Ben Shapiro: Volume I Read online

  This wasn't an argument for same-sex marriage. It wasn't even attractive image-making on behalf of same-sex marriage. It was hatred of Biblical values cloaked in pietistic nonsense.

  Begin with the marriages themselves. The only rationale for getting married on the Grammys en masse would be either attention-seeking or spite toward Americans with traditional values, or both. Neither of these rationales scream "love," "commitment" or "societal building block."

  Move on to the cheering audience — a group of anti-marriage Hollywoodites who largely see the institution itself as patriarchal. The same folks standing up for same-sex marriage at the Grammys largely scorn the institution of marriage itself. The only time they embrace marriage is when it is being mocked, undermined or perverted. That's not a cuddly case for same-sex marriage.

  Finally, look at the artists: Macklemore, who rages against religious Americans for cash and Grammys; Madonna, who is happy to glom onto the marriage bandwagon after selling her body for decades, and running through a raft of unsuccessful marriages and relationships of her own; Queen Latifah, acting as a stand-in for the government, offering up salvation via paper licenses from the state. None of this warms hearts or changes minds.

  But this is Hollywood unmasked: angry, vindictive, self-righteous, anti-Biblical. The case for same-sex marriage rests on an application of Biblical principle — monogamy and commitment — to actions condemned by Biblical text. For years, Hollywood was able to get away with perverting the Bible by ignoring it. But in its rush to congratulate itself for overthrowing Biblical values without a shot, Hollywood spiked the football and revealed its true agenda. And that agenda is not the agenda of tolerance for individuals, but an ugly agenda of unearned moral superiority via destruction of traditional values.

  Letter to My Newborn Daughter

  February 5, 2014

  Last Tuesday evening at 6:19 p.m. PST, my wife gave birth to our first child, a 7-pound, 9-ounce, 21-inch little girl named Leeya Eliana. The labor was long, approximately 26 hours, and my wife endured it heroically. Before, we were a married couple; now, we are a family.

  On the sixth day of her life, I wrote my little girl a letter to memorialize our hopes for her at the dawn of her life. With my wife's permission, here it is:

  Dear Leeya Eliana,

  This is Daddy and Mommy writing to you. You are now six days old, and you are tiny and cute, and you poop a lot — and you get really mad when anybody tries to change you. But you are also sweet and calm, and you look at us with your huge blue-gray eyes, and we love you so much because we know that not only are you a manifestation of how much Mommy and Daddy love each other, but you are the future of the Jewish people and the American people, and that we are preserving God's word and His freedom for the next generations. That's why we gave you your name: Leeya — in Hebrew, "I Belong To God."

  And you were our answer, Leeya. After Mommy and Daddy prayed very hard to Hashem to give them a healthy little baby, God answered them: Eliana. So your first name is about your relationship with God, and your middle name is about how thankful we are for you.

  We hope you grow up to be the best, most principled, most joyful person in the entire world. We want you to be a leader for God, no matter what you choose to do — to live with His justice and His compassion, with His standards and His kindness. And we want you to love your family as much as we love you, and to carry forward our mission as a family and as a people. We will do our best to train and guide you. We promise to always take you seriously and to always listen to you. And we promise to never leave you.

  You are the best thing that has ever happened to us, and that's what makes all the poop and the crying and the late night feedings and the sleep deprivation worth it. You may not always agree with everything we do — you're going to be a teenager, and you're going to realize that Daddy and Mommy are just human beings trying their best. But we will do our best to ensure that you understand that we love you more than anything, and that it is our mission to help you find the best path to serving God.

  Love you forever,

  Daddy and Mommy

  Why Democrats Hate Work

  February 12, 2014

  Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released a report discussing the ramifications of Obamacare. The report revealed that the work-hour equivalent of approximately 2.5 million jobs would disappear from the workforce, thanks to Obamacare, in a voluntary process in which employees would simply dump out of their jobs, knowing they could get health care through expanded Medicaid and federal subsidies they would lose by working.

  Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., an ideological leftist thought leader, spun the report as a massive positive for Obamacare: "The single mom, who's raising three kids (and) has to keep a job because of health care, can now spend some time raising those kids. That's a family value." And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., celebrated the report as a defeat for the dreaded condition known as "job lock" — the situation in which you have to stick at a job you don't like for the benefits. "We have the CBO report," Reid stated, "which rightfully says, that people shouldn't have job lock. If they — we live in a country where there should be free agency. People can do what they want."

  But, of course, people can only do what they want by taxing other Americans, borrowing from foreign creditors, and burdening future generations with unsustainable debt. And unfortunately, Schumer's proclamation that the greatest beneficiaries of Obamacare will be single mothers turns out to be false: One of the studies relied upon by the CBO stated that those who benefit from the end of job lock are disproportionately white, single and of work age.

  In reality, the Democratic vision of the world centers on the notion that work itself is a great evil to be avoided, and that any program allowing people to free themselves of work — whether to finger-paint or start a garage band — is an unmitigated good. "Job lock," according to the definition Reid gives, goes by another name, according to those who live in the real world: "having a job." There are times that everyone hates his or her job. Were they freed from the economic consequences of having these jobs, they'd drop out of the workforce.

  There are only two problems with this strategy: First, someone has to pay for it; second, it is not the recipe for human fulfillment. Leisure time is only leisure time when it is earned; otherwise, leisure time devolves into soul-killing lassitude. There's a reason so many new retirees, freed from the treadmill of work, promptly keel over on the golf course: Work fulfills us. It keeps us going.

  This doesn't mean every job fulfills us, naturally. But we have all worked rotten jobs in order to get to jobs we like. Capitalism doesn't mean, as my grandmother used to say, that you don't have to walk through some manure to get to the roses. It just means that if you walk through enough manure, you'll likely get to the roses sooner or later. In the leisure-first world of the left, however, wallowing in mire is a preferred road to happiness over the hard work that brings true fulfillment.

  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. Perhaps we'd all be happier in the short run were we somehow freed of our job lock. But we certainly would not contribute to the betterment of ourselves or the community around us. We'd leave the world worse than we found it. The opt-out society opts us out of societal happiness.

  The Left Preaches the Great Apocalypse of Global Warming

  February 19, 2014

  This week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced to a group of Indonesian students that global warming was "perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." He added, "Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is ... one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk."

  Meanwhile, Hollywood prepared to drop a new blockbuster based on the biblical story of Noah. The film, directed by Darren Aronofsky, centers on the story of the biblical character who built an ark after God warned him that humanity would be destroyed thanks to its sexual immorality and violent transgressions. The Hollywood version of the story, however, has God punishing humanity not for actual sin, but for overpopulation and global warming — an odd set of sins, given God's express commandments in Genesis 1:28 to "be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it."

  This weird perspective on sin — the notion that true sin is not sin, but that consumerism is — is actually nothing new. In the 1920s, the left warned of empty consumerism with the fire and brimstone of Jonathan Edwards; Sinclair Lewis famously labeled the American middle class "Babbitts" — characters who cared too much about buying things.

  In his novel of the same name, Lewis sneered of his bourgeois antihero, "He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty." Lewis wrote, through the voice of his radical character Doane, that consumerism has created "standardization of thought, and of course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows it that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent."

  Lewis, of course, was a socialist. So were anti-consumerism compatriots like H.G. Wells, H.L. Mencken and Herbert Croly. And their brand of leftism was destined to infuse the entire American left over the course of the 20th century. As Fred Siegel writes in his new book, "The Revolt Against The Masses," this general feeling pervaded the left during the 1950s, even as more Americans were attending symphony concerts than ballgames, with 50,000 Americans per year buying paperback version of classics. That's because if the left were to recognize the great power of consumerism in bettering lives and enriching culture, the left would have to become the right.

  Of course, consumerism is not an unalloyed virtue. Consumerism can be utilized for hedonism. But it can also be utilized to make lives better, offering more opportunity for spiritual development. It's precisely this latter combination that the left fears, because if consumerism and virtue are allied, there is no place left for the Marxist critique of capitalism — namely that capitalism makes people less compassionate, more selfish, and ethically meager. And so consumerism must be severed from virtue (very few leftists critique Americans' propensity for spending cash on Lady Gaga concerts) so that it can be castigated as sin more broadly.

  In a world in which consumerism is the greatest of all sins, America is the greatest of all sinners, which, of course, is the point of the anti-consumerist critique from the left: to target America. Global warming represents the latest apocalyptic consequence threatened by the leftist gods for the great iniquity of buying things, developing products, and competing in the global marketplace. And America must be called to heel by the great preachers in Washington, D.C., and Hollywood.

  Piers Morgan Is the American Left

  February 26, 2014

  This week, CNN's Piers Morgan announced that "Piers Morgan Live" would be coming to an ignominious end sometime in March. His replacement has not yet been chosen. But his television demise came not a moment too soon for millions of Americans who had tired of his sneering nastiness.

  The New York Times chose not to see it that way. Instead, the Times insisted, Morgan's problem sprang from his British accent and heritage: "Old hands in the television news business suggest that there are two things a presenter cannot have: an accent or a beard ... Mr. Morgan is clean shaven and handsome enough, but there are tells in his speech — the way he says the president's name for one thing (Ob-AA-ma) — that suggest that he is not from around here." Morgan himself attributed his downfall to his foreignness: "Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it."

  No doubt the notion of a British entertainer coming to America, clearing millions of dollars, and then lecturing Americans on their fundamental rights galled many. But what truly galled so many Americans was Morgan's underlying perspective — a perspective shared by the Times, as well as most of the left. Morgan, unfortunately, believes that Americans are typically racist, sexist, homophobic bigots clinging to guns without regard to the safety of children. We, in his world of unearned moral superiority, are the bad guys.

  Which is why Morgan had nothing to say when I appeared on his program in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, handed him a copy of the Constitution to remind him of the Second Amendment, and then told him that he was a "bully ... demoniz(ing) people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook." His only response: "How dare you."

  It's why Morgan had nothing to say when I suggested a few months later that his gushing response to gay basketball player Jason Collins' coming out sprang from his disdain for the American people: "Why do you hate America so much that you think it's such a homophobic country, that when Jason Collins comes out it is the biggest deal in the history of humanity, and President Obama has to personally congratulate him?" Again, Morgan had no answer.

  As the left has no answer. The left's perspective on the role of government is inextricably linked to its view that Americans, free of government strictures, are brutally discriminatory, selfishly violent. Without the guiding hand of our betters, we would all be Bull Connors (a government employee), hoses at the ready. Without the sage wisdom of our leftist superiors, we would all be shooting each other at shopping malls.

  The countervailing perspective — that America is a pretty damn great place filled with pretty damn great people — has little currency for the left. But when their hate-Americans perspective is repeatedly exposed, Americans begin to find it tiresome. That's what happened with Morgan. That's what will happen to the American left if the American right somehow finds the stomach to call out the left's snobby scorn for everyday Americans.

  The Faculty Lounge Administration

  March 5, 2014

  On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" to respond to Russia's invasion of the Crimea region of Ukraine. "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext," Kerry stated. He added, "It's an incredible act of aggression. It is really a stunning, willful choice by President (Vladimir) Putin to invade another country."

  So, what would the United States do about Russian aggression? America would consider dropping its scheduled attendance at the G8 meeting in Sochi, Kerry said: "He is not going to have a Sochi G8, he may not even remain in the G8 if this continues." And on Monday, the Obama administration got truly tough: It announced that it would not send a presidential delegation to the Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi.

  Which, of course, had Putin quaking in his boots. Because if there's one thing a Russian autocrat fears, it's faculty lounge-style sneering about his unsophistication followed by symbolic withdrawals from meaningless events.

  But this sums up the Obama administration in its entirety: When it comes to dealing with America's enemies, the Obama White House simply assumes that there is no true conflict. After all, who could disagree with an America that has spent five years on bended knee to the rest of the world, that has minimized its influence in the world, and that is planning to slash its military by 30 percent over the next several years? Who could oppose an administration so dedicated to harmony that it is willing to undercut its own allies for the sake of a humbler America on the global stage?

  This complete incapacity to understand America's geopolitical enemies dominated the 2012 election cycle. With the help of the media, the Obama campaign scoffed its way to victory by tut-tutting Mitt Romney's designation of Russia as America's chief geopolitical challenge. That acidic jeering, which cloaks a pathetic naivete, underscored America's unwillingness to place armed troops in Benghazi.

  And that same desperate and ironical urbanity reared its ugly head last week when National Security Adviser Susan Rice blithely informed David Gregory, "It's nobody's interest to see violence return and the situation escalate." When Gregory asked whether Putin sees the world "in a Cold War context," Rice ignored the question entirely: "He may, but if he does, that's a pretty dated perspective."

  But that's the point: If Obama and his staff disagree with a perspective, that doesn't mean it isn't real. 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.

  In the ivory tower inhabited by the great intellects of the Obama administration, however, no problem is too big to be thought or talked or surrendered away. If Russia won't change its perspective, we will simply cut our military more to convince them we mean well; if the Palestinians or Iranians don't change their perspectives, we will force Israel to negotiate with them in order to prove our goodwill.

  Meanwhile, our enemies laugh. And they should. The global battlefield is no place for the Kennedy School political science grad students who inhabit our White House and believe that a well-aimed, snooty barb is a substitute for a muscular foreign policy presence.

  The Entertainment President

  March 12, 2014

  For years, conservatives have puzzled over President Barack Obama's continued personal popularity in the face of his dramatically uninspiring performance as commander-in-chief. 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 do his numbers remain so stubbornly mediocre?