Ben Shapiro

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Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Peace
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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
Collection: Religion
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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
Collection: Religion
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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
Collection: Morning
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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
Collection: Marriage
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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
Collection: Poetry
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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
Collection: Success
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Al Gore had no problem taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the government of Qatar to sell his Current TV to Al Jazeera America.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Government
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The Obama administration has consistently refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory, let alone as the capital of Israel.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Alone
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Kids are fat because of lack of parenting.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Parenting
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The Obamacare contraception mandate was never about freedom. It was always about pitting secularism against religion, and using the power of government to sponsor secularism.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Freedom
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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
Collection: God
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Obama's respect for the Constitution does not apply to protections against unreasonable search and seizure, as Obama's deeply intrusive National Security Agency programs prove.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Respect
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The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Government
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Thanks to presidential immunity and executive control of the Justice Department, there are no consequences to executive branch lawbreaking. And when it comes to presidential lawbreaking, the sitting president could literally strangle someone to death on national television and meet with no consequences.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Death
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Vaccinations absolutely work, and have dramatically decreased rates of childhood diseases.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Work
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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
Collection: Health
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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
Collection: Freedom
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Distrust of government isn't baseless cynicism. It's realism.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Government
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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
Collection: Anger
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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
Collection: Freedom
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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
Collection: Health
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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
Collection: Marriage
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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
Collection: Marriage
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During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: War
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President Obama's biggest advocates believe that Americans are ready to embrace his vision for the United States: a less muscular America on the world stage, an America with a more controlling executive branch and less conflict in the legislative branch, an America in which the government takes care of us, be we Pajama Boys or Julias.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Government
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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
Collection: Government
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It was always foolhardy for Republicans and conservatives to stake their objections to Obamacare on the number of sign-ups; Social Security is going bankrupt despite 100% enrollment. The reality is that Obama was always destined to hit his required numbers because, after all, he has the power of government to compel action.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Government
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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
Collection: Great
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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
Collection: Birthday
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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
Collection: Freedom
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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
Collection: Relationship
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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
Collection: Technology
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The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.
- Ben Shapiro
Collection: Religion
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Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
- Ben Shapiro
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It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression.
- Ben Shapiro
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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
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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
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A West Virginia 10 is a California 4. Or at least that's what legend tells us: The Legend of Dr. Feelgood. Plastic surgery has a permanent home here, which is why Nancy Pelosi loves our Botoxed beaches. Beverly Hills looks like a moving Madame Tussauds.
- Ben Shapiro
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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
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The Fourth Amendment is quite clear on the notion that search and seizure must not be unreasonable. It is difficult to think of something more unreasonable than searching the private phone records and digital information of citizens who are suspected of nothing.
- Ben Shapiro
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Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will.
- Ben Shapiro
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One wonders what exactly Israel did to earn Arab enmity between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria.
- Ben Shapiro
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Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.
- Ben Shapiro
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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
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Matt Damon's anti-fracking diatribe was funded by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.
- Ben Shapiro
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President Obama is perhaps the most ideologically-motivated president in American history. But according to the ultimate authority, Barack Obama, he's a mere pragmatist.
- Ben Shapiro
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Vice President Joe Biden believes that illegal immigrants are citizens. Obama believes that some Americans who join Islamist groups are citizens, while others are not. Who is an American? Whomever the executive branch deems an American. Who isn't? It depends on whether Obama ate his Wheaties or not.
- Ben Shapiro
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'Noah' doesn't merely get the story wrong; like all Biblical adaptations, it's bound to do that (although some aspects of the film are out and out ridiculous). It gets the morality of the story wrong, and in the process turns God into Gaia and morality into radical deep green environmentalism.
- Ben Shapiro
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Having children truly ends adolescence. We are all either parents or children: responsibility-takers or those who demand from others.
- Ben Shapiro