Wordy Wednesday: Bae Shapiro

I first discovered Ben, or bae as I like to refer to him, while watching conservative youtube videos while I procrastinated on my homework. He was refreshingly articulate and intelligent; and spoke with a conviction that could leave no Republican uninspired. The intimidatingly brilliant graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law is editor at large of Breitbart News ans author of Primetime Propaganda, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, The People vs Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration, and Bullies: How The Left’s Culture of Fear & Intimidation Silences America.

• Every so often, we all gaze into the abyss. It’s a depressing fact of life that eventually the clock expires; eventually the sand in the hourglass runs out. It’s the leaving behind of everything that matters to us that hurts the most.“

• Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.
• When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.
• Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don’t give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
• Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept – it is a religious one, an acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over property, a sovereignty the Left utterly rejects.
• Obama’s entire foreign policy was predicated on the notion that by existing, he would bridge all gaps and bury all hatchets. Instead, the Muslim world burns his picture even as he tells them he respects their radicalism. It turns out that diversity is a one-way street for the devotees of global Islam.
• President Obama is a gifted politician. He is gifted with rhetoric virtuosity. He is gifted with the ability to lie directly to camera without blinking. And he is gifted with some of the most incompetent conservative opposition in the history of the country.
• When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.
• Wishful thinking won’t make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin’s worldview won’t make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.
• Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other.
• The European style of living is seductive: fewer hours worked, more hours at the cafe, less concern over self-betterment. But that style of living does not produce a purposeful life.
• America’s liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected ivory towers for the pseudo-elite who earn their livings writing papers nobody reads about gender roles in the poetry of Maya Angelou.
• Obama seems to inspire a bizarre personal loyalty among his advocates, particularly among young people who should by all rights be concerned with their fading futures and collapsing prospects.
• Why should Congresspeople have to visit D.C.? Thanks to Skype, meetings are possible across the country. Thanks to email, communications are simple. And we’ve had the technology to vote from afar for decades. Why should we have backroom deals made over cigars thousands of miles distant from those who are affected by those deals?
• Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America’s global enemies sense a failure of will.
• By giving professors jobs for life, universities create a feeling of unanswerable power among too many. Tenured professors who are uninterested in serving the student body are less likely to respond favorably to criticism, and are more likely to feel the freedom to intimidate or harass those with opposing viewpoints.
• Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system – they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.
• Musicians are, by and large, not the most politically savvy crew.
• Obama’s pop-cultural focus may seem demeaning to the office of the presidency. It may be mockable. But it is also tremendously effective.
• Black culture has contributed hugely to American society: The civil rights movement brought meaning to American notions of equality and freedom; black contributions to politics, science, music, and art have helped enrich all of us. To demean these accomplishments and contributions by listing rap among them is to demean black culture as a whole
• The reason that conservatives lost the 2012 election was garishly simple: most people in America don’t follow politics that closely. What they see about the various candidates are what the candidates say about each other, and what the media say about the candidates.
• The leftist philosophy of violence is simple: It’s good when it’s being used for leftist causes. It’s bad when it’s being used for any other purpose.
• No wonder the left seeks to avoid political debate at all costs. Why bother? Members of the left are not interested in having a debate about policy. They are not interested in debating what is right or wrong for the country. They are interested in debating you personally. They are interested in castigating you as a nasty human being because you happen to disagree.
• The university system has been monopolized by a group of folks who believe that it’s no longer worthwhile debating the evidence on tax rates, or whether the Laffer curve is right, or whether Keynesian policies actually promote economic growth. They don’t want to debate those issues. What they want to teach instead is that is you are personally ignorant, bigoted, corrupt, and mean if you disagree with them. Their opinions are not opinions; they are fact. This is the hallmark of being stuck inside a bubble. The people who occupy the professoriate have not had to work a real job – a job with real-world consequences – in over 30 years. They’ve lived on a campus where everyone agrees with them, convincing them that their beliefs are universally-held. Anyone who disagrees is a “flat earther.” Anyone who disagrees is a monster.
• Real-life teens wish they could live like the teens Hollywood promotes. Everyone has sex, and relationships are deep and meaningful, even if they only last a couple episodes. There are never any consequences to any action, except for experiencing the angst of teenage life alongside the characters. When a generation becomes desensitized to the ramifications of the culture around them, it’s natural to seek out any sort of feeling, even angst.
• Straw men are easier to knock down than real arguments.
• Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the forces of moral relativism, radical feminism, and generational nihilism have gradually destroyed the foundation of our own greatness. Instead of adopting stronger moral standards, our society has embraced the lure of personal fulfillment.
• It is the reason that the right consistently loses the black and Hispanic vote – not because the right’s policies are so abhorrent to blacks and Hispanics, but because blacks and Hispanics have been told for generations that conservatives hate them
• The left’s arguments are chock full of inconsistencies. Internal inconsistencies – inconsistencies that are inherent to the left’s general worldview. That’s because very few people on the left will acknowledge their actual agenda, which is quite extreme. Leftists prefer to argue half-measures in which they don’t truly believe.

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