Ben Shapiro has simple advice for how disaffected young men can turn around their lives: “Get off your ass and go do the thing.”
Speaking to The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan at Turning Point USA’s AmFest on Thursday night, the Daily Wire Editor Emeritus was asked how men should respond to a culture that “rejects masculinity.” He said there are obstacles that need to be removed, but ultimately that men are in control of their own success.
“I think first of all we need to remove the obstacles for them,” Shapiro said. “The Trump administration has done a great job of fighting DEI, but they need to unleash the DOJ on anybody who’s violating the Civil Rights Act of 65 with regard to young white men, for sure.”
“And then, we need to say something to young men: get off your ass and go do the thing,” he declared. “Seriously. Stop telling all young white men that all of their grievances — when it comes to making basic, good decisions for their lives — are justified. Those decisions are not always justified. Here are things you can do: Finish high school. Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Go to church. Those are all in your control. You pretending those things are not in your control is grievance culture bulls***. And all the politicians who pander to that sort of stuff are making people’s lives actively worse.”
Shapiro has been preaching that message for nearly a decade; in his speech at UC Berkeley in September 2017, when the city spent $600,000 for security involving hundreds of police, he told the crowd, “Here are the three rules that you need to fulfill as a person before you can start complaining about your life failures being the result of somebody else’s actions.”
“Number one, you need to finish high school. Number two: you need to get married before you have babies. Number three: You need to get a job.”
The remarks came ahead of Shapiro’s speech on the main stage of the Turning Point USA event, where he laid out the importance of “truth” in conservatism.
