Author: Ben Shapiro

Last week, former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner went on a murderous rampage throughout Southern California, shooting seven people, including five members of law enforcement, killing three. Before he went on his spree, Dorner wrote a manifesto praising liberal policies on gun control, media personages including Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews and politicians including Barack Obama […]

During the 2012 election cycle, Tea Partiers were told by their supposed betters that their ignorance of everyday politics meant that they should take a back seat to the Republican Party establishment. Brandishing the so-called Buckley Rule with quasi-religious fervor — the notion that Republicans should run the most conservative candidate who can win — […]

President Obama is a uniquely gifted demagogue. An orator of unparalleled skill supported by a gushing media, Obama has yet to present a major policy proposal geared toward solving specific problems. But he has won elections. And he has done so by implying — over and over and over again — that his opponents are […]

On Monday, President Barack Obama delivered a monumental address to the nation. It wasn’t monumental in terms of rhetoric — in fact, it wasn’t even memorable. It was monumental because it signaled for the first time just how grand Obama’s ambitions for the left are. No longer is the left content to wage a war […]

Last week, I appeared on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.” For the past few weeks, Morgan had been inviting gun rights defenders ranging from the reasonable to the nutty, and then slamming them by appealing to the memory of the children slain at Sandy Hook. And when I appeared with Morgan, that’s precisely what I told […]

This week’s column is brought to you by the word “a–holes.” It’s one of the left’s favorite words these days, fond as they are of shutting down the debate and casting their political opponents out like lepers. Take, for example, the website Gawker. The website is liberal. And as liberal Obama backers, they feel the […]

Progressivism in America has always been a thuggish ideology. It rests on the notion that laws require no evidence to support their implementation, that intentions are all that matter and that those who oppose “change” of the sort progressives like are morally deficient. Progressivism requires Americans to separate off certain groups in American life as […]

The horror of the massacre of innocents at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. struck at the fabric of the American tapestry. Virtually every American has spent the last few days in a haze — shocked at the nature of evil, confused and frustrated by the inability to prevent such an atrocity, fearful […]

“I’m in the top two percent,” said Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, this week on CNBC. “Right now, I’m paying 45 percent of my total income in income taxes … You tell me, what’s fair about that when medieval serfs pay 25 percent, I’m paying half? I don’t care what the majority voted […]

America is about to plunge over the so-called fiscal cliff — and Americans are fighting mad about it. According to the latest polls, 77 percent of Americans believe that the fiscal cliff — a combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in at the beginning of 2013 — will hurt them […]

In the aftermath of the re-election of President Barack Obama, conservatives searched the heavens and the earth for answers. Some suggested that Mitt Romney lost because Republicans didn’t reach out more to Latino voters; some suggested that Romney lost because his “get out the vote” system fell apart on Election Day. Romney himself said that […]

Will Republicans ever win the presidency again? In the aftermath of the reelection of the worst president since James Buchanan, the question must be asked. Clearly, the Republican Party is on the downswing. But why? There are two easy answers. Neither of them is correct. The first answer is advanced by proponents of liberalism. They […]

It has become an accepted truism in American politics that both Democrats and Republicans want the same things: a prosperous America, a strong America, an America true to principles of freedom and liberty. Perhaps 50 years ago that was true. Today, it no longer is. The fact is that the Democratic Party and the Republican […]

President Obama was on the ropes in the polls after the first presidential debate. After the second presidential debate, he hit the mat in the polls. And after the third presidential debate, he looks to be down for the count. The question, of course, is why. Looking at the debates alone doesn’t tell the full […]

During the second presidential debate, moderator-turned-Obama-advocate Candy Crowley helped President Obama make the case for why he’d been a true leader on the murder of our ambassador and three other brave Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Obama was asked a simple question: “We were sitting around, talking about Libya, and we were reading and became aware […]

Last week, after the first presidential debate, I spoke at an architecture school in downtown Los Angeles. One of the questions the moderator asked was about American exceptionalism. The foam flecked to his lips at the very phrase. What, pray tell, was American exceptionalism, he asked? I answered by referencing the Founding Fathers and the […]

A recent poll shows that 85 percent of middle-class Americans believe they’re worse off now than they were 10 years ago. Yet shockingly, just 34 percent of those people blame Barack Obama. More Americans blame Congress (62 percent), banks (54 percent), corporations (47 percent), former President George W. Bush (44 percent) and foreign competition (39 […]

Here are two quotes from two world leaders. See if you can guess the speakers. Leader #1: “Any action that is provocative [and] offends the religious thoughts and feelings of any people, we condemn. Likewise, we condemn any type of extremism. Of course, what took place was ugly; offending the Holy Prophet is quite ugly.” […]

What happens when a free people decides it was never free to begin with? What happens when a nation decides that individual liberty is a myth, that the endless vicissitudes of life form an impenetrable wall to success, that we are all controlled by outside forces? We despair. We turn to the power of the […]

This week, writer-director Nick Cassavetes released his new movie, “Yellow,” about a woman having an affair with her brother. “I have no experience with incest,” says Cassavetes. “We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole […]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – If the Republican National Convention was all about the numbers — unemployment numbers, deficit numbers, tax rates — the Democratic National Convention thus far has been all about feelings. The keynote address on Tuesday night was delivered by Julian Castro, mayor of San Antonio, who proclaimed that numbers didn’t matter — Barack […]

TAMPA, Fla. — The Republican National Convention started off as an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess on Monday morning. By Tuesday night, the Democratic Party and Barack Obama in particular had to be an anxiety-ridden, soggy, depressing mess. The transition between Monday morning and Tuesday evening was stunning. The Republican Party went into the convention on […]

The American system of democracy is under threat. It’s under threat from an Obama campaign that seeks to polarize Americans along race and class lines. It’s under threat from a Democratic Party that seeks to pit those who pay taxes against those who don’t. But most of all, it’s under attack from America’s public sector […]

Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate has utterly unhinged the Obama campaign. Last week they were happily jabbering about Romney’s record at Bain Capital, implying that he had killed a man’s wife, stating that he was a tax cheat and blaming him for outsourcing jobs. This week they’re stuck defending Barack […]

President Obama is my president. He’s not illegitimate. He’s not a usurper. He was duly elected by my fellow citizens — and as much as I think he’s a horrible commander-in-chief with anti-American ideals, that’s the choice Americans made in 2008. But by the same token, President Obama isn’t my: president. He isn’t doing anything for […]

Let’s say that you own a business. And let’s say that as a person of faith, you decide to use the profits from that business to support, at least in some small part, traditional marriage. Now let’s say that your political opponents find your position stunning and launch a boycott against your business. So far, […]

Last week, President Obama infamously said that if you built a business in America, you weren’t really responsible — the government was. You didn’t get ahead because you were smart or worked hard, or a combination of the two. Only the government could allow you to rise above your station. Obama took a lot of […]

This week, President Obama spelled out just how much he hates American business in an off-prompter moment in Roanoke, Va. If “you’ve been successful,” said Obama, “you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just […]

The agendas of liberals, progressives and assorted tyrants desperately depend on the aspects of human nature they often condemn, such as acquisitiveness, profit motive, self-interestedness and greed. This crossed my mind while reading “How Departures From Economic Freedom Can Affect Freedom In General,” by Dr. John Taylor, a Hoover Institution scholar. Taylor tells how former […]