What I Learned From Watching Ben Shapiro for a Week
It was painful
Daily Blog #5
I think anyone that places themselves on the left politically should sit down and watch Ben, try to watch him, try to really look at things from his point of view. And then come right back to the realm of reality and understand how smart he is, but also how much of a bubble he lives in.
For a week I ate up all the Ben Shapiro filled content that I could, it started off being very difficult and irritating to watch, but after awhile I started to see where he’s coming from and I better acquainted myself with the strong and weak parts of his arguments instead of screaming no. I don’t agree with him by any means nor do I endorse anything that he says.
Ben Shapiro is Really Smart
Really really really smart. I know this because I’m not dumb and I can tell an intelligent person when I see one. He’s a Harvard grad and skipped multiple grades a child. He has extremely logical arguments, if all of his premises are correct, it’s extremely difficult to prove him wrong (SPOILER: not everything he says is true or at least not as true as he likes to make it seem, but he’s great at making it seem like they are). He can construct a ridiculously sound argument with ease and he has a plethora of knowledge that he utilizes to back up his statements. The issue is, a lot of his information is biased — which I can’t blame him for, humans love things that agree with us. Shapiro has used old statistics to prove his points and utilized the “the latest literature in the field is biased” argument great in some of his debates. He can argue like a motherf*cker, but I really do wish he could take left-wing literature seriously.
Ben Shapiro Was Bullied as a Child
Being bullied makes Shapiro’s public demeanour a lot less cool (not saying there’s anything wrong with being the victim of bullying). He gives off a very, “everyone should be as mature and smart as me” vibe, which usually goes hand in hand with being an ex-boy genius turned political champion. Shapiro brings up being bullied pretty regularly and draws comparisons between bullying and the treatment of conservatives by liberals.
When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe because you happen to disagree with them about tax policy or same-sex marriage or abortion, that’s bullying. When someone slanders you because you happen to disagree with them about global warming or the government shutdown, that’s bullying. When someone labels you a bad human being because they disagree with you, they are bullying you. They are attacking your character without justification. That’s nasty. In fact, it makes them nasty.
Ben Shapiro Seems to Be Very Grounded in the Concept of Freedom (with limits)
Shapiro is pro-freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to practice your religion, he’s all for freedom unless the religion you want to practice is Islam or you want him to call you a pronoun that doesn’t align with your genitals or you disagree with him. Shapiro really does America is the land of freedom and no group is being systematically oppressed and that this is truly the land of equal opportunity. Wish I lived in his world.
Ben Shapiro is Great at Strawmanning the Opposition
(Strawman definition — a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”) Shapiro frequently attacks arguments that those disagreeing with him didn’t necessarily present. When you do this, talk fast and have the ability to state statistics and facts like its nobodies business, it’s very easy to get people who already want to agree with you, agree with you way more. Shapiro is usually presented with pretty subpar debate opponents, which helps support the argument that leftists are dumb and they seldom put up a good fight (sadly).
Ben Shapiro is an Ethnocentrist
(Ethnocentrist definition — evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture) Shapiro frequently states that capitalism and the traditional Western/American way of life (family patriarchy, nuclear family etc) are the best way to live. He doesn’t believe in premarital sex and abortion for religious reasons, he refuses to refer to people by their preferred pronouns and has referred to transgender individuals as mentally ill and suffering from gender dysphoria, a diagnosis found in the DSM 5 (the inclusion of gender dysphoria in the DSM 5 is currently under scrutiny by some researchers and it has been removed as a diagnosis in Denmark). Shapiro frequently asks people to be tolerant of his political views, but has an air of intolerance in regards to other people’s beliefs and lifestyles. Shapiro is quoted as saying
Tolerance fails as a virtue, first of all, because it is in some ways demeaning to people. It is much better to speak of “respect” or “empathy.” But that is precisely the problem — common sense tells us that there are people who cannot and ought not to command our respect or empathy. We regard what they stand for as stupid, crazy, evil, or all three. To be respectful of them would be to abandon all moral sense, so that a completely tolerant person would be totally passive, without a moral center. Thus we fall back on “tolerance,” which merely means conceding to people the right to be who they are, while withholding our respect.
Ben Shapiro’s views on political extremism, the LGBTQ community, Islam and Trump all seem to based on the logic found in this quote. Shapiro believes that anything too far from what he morally finds right, is wrong. His logic is sound here, but in practice a lot of people can be neglected and mistreated (ie. the LGTBQ community and Muslims).
I think Ben Shapiro is really smart, but I believe that the data he presents in his arguments is meticulously picked to prove his point and that he has a very strong bias (expected). I don’t take him to be an impartial opinion and I think he’s just as bad at giving impartial facts as mainstream media. I also don’t spend any more time watching him since this experiment because his opinions and arguments can be extremely hurtful to certain groups.
