That now famous debate on a recent Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode between comic Dave Smith and journalist/author Douglas Murray is worth discussing for several reasons, and the first reason is that it’s good that we on the right are actually having debates. It’s good that we’re confronting opposing ideas within our broadly defined movement – even when some of those ideas are bad. In fact, by definition, when you have a lot of different ideas, some of them are going to be bad. All the stuff about the marketplace of ideas leading to better outcomes is a cliché, but it’s also true, as most clichés are. Bickering beats the alternative, craven conformity. Look at the left. They can’t handle disagreement. They cry, call you a racist, and, if they can, throw you in jail. 

We’re not like that. We’re stronger and better. It’s why we’re winning. This debate got a lot of attention specifically because it was confrontational. Americans are nice people. Except for New Yorkers, lawyers, and on Twitter, Americans tend to avoid confrontation. It was good for Joe Rogan to have Dave Smith and Douglas Murray facing off for three hours. Dave Smith calls himself a libertarian, and he is in that he adopts some of the positive aspects of libertarianism and a lot of the annoying ones. He vaguely identifies as anti-war, which is a terrible thing to identify as, but at least he didn’t talk about pot. Libertarians are the political version of your annoying sophomore roommate who, after smoking a few bowls, starts sharing the full benefit of his 19 years of life experience with you at 2:30 in the morning when you’re studying for your history final. But it’s good that he was on the show, even though Douglas Murray doesn’t think so.

Douglas Murray is an establishment guy. He is associated with the Bari Weiss/Free Press folks, who are all refugees from the regime media and retain a bit of the regime media attitude toward regular folk. They have done good work highlighting woke insanity, but they miss being part of the cool clique. Murray is also a posh Englishman, and he argues like one, with a lot of condescension and skipping around when confronted with bad facts. At one time, he might have been overseeing some district in the Punjab; now he makes most everyone mad at him.

A lot of the right-wing response to the Joe Rogan episode was irritation with Murray, and as a guy who spent 30 years arguing to Americans to convince them to find for my clients, I can see why. He must be very annoying to normal people who do not argue for a living. A guy like me, who did, doesn’t take it personally, but when the other guy is constantly telling you that you’re stupid – in so many words – yeah, a normal American would find that annoying. He really is smart, and his accent makes him seem smarter. But he comes off as thinking he’s smarter than everyone else because he thinks so; like I said, he’s a posh Englishman. 

There were two big issues that came out of the debate. The first was procedural: Should Dave Smith and other sort-of right-wing guys without a lot of traditional credentials get platformed on big venues like the Joe Rogan Experience? Should we defer to........

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