A sick thread now runs through the conservative movement. It runs from Candace Owens to Tucker Carlson and Carlson’s friends. One can see one symptom of the sickness in its treatement of the Jews. The sickness should be called out, confronted, and refuted.
Ben Shapiro has an argument to make against the sickness. That’s what he did in the case he made against Tucker Carlson at the Heritage Foundation. There his argument was premised entirely on the stated mission of the Heritage Foundation. He applied the stated principles of Heritage’s mission to Carlson. If you want to disagree, the disagreement should be based on the stated principles of Heritage’s mission.
Shapiro continued the argument in his appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest last night. In his prepared remarks the argument came in a slightly different form. I have posted the video below. If the video doesn’t display below, it should be accessible here.
You can hear what I refer to as one symptom of the sickness in the question posed to Shapiro about the mistaken Israeli sinking of the USS Liberty in 1967 by the young man who denounces it as a deliberate attack. The young man speaks up in the question-and-answer period following Shapiro’s prepared remarks and receives a round of applause. Shapiro responds with a factual argument. The number of those in the audience who are familiar with the facts must approximate zero. It’s the young man’s attitude that appeals to them and a likely manifestation of the sick influencers.
Shapiro seeks to perform necessary acts of hygiene with the arguments he makes to his young audience at TPUSA here and to the adults in the room at the Heritage Foundation. Those who denounce him based on the variety of argument known as ad hominem don’t have an argument to make. Argument ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy.
Michael Doran undertakes the same kind of hygienic act in his Jewish Chronicle column “Tucker Carlson claims Israel is a burden on the US. It reveals profound strategic ignorance.” Doran, by the way, is not Jewish. He is just knowledgeable of the relevant facts. Like Shapiro, he understands what is going on and he makes his argument based on the facts as he knows them.
