Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Happy President's Day, everybody.
Chapter 2: What award did Ben Shapiro receive and why is it significant?
So a couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of receiving an award from City Journal, which is a publication of the Manhattan Institute. We have their guests on our program all the time. They have an amazing number of truly wonderful and talented people.
The speech that I gave there, I think that it is worth the listen because it speaks to where we are in our politics right now and the optimism we ought to have about America going forward. Here's what it sounded like.
Well, first of all, thank you all for coming to my bar mitzvah. It's obviously an honor to be introduced by Douglas Murray and also a challenge because having to speak after Douglas Murray is always a challenge. I don't have the mellifluous voice and his pacing is so much more soothing than my own.
I want to thank obviously City Journal, perhaps the finest intellectual publication in all of America. I, of course, also want to thank Manhattan Institute, which is a spectacular think tank to which I myself am becoming a donor because of its important mission.
It's a deeply, deeply important institution in American life, and given all of the chaos that is now emerging in the think tank world, a significantly more important institution than it ever was. I think that it's going to grow by leaps and bounds and certainly should.
I also want to thank a bunch of my Daily Wire colleagues who came in from frozen Tennessee. I'm pretty sure that this was just an excuse for them not to be in Tennessee. But I want to thank particularly my business partner Caleb Robinson, now CEO of the Daily Wire. He's been there the whole time building this alongside me. And there are so many other people from Daily Wire here. That's wonderful.
My father also I want to thank because without him I wouldn't be here. And that's just factually true. In any case.
I've been a long time City Journal and Manhattan Institute fan because it is incredibly thought-provoking and because of its well-researched investigations and because of its courage in saying that which must be said. But there's something else that I think makes City Journal and Manhattan Institute unique.
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Chapter 3: How does Ben Shapiro express gratitude in his acceptance speech?
Their optimism. I'm an enormous fan of both of these institutions because of their unflagging and unwavering optimism about the country. That optimism shines through in their particular focus, solving concrete problems. To solve problems requires a few presuppositions. First, that we live in a system in which problems can be solved.
There are lots of systems where you can't actually solve problems. Second, that problems can be attributed to discoverable and cognizable causes. And third, that curing such problems is not some sort of Sisyphean, nihilistic task, but a life-improving and life-affirming one. Unfortunately, we now live in a time when solving problems has become passé.
Both the left and now large segments of the right, call them the horseshoe right or the woke right, are no longer interested in solving concrete problems. Instead, both are fascinated with the idea of a simple magical pill that will wipe away all problems all at once. And that's because both the left and the swath of the right have decided that our problems are unsolvable.
Both have decided that our system is fundamentally flawed. Both have decided that our problems are systemic and diffuse. Both have decided that curing problems is not merely a fool's errand, but counterproductive because solutions tend to uphold the very systems they despise. And make no mistake, the left and the horseshoe right despise America, truly despise it.
They despise the ideas of the founding, they despise the nature of our history, they despise what America is today. To the left, the founding represents a preservation of dark systems of power and exploitation. To the horseshoe right, the founding represents the shattering of the common good preserved by a vast paternalistic power.
To the left, American history represents an unbroken chain of sins springing from our original sins, capitalism, religious intolerance, racism. To the horseshoe right, American history represents fragmentation, a shift toward radical godlessness, imperialistic overreach. To the left, America today represents inhumanity, brutality to the weakest at home, and even more brutality to those abroad.
To the horseshoe right, America today represents collapse, dedicated to selling out its own citizens while spreading a peculiar, ugly form of godlessness abroad. And the solution, according to both the left and the horseshoe right, is power. Centralization of power. Not the sort of power sufficient to solve problems, which is to say the sorts of power that the founders actually envisioned.
You know, power divided between branches and between levels of polity. A different sort of power, a power that is unbridled and unchecked. That's the power sufficient to overthrow everything. When we launched The Daily Wire, we had all the usual uncertainties. What if nobody listens or people don't care what we have to say? Well, we're glad we took the risk.
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