TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS 'DIRECT MESSAGE' WITH DAVE RUBIN:

Published on Ora TV on Dec 22nd, 2015:

The end of the year is upon us, so this is going to be a Progress Report. I hope you guys have had a chance to watch my interview with Peter Boghossian from last week. For those of you that missed it, my intention with Peter was to focus on atheism as well as critical thinking. These ideas are what Peter wrote his book about, spends most of his time talking about, and are obviously topics I'm highly interested in. I think I had about 13 questions prepared for Peter, but like many of my interviews, the conversation took a life of its own.In last week's case, something particularly interesting happened -- no matter how far I tried to steer the conversation away from the regressive left, all roads kept leading back to them.

I've mentioned to you guys a couple times now how I want to talk about all kinds of things on this show from science, to politics, to spirituality.I've also mentioned how I don't want to solely focus on the regressive left, primarily because it doesn't necessarily solve anything.Still, I find myself incredibly torn about this. On one hand, until the last couple months, we hadn't even diagnosed the problem of the regressive left. Clearly, huge numbers of those on the left were upset about how their team was being hijacked, but there wasn't a place to come together and talk about it, much less a whole group of like-minded people willing to share their experiences and tell their stories.For that reason, I've wanted to keep this conversation going. It's important to realize how many of us are out there. We want to fix the left, but I don't think we can without getting to critical mass on the issue.

On the other hand, I don't sense that we can change these regressives. As I've also mentioned before, since we've started doing this show, I've seen them continue to lie and smear opponents, only to be caught, then double down even more. Some people are fighting back against these lies with facts and logic. Several of these fighters I've had on the show, like Maajid Nawaz, Sarah Haider and Gad Saad. Others I only know from the online space, such as my guest this week, Ali Rizvi. Ali is an atheist Muslim, who is constantly writing about and fighting against regressive ideology. Growing up mainly in Saudi Arabia and ultimately leaving religion for secularism, he should be a natural hero of the left.Sadly, he is not. That's one of the many things we're going to talk about.

I go back and forth between thinking that fighting the regressives by putting time and energy into discussing them is what will ultimately do the most to the change the landscape of the left, and then thinking that if I just ignore them, maybe they will go away. I tend to think most of you will tell me that we have to keep amplifying real liberal voices and by ignoring them we'll only let their influence grow. That's basically what I think, too. I must say I'm incredibly inspired by the fact half of the time when they say, write, or tweet something crazy that there is an army of people ready to combat their bullshit.

A few people have mentioned to me that they believe this whole regressive situation and the fuel it gives to the right is going to get worse before it gets better. Unfortunately, I think they may be right. Until the legitimate, true voices of liberalism come back to the forefront, the conversation will always be stuck between the regressives and the Trumps. Looks like our work is cut out for us...