Author: Ben Shapiro

On April 1, 2014, President Barack Obama triumphantly announced that 7.1 million Americans had selected a health insurance plan through Obamacare. In doing so, he nastily labeled his political opposition uncaring and unfeeling. “Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance?” Obama asked. “Why are they so mad about the […]

Last Thursday, Mozilla, the company that’s home to the web browser Firefox, forced the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich. What, precisely, had Eich done wrong? Back in 2008, Eich had donated $1,000 to the Proposition 8 effort backing traditional marriage in California. Dating website OKCupid posted a ban on Firefox traffic, issuing a message to […]

On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., presented his 2015 budget proposal. The Senate Democrats did not provide any such proposal; President Barack Obama’s proposal posited an unending federal deficit and massive tax increases. Ryan’s proposal, by contrast, lowered the rate of increase of spending moderately (by $5.1 trillion over the next decade), […]

Few Americans have ever met their Congresspeople. They don’t see them at the grocery store; they don’t meet them at the bowling alley. They’re more likely to see their representatives in photographs from the Daily Grill in Washington, D.C., than at a local town hall. Constituents’ closest contact with those they elect comes on Election […]

When I was a kid — which wasn’t that long ago, given that I just turned 30 in January — I recall hearing a popular phrase on the playground: “Mind your own business.” MYOB reared its head whenever somebody threatened to rat out a fellow student for anything from harmless roughhousing to juvenile delinquency. The […]

For years, conservatives have puzzled over President Barack Obama’s continued personal popularity in the face of his dramatically uninspiring performance as commander-in-chief. Obama seems to inspire a bizarre personal loyalty among his advocates, particularly among young people who should by all rights be concerned with their fading futures and collapsing prospects. Why do his numbers […]

On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to respond to Russia’s invasion of the Crimea region of Ukraine. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” Kerry stated. He added, “It’s an incredible act of aggression. […]

This week, CNN’s Piers Morgan announced that “Piers Morgan Live” would be coming to an ignominious end sometime in March. His replacement has not yet been chosen. But his television demise came not a moment too soon for millions of Americans who had tired of his sneering nastiness. The New York Times chose not to […]

This week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced to a group of Indonesian students that global warming was “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” He added, “Because of climate change, it’s no secret that today Indonesia is … one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It’s not an exaggeration to say […]

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released a report discussing the ramifications of Obamacare. The report revealed that the work-hour equivalent of approximately 2.5 million jobs would disappear from the workforce, thanks to Obamacare, in a voluntary process in which employees would simply dump out of their jobs, knowing they could get health care through […]

Last Tuesday evening at 6:19 p.m. PST, my wife gave birth to our first child, a 7-pound, 9-ounce, 21-inch little girl named Leeya Eliana. The labor was long, approximately 26 hours, and my wife endured it heroically. Before, we were a married couple; now, we are a family. On the sixth day of her life, […]

In May 2012, Vice President Joe Biden floated a political trial balloon: He came out in favor of same-sex marriage. In the process, he stated that the way had been paved for the same-sex marriage movement by Hollywood. “I think ‘Will & Grace’ probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s […]

Jenelle Evans, 22, had an abortion this year. Originally featured on MTV four years ago as a pregnant teenager, Evans, who loves to party, had a son, gave the son to her mother to raise, got into heroin, got married and went to jail; her husband ended up in jail as well on drug charges. […]

On Tuesday, the Iranian government announced that it had reached a secret agreement with the West on its nuclear development. The details of the agreement were not released, but suffice it to say that the Iranians could not contain their glee. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani celebrated the deal with an English-language tweet claiming that the […]

It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression. It’s taken socialism half that time to come back from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In New York City, avowed socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that his goal is to take “dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities” […]

2013 was a year of revelations, a year of possible turning points. For nearly two decades, since Ronald Reagan left office, America moved steadily in the direction of the left, both culturally and politically. When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal […]

A&E’s indefinite suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson over his comments regarding homosexuality, and the subsequent backlash, is an important cultural moment in American life. For the first time in decades, traditionally religious Americans have come out of the closet en masse to speak out against anti-religious bigotry from proponents of gay rights. This, […]

We’ve all heard the Obamacare horror stories: members of the individual insurance marketplace who watched their plans get canceled; business owners watching their costs rise; and employees finding out that more is coming out of their paychecks for approximately the same benefits. But the underlying logic of Obamacare was that those in need would benefit […]

The death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela prompted torrents of gushing praise from world leaders and media this week. Mandela was widely depicted as a near-flawless human being. BBC presenter Evan Davis said Mandela ranked near Jesus in the “pantheon of virtue”; Bono said Mandela was “stubborn ’til the end for all the […]

When George W. Bush was president of the United States, many of the left fell prey to what columnist Charles Krauthammer called “Bush Derangement Syndrome”: “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” With Bush out of […]

This week, President Barack Obama doomed Israel to a choice between unpalatable options: either striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities in its own defense and thereby internationally isolating itself, or watching as its most ardent enemy goes nuclear. The deal, put into place with Iran by the Obama administration, allows Iran to continue developing nuclear-enrichment processes, […]

On Friday evening, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, a man known largely for interviewing Michael Jackson back in 2003, made a name for himself in a new way: He stated that former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin deserved to have someone “p*ss” and “s***” in her mouth. The repulsive comments came on the heels of […]

The left is scared to death that its favored 2016 candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, could be on the ropes. Hillary’s favorable ratings are down dramatically from when she left office — in April 2013, her favorability rating stood at 56 percent, but by the end of October, it had dropped to 46 […]

President Obama is a gifted politician. He is gifted with rhetoric virtuosity. He is gifted with the ability to lie directly to camera without blinking. And he is gifted with some of the most incompetent conservative opposition in the history of the country. How else to explain the fact that after years of President Obama […]

On Monday evening, NBC News reported that President Obama wasn’t just wrong, he was willfully lying when he said that if Americans liked their insurance plans, they could keep them under Obamacare. “(T)he administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their […]

President Obama’s election was supposed to usher in an era of racial unity greater than any Americans had previously experienced. By making the historic move to place the first black president in the White House, Americans signified that they were ready to move beyond the racial conflicts of the past and move forward, arm-in-arm. At […]

This week, massive crowds of veterans descended onto Washington, D.C., to protest the Obama administration’s vindictive shutdown of open-air memorial sites — sites that require no guards but were fenced off simply to make Americans miserable as a bargaining chip in the government shutdown negotiations. Veterans, including many wheelchair-bound veterans from World War II, overturned […]

Back in 1987, a young demagogue named Al Sharpton leapt onto the national scene, accusing a New York assistant district attorney, Steven Pagones, of raping a 15-year-old girl, Tawana Brawley. Actually, Sharpton claimed that Pagones had raped Brawley, anally raped Brawley and then scrawled the initials “KKK” on Brawley’s torso in feces. “We stated openly […]

The media have proclaimed the end of civilization for the third time this year. Sure, the mail will still run on time. Sure, the police will still fight crime. Sure, you’ll still receive your Social Security check and your Medicare and your food stamps. But by golly, if we don’t get this horrific government shutdown […]

In September, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted to secede from the State of California. “Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights,” said one attendee at the council meeting. “We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life.” A few weeks later, the […]