Ben Shapiro gave two speeches last week that urged leaders of the conservative moment to perform acts of intellectual hygiene. I posted both of them on Power Line.
The response from those who disagree with Shapiro has not been impressive. Speaking at TUPUSA’s AmericaFest this past Sunday, Vice President Vance avoided explicit ad hominem attacks, but his response offered little more than pompous non sequiturs.
Shapiro has sought to do for the conservative movement in our day what William F. Buckley, Jr. did in his. It is fitting that National Review has posted an editorial — “Cheers for Ben Shapiro” — assessing the merits of Shapiro’s argument. Brit Hume alerted me to it via his X account with the comment “Hear, hear.”
The editoral omits any mention of Vance. I will say he has chosen a side and chosen poorly. He’s stickin’ with his buddy Tucker Carlson. While omitting any mention of Vance, the editorial speaks for me. I’m posting it below the break (links omitted).
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Ben Shapiro did the conservative movement a service last week by giving two speeches that were deliberate acts of provocation.
First, at the Heritage Foundation, he argued that a political movement, like a nation, needs borders. He illustrated the point with reference to the Heritage Foundation mission statement, which supports free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
He then compared those principles with the beliefs of Tucker Carlson, with whom Heritage President Kevin Roberts has been in ideological sympathy, up to and including initially defending Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes (before backpedaling). Shapiro persuasively argued that by Heritage’s own standards Carlson — who expresses routine contempt for markets, who launders Russian propaganda, who sees the advantages of sharia law, and who gives sympathetic interviews to white nationalists, Churchill-hating World War II revisionists, and proud misogynists accused of rape — is no longer a conservative.
We assume that Roberts won’t be inviting Shapiro back any time soon, but his talk was received warmly by the audience at the Heritage Foundation.
A couple of days later, Shapiro spoke at TPUSA’s AmFest conference. He addressed the rank pandering to audience, widespread conspiracy-theorizing, and cowardly unwillingness to call out lunacy on the right that has infected the right-wing influencer space. Here, Shapiro focused on the absolutely cracked theories promoted by Candace Owens about the Charlie Kirk assassination; these rancid, obsessive musings, which would set off alarms bells for any psychiatrist if spouted by a patient, have significantly shaped the debate on the right about Kirk’s assassination.
True to form, Owens responded to Shapiro’s speech with an anti-Jewish rant.
Shapiro’s critics accuse him of wanting to cancel his adversaries. But having standards and speaking truthfully about lies is not cancellation. If Carlson had chosen not to have Fuentes on his show, Fuentes wouldn’t have been canceled; he just would have been denied the favor of a high-profile platform with a friendly interviewer.
As Shapiro told the TPUSA audience, “Our first duty is truth. We owe you the truth. That means we should not mislead you; it means we shouldn’t hide the ball; we shouldn’t be deliberately obscure about what we are telling you. We have an obligation to clarity and to honesty.”
Such are the business incentives in the influencer space and the radicalism that has been unloosed that these words are unlikely to be heeded any time soon. Yet, Shapiro has put down an important marker, and anyone vested in the health of the conservative movement should be grateful.
