come up probably the most was: do you believe in God? And Jordan's answer was pretty consistent over that year and a half. I saw him refine his answer. He didn't really like the question because he always felt, "How are you going to ask me this in a Q&A at the end of everything? This is a ten-hour conversation." Sometimes he would do a whole show on that question actually.
His basic answer on whether God exists, I think, is the perfect synthesis of what Jordan is. You have to remember he's a clinical psychologist and an educator, an academic. And then he also obviously is someone who has deep, deep respect for religion and belief. He's trying to piece these two things together, which all the great thinkers really try to do.
So his answer usually was something to the effect that when he was in his 20s, he believed in telling the truth for truth's sake because he thought that would ultimately be the best outcome — no matter what. It doesn't mean it's going to be a good outcome or easy, but it would be the only way you could in essence add any order to the world. And that in and of itself is a leap of faith. That's obviously empirically true: if you tell the truth for the sake of the truth, how could the nature of reality be such that by putting more truth into the world, it would ultimately do worse? Now, it might cause a lot of pain. There could be all sorts of problems on the way for the truth tellers. But I like that version of it. It's the right way for someone who wants to keep their analytic mind to the best of their ability and also to believe in something beyond themselves — to synthesize those two things. I will tell the truth because ultimately I think that will be the best outcome.
Bishop Barron: That's a leap of faith. It's not empirically true.
Dave Rubin: And I like that.
Bishop Barron: I've had this conversation with him a couple of times, and I'm speaking now as a philosopher and theologian because we're coming at the same thing from different angles. St. Anselm says God is that than which nothing greater can be thought — the famous definition of God, which is really an anti-definition. But Jordan talking about your highest possible aspiration — what is it that's driving your mind not just to these particular truths but to that commitment to truth? I don't want just particular true things. I want my life to be about the truth. I want my life to be about what's good. You're heading toward that than which nothing greater can be thought. St. Augustine: "Our heart is restless till it rests in thee." That's Jordan Peterson all over the place. You've done this, you've done that. I've sought this good, that good. I'm not satisfied. There's always a higher aim. When you say in principle the highest aim is the governing force of my life — that's what it means to believe in God, I would say from a theological perspective.
Dave Rubin: That's very much Jordan's perspective. One of the best speeches I ever saw him give — you can find it online — was his speech two years ago at the ARC conference in London.
Bishop Barron: Oh gosh, yes. I was there.
Dave Rubin: Oh! How did we not see each other there? We've mentioned a few events that we were both at that we didn't see each other. But his speech at the end of that ARC conference where he talks about Jacob's ladder — why you want to build Jacob's ladder — because what he's doing is taking both worlds. He's taking this world we are in right now and saying, "But you can get to something else." And it's not abandoning his belief in logic and reason and all of those things. I think most people exist in that space. So to not have Jordan in normal times is not great. To not have him in times like we are in right now, politically particularly — it's hugely damaging.
Charlie Kirk: the microphone and the coalition
Bishop Barron: Now make the connection to Charlie, because I mentioned it before the show — he was supposed to be in that chair three days after he died.
Dave Rubin: So we had a text exchange. He was due on this show on September 13th and we had a text exchange — he was looking forward to seeing you in Minnesota. God bless you, Charlie. And then two days later he's dead. Heartbreaking to me personally, to a lot of people.
Bishop Barron: But also, as you suggest correctly, I think heartbreaking to the country. And what was it? There was something about him that was a glue that was at least holding the right together, but was also drawing a lot of people to his perspective. It wasn't like he was just defending some little niche perspective. He was a kind of evangelist for what I would say are basic American and spiritual values.
Dave Rubin: He was constantly widening the tent of what will save America. And I don't think any of us — and I include myself in this, even though I was quite close with him and we toured together. Before I toured with Jordan, Charlie and I and Candace Owens — this feels many lifetimes ago — we would tour and I was the lefty. Charlie was the conservative. We would go to campuses and they'd pull fire alarms and throw things at us and all the usual stuff. One night — I forget what school we were at — we were walking to the stage and some kid throws a hot cup of coffee at us. It hits me and Charlie, mostly me, and I'm dressed in a jacket like I normally do, and I'm like, "Ah, it's going to ruin my coat." And Charlie looks at me and he didn't even flinch. He just goes, "Well, that's why I wear a t-shirt." All of the craziness was baked in with him.
But none of us realized how vital Charlie was to holding something sane in America. Charlie was able to talk to other people about deep political disagreements — as we referenced earlier, why that's important — but he did it more than anyone. He genuinely did it more than anyone because he would go to college campuses and do it and obviously paid the ultimate price for doing that. He would deal with all of the screaming, hysterical people right to their face and never lost his cool. He was a magician at that.
He was also deeply involved in the political world, which is a whole other thing. He was absolutely integral in getting Trump elected the first time and reelected. The last time I saw him was at Mar-a-Lago at a PragerU event. We were standing down in the mezzanine and Trump walked by on the rafters up there. I was standing next to Charlie — he was really tall — and Trump comes and waves at everybody. And I said, "Charlie, that could be you one day." And he goes, "God help us all." With that funny smile that he had. He had an unbelievably bright future, obviously. Missing him right now.
I think what his death did, oddly, was allow all of the weird elements — the alliance that Trump created, if you think about it, the MAGA alliance — it's hard to say what it is in terms of pure political belief. You've got Bobby Kennedy on the same side as the Christian conservatives. Bobby Kennedy is a lifelong liberal whose last name is Kennedy, and he's obviously different on abortion, medical marijuana, gay marriage, whatever. But they all were like, "Wow, we can fit in this thing because it's America, and America allows for these differences. America actually celebrates these differences." That's why every Trump rally I've ever been to was a party. Even if you polled everyone there on what they agree on, it might actually be very little. But the bigger thing was: we love this country and we're not here to behead people who are different from us.
Charlie was doing that at the ground level with young people while Trump was doing it at the wide cultural and political level. And in some sense, you could argue Charlie's version of it was more important, because we already talked about how the institutions were so brainwashing these kids that he became the only off-ramp for them. So him going down — I don't think anyone could have predicted how bananas certain parts of the right would go. And in some cases, people that I think Charlie believed were his friends were dancing on his grave and sullying his legacy. So I've tried desperately to honor him the best way I can and not use Charlie's death for my own political purposes, where I see a lot of people saying, "Oh, Charlie said this and that means this." I really try not to do that. I play clips of Charlie and say, here's what Charlie said.
The right's infighting and the fight against extremism
Bishop Barron: Let's stay with that for a second, because we've talked about how the left went crazy — wokeism is kind of liberalism run amok. But we're witnessing now, as you've been saying, elements of the right going crazy and losing the narrative and turning to forms of anti-semitism and all kinds of craziness. And I think you're right in saying that Charlie Kirk was very helpful in keeping that together, keeping it sane. What happened on the right? Why is the right splintering the crazy way that it is?
Dave Rubin: Again, I would connect it to that commentary by Jordan on Joe Rogan's show about what will happen one day. Charlie — there was this weird moment. If you remember those few days after Charlie was assassinated, I happened to be in New York City for a 9/11 event. I did all these 9/11 events and I did a whole bunch of stuff on Fox that day about Charlie. I was supposed to be there for 9/11, but they ended up bringing me in for all this Charlie stuff.
And I remember thinking — and I was in New York City for 9/11. I was there for it. My dad saw the second plane hit from his office. I can tell you all sorts of stories about that. But I remember thinking that day: in a weird way, this feels bigger than 9/11. And I know that is in some sense a crazy statement to make, but it felt right in the immediacy of it.
If you look at what has happened over the last eight months with a certain set of people — and if you want to name names we can name names, I don't even think it's necessary, people know who we're talking about — Charlie wanted to keep MAGA alive. And Charlie loved freedom. What was the word on his shirt when he died? It said "freedom." Freedom incorporates a lot of different things — a lot of different things that maybe the secular libertarian coming into this movement feels differently about than the Christian conservative. But can they exist in the same country? Yes. And it's America. America is basically the only place they can do that. And if we give that up, we give everything away. So it was literally on his chest when he died.
I don't think anyone thought it would have broken down so quickly. But now — I'm not a black pill guy. I'm a white pill guy. I always consider myself a world-weary optimist. But I have to be an optimist, as I suspect you are, because how else could we do something like this for a living? How could we sit here and talk about things if we didn't think we could angle them to be a little bit better?
The white pill on this is that when the left was going crazy ten years ago, and obviously I was right in the middle of that, there were almost no liberals willing to stand up against it. There were a couple — Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Jordan, although he wasn't truly liberal but he was kind of right there. There were a few people willing to stand up against it. What I have seen on the right in this past eight months or so since Charlie's death is extraordinary. The right is fighting. The right is saying there are some things that are not acceptable — ushering in ancient hatreds that we should have left a long time ago and the worst ideas of all time. No, we're not going to do it. So there is a fight on the right that did not happen on the left, and I believe the right will beat this thing. I think the polling absolutely indicates that. Trump has clearly chosen the right side of this, so to speak. I think there's a much better chance the right will survive this and not become exactly what the left has become.
Anti-semitism on left and right
Bishop Barron: Say a bit in that context about anti-semitism, because we referenced Buckley already. As everyone points out, back in the '50s Buckley made this decision to extricate from his movement the John Birch Society and anti-semitic elements, and he said the movement I'm advocating — classical conservatism — should not include those elements. It was a very important decision. A lot of people critiqued him and said, "I'm done with you," but Buckley stuck to his guns. It was the right decision. The anti-semitism on both the left and the right — what's the right move now? Would it be for people on the sensible right to say, look, do what Buckley did — this is just not appropriate?
Dave Rubin: The left version we can do quickly because it's very easy. The left basically thinks of Jews as white — but even sort of extra white, and successful, and therefore oppressive. And what really doesn't make sense is that the Jews, if you were to look at one group, are in some sense the ultimate minority because they're still here. The Jews are still here after thousands of years. People always talk about all these countries that kicked the Jews out, as if it's the minority's fault. Well, most of those empires and countries don't exist anymore. So you might want to think about what happens when you start turning on the Jews, because it's not that you're turning on the Jews only — you're usually turning on all of the good principles that allow for minorities and other people to exist in your nations, and that's not good for nations.
And then to the backdrop of October 7th, they've created just the grandest of all lies related to the founding of Israel and the connection that the Jewish people have to that land. A state of Palestine never existed for a people known as Palestinians. The coin people always show you — the British Mandate of Palestine — it's not a country, which is why it didn't have a prime minister. And in Hebrew it says "the land of Israel" on it. But because they marched through the institutions, they taught people this incredible lie that somehow the Jews — where was Jesus born? Where did the story of Hanukkah take place? It's Judea and Samaria, which is now unfortunately what people call the West Bank. It's just the west bank of the Jordan River. So Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib or even AOC — they'll wish Jews a happy Hanukkah, and then by the next day they don't want any Jews living in the place where Hanukkah took place. It was literally the Jews defending their land against the Greeks. So none of it works. There are so many lies and the intersectional calculator doesn't work for the left.
Now on the right, I think there are a couple of things happening. One is that you can be a principled isolationist — in a pure political sense, you can be an absolute isolationist. America should be more like Switzerland: we're just not going to have anything to do with the rest of the world and we're anti-war. I think that's a perfectly fine position, I suppose, though I don't think it's the most mature position. I don't think it really equates with reality. Just saying you're anti-war doesn't get you no war. In some sense it probably gets you a really bad war on your shores because obviously there are bad guys out there. But I think some sense of that leads to: "Oh, Israel's in the Middle East and there's always wars in the Middle East" — some weird isolationist connection to that.
Then there's some weird things that you can probably speak to better than I can related to replacement theology and things of that nature. I've never once had any issue with any of my Christian friends or Catholic friends or any denomination thereof related to being Jewish. My two best friends — we're turning 50 this summer, we're all going to Vegas. My buddy John, Italian Catholic. My buddy Arie, Greek Orthodox. And ironically the three of us, friends now for about 45 years, met when we were in kindergarten basically. We celebrated all our holidays together. They would come to my house for Shabbat dinner or to light Hanukkah candles. I would go to Arie's for Greek Orthodox and we'd roast a lamb. We would put up the tree at John's house for Christmas. It was never even a thing at any level whatsoever. So now 45 years later, we have the fruits of that — a great lifelong friendship that hopefully will take us into our 90s.
So I think there's some weird religious stuff happening there. And then I think there's just something that is baked in unfortunately — Jews just celebrated Passover as Christians were celebrating Easter. And Passover is the story of bondage to freedom. Within that story, if you sit at the Passover table no matter what Haggadah you're reading, they talk about how in every age someone will come, someone will rise up to destroy us. It's baked into the code in some sense. And Jews are the canary in the coal mine.
Here's the simplest way to put it: if you're on the side of the Jew haters right now — and what is now becoming really anti-American too, that's the weird thing — it would be one thing if you just hate Jews. Well, as long as you're not attacking them, you can hate whoever you want. But it usually doesn't just stop with that. Now they're connecting it to deep anti-American stuff and pro-Iran and pro-Russia and a whole bunch of other things. If you think that you can remove Jews from public life altogether, or do some pogroms or whatever you want to do, and that America will be better or safer on the other side — it's crazy. And it's not because of what the Jews will do to you. It's because there's something tied to the fabric of reality related to all that. The story of the Jews is the story of man in a way.
The last time I was in Israel, I went to the City of David. To walk there — we did it right before it opened publicly, so the scaffolding was still there — and they talk about how these are undoubtedly the steps that Jesus walked. And they show you the podiums where clearly the preachers would have stood. It's incredible. And in no way do I find that in conflict with anything else that I believe politically, theologically, or anything else.
Charlie Kirk, the microphone, and the Western tradition of dialogue
Bishop Barron: I'm trying to think this together — the stuff we've been talking about. I did a little piece after Charlie died called "He Died with a Microphone in His Hand." So instead of an instrument of aggression, he died with an instrument of communication in his hand. And I suggested: go all the way back to the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition. Socrates is not so much a university lecturer. He's a guy who went on the street and asked questions and engaged in dialogue. It comes up through the Middle Ages — my hero Thomas Aquinas, all his writings are based upon an open conversation: you say this, I say that. And go all the way up to the founding of America — it's predicated upon our capacity to have civil public conversations about things.
Then I think of your friends — you're able to talk to each other despite differences of ideology. That's the American thing. That's the best, I would say, of the spiritual tradition of the West, to speak very broadly — including cultural, political, and religious dimensions. My take, and it's just helping me to talk through with you, is that that's what's under attack in some way. When that's under attack, from left to right, we've got serious trouble going on.
Dave Rubin: Not only do I agree with that — I like what you said about Charlie with the mic. A lot of times right before I go on stage at a theater or something, I'll take a picture of the mic. And I quote Obi-Wan Kenobi: "An elegant weapon for a more civilized age." That's what the microphone is.
And if we can't debate these things — look what's happened just in the last couple of days. There was a third assassination attempt on Donald Trump. When I saw it, I didn't have my phone for a little bit, and then I look at my phone and I have all these texts. I'm looking at Twitter and everything, and I see that Trump's okay and they got the guy. And I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to bed right now. I was about to go to bed anyway and I was like, I'm not going to stay up and stare at all this. But when I woke up the next morning, I thought: what does that tell you about where we're at? There was an assassination attempt on the president, and because it's already happened twice, I looked at it for ten seconds and went to bed. What is slowly happening to us?
And as I said on my show the next morning, an even scarier thought than that: imagine how close we are to the precipice of something we can't even begin to imagine. If one of these guys gets the president — imagine if the unthinkable had happened just a few days ago. I'd still probably be sitting here with you, but imagine what world we would be in at that point. We have no idea how absolutely off the rails everything could go. And that's why we need this type of thing more than ever, because as algorithms keep feeding us — we don't know what we're being fed online and how we're being manipulated. We're in a massive information war at the same time.
Bishop Barron: And if we can't figure out what makes us the United States of America — what makes the states united, what makes us as people united — this experiment, we're rolling into our 250th year, but that's not that long. And it could be over before 300. It's a capacity for civil conversation which is predicated in turn upon some basic values held in common. So it's not that everything's up for grabs and let's just talk about everything. No, the conversation is structured. If it's not structured, then it's not going to be a conversation. There's got to be certain basic assumptions in place. Look at the Declaration of Independence. Look at the Constitution. Look at the Federalist Papers. They're articulating those great values. Someone like Jordan Peterson, I think, is putting his finger on what some of those values are. You need that combination of a structured civil conversation to make it happen.
Bill Maher and the classical liberal holdout
Bishop Barron: You mentioned Bill Maher earlier. Bill Maher to me is fascinating. He and I are about the same age. He was raised Catholic — his dad was Catholic, his mother was Jewish, but he went to Catholic school. And they didn't even know his mother was Jewish, I think, until he was in his teens or something like that. I would have known Bill Maher as a comedian back in the '80s — the Merv Griffin show and the Johnny Carson show. And then he begins his career as a political commentator. But he first really came on my radar as a great critic of religion. And I hated him. That religious movie of his — he just took the worst examples of fundamentalism and said, "Well, that's religion." He never talked to a serious religious person. It was a lot of caricaturing. So he just sort of turned me off.
But I had what the Romans call the gaudium dolo — when you kind of enjoy someone's style despite yourself. There was something about Maher that I enjoyed watching. So I kept watching him. And he eventually dropped religion, stopped talking about religion, and started talking about wokeism. And I kept saying, "Yeah, that's it. Yes." I'm applauding with the crowd. So Maher to me is a fascinating figure because he's one of the only classical liberals who really called out the kookiness of the left. And you've become friends with Maher. Tell me a bit about your sense of him.
Dave Rubin: First off, he took me — we sat courtside at a Lakers game, which, I'm a huge basketball guy. I don't really watch the current NBA anymore, but to sit courtside at a Lakers game with a guy who was really my comic hero from back then — I remember watching Politically Incorrect in the '90s thinking, that's what I want to be one day. So the fact that I've been on Club Random and I've been on Real Time and that we've become friends — it showed me: wow, I did something in my life. I had this idea and I wanted to do something, and then this guy who I admired tremendously thinks I'm cool. There's just something cool about that.
What I would say is interesting about Bill — there's a couple of things. The fact that he is still holding out that classically liberal position. Sometimes when we play clips of him, we usually do them on Mondays because Real Time's on Friday. We have a little cartoon intro and we call it "Mondays with Maher" and we have a funny song playing. It's me holding his hand and I'm dragging him to an American flag. And the reason we do it that way is that Bill is right about most of the issues. I would say roughly — you absolutely disagree with him on abortion, and actually I'm closer to your position on abortion than I am with Bill's. But let's say he's roughly right about what America is, and free speech, and things like that.
The conclusion I've come to is that Donald Trump at a political level is the best guy to accomplish that. There's nothing left in the Democratic Party to accomplish those things. If you care about free speech, if you care about capitalism, if you care about law and order, there's nothing left for you. You have you and John Fetterman, and it's a lonely boat and good luck. However, there is something to be said for somebody who stakes out that position and says, "I will not move."
He said he voted for Kamala, I think, right?
Bishop Barron: Yeah. Did he say he did?
Dave Rubin: I know he didn't vote for Trump. So to me, I just don't understand how you could take all your positions that you're right about and then vote for someone who's antithetical to all of those things. But that's a small piece, actually. In a way, the position where he gets up there every Friday night on that show, brings on people he agrees and disagrees with, and says, "I'm here and I did not change" — I do think that is admirable. And if you sat down with him and debated abortion for two hours, I don't think you would change his opinion, but I don't think either one of you would leave angry.
Bishop Barron: And that's clearly the theme we keep coming back to here.
Dave Rubin: And I admire that about him very much. He does have people on, and he often complains because Democrats don't come on his show. Republicans come on his show.
Can I tell you something? When I did Club Random — about two or three years ago — I said something to him that I now realize lit a little fire in him. I said, "Bill, this is before he had sort of made amends with Trump and everything before the last election. I said, "Bill, tell me this: if you went to a Trump rally, I can tell you what would happen. People would love it. They'd be like, 'Holy cow, Bill Maher is here.' They'd be like, 'I disagree with him on some stuff and he's a little wacky on abortion, but it's Bill Maher. How cool.'" I said, "Bill, what would it be like if you showed up to an AOC rally?" You would be hated. And I can send you the clip — his eyes went like this. He suddenly was like, "You're right. You're right." And that's the interesting thing — his voting habits are one thing, but the idea set is something else.
And I think as the years go by, he will just find common cause with more people. It's very similar to Richard Dawkins, who's obviously a hugely well-known atheist. He's now very appreciative — he's spent his life trying to basically destroy Christianity, but now he appreciates Christian culture.
Bishop Barron: Because he realizes that Islam as it encroaches on the West is now a much bigger issue. So suddenly he's very appreciative of living in a Christian culture.
Dave Rubin: Whether he can grapple with that or what he's going to say on his deathbed or whatever.
Bishop Barron: The question is, can you get a Christian culture without Christianity? And I would say no, ultimately.
Dave Rubin: No, I would say no.
Bishop Barron: Enjoy the fruits of something while trying to destroy the plant.
Dave Rubin: This was always the debate, and in some sense this is what separates maybe the classical liberal from the conservative. Did it all start with the Enlightenment, or was there something beneath that? That's what Jordan and Sam Harris debated for years. I've come closer obviously to your version of it.
Bishop Barron: That's a really interesting question. I would say the best of the Enlightenment is a fruit of Christianity. The worst of the Enlightenment is a distortion of it. And so there should not be a conflict between Christianity and the Enlightenment. In the French Revolution there was indeed, because that became radicalized and became deeply anti-clerical and anti-religious. Our revolution, thank God, was not. Even though you had deists like Jefferson and Ben Franklin, you had a lot of very committed Christians who gave rise to the American experiment. And it's not by its nature anti-clerical or anti-religious.
I was on this religious liberty commission — we just finished our work — and the basic assumption of it is that the American commitment to religious liberty is a Christian idea. It's not opposed to Christianity or trying to limit Christianity. It comes up out of the heart of Christianity.
Dave Rubin: And I think Bill, as time goes on, realizes that more and more. It's also why during COVID, most of the people I found who were kind of sane during COVID happened to be religious, because they believed in something else beyond what Anthony Fauci was telling them every day.
Bishop Barron: Did you notice this? It struck me in 2020. The great civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s didn't just have religious people in it — it was led by religious people, most notably King, but many others too. It was led by deeply biblical people. Rabbi Heschel — most of the white people that King was marching with were Jews, actually. So it was led by religious people. The 2020 riots — religious people were conspicuous by their absence, because the woke revolution doesn't like religion. The civil rights movement came from religion. It came from that narrative.
Dave Rubin: Because woke is a cult, not a religion. That's the difference.
Bishop Barron: But it struck me as a very interesting difference. The hostility to religion, which has been part of the university culture for too long — that came out of that whole wokeist mentality. Religion's on the side of the oppressor and all that.
Bernie Sanders and the softening of the ground for socialism
Bishop Barron: Okay, let me ask you this question. How do you explain Bernie Sanders? I come from a very strong Democratic family. I'm a Chicago Catholic — that meant Mayor Daley, and my dad loved politics. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy — those were his political heroes. I grew up with one of my earliest political memories being the Republican convention of 1972 and my father lustily booing Richard Nixon. And my father — he's been gone for a long time — but he would be like a conservative Democrat, sort of a classic pro-working class type.
Dave Rubin: Blue dog Democrat.
Bishop Barron: Blue dog Democrat. That's what he would be now. If you told my father that running for president is a wild-haired 70-something socialist from Vermont advocating these kind of wild left positions, he finally would say, "Are you crazy? He'll never get anywhere." Which is exactly what I thought when he first emerged. How did he manage to yank the Democratic Party so far to the left that now it seems to me a simulacrum of what it was?
Dave Rubin: It's a good question, because if we just mock him, it's fun in a way but it doesn't really get to what they've done. You have to give the devil his due. You have to give them credit for destroying an awful lot, mostly the minds of young people.
Bernie Sanders' legacy will not be politics. He has no major piece of legislation written in his name. He's been in the Senate for 40 years and has done virtually nothing in terms of granular policy. But what he did do was push socialism. Always. Everything. The answer to every problem was always the government.
And in some sense he was a fringe figure up until about ten years ago. He was on the debate stage for a couple of presidential cycles but he was considered far left. But then what happened — and I think Bernie just took advantage of this in a very cynical way when he saw the woke thing happening — woke is basically socialism, but now let's throw in a dash of race and a dash of sexuality and gender, make it about equity. He repackaged this. And then he ran with that.
Now, the irony of course is that this will not end well for an old white — really Jewish — socialist like him. The revolution will come for him too. There will be some position, as they go more radical — because now the marriage of progressivism and Islamism is getting so tight — that something so radical will happen that they will get rid of him or he will find himself in the front. But that's one of the tricks they've used with everybody.
Even if you think about what's happening related to this last assassination attempt — they've been subtly winking towards violence, that a low level of violence is okay. The United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who got executed in Times Square — not a lot of lefties said anything bad about it. They were kind of like, "Well, the health care system is bad." Now, ironically, the health care system, including United Healthcare, got much bigger because of Obamacare, but that's a whole other issue. But they've been winking towards the idea that a low level of violence is kind of acceptable.
Bishop Barron: And eventually that will take everybody out, because once you give a nod to that — congratulations. All of us on the other side might think you're just as bad. And now if we start doing it — that is literally what all of our ancestors fled the old world for.
Dave Rubin: And again, think Charlie Kirk with the microphone in his hand, being shot to death by someone. There's the contrast. A polity based upon lively civil conversation versus one based upon violence. And that's what worries me the most, honestly.
So to fully connect this to Bernie: I think his legacy will be that he softened the ground via democratic socialism. You can literally find videos of mine eight years ago saying they're going to drop the "Democratic" soon enough. And now they have. Now they're just open socialists. And in two years, they'll be open communists, which in essence is what Mamdani is in New York anyway.
He softened the ground so that they could usher in all of these bad ideas. And it's unbelievably ironic that someone like him — he used to rail against millionaires, then he became a millionaire, now he rails against billionaires — taught young people basically that envy of what other people have is righteousness. It's the complete reverse of everything you would believe in from a religious perspective, and I could make the same argument from a secular perspective. But they're almost done with him. He'll be eaten by the revolution.
Mamdani and the warmth of collectivism
Bishop Barron: You mentioned Mamdani, and sometime we'll talk about the warmth of collectivism. I actually heard him utter that line. I forget what I was doing — I was home and I was watching TV — and something just in me tightened when I heard that. Does he have any idea what collectivism has meant?
Dave Rubin: I think he knows. I think he absolutely knows the warmth of it. I'm a little more aggressive when it comes to talking about what's really going on with him. A lot of people seem to think, "Oh, he's just a socialist or a communist and he doesn't know what he's doing and it's big government and it never works." I think the marriage now between that and the Islamism portion of what's going on — his goal is to destroy New York City. He is trying to push out all of the creators, the good people, the earners. They are trying to implode the city because then they can turn it into what they really want to turn it into. I don't think there's anything not cynical about him. I think there's absolutely a plan when it comes to him.
Bishop Barron: Next time we'll talk about it. Listen, a delight having you here.
Dave Rubin: Pleasure. Pleasure as always.
Bishop Barron: We covered a lot of ground, but a lot more to cover. And it's maybe in honor of our friend Charlie Kirk, who was supposed to be in that chair, that we would continue having these frank and public conversations. God bless you for that.
Dave Rubin: Next time come to Miami. Our weather's a little warmer.
Bishop Barron: During next winter I'll come. Pleasure, my friend. Thanks.