A Deep Dive into Ben Shapiro’s Book

“That ‘conservatives’ today celebrate the book speaks volumes of the leftward drift of conservatism and the confused state of existence conservatism is in.”

Ben Shapiro is a fighter. He was a fighter growing up and a fighter still today. He lives, indeed, thrives, on argument and debate—at least when he thinks he’s winning. Matt McManus is right that fighting polemicists must, someday, turn toward a more vigorous intellectualism. Ben Shapiro’s The Right Side of History is that attempt.

We hear much about the “right side of history” in debate, both political and intellectual. Conservatives, the general wisdom suggests, are on the wrong side of history, while progressives are on the right side of history. Shapiro’s title playfully puns on this received wisdom.

Ben Shapiro’s book tries to do two fundamental things as far as I can tell. First, it offers a defense of Western exceptionalism through the synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem: Greek rationalism and Biblical revelation. Second, it attempts to offer an apologia for modernity—though a very specific conceptualization of modernity.

Misreading Strauss and Misrepresenting “Greek Reason”

The book begins with a rhetorical, if not otherwise brilliantly crafted, tour de force in his introduction on Athens and Jerusalem. Shapiro appeals to the thesis outlined by Leo Strauss, one of the most important classical exegetes and political philosophers of the twentieth century who is, admittedly, a very important influence on me. However, Shapiro fundamentally misunderstands Strauss’ thesis of the relationship of Athens and Jerusalem. He shares, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Christianized (and specifically Catholic) reception of these two traditions mediated through Medieval Scholasticism as exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas rather than Machiavelli or the Straussians.