Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

Summary

The Ben Shapiro Show: Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization | @ CPAC Hungary

Release Date: May 30, 2025
Host: Ben Shapiro
Platform: The Daily Wire

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Introduction

In the May 30, 2025 episode of The Ben Shapiro Show titled "Battling For The Heart of Western Civilization" recorded at CPAC Hungary, Ben Shapiro delves into a comprehensive analysis of the current challenges facing Western civilization. He articulates the philosophical and cultural battles that threaten the foundational values of the West, critiques the influence of postmodern leftism, and engages with audience questions on topics ranging from national identity to the resurgence of religious values.

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Defining and Defending Western Civilization

[00:29] Ben Shapiro begins by defining Western civilization, emphasizing its roots in individual liberty, freedom of speech, virtuous action, property rights, familial obligations, and the equal application of the law. He underscores the unique contributions of Western civilization to human prosperity and progress, attributing its origins to Judeo-Christian traditions and biblical wisdom that encourage the pursuit of truth through reason.

“Western civilization is unique. It is the wellspring of virtually all human prosperity and all human progress.” — Ben Shapiro [00:29]

Shapiro laments the perceived decay of Western civilization, pointing to various societal issues such as anarchic protests, the push for alternative moralities, the expansion of governmental power at the expense of family and religious institutions, and the undermining of traditional values.

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The Threat of Postmodern Leftism

A significant portion of Shapiro's discourse targets Western postmodern leftism, which he identifies as the principal force mobilizing against the foundational values of the West. He contrasts this with threats from radical Islamists, arguing that while both pose dangers, postmodern leftism's influence on Western self-perception is more insidious.

“The key force is the force of Western postmodern leftism.” — Ben Shapiro [05:30]

Shapiro references influential leftist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon to illustrate how leftist ideology has historically promoted anti-Western sentiments and civilizational suicide. He criticizes the Western tendency towards a "guilt culture," where the West perceives itself as uniquely evil, leading to self-destructive policies and an inability to defend its own civilization.

“Our culture, Western culture, is a guilt culture, a culture that focuses on the reality of absolute morality and says that when we fail, we are guilty.” — Ben Shapiro [07:15]

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Historical Context and Civilizational Pride

Shapiro challenges the narrative that Western civilization is inherently evil, arguing instead that while all civilizations have the capacity for evil, Western civilization is uniquely good. He highlights the West's role in abolishing slavery, reducing poverty, and minimizing war, attributing these achievements to its foundational values.

“Slavery was a human universal. It was Western civilization that ended it. Poverty is a human universal. It was Western civilization that has exponentially mitigated it.” — Ben Shapiro [08:45]

He praises Hungary's efforts to defend Western civilization, framing it as a battleground against both external and internal forces seeking to undermine traditional values.

“Hungarians are trying to stand up for their civilization, our shared Western heritage and civilization. And that is a thing that is worth fighting for.” — Ben Shapiro [09:50]

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Audience Questions and Insights

1. National Identity and Mass Migration
[11:07] An audience member asks about the erosion of national sovereignty in Europe due to mass migration and open border policies. Shapiro commends Hungary's stance against mass migration and notes a growing resistance to such policies in countries like France, Germany, and Denmark.

“The era of open migration is over. This is one area where the prime minister, he was ahead of his time.” — Ben Shapiro [11:45]

2. Secularism and the Spiritual Core of the West
[13:19] Balaz inquires about the impact of secularism on Western civilization's spiritual core. Shapiro asserts that Western civilization cannot survive full-scale secularism and advocates for the restoration of religious institutions as the foundation for moral and societal order.

“The restoration of church is the fundamental basis of a restoration of the West.” — Ben Shapiro [13:55]

3. Government's Role in Supporting Religious Institutions
[16:47] Balaz follows up with a question about how Trump’s administration efforts are reinvigorating the spiritual energies of the West. Shapiro discusses the government's role in supporting religious schools through initiatives like school choice and vouchers, while also advocating for reducing governmental interference to allow religious communities to fulfill social functions.

“We need to foster, for example, school choice, religious school choice.” — Ben Shapiro [17:28]

4. Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy
[22:27] A question about JD Vance's Naval Academy speech and its implications for U.S. foreign policy. Shapiro explains the complexities within the Trump administration's foreign policy, emphasizing the importance of "peace through strength" and expressing concerns about strategic ambiguity leading to uncertainty and perceived weakness.

“Peace through strength… the credible threat of use of force.” — Ben Shapiro [23:15]

5. Woke Culture and Its Decline
[25:06] Balaz asks about secularism hollowing out Western civilization and the survival of conservatism in a godless culture. Shapiro contends that Western civilization cannot thrive without religious values, highlighting a resurgence in religious adherence as a counter to secularism's emptiness.

“The only thing that fills the God shaped hole is God.” — Ben Shapiro [16:47]

6. Moral and Emotional Arguments in the Cultural War
[27:21] Balaz inquires whether the right should adopt more moral and emotional arguments to win the cultural war. Shapiro agrees, suggesting that while facts are foundational, incorporating emotional appeals can enhance the persuasiveness of conservative arguments.

“You're going to have to build some sort of emotional superstructure atop that if you hope to be convincing.” — Ben Shapiro [28:00]

7. Anti-Semitism in the Conservative Movement
[29:05] Shalom, an Orthodox Jew and listener, raises concerns about anti-Semitic sentiments emerging within the American conservative movement. Shapiro acknowledges the issue, attributing it to algorithmic manipulation on social media and a populist right that veers into conspiratorial and prejudiced thinking.

“This seems to be a perfectly clear civilizational conflict… pretending otherwise is a great way to commit societal suicide.” — Ben Shapiro [30:30]

8. Transatlantic Conservative Alliance
[33:05] A question about the cornerstone of a transatlantic conservative alliance. Shapiro emphasizes shared traditional values, opposition to wokeness, and religious principles as the foundation for unifying conservative movements across the Atlantic.

“The only fundamental basis of a civilization that has ever truly lasted the test of time is one that is built on the notion that there is a right and there is a wrong.” — Ben Shapiro [35:00]

9. Supporting Israel in the Face of Adversity
[35:14] Daniel Cohen from the Real Life Network asks about engaging conservatives to support Israel amid rising anti-Israel violence. Shapiro underscores the existential threat posed by enemies of Israel and criticizes European leaders who fail to support Israel's security measures.

“The main target of radical Islamists was Christians… ignoring that in favor of bizarre conspiracy theories about Jewish power.” — Ben Shapiro [36:50]

10. Protecting Western Culture Against Decolonization
[38:21] Balaz questions how conservatives can protect Western culture amidst efforts to decolonize art, literature, and history without being labeled racist or bigoted. Shapiro advises rejecting unfounded accusations with assertive responses rather than defensive, fact-based arguments.

“If somebody calls you a racist, the proper response is to flip them the bird or to tell them to F off.” — Ben Shapiro [39:10]

11. Germany’s Stance on Israel and Its Implications
[40:13] An audience member inquires about German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's statements regarding Israel's actions in Gaza and the potential dangers for Israel and Europe. Shapiro criticizes the Chancellor's lack of a practical plan to address Hamas's control in Gaza, emphasizing the necessity of strong, decisive actions against terror-supportive factions.

“The minute you posit an actual practical plan that doesn't involve Hamas actually running the place again… I'm happy to hear it. Otherwise, you should shut up.” — Ben Shapiro [40:30]

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Ben Shapiro presents a fervent defense of Western civilization's core values, critiquing both internal and external forces that he perceives as threats. He advocates for the restoration of religious institutions, a rejection of postmodern leftist ideology, and a reaffirmation of national identities to preserve the integrity and prosperity of Western societies. Engaging directly with audience questions, Shapiro provides thoughtful yet uncompromising perspectives on pressing cultural and political issues, reinforcing his commitment to conservative principles.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Western civilization is unique. It is the wellspring of virtually all human prosperity and all human progress.” — Ben Shapiro [00:29]

• “Our culture, Western culture, is a guilt culture, a culture that focuses on the reality of absolute morality and says that when we fail, we are guilty.” — Ben Shapiro [07:15]

• “The restoration of church is the fundamental basis of a restoration of the West.” — Ben Shapiro [13:55]

• “The only thing that fills the God shaped hole is God.” — Ben Shapiro [16:47]

• “If somebody calls you a racist, the proper response is to flip them the bird or to tell them to F off.” — Ben Shapiro [39:10]

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This episode provides a comprehensive examination of the perceived challenges to Western civilization from a conservative standpoint, offering insights into maintaining cultural integrity amidst global and ideological pressures.

Transcript

[Ben Shapiro]

This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire. Plus, we're dealing with misbehaviors with our son.

[Daniel Cohen]

Our 13 year old throws tantrums.

[Balaz]

Our son turned to some substance abuse.

[Daniel Cohen]

Go to dailywireplus.com today.

[Ben Shapiro]

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate is amazing to be here in Budapest. I want to talk today about the battle for the heart of Western civilization. But to do that we have to start with a definition of what Western civilization actually is. Western civilization rooted in man's individual liberty and his collective duty, in his freedom of speech and in his duty to act virtuously, in his property rights and in his familial obligations, in the right to the equal application of the law. Western civilization is unique. It is the wellspring of virtually all human prosperity and all human progress. And Western civilization did not come from nowhere. It came from biblical wisdom, the wisdom of thousands of years of Judeo Christian tradition. It came from the Bible's admonition that we ought to seek truth through the light of reason. When we cut ourselves off from the sources of our own civilization, our civilization decays. And make no mistake, our civilization is now in the midst of decay. We can see that decay in the anarchic marchers in the streets chanting on behalf of radical Islamic terror groups by the hundreds of thousands. We can see it in the push by intellectual elitists for a bizarre alternative morality that suggests the fundamental free flowing nature of sexual identity where boys can be girls and behavior ought to be separated utterly from the realm of morality. We can see it in the push for an ever growing domination of a powerful governmental infrastructure, crowding out familial bonds, crowding out church in favor of a faceless state that offers money rather than virtue. We can see it in that crusade against churches that refuse to jettison their values in favor of moral relativism flying rainbow flags. What are these forces that have mobilized against our civilization? Well, the key force is the force of Western postmodern leftism. Sure, we can look at the radical Islamists who have invaded Europe, who support terrorism, who use Western governments to impose effective fatwas against Westerners, who speak out against them, people who target Jews and Christians, who openly chant for the downfall of the civilization that they leech upon. But the question really isn't radical Islamists. They, after all, are doing just what they have always invading and conquering. The question is why the west allowed them in. And the answer is that the west, thanks to that postmodern left, bears a peculiar and self Defeating blood guilt, a guilt that says that because the west is too successful, it owes it to the rest of the world to destroy itself. Maybe the most colorful champion of this philosophy was the Marxist existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre. In 1961, a Francophone rebel named Frantz Fanon wrote a shockingly violent book titled the Wretched of the Earth, in which he posited that colonized peoples had a moral duty to kill their colonizers, that they ought to unleash, in his words, red hot cannonballs and bloody knives. Frantz Fanon expressed that the colonized man was right to want to rape the wife of his colonizer, to murder him, to take what he had. And Sartre, just a Western leftist, agreed. The West, Sartre said, was an inherent colonizer. Its very success in the world, whether through war or through markets, was a sign of its uniquely rapacious and exploitative nature. Thus, Sartre argued, Europeans had to die at the hands of their victims. He said, to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone. To destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses. At the same time, then there remains a dead man and a free man. In other words, Sartre advocated civilizational suicide, and the west largely complied. But why did the west comply? Now? Part of the answer to that lies in the West's pathological and religiously based adherence to the reality of sin and the necessity of repentance. Our culture, Western culture, is a guilt culture, a culture that focuses on the reality of absolute morality and says that when we fail, we are guilty. This means that we feel bad when we sin. That's actually one of our virtues. But there are lots of other cultures, shame cultures, like, say, the Islamic cultures or pre World War II Culture of Imperial Japan, or, say, the modern left that focuses not on any absolute standard of morality or conscience, but on the evil of being humiliated. For these folks, admitting fault is the weakness. Well, because we in the west reflexively look to our own sins before those of others, we. We fall prey to civilizationally suicidal impulses. Our enemies don't. They're happy to blame us for their problems. And unfortunately, we're all too happy to blame ourselves. As the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner writes, the duty to repent forbids the Western bloc, which is eternally guilty, to judge or combat other systems, other states, other religions. Our past crimes command us to keep our mouths closed. Our only right is to remain silent. But why should we feel uniquely guilty? The west seems to bear a unique amount of guilt because we have come to believe a giant lie, a great giant lie about ourselves. And that lie is that we, the west, are uniquely evil. And we hear this lie all the time. Just a couple of days ago, for example, King Charles visited Canada, a country with a parliament only because it was once a dominion of the British Crown, and then read a land acknowledgement to the Algonquin Indians as though the British Empire ought to repent its establishment of the country of Canada. The very concept is ridiculous. Watching King Charles sit there in all of his royal regalia lamenting his own empire is insane. And yet this kind of nonsense is imitated at nearly every college event across the West. But that's the lie that the west is uniquely evil. And that lie gained an enormous amount of credibility due to the horrors of the 20th century. We were told, often by Marxist Lexart, that imperialism was a uniquely Western phenomenon, despite the fact that human beings have conquered other people for as long as human beings have existed. We are told that the Nazis and their allies were natural outgrowths of Western civilization rather than perversions of it. We were told that if we abandoned biblical values in favor of a sort of namby pamby secularism, we could avoid all the terrible atrocities of the past, even though it was the pagan dogmas of of the Nazis and the Soviets, the secular dogmas of the Nazis and the Soviets, not their Biblical adherence, that led to their assault on humanity. We were told that if we mitigated our cultural honor, if we discarded it, we could then expunge our sins, even though it was craving cowardice in the face of transnational left wing movements like Nazism and communism that led to their domination of the European continent and proud resurgent patriotism that stopped it. We were told that if we abandoned our borders, we could alleviate our guilt, even though obviously the Nazis and the Soviets had no respect for borders and sought to obliterate them themselves. It was not Western civilization. It was not adherence to biblical values, rule of law, free speech and private property rights that led to the tragedies and horrors of the 20th century. It was the rejection of the West's core values that led to those horrors. But too many in the west believed the lie that the horrors were the result of Western civilization rather than a perversion of it. And in believing that, Lieutenant, we surrendered our own civilization to people who would destroy it. We turned over our nations to consortiums of international elitists who sought to rule us from above and from without. We opened our nations to groups that sought to destroy our history and our unity. Well, now it is time to reverse that process. We have to, in all humility, recognize that Western civilization, like all civilizations, has of course committed sordid wrongs and egregious evils. But the truth, the real truth, something we have known for a very long time, like since the Garden of Eden, is that all human beings have a capacity for evil. Human evil is a universal truth. But the glories of Western civilization are not universal. They come from a particular philosophy, a particular history, a particular culture. Western civilization isn't uniquely evil. Western civilization is uniquely good. Slavery was a human universal. It was Western civilization that ended it. Poverty is a human universal. It was Western civilization that has exponentially mitigated it. War is a human universal. Western civilization has wildly reduced it. And the secular postmodern leftists who refuse to admit this, they are engaging in evil of their own. This country, the very country these secular postmodern leftists seem to despise, a country they label Nazi esque is, is the only country in Europe, perhaps that is not currently overrun by Islamic radicals. This supposedly Nazi esque country is the only country in Europe where I, an Orthodox Jew, can walk in safety and comfort down the street wearing a yarmulke. It is a country where children don't actually have to fear that their innocence will be robbed by a perverse anti biblical left seeking the spiritual destruction of those children. Hungary, like the rest of the west, isn't perfect because no country is. But Hungarians are trying to stand up for their civilization, our shared Western heritage and civilization. And that is a thing that is worth fighting for. And if we fight for it, we will emerge victorious against the forces that seek to destroy our civilization from outside and inside as well. Thanks so much. Happy to take your questions.

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[Ben Shapiro]

PureTalk.com Shapiro hello, Mr. Shapiro, thank you.

[Audience Member]

So much for your speech. I have a question regarding the national identity. So although President Trump took office in Washington, D.C. here, globalist elites in Europe are actually trying to erode our national sovereignty by mass migration and by open border policies. And my question to you is, what do you think? What is the best way for European conservatives to reassert our national identities? And thank you so much in advance.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's a great question. I mean, I think number one, one place where Hungary clearly has led Europe is in reasserting its national identity, specifically with regard to rejecting mass migration from areas that absolutely reject Western civilization as a whole. And you guys are paying, I believe something like a million euros a day for the privilege right now, thanks to the predations of the European Union. I think that you are starting to see a rising tide that is going to reject mass migration. That rising tide is happening in France. It's obviously happening in Germany. It's actually happened in Denmark where a left wing party has radically restricted immigration. So I think that the era of open migration is over. This is one area where the prime minister, he was ahead of his time. He took an enormous amount of flak for doing what Hungary did. And time has proved him right. And nations that refuse to protect their own border are nations that are going to suffer for it. And the populations of those nations know it. Now, obviously there are people in a variety of powerful roles who are attempting to stop democracy from actually working. In many of these countries you'll see an upsurge in right wing or conservative or anti mass immigration sentiment and then it will sort of be shoveled off to the side because no one really wants to talk about it. But you can only suppress that for so long. That situation for supposedly center right or center left parties that are siding with the radical left on these issues, eventually the lid is going to blow off of that jar and what's going to come out is going to be the sentiment of Europeans that they do not actually wish to have Their cultures discarded in favor of a failed multiculturalism that has destroyed every state it's touched.

[Audience Member]

Hi Ben, I'm here. It's an honor to ask you. My name is Balaz and my question is the following. Secularism has hollowed out the spiritual core of the Western civilization. How can conservatism survive in such conditions in a godless culture? And how can we actively reintroduce the Judeo Christian value set to our society? Sociology, sorry. Societies to reach order and the real meaning.

[Ben Shapiro]

So I mean, the answer is that Western civilization cannot survive full scale secularism and godlessness. And that's what we've been watching. And the restoration of church is the fundamental basis of a restoration of the West. I say this as a Jew. Everybody who grew up in a Christian household and whose grandparents were Christian needs to go to church. Everyone, it is deeply, deeply important that they go to church and reengage with their religious heritage and re engage with God and re engage with an absolute morality that suggests that there is a right and that there is a wrong. Because again, all the things that I just talked about spring from those biblical values and there is no substitute for it. And I think that's why you're seeing actually in the United States an increase in religious adherence among young people. For the first time in my lifetime, it was going in one direction, it was going down into the right, and now it's moving up again. And the reason is because it turns out that a life that's filled with secularism eventually becomes hollow. Not for everybody. There are some people who can lead fulfilled lives of their own making, but the reality is that for a broad population, finding meaning in a meaningless universe is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. And for a civilization it's actually just impossible. Because to slide from secularism to nihilism is not much of a slide. But if you actually want to, for example, have a civilization that has children, I mean, this is what every statistic shows. Religious adherence and having lots of kids go hand in hand. You are not going to restore natalism in the west without having people go to church. It's just not going to happen. You have to have a national mission. You have to have a godly mission. It's why the only country actually in the west that currently has above replacement rates of population growth is Israel, because it's a country that is largely religious. Even the secular people in Israel have some semblance of religion. And also because they. They're surrounded by enemies on all sides. And that means that they feel the actual patriotic Necessity to have kids, that sort of thing can be restored. But you have to have civilizational pride. And that civilizational pride is rooted in a belief in a higher power that demands something of you. Also, the success of Western civilization rests on a very simple principle, which is if you fail, it's probably your own fault. Every failed civilization is rooted in the opposite, that if you fail, it's somebody else's fault. But successes in life and successful civilization say that freedom exists so that if you fail, you're the one to blame. That's what religion says. What the Bible says all over the Bible is if you fail, that's not God's fault, that's your fault you did it. And that means you need to take responsibility for your life and make it better. And without that, it's very easy to slide into the morass. So I think there's a reason why people are going back to church, thank God. I think that there's a God shaped hole in people's hearts that was opened up by secularism. People have tried to fill that hole with everything from pornography to chatbots, to just the Internet itself, or to rage and political polarization. None of that fills the God shaped hole. The only thing that fills the God shaped hole is God.

[Balaz]

Hello, Mr. Shapiro, allow me to quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who said that the strength or weakness of a society depends more on on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotting core cannot stand. Mr. Shapiro, we all see the efforts of the Trump administration, which you support, to improve the industrial and governmental structure of the United States, however, is equally as much being done to reinvigorate the more important spiritual energies of the west. And if so, what?

[Ben Shapiro]

So this is a great question and it goes to the heart of what government can actually do in concert with religious institutions. Because the truth is that religious institutions are what we would call intermediary institutions in life, right? You have like you and your family and then you have the government which you vote for, but you have no actual relationship. But then you have these sort of intermediate institutions that you deal with, these informal societal institutions where you really form all of your social bonds. The question is, what can government do to prop those up and strengthen them? And by the way, I totally agree with you that everybody who's looking for re industrialization to fill the God shaped hole again, the only Thing that fills the God shaped hole is God, not a factory job. And so if you are trying to actually fill that God shaped hole with God again, then what you actually need to do is foster, for example, school choice, religious school choice. That's something that we, in the state of Florida, in Florida, we do this. We actually have stipends for everybody who wants to go to private school. And religious schools are really filling the gap. We have huge vouchers for every kid in the state of Florida. And my kids, for example, are recipients. They go to a Jewish day school. A lot of friends who go to Christian schools specifically because of this. That is a big one. Obviously, we also need to get government out of the business of crowding out churches. So it used to be that many of the social services that were provided in your community were provided by your church. So in my community, for example, I'll take mine as an example just because I know it the best. If somebody loses their job, the first move is to go to members of the community and say, does anybody know who has a job for this person? How do we help this person get a job? If there needs to be a meal train, right. Everybody needs to get together and help fund this person to get through hard times. People in the community do it. When government fulfills that role, when government comes in and just hands you a check, it breaks the bonds that you actually have with the people in your church and in your society. That that level of mutual dependence that exists at the intermediate level that comes along with spiritual obligations. Because if you want to be part of that social club that represents my synagogue that comes along with certain duties to God, you have to keep Sabbath, you have to send your kids to Jewish day school, probably you have to keep kosher. And that was true for literally all churches for all of time. To be part of this social club, there were obligations that attached as well, which is also how you knew that your neighbor wasn't mooching off of you. You knew that your neighbor wasn't just taking money out of your pocket because they had to fulfill religious obligations and show skin in the game. The increase in the size and scope of government has crowded out a lot of the social functions of churches and intermediate institutions. I would, number one, suggest that government does have an active role to play in allowing people to send their kids to more expensive religious schools in the United States, for example, because that's good. But I also think that the government should get out of a lot of these realms and allow that social gap to be filled by what it used to be filled by, namely, the people that you live next to and with and with whom you share a religious belief system.

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[Audience Member]

My question is regarding JD Wanz's Naval Academy speech that you also covered on your show earlier this week. I think what do you think is the meaning behind the sort of strategic shift of US Foreign policy and diplomacy that he spoke in length about?

[Balaz]

Thank you.

[Ben Shapiro]

So the question is about the shift in American foreign policy and what it represents right now. I will say that I think there are multiple strains of foreign policy that are currently playing out simultaneously inside the Trump administration, and the result is a lot of uncertainty. I'm not sure that anyone has sort of a solid read on what the next move from the Trump administration will be in, say, Ukraine or with regard to Israel, with regard to Iran, with regard to China. There are a bunch of strains that are competing. So the speech that you mentioned, J.D. vance's speech at the Naval Academy, what he was rejecting was, I think, a straw man that's been burned 20 years ago. Essentially, he's saying that we will no longer engage in the sort of interventionist Wilsonian philosophy that led to the war in Iraq. I'm not sure how many Americans at this point raise their hand when you say, if you know then what you know now, would you go to war in Iraq? Like, how many hands go up? The answer is probably zero. So he's fighting against an impulse that no longer exists in the American body politic. The question is, what does he mean practically? And so I've always believed that President Trump understands peace through strength, which was sort of Trump 1.0, which was we don't have interests in every conflict all along the globe. We don't have to get involved in every conflict. But where we do have interests, we have to muscularly defend those interests. And the only thing in some cases that defends those interests is the credible threat of use of force. And that's why, for example, when it comes to Ukraine, I've taken the position that President Trump is right, that he wants to get to an off ramp. I've been calling for an off ramp in Ukraine since August of 2022. But if you actually want to get Vladimir Putin to an off ramp, you actually need to up the pressure on Putin because Zelenskyy right now is actually giving Trump everything he wants. He gave him a 30 day ceasefire, he's giving him the rare earth minerals deal, he's giving him the possibility of a face to face negotiation with Putin, no preconditions. And Putin meanwhile, is doing none of those things. And so the only way to get Putin to the table, presumably, is to up the ante on the pressure with an eye toward an off ramp. Now, is that something that J.D. vance wants? I have no idea. I have no idea what JD Wants. I'm not sure what the president foreign policy is with regard to Ukraine. It seems to shift fairly frequently. And again, there's something to strategic ambiguity, but there's a point where strategic ambiguity, like you don't know what he's going to do next. So don't screw with this guy. There's a point where strategic ambiguity shifts over into just pure uncertainty. And America's enemies can take uncertainty as a sign of weakness. And that's one of my concerns.

[Audience Member]

Hi, Ben Malka, fellow Orthodox Jew. And my question was we have 10 kids and we moved out of the state because of how intense and invasive the woke culture has gotten in the states. And my question is, how do you think Donald Trump, if he can stall this decline in the US if he can reinstate conservative values, what do you think? What is your opinion on this?

[Ben Shapiro]

So I do think that woke culture is on kind of its last legs in the United States. By this, I mean that 10 years ago when I was saying that boys are not girls, I was nearly kicked off of every social media platform. Now that is actual government policy from the White House on down. And I think that there's been a very harsh reaction to the woke philosophy, which essentially suggests, in essence, that every disparity in outcome is due to discrimination. That if one group does worse than another group, it must be because the system is designed in order to harm that group. I think the American people are tired of that. I think that's why some of the most popular stuff that President Trump has done is taking on, for example, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is just wokeness or taking on the trans agenda in the United States, which again, is really unpopular in the United States. I think that wokeness has a real problem on its hands. Now. The thing that I'm fearful of is that all the good that President Trump is doing. How long does it last? Is there a reversion back to woke in the aftermath of President Trump? And the answer there is going to be determined by how successful President Trump is on sort of the baseline governance things. If the economy remains very strong, I think wokeness is in serious trouble for the long haul. If the economy were to tank and now it's a package deal where you get a sort of left wing populism that surges along with the wokeness, you could get a package deal where wokeness rears its ugly head all over again. So I think, I don't think you can wipe out wokeness in a single moment. I think the attempt to do so is laudable. But I think that a movement that took decades to build is usually not destroyed inside of a couple of years. It's going to take a more long term vision of how to keep that at bay. But I do think the American people are very, very tired of it. So let's put it this way. I'm significantly more optimistic about the death of wokeness than I was, say, three years ago.

[Balaz]

Hi, Ben, you often emphasize facts and logic, and you've already mentioned in your speech that many of our opponents operate purely on an emotional and pseudo moralistic level. So do you think that the right should embrace moral and emotional arguments more strategically in order to win the cultural war? Thank you.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, I think it's a great question. So I frequently say, facts don't care about your feelings. But the response very frequently is in feelings don't care about your facts, which is very often true. People are making emotional arguments. You cite a fact at them, they ignore the fact because they feel a particular way about a particular issue. Should we be making more emotionally laden arguments? I mean, the answer is absolutely sometimes. I mean, my hope would be that the emotional argument comes atop a layer of facts. It's sort of a pie in which the crust of the pie, the base of the pie is going to be the facts. And then you do have to put in some emotional content that appeals to the heartstrings if you hope to actually foster a positive agenda sometimes, because of course, people are emotional creatures and ignoring that would be a strategic mistake. So I agree with that. I think that when the emotions substitute for the facts, that's where I start to lose it. And again, I'm not sure that that's only a left wing phenomenon. I think it's a universal human phenomenon. You sometimes see this on the right, which is why the right will drift into sort of Conspiracy theories. They'll say, I don't care about the facts. There must be somebody who's attempting to screw me. It's probably the small cadre of people. And if there's no facts to back that, I'm very uninterested in that take. If there are facts to back it. Now you're talking about something completely different. So. So again, I think you're right. The foundation has to be facts. But yeah, sure, you're going to have to build some sort of emotional superstructure atop that if you hope to be convincing.

[Audience Member]

Hi, Ben, I'm Shalom. I'm a big fan. And my question is about what people like to call lately the woke, right? So as we all see and all observed in the last like two years since the war began in Israel, that more and more pretty prominent conservative voices in America started to say sometimes subtle, sometimes not as subtle and quite explicit anti Semitic stuff. And for me, as an Israeli Jew, that's pretty worrying because I always saw the conservative movement in America as a natural ally. So my question is, how much of a percentage does that represent of conservatives in America? How much are you worried about it and how do you think we should reply or we should deal with this new phenomenon?

[Ben Shapiro]

So, first of all, I'm not a huge fan of the term woke, right, Because I think that it obscures more than it illuminates. And so I'll try to be very specific about who I think you're talking about and you tell me if I'm wrong. I think that the philosophy of the people that you are referring to essentially says that there is, just like the left, a group of people who are put upon. And that group of people who are put upon are put upon by an elite cadre of people here. They will often name check Jews or Israelis or Israeli foreign aid, and that's what's making their life bad. So in the same way that the left will argue that every disparity is in fact discrimination, that every thing that is unequal between two parties must be because someone is harming the other party, the right is doing some of that same stuff, but their victim group is different. So the left might say that it's blacks in America, the right might say that it's white Appalachian people in America. But the similarity is in the idea that there is a victim group and a victimizer group, and success is an indicator of victimizer status. And so is that a problem on the right? Absolutely. I mean, you can see sort of a populist right that edges toward that and veers directly into it more than a little these days. I don't like that along any lines. I think that it's very bad. How popular is it? I think some of it is being bolstered, frankly, by algorithmic problems at places like TikTok, which is a Chinese spy app, or like at. Certainly X, X is being gamed by malign actors. There's no question that's the case. So how popular is it in reality? Not particularly popular with the American people generally. It is increasingly popular with young people who are being told after years and years of being lied to by the elites, that the elites can never be trusted. And the only people you can trust are people who posit conspiracy theories. The logic goes something like the elitist told us something was false and they were lying, and I told you the truth because I said they were lying. That means I'm telling you the truth about literally everything. And there's a conspiracy behind everything that I'm also uncovering that sort of conspiracy, theorizing that. Just asking questions that I've criticized so frequently. The purpose of a question should be to elicit an answer. The purpose of a question should be to elicit a fact. If you're just asking questions because what you actually hope to do is see doubt about people in the minds of other people, not based on fact, but based on sort of a malignant hatred, then, yeah, I'm obviously very much worried about that. I think you see it very often. I mean, I spoke about this at length last week, actually. When people suggest that Israel's committing a genocide, for example, in the Gaza Strip, which is an absurdity on every level. There is literally no definition of a genocide that fits what's going on in the Gaza Strip right now. There has never been a genocide in which the supposedly genocidal party somehow increases the population of the group that is genociding. That has never happened in human. That has not fed that group to the tune of hundreds of trucks per day while that group is holding hostages. It makes no sense if you're participating in that lie. There must be some sort of ulterior motive that is not factually driven. So.

[Audience Member]

Good evening, Mr. Shapiro. Thank you for joining us for this session. My question would be about that both Europe and America is facing with a cultural crisis which is pressured by cultural. So what do you think? What could be the cornerstone of a transatlantic conservative alliance?

[Ben Shapiro]

I think that, as we've been talking about, the cornerstone of any transatlantic conservative alliance will actually have to be shared traditional values, which is amazing, because 20 years ago, the right was totally disunified about traditional values. And I think that's why you had the subsequent 20 years. If you went back to the year 2000 and you said what unifies the right, what you would say is there's actually a lot of social debate over everything from sort of abortion to same sex marriage. But there's pretty good coincidence on foreign policy and on economics. And now it's kind of the opposite. If you were to talk about the things that unite the right, the thing that unites the right is opposition to wokeness. So opposition to transgender philosophy, for example, opposition to the idea that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was a genius move. There's actually pretty wide consensus across the entire right on those particular issues. And what I really mean here is that in the fundamentals, church, religion, God, I mean, we keep coming back to that. But if you're going to build from anything, that's the most solid basis from which human beings have ever built anything. So that seems like the best basis from which to build everything else can be argued. People can make arguments on either side with regard to the free market. I think the arguments stack up very strongly in favor of the free market. But you can hear people who will suggest particular governmental interventions that they think are more salutary or not. But when it comes to actually building a civilization, the only fundamental basis of a civilization that has ever truly lasted the test of time is one that is built on the notion that there is a right and there is a wrong and that that is divine in origin and that human beings are made in the image of God, given both rights and duties because they are freely choosing creatures that God put on earth to serve him. That seems like a pretty good basis for a shared civil.

[Daniel Cohen]

Hi, Ben. Great speech. I really liked what you said, especially about the resurgence and the revival of the church. It was great to hear you say that from the podium there. My name is Daniel Cohen. I'm with the Real Life Network. It's pro God, pro Israel, pro Bible, pro family. I actually live in Israel. I'm American and Israeli. And I was horrified, as I think most people, most common sense people were, by the murder of the Israeli diplomats in Washington D.C. and as shocking as that was, it was shocking. But I have to say I wasn't surprised. After 18 months to 2 years of free Palestine and the from the river to the Sea and the calls for Intifada, which literally are to murder and to kill Jews, the left is going to do what the left is going to do. But how do you. How do we engage conservatives, people on the right, to become more vocal, to become more active and just engage in this fight to support Israel?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, I mean, I think that the first thing that people on the right and generally in Western civilization should understand are that the people that Israel are fighting are fighting the entire West. I mean, that's something that this country actually really understands, which is why they closed their borders to migrants who are coming from especially those areas. And the notion that Hamas has a hatred for Jews, but they love Christians, it's insane. I mean, it's patently insane. The notion that Hamas, all the people shouting from the river to the sea and wearing on the one hand, a rainbow flag and on the other, a Hamas armband like that. These people are friends to the sort of traditional people of Western civilization. They're not friends. They're enemies. There is a reason why the enemies of Israel are constantly talking about how they wish to not only kill Jews, but also to free Al Andalus, which is Spain. This bizarre notion that all of the hatred of the radical Islamic world is directed against Jews is so historically ignorant. The reality is that for about a thousand years there, for significantly more than a thousand years, the main target of radical Islamists was Christians. I mean, Istanbul used to be called Constantinople. Lebanon used to be a Christian country. Coptic Christians used to be a major demographic group in Egypt. Actually, I was talking as I got off the plane today with a nun from Syria, and she was talking to me about the threats that now exist to Christians in Syria and Lebanon have existed there for a while. And she was pointing out the solidarity between Jews and Christians along these lines, the absolute willingness to ignore that in favor of bizarre conspiracy theories about Jewish power. I wish I could say that I understand it beyond the simple conspiratorial desire for somebody to blame for your own problems. But again, this seems to be a perfectly clear civilizational conflict. And pretending otherwise is a great way to commit societal suicide, as we're finding out from France and the UK right now.

[Balaz]

Hello, Mr. Shapiro, my question is about how, across all of the west, art, literature, and history are constantly being rewritten in the name of decolonization. And what can we conservatives personally do to protect our culture without being called a racist or a bigot?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, so I've said this for a long time, I think my entire career, the proper response. Very often, you know, I'll go to a campus, somebody will call me racist, or I'm on a show. When somebody calls you a racist, the Proper response to you're a racist is not, Let me explain to you 10 reasons why I'm not a racist. That's a losing argument. The proper response is right. That's the actual proper response. If somebody calls you a racist, the proper response is to flip them the bird or to tell them to F off. And the reason for that is because what they are doing there is maligning it. That's not an argument. That's a character assassination. And you can't fight back against a character assassination by legitimizing the person who's actually making the argument. The minute that you start defending yourself, oh, I'm not a racist. And let me tell you all the reasons why I'm not a racist. What you're actually saying is you're a reasonable person who's calling me a racist, which means that it's reasonable for you to call me a racist or to think that I'm a racist, which means that maybe I'm a racist. There's no reason to even humor the argument. So I think the first thing that the west has to do when it comes to many of these arguments is to throw the bird and say, you have no evidence of this. Not only do you have no evidence of this, it makes you a schmuck to actually make this argument and to character assassinate people that you know nothing about. And against all available fact patterns, it is okay to simply reject out of. You do not have to make a logical retort to an insult. In fact, a logical retort to an insult is typically ineffective. The only actual appropriate response to an insult is to take umbrage and to either walk away or to engage on the same level that somebody is insulting you. All right, one more question.

[Audience Member]

Hi, Mr. Shapiro. I have a question regarding the relationship of Israel and Germany. The new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who is a conservative, says he does no longer understand what Israel is doing in Gaza and that the war cannot be explained with the fight against Hamas anymore. I wonder, how dangerous is this for Israel and our Europe and especially Germany, still, still on Israel's side?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, obviously it's not good for Israel that so many of the European powers have decided that basically they are fine with Hamas regaining control of the Gaza Strip. And I'd recommend to the Chancellor that if he has a good plan for Gaza, he should table it right now, because I've heard zero plans from anyone that are actually practical or practicable in the Gaza Strip. There's a reason that no country in the region will take the Palestinians There is a reason for that, and it is because the Palestinian population, by polling data, by literally all polling data, is heavily terror supportive. And many countries don't want that in their country, and I think rightly so. The notion that Israel is supposed to sort of leave and then leave Hamas as the governing power in the Gaza Strip is insane. Obviously, no one is positing any other solutions, including the chancellor. So my response to that is always the same. The minute that you posit an actual practical plan that doesn't involve Hamas actually running the place again, redeveloping all of its terror tunnels, firing rockets into Israel, attacking its neighbors, and oppressing its own people, while, by the way, still holding Israeli hostages, the minute you come up with that plan, I'm happy to hear it. Otherwise, you should shut up. All right, bye, everybody. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

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