“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It’s an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“In actuality, California could be a wonderful place to live. In fact, if you’re highly educated and ambitious, you can do quite well here while enjoying the sun and the fun. The only problem: California will then blame you for your success and recommend that all your cash be removed from you.”
— Ben Shapiro
“The ouster of Jill Abramson as executive editor of ‘The New York Times’ sent shock waves through the media landscape. Reports that she was fired thanks in part to a soured relationship based on the ‘Times’ alleged sexist pay discrepancy only made those shock waves stronger.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“The greatest bulwark against an overreaching government, as tyrants know, is a religious population. That is because religious people form communities of interest adverse to government control of their lives; religious communities rely on their families and each other rather than an overarching government utilizing force.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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?”
— Ben Shapiro
“What sort of job can you hold in America in which it is safe to hold the personal conviction that same-sex marriage is wrong? The answer: there is no such job. Except Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. Then you’re fine.”
— Ben Shapiro
“The Left despises Texas, with its stellar record of job growth; Texas, with its strong support for traditional marriage and the sanctity of life; Texas, the root of the conservative tree. Should the Left succeed in its attempt to turn Texas purple, America could turn permanently blue.”
— Ben Shapiro
“The argument that gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Washington’s birthday is worthy of celebration – he is one of the greatest men in history. But Washington himself would likely have seen celebration of the office of the presidency itself as monarchic in nature.”
— Ben Shapiro
“With the dramatic increase in ease of transportation and the incredible decrease in the amount of time required to travel between far-flung areas of the United States, representatives began spending more and more time in Washington and less and less time in their home districts.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Obamacare has made the government part of our health care decisions. The IRS controls all of our financial information. The NSA apparently sees everything else.”
— Ben Shapiro
“During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again.”
— Ben Shapiro
“It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression.”
— Ben Shapiro
“When we say ‘less fortunate,’ we generally mean the poor rather than the disabled, who actually are less fortunate. In truth, the poor are generally ‘less fortunate’ only in terms of genetics. They are certainly not less fortunate in the amount of help they receive.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?”
— Ben Shapiro
“The greatest obstacle to the welfare state is not greed but private charity that makes the welfare state irrelevant; the greatest obstacle to re-education of children in the name of the collective is allegiance to a higher power. More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Google is a private company. It has the capacity to utilize its massive power for whatever political agenda it chooses. But for it to pretend to be an advocate for Internet freedom while simultaneously disadvantaging messages it finds politically incorrect is deeply hypocritical.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“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.”
— Ben Shapiro
“It is no wonder that advocates of Obamacare blindly push forward with their agenda to force religious Americans to violate their own precepts: in the war between the state and the individual, religion is on the side of the individual and his or her relationship with God. That is why symbolic prayer matters. It is symbolic.”
— Ben Shapiro
“Same-sex marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us – the Supreme Court, President Obama – against traditional religion.”
— Ben Shapiro
“When I was a kid, I’d wake up extraordinarily early every morning and turn on the television, scanning for episodes of ‘The Jetsons.’ For some reason, I loved the notion of a future where there would be flying cars, supercomputers, and most of all, robot maids to take care of the chores.”
— Ben Shapiro
“The most formative time of our lives are the years between birth and age 21, when we explore who we are and learn from those who surround us.”
— Ben Shapiro
“2013 was a year of myths falling apart. The myth of President Obama – a myth in which Obama was a messianic figure descending to bequeath health care, equality, and brotherhood on mankind – imploded. The myth of an America embracing the leftist social agenda collapsed.”
— Ben Shapiro