How to Destroy America in Three - Ben Shapiro

262 Pages·2020·2.02 MB·English

by  Ben Shapiro

Dedication
To the founders, who created the greatest country in the history of
the world;
to the Americans who struggled and fought to fulfill the promises
they made;
and to my children, who inherit the gift of America from all of them.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1: The American Philosophy
Chapter 2: Disintegrating American Philosophy
Chapter 3: The American Culture
Chapter 4: The Disintegrationist Culture
Chapter 5: The American History
Chapter 6: Disintegrating American History
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Also by Ben Shapiro
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
W
hat holds America together?
That question has, in recent years, taken on renewed urgency.
Increasingly, Americans don’t like each other. They don’t want to
associate with one another; they don’t want to live next door to one
another. More and more, they don’t want to share the same country
anymore. Red areas are getting redder. Blue areas are getting bluer.
According to a November 2018 Axios poll, 54 percent of Republicans
believe that the Democratic Party is spiteful, while 61 percent of
Democrats believe the Republican Party is racist, bigoted, or sexist.
Approximately one-fifth of both Republicans and Democrats consider
the opposing party “evil.”1 A Pew Research poll from 2016 found
similar numbers: 70 percent of Democrats say Republicans are
close-minded, while 52 percent of Republicans say Democrats are
close-minded; the same poll found that 58 percent of Republicans
had an unfavorable impression of the Democratic Party leading up to
the election, while 55 percent of Democrats felt the same.2
A 2017 Washington Post poll found that seven in ten Americans
thought America’s political polarization is now as severe as it was
during the Vietnam War era, reaching a “dangerous low point.”3 A
2019 survey from American Enterprise Institute found that about half
of Americans believe the other party doesn’t want what’s best for the
country. That’s likely because Americans increasingly misperceive
the nature of those who vote for the opposite political party: both
Democrats and Republicans radically overestimate the secularism
and radicalism of the constituency of the Democratic Party, for
example.4 According to another study from More in Common, 55
percent of Republicans and Democrats believed that a majority of
the opposing party believed extreme views; in reality, that number
was 30 percent. So, for example, Democrats believed that only half
of Republicans would acknowledge that racism still exists in
America; in reality, the number was approximately 80 percent.
Conversely, Republicans believed that just half of Democrats were
proud to be American; the actual number was about 80 percent.5
All of this is having real-life bleed-over effects. According to Pew
Research, 79 percent of Americans believe that we have “far too
little” or “too little” confidence in each other, and 64 percent believe
Americans’ level of trust in each other has been shrinking.6
The center, philosophically and culturally, isn’t holding.
As a matter of historic timing, this polarization is odd. The issues
that tore America apart over the past centuries have been radically
alleviated. Despite the protestations of the liberal media, racism is at
an all-time low in the United States; prosperity was, until the
coronavirus pandemic, at an all-time high.
We should be happy together.
And yet, increasingly, Americans seem to be looking for a non-
amicable divorce. And both sides want the silverware and the dog.
From the Right, the outlook for a united America looks grim:
conservatives perceive a triumphalist, aggressive Left, hell-bent on
rewriting basic American notions, cramming down an extreme vision
of identity politics, cheering the demographic change they insist will
inevitably result in a permanent political and cultural ascendancy.
From the Left, the outlook for a united America looks similarly
grim: Leftists see a reactionary Right, willing to cut any corner in
order to maintain their grip on fading hierarchies of power, clutching
at the last vestiges of that old order.
These competing visions have defined the Trump presidency.
President Trump represents a sort of political optical illusion: Do you
see a blue and black dress, or a white and gold dress? There’s no
way to see both simultaneously. For those on the Right, Trump
represents a seawall against the encroaching, rising tide of
radicalism on the Left. His serious character flaws simply become
secondary concerns when the future of the nation is at stake. Should
Trump lose the presidency in November 2020, conservatives are
likely to panic; the potential for national divorce rises dramatically.
For those on the Left, Trump represents confirmation of their worst
characterizations of the right: crude, bigoted, and corrupt. The
willingness of conservatives to accept Trump, despite all of these
flaws, represents further confirmation that the conservative
movement was rooted in retrograde impulses papered over with the
language of small government. Should Trump win reelection in
November 2020, Leftists are likely to panic; the potential for national
divorce rises dramatically.
But Trump isn’t really the issue, of course. He’s merely the symbol
of a broader rift in America that predates his presidency, and has
been growing, decade by decade.
In order to heal that rift, we must first try to remember why we got
married in the first place—and why we’ve stayed together all these
years.
Disintegration vs. Union
This is hardly the first time Americans have considered divorce.
Indeed, during nearly every major crisis in our history, a contingent of
Americans suggest that divorce might be preferable to living
together. After all, the logic goes, not all that much holds us together
—America is a marriage of interests, not a love match. When the
convenience wanes, the marriage ends. Better that we should go our
separate ways, or radically redefine Americanism itself—which will
end with the same result.
This strain of thought runs from the slaveholding secessionists
through the early-twentieth-century political progressives through
today’s alt-right and identity-politics Left. All of these movements
represented a minority of Americans; all had and have outsize
influence. The philosophy of division is a philosophy of power
politics, a philosophy that paints America as a mythical construct,
instituted by those at the top of the hierarchy in order to reinforce
their own control. It is a philosophy that derides any notion of
American unity as a lie, and bathes that which links us—Abraham
Lincoln’s “bonds of affection” and “mystic chords of memory”—in
acid, disintegrating our ties and casting us all adrift.
Throughout this book, we shall call this strain of thought
Disintegrationism.
Then there is another strain of thought. Throughout American
history, this strain of thought has emerged victorious—though never
without pain and struggle, and sometimes at the cost of death. This
philosophy argues that what unites Americans is far stronger and
deeper than what divides us, that our vows to one another were
cemented in blood, that we are inextricably intertwined. A separation
would kill us both.
This strain of thought runs from the founding fathers through
Abraham Lincoln through the civil rights movement. This strain of
thought championed reason and universal morality above passion
and tribalism, and emerged with a belief in the value of democracy
and individual rights—principles that were always true, but never
properly applied. This strain of thought suggests that America is
always an imperfect union, but it is indeed a union—and that we are
always in the process of strengthening and growing that union, built
on the foundations of founding ideals.
Throughout this book, we shall call this strain of thought Unionism.
Most Americans are Unionists. But they are under attack: steady,
unyielding attack by those who support Disintegrationism. Our bonds
are fraying. What is left is chaos. Without the ties of Unionism, the
center cannot hold. And it isn’t.
The Elements of Unionism
So, let’s get more specific. What, exactly, has allowed America to
stay a country? And why should we continue to do so today?
There are three elements that make America America.
First, American philosophy.
The philosophy of the United States rests on three basic
principles: first, the reality of natural rights, which preexist
government, inalienable and precious; second, the equality of all
human beings before the law, and in their rights; and finally, the
belief that government exists only to protect natural rights and to
enforce equality before the law. American philosophy believes these
propositions are “self-evident,” in the words of the Declaration of
Independence. The founders attempted to implement American
philosophy through a unique set of institutions. The Constitution of
the United States was a compromise document, designed to
enshrine American philosophy via a limited government system. That
constitutional system’s enumerated powers balanced the necessity
for action embodied in the legislative power with the necessity to
avoid tyranny; the constitutional system’s checks effectively
balanced the requirement of an executive powerful enough to
respond to threats and enforce law with the requirement to avoid
despotism embodied in checks and balances; the constitutional
system’s federalism was constructed to frustrate national schemes to
subsume the character of local communities, while simultaneously
preventing those local communities from becoming autocracies.
Next, there is American culture. That culture is characterized by
four distinct elements. First, a tough-minded tolerance for the rights
of others, particularly when we don’t like how others exercise their
rights—we have to agree to disagree, and to get over it. Second, our
culture prizes and cherishes robust social institutions, which create a
social fabric that allows us to trust one another in the absence of
compulsion from government. Third, American culture has always
carried a rowdy streak in defense of liberty: we must be willing to
stand up for our freedom and that of others. Finally, American culture
has always celebrated and rewarded those with a sense of
adventure—the pioneers, the cowboys, the inventors, the risk takers.