This is a new video interview from the “Conversations with Coleman” series at the Free Press, but I found it posted just this morning on YouTube. Before you go running to the hills when you hear and see “Ben Shapiro”, let me remind you of the salubrious effect of listening to those whose views differ from yours.
Here are the notes from The Free Press, with the piece titled “Ben Shapiro on the most dangerous force in America“.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro sees the civilizational battle of the modern era as one between the builders and the destroyers—or as he writes it in his new book, between the “lions” and the “scavengers.” [JAC: you can find the book here on Amazon].
When I sat down with Ben this week, he explained the way he sees this dynamic play out in American society—across both political parties—as “scavengers,” who feed on grievance, identity politics, and moral relativism, cut down the progress of “lions,” who choose responsibility, courage, and a commitment to truth, even when it’s unpopular.
Over the past two years, Ben has seen the scavengers ascendant, as America and Europe have exploded in violent protest against their own institutions, blaming their ills on the free markets and constitutional republicanism, or on the “military-industrial complex” and “global Jewry.”
I spoke with Ben about the way out of the darkness—which he thinks can best be found in religious values: family obligation and procreation, moral order, and meaning beyond the self.
Our conversation ranged across birth rates, wokeness, and the Donald Trump presidency, with moments of both agreement and debate. I came away with a clearer understanding of his worldview—one that frames the future of Western civilization as a high-stakes struggle, more fraught than ever.
Click to listen; it’s a bit more thanb an hour long, and I did listen to it. I have a few notes below the video. (Note: there are a few short ads.)
Shapiro’s premise, which isn’t controversial, is that those who protest Israel’s actions and favor Palestine (or Hamas) really want to see the demise of Western civilization. This all, avers Shapiro stems from adopting the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, which leads to the idea that dispelling that dichotomy means “ripping down the whole system.” The irony is that many of those who are scavengers, calling for the death of Western values, also benefit from the fruits of those values (e.g., the Oxford students whom Shapiro debated—the incident that inspired the book). He adds that those “fruits”—the results of technological and scientific innovation, as well as of capitalism—were largely spread by Western colonialism, a contention that will drive “progressives” wild (cf. Bruce Gilley).
I do disagree with both Shapiro’s religiosity and his claim that alternative family structures are somewhat immoral (both of which, he says, are things that “scavengers” oppose, along with the “male/female binary”), and he does push hard on his view that the societal norm, endorsed by the government, should be that couples are best made of one heterosexual male and one heterosexual female, who have a sort of cultural duty, as well as a proper “life aspiration,” to have several children. (Apparently Shapiro is deeply worried by the low frequency of “replacement level” births in the West.
I’ve always wondered how Shapiro, who prides himself on his rationality, had bought so heavily into superstition—in the form of orthodox Judaism. It’s not just that religions like Judaism uphold the traditional values that that Shapiro sees as the grounding of Western civilization, but that Shapiro seems to believe the myths and superstitions of the Old Testament itself.
Moving on, at 43:45 Hughes says Shapiro describes himself as a “sometimes Trumper” rather than a “never Trumper”, and Hughes asks whether Trump has done or could do anything that would make Shapiro reject him completely. Shapiro responds that he’s been very critical of Trump’s economic policy (tariffs) and foreign policy, as well as of the use of executive power willy-nilly to promote “national security.” Shapiro abhors the expansion of executive power at the expense of Congress, something he says has been going on for a while, including under Biden and Obama.
When asked what he sees as Trump’s biggest achievements, Shapiro replies that the three big ones are the shutting down of the southern border, the dismantling of DEI (which, of course, is not near being dismantled), and the striking of Iranian nuclear facilities in conjunction with Israel.
They then discuss peak wokeness, and Shapiro argues that “Black Lives Matter” as well as “trans-issue” wokeness are gone, but we are heading into higher “economic wokeness”, which calls for violence against those, like the murdered United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who are seen as parasitizing society. This takes him back to the “tear down society” mindset of many protestors.
At about 53:30, they proceed to disagree on the value of the Second Amendment (Shapiro is pro, Hughes con, as he considers that Amendment as originally construed in the Constitution is largely superfluous). Shapiro considers the Amendment moot because there are so many guns already in existence, and it’s impossible to get rid of them. I disagree: one can at least try to restrict and buy back guns from the public, even if it doesn’t work perfectly. Remember, far more deaths that result from privately-owned guns are of innocent people than of criminals shot in self defense. This is from a study conducted by the Violence Policy Center:
The study finds that in 2019 there were only 316 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the SHR. That year, there were 9,610 criminal firearm homicides reported to the SHR. Using these numbers, in 2019, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 30 criminal homicides. For the five-year period 2015 to 2019, 49,104 Americans died in criminal gun homicides, while guns were used in only 1,453 justifiable homicides: a ratio of 34 to one. Neither ratio takes into account the tens of thousands of lives lost each year in firearm suicides and unintentional gun deaths. The study presents Bureau of Justice Statistics data that reveal that only a tiny fraction of the intended victims of violent crime (1.7 percent) or property crime (0.3 percent) employ guns for self-defense – and of these incidents, it’s not known whether the gun was even used successfully in stopping the crime.
They finish up with Shapiro describing what he sees as the biggest misconceptions about him harbored by the public. They include lumping Shapiro together with other conservatives (e.g., Tucker Carlson), a view which I don’t like either as it gives people an excuse not to pay attention to any message that comes from the Right.
Overall, it’s a decent conversation (Hughes is an excellent interviewer), though I thought Shapiro went on a bit too long about the duty to have heterosexual families and children, a view with which I disagree. And I still don’t understand his strict adherence to Orthodox Judaism, which is a form of superstition. I wish Hughes had asked him that question, but of course it would have made Shapiro uber-defensive. And, in general, I agree with Shapiro on what he see’s as Trump’s biggest mistakes and three biggest achievements, though of course I did not and would not ever vote for Trump. And I still think we should strive to eliminate all private ownership of guns. Finally, there wasn’t enough discussion about the connection between war protests and the desire to destroy Western civilization. After all, that was supposed to be the “most dangerous force in America,” and yet I don’t perceive it as so dangerous right now. I would, however, like more people to be aware of the connection.
‘those “fruits”—the results of technological and scientific innovation, as well as of capitalism—were largely spread by Western colonialism, a contention that will drive “progressives” wild.’
Trouble is, ‘those fruits’ are rotting on the vine, the tree, and are in the end, which is ecologically near, as desiccated as the Ogalalah Aquifer. Capitalism is not ‘conservative,’ for it devours nature rather than tending it as a garden. ‘[T]echnological and scientific innovation’ are not inherently ideological, yet become so when expropriated as capitalism’s tools.
The USSR had a uniformly poor environmental record, and the PRC did until fairly recently.
“Capitalism is not ‘conservative,’ for it devours nature rather than tending it as a garden.”
Interesting imagery there. It prompts a question (and I think I know what your answer will be); what ‘ism’ do you think would be better at tending our garden?
Weed it; then plant, nurture, and harvest sustainably.
A non-answer! I like it. Says it all, actually.
It will take a long time for current plantings to turn into new harvestable coal, so your answer has a certain unassailable logic, …as long as you can find people willing to have it imposed on them.
My understanding is that coalification occurred during one period, 300 million years ago and not since. So peat bogs today are not on a path to make coal no matter how long we wait for them to bear fruit. You really are saying that we should run our energy system literally on wood, I guess, if we can find the water to grow the trees. You won’t like the result, I don’t think.
Older age is paradoxical. One the one hand, being old means I won’t be around to suffer the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change imposed by capitalism’s abundance-seeking. But being old also means I got to enjoy all that abundance all my life but now want to deny it to people coming along after me. Either way, it’s our great-grandchildren who will have to live with the consequences. But as some wag on another Substack put it, it won’t be our great grandchildren cleaning up the mess here. It’ll be the great-grandchildren of people who are currently living in Somalia.
The existence of nuclear power makes the above point somewhat out of date. We don’t need coal. We do need to bring nuclear regulatory agencies to stop sabotaging the whole industry. See Jack Devanney’s “Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop.” (https://gordianknotbook.com ) I recommend especially the articles that explain how we overestimate the danger of nuclear radiation (https://gordianknotbook.com/download/the-case-for-2-msv-per-day/) and how nuclear power would be cheaper than coal if it were not mis-regulated (https://gordianknotbook.com/download/nuclear-power-not-only-should-be-cheap-it-was-cheap-3-cents-kwh-cheap/).
Coleman is really at the front of the next generation of public intellectuals.
Shapiro irritates me with a lot of his stuff but he’s right on a few issues, I grudgingly admit. Like PCC(E).
Shapiro’s religiosity and insistence of a traditional family (like Harzony’s) gets my goat.
I’ll listen to the interview later today. Thx for the preview.
D.A.
NYC
You better strap in when you hit play, David. Either Shapiro talks too fast or I listen too slow. But in any case I had a hard time processing all he was saying in real time. I had never listened to him before, and though watching you tube in general is a favorite path to learning for me, in Shapiro’s case, I will favor our host’s preferred medium of the written word in the future.
You can slow down the replay on your YouTube settings for individual videos if it helps. I don’t have trouble following Shapiro, but there are plenty of podcasters whose speech is both rapid and condensed and I’ll occasionally have to slow them down… Sam Harris comes to mind.
Thanks debi.
Gish gallop? Didn’t/won’t listen but sounds like what you describe. An evasion by flooding the zone tactic.
It wasn’t a debate. It was an interview. It wasn’t adversarial at all (just to let you know). So, no, gish gallop (an expression I had to look up) isn’t an accurate description.
Thanks for the clarification.
I don’t like Shapiro, but I’ve heard him talk a few times. He is excellent on genderwoo, but when he strays into women’s rights or religious issues I find he pushes my belief in “listening to those whose views differ from yours” a bit too far and I can’t hear him out.
We really need better gun data. When one digs into the data, what you find is a mishmash of sometimes related statistics. That said, I am not impressed by the way the Violence Policy Center presented their case:
“The study finds that in 2019 there were only 316 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the SHR. That year, there were 9,610 criminal firearm homicides reported to the SHR.”
This shows us only that there was a lot of homicides using guns, but not who committed them. AFAICT, this does NOT mean that 9,610 legal gun owners committed homicide with a gun that year. Nor does it tell us much of anything about how guns owned by non criminals are used in self-defense, except that 316 justifiable homicides were fully adjudicated and made it into the data.
So, how do legal gun owners use their guns?
Using the Violence Policy Center’s own references, a much more complicated picture emerges. According to the FBI:UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting) in 2019 there were over 1.2 million cases of violent crime against innocent people (defined as ” murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR as those offenses that involve force or threat of force.”) And, according to the Violence Reporting Center’s own report, from 2014 – 2018 there were 10,032,400 instances of violent crime visited upon victims who used a weapon to nonfatally protect themselves 351,600 times. In the same period, there were 12,782,100 instances were people’s property were threatened, and 214,300 times they nonfatally defended their property with a weapon.
According to the US Department of Justice, there are at least 108,000 instances of defensive gun use in 1994, with reports ranging much higher [https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf, see page 8]. The report seems to credit a figure of 1.5 million defensive gun uses as credible. Please note that these figures include scaring off trespassers as well as defense against violent assault.
So, while there is a lot of violent crime against people (1.2 million cases per year), there is evidently a lot more responsible gun use (possibly 1.5 million cases per year) than the Violence Policy Center suggests.
“Studies say” and statistics lie. There are very few think tanks/organizations whose cited studies and/or stats I’m not skeptical of.
“Shapiro replies that the three big ones are the shutting down of the southern border, the dismantling of DEI (which, of course, is not near being dismantled), and the striking of Iranian nuclear facilities in conjunction with Israel.”
Agree. But there’s the disastrous acts of RFK Jr! He’s destroying the CDC, for example.
Plus sucking up to Russia (rolling out the red carpet for Putin and applauding as he walked down it).
For more on the assault on science, see video here (free):
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/science-under-siege-a-talk-with-peter
You may be aware that the term “Orthodox Judaism,” as has often been observed, is a misnomer. (The term originated as a term of derision used by proponents of the Reform movement in 19th-century Germany against its opponents; but the latter then adopted the term in their own defenses of traditional observance.) Adherence consists in observance of the mitzvot (supposed divine commandments), as interpreted by rabbinic tradition. From the fact that someone adheres to Orthodox Judaism, you can infer that it is highly probable that he or she believes that the mitzvot are the terms of a covenant of YHWH with the people Israel; and you may deem this belief to be a superstition. But the belief is not itself the definition: Orthodox Judaism is a practice underpinned by certain beliefs, but the practices are in principle separable, and in some instances actual separate, from the beliefs. To say that Orthodox Judaism is a superstition is therefore a category error. You would have to ask Ben Shapiro what he believes before you could attribute superstitions to him.
“The Free Press” is a nazi organization lead by a literal war criminal.
(That really needed a ‘/s’, if it is such.)
Whenever I see a phrase like “literal war criminal” I say it in my head in the voice of the Chris Traeger character (Rob Lowe) on Parks and Recreation.
A late comment. If y’all are interested in another good interview I recommend “Beyond Gender” and their interview of Gordon Guyatt, the McMaster University expert on gender-based medicine who wrote then disavowed a series of systematic reviews of youth gender medicine.
In the last 5 minutes of the interview, Guyatt torches his whole reputation as a scholar and expert. Incredible stuff.
The rest of the interview is worth a listen as well: the conflict between experts who value patient autonomy (Guyatt) and those who value the avoidance of harm (the podcasters Stella O’Malley and Mia Hughes).
https://t.co/1BpXn1759J
You wondered the other day what a well-prepared litigator in Alberta would do on the witness stand. I think you just got your wish. Incredible stuff indeed.