Has Ben Shapiro Outgrown Being a Polemicist?

“But there are times in every polemicist’s career when he must take a genuine stab at intellectual respectability, put away sloganeering and manic hyperbole and see not through the dark lens of partisanship, but grasp the complex world as it truly is.”

Introduction

Before getting into the meat of this review, I must admit to never paying much attention to Ben Shapiro until quite recently. He struck me as the latest in a long line of conservative pundits going back to William F. Buckley to launch a career as a polemicist by criticizing academia for its alleged and real left and liberal biases. Was he more articulate than some? Sure. But he was also prone to his share of hyperbole and philosophical vagaries. The subjects of his early books, with cute titles like Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans and How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them, seemed closer to Anne Coulter or pre-Trump Glenn Beck than Russell Kirk.

But there are times in every polemicist’s career when he must take a genuine stab at intellectual respectability, put away sloganeering and manic hyperbole and see not through the dark lens of partisanship, but grasp the complex world as it truly is. Shapiro’s The Right Side of History is a major effort in that direction, 200-plus pages analyzing the history of Western thought to answer two fundamental questions: Why are things so good? And why are we blowing it?

As Shapiro opines, never before in history has a civilization enjoyed such benefits as ours in the 21st century, and yet there is a widespread sense that society is getting worse—and the ties that bind us are eroding. Shapiro’s central thesis is that the fundamental pillars of Western civilization are faith in Biblical revelation and an emphasis on Greek reason and natural law. Following the German émigré Leo Strauss’s seminal thesis, Shapiro regards the twin influences of Jerusalem and Athens as responsible for the moral and material prosperity of the West. Unfortunately, we are forgetting and even eroding these pillars under the influence of the modernist thinking of various leftist groups. These left-wing efforts have resulted in the “end of progress,” including spurring the emergence of the “so-called” alt-right. As Shapiro puts it:

“So, has the vision of the cultural Left provided fulfillment? It’s provided solipsism for sure. But it’s also provide polarization. It’s not merely that intersectionality has carved off individuals into racial groups, then pitted them against one another. Racial solidarity among members of the intersectional coalition has also driven reverse racial solidarity from the so-called alt-right—a group of racists who have sought to promote white pride.…The cultural Left’s view of reality has driven anger and hatred—polls show that Americans are more divided than ever. That sense that the world is spinning out of control only feeds into intersectionality’s attack on agency. Individuals’ capacity has been abandoned in this worldview—individuals, after all, are mere creations of the systems into which they have been born. Collective purpose, too, has gone by the wayside—after all, it’s the system keeping you down.”