Dave Rubin: New Book’s Limits & Merits

Recently on Twitter I saw someone make a thread of their favorite meals — the best meals they’d ever eaten. It was all Italian countryside this, New York hole-in-the-wall that, Asian metropolis, Michelin star, and so on, complete with gorgeous pictures. I could remember a few meals I’d had like that. But I found it easier to remember the first times I’d eaten certain things: sushi from a grocery store; roasted peppers on soggy bread with a “tapenade” — whatever that is — in a college dining hall; and, most of all, grilled chicken and rice pilaf at a Denny’s near a hotel in, I think, Philadelphia. I love grilled chicken; I’ve eaten a lot of great grilled chicken since then. But there’s a sense in which it all started at that Denny’s. If I went to Denny’s today, I’d probably hate their grilled chicken. But if I’d never gone to that Denny’s to begin with — who knows?

You may be wondering what Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason, the new book by Dave Rubin — the host of The Rubin Report, interview show and centerpiece of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web — has to do with Denny’s grilled chicken. Well, you see, Dave Rubin is the Denny’s — the memorable if unspectacular entryway — of a certain brand of cultural politics, a brand with which I’ve become somewhat entangled. Some problems with Rubin’s book have already been pointed out. For instance, he gets some facts wrong and makes some incoherent arguments (my favorite: He says that the idea of reverse psychology came from “German philosopher Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, back in 1970,” but Adorno died in 1969), he talks a lot about ideas but doesn’t seem to have any of his own, and he may have taken one of the book’s best ideas from Bridget Phetasy. I’ll add another problem right now: There are several spelling and grammatical mistakes in the book, hallmarks of the poor editing endemic to contemporary publishing. (They get pretty egregious: His brother is acknowledged as “Jonat]han,” and I don’t think Elon Musk named him.)

About the Author

Oliver Traldi

Oliver Traldi is an assistant professor at the University of Toledo’s Institute for American Constitutional Thought and Leadership.

Recently on Twitter I saw someone make a thread of their favorite meals — the best meals they’d ever eaten. It was all Italian countryside this, New York hole-in-the-wall that, Asian metropolis, Michelin star, and so on, complete with gorgeous pictures. I could remember a few meals I’d had like that. But I found it easier to remember the first times I’d eaten certain things: sushi from a grocery store; roasted peppers on soggy bread with a “tapenade” — whatever that is — in a college dining hall; and, most of all, grilled chicken and rice pilaf at a Denny’s near a hotel in, I think, Philadelphia. I love grilled chicken; I’ve eaten a lot of great grilled chicken since then. But there’s a sense in which it all started at that Denny’s. If I went to Denny’s today, I’d probably hate their grilled chicken. But if I’d never gone to that Denny’s to begin with — who knows?

You may be wondering what Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason, the new book by Dave Rubin — the host of The Rubin Report, interview show and centerpiece of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web — has to do with Denny’s grilled chicken. Well, you see, Dave Rubin is the Denny’s — the memorable if unspectacular entryway — of a certain brand of cultural politics, a brand with which I’ve become somewhat entangled. Some problems with Rubin’s book have already been pointed out. For instance, he gets some facts wrong and makes some incoherent arguments (my favorite: He says that the idea of reverse psychology came from “German philosopher Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, back in 1970,” but Adorno died in 1969), he talks a lot about ideas but doesn’t seem to have any of his own, and he may have taken one of the book’s best ideas from Bridget Phetasy. I’ll add another problem right now: There are several spelling and grammatical mistakes in the book, hallmarks of the poor editing endemic to contemporary publishing. (They get pretty egregious: His brother is acknowledged as “Jonat]han,” and I don’t think Elon Musk named him.)