347. The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by: Nick Reader
Author: Ben Shapiro
Genre: Non Fiction, History, Philosophy, Theology
288 pages, published March 19, 2019
Reading Format: Book
Summary
The Right Side of History is Ben Shapiro’s take on the history of religion and philosophy in Western Civilization and how those two things were integral to America becoming a great and unique country. However, he argues that we are in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas. Our freedoms are built upon the two ideas that every human being is made in God’s image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God’s world. These precepts led to the birth of science, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. They also built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty and gave billions spiritual purpose. Civilizations that rejected these ideas have collapsed into ignominy. The USSR, Maoist China, Nazi Germany and modern day Venezuela rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, substituting a new utopian vision of “social justice.” The result was mass starvation and slaughter of tens of millions of human beings. Shapiro warns that the United States is in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, favoring instead moral subjectivism and the rule of passion. The result if civilization collapse into tribalism, individualistic hedonism, and moral subjectivism. The solution is to regain the moral purpose that drives us to be better individuals and assume the duty of working together for the greater good.
Quotes
“We don’t live in a perfect world, but we do live in the best world that has ever existed.”
“What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.”
“The best countries—and the best societies—are those where citizens are virtuous enough to sacrifice for the common good but unwilling to be forced to sacrifice for the “greater” good. Flourishing societies require a functional social fabric, created by citizens working together—and yes, separately—toward a meaningful life.”
“Lasting happiness can only be achieved through cultivation of soul and mind. And cultivating our souls and minds requires us to live with moral purpose.”
“The creation story itself is designed to demonstrate how the first man, Adam, used his innate power of choice wrongly—and we are all Adam’s descendants.”
“What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.”
”a society of essential oils and self-esteem has replaced a society of logic.”
“That virtue took the form of courage—willingness to sacrifice life, fortune, and sacred honor in pursuit of defending the rights necessary to pursue virtue itself. That virtue took the form of temperance—no better founding document has ever been penned than the Constitution of the United States, the product of compromise. That virtue took the form of prudence—the practical wisdom of The Federalist Papers has not yet been surpassed in political thought. And that virtue took the form of justice—the rule of law, not of men, and the creation of a system where each receives his due.”
“Nazism didn’t arise from consumerism. It arose from communal purpose overriding individual purpose, and individual capacity abandoned in favor of worship of the communal capacity of the state. Nazism, in other words, lay a lot closer to Marxism than capitalism did.”
“Politics is about working to build the framework for the pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of it; politics helps us establish the preconditions necessary for happiness, but can’t provide happiness in and of itself.”
“Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
“Christianity’s focus on grace rather than works makes it a far more accessible religion than Judaism in a practical sense. The commandments of Judaism are intricate and difficult. Christianity dispensed with the need for them. Faith is paramount.”
“We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages—in seeking to graft ourselves to rootless philosophical movements of the moment, cutting ourselves off from our own roots—we have damned ourselves to an existential wandering.”
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society,” Rousseau wrote.
My Take
The Right Side of History was a Mother’s Day gift from my son Nick, a devotee of Ben Shapiro. Nick and I share a conservative/libertarian philosophy and I was looking forward to reading Shapiro’s take on Western Civilization. While the book is a bit dense at times with its lengthy history of philosophy, I wholeheartedly agreed with Shapiro’s conclusions and prescriptions for keeping America from plunging into the historical abyss and towards a free society that recognizes and values the individual while still expecting that individual to work within his or her community to improve the lives of others. An interesting and worthwhile read.
