The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great

by Ben Shapiro

Eventually, the backlash to the inclusion of secular knowledge in the Christian worldview—a backlash led by thinkers like Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–1564)—led to the Church’s famous persecution of Galileo. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) famously posited that the Earth moves around the sun, and was forced to recant by the Church for his failure to state that his theory was not fact. Copernicus had been treated with decency by the Church of his own time—but in 1616, in response to the new fundamentalist religious wave, Copernican ideas were banned. The ban would last until the early nineteenth century, and Galileo’s official pardon from the Vatican would only be issued at the end of the twentieth century.

The nineteenth century’s embrace of the new concept of romantic nationalism offered a purpose without Judeo-Christian values or Greek telos: the nation, spurring forward the progress of history, unified by ethnicity and background, proselytizing with its power. Nationalism also unified the question of individual and collective capacity by suggesting that they were one and the same: your individual identity lay in your identity as a member of the collective. And the collective existed to give you spirit and strength and purpose.

It seems that Nationalism in the 21st century United States is also drifting from Biblical principles, in favor of political efficiency.

It all depends on the meaning of happiness, which Pinker contrasts with suffering—as though all happiness can be got from a 98.6 degree temperature, a hearty meal, and a steady supply of sex. But that’s not what happiness actually constitutes. Human beings keep showing that they need something more—man cannot live by quality of life indicators alone. Material human progress in the absence of spiritual fulfillment isn’t enough. People need meaning.

Focusing on right-able wrongs is worthwhile; blaming all disparities on discrimination leads to more political polarization and individual failure. Studies show that perceived discrimination is heavily connected with “lower grades, less academic motivation . . . and less persistence when encountering an academic challenge.”43 That’s certainly a case for fighting discrimination. It’s also a case for not exaggerating its extent, or silencing conversations in order to pander to sensitivities.

But tribal identity is alive and well. Tribal identity cannot provide prosperity. But it can provide meaning. The problem, of course, is that tribal identity also tears down the civilization that has granted us our freedoms and our rights, our prosperity and our health.

Tribal Identity includes both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe of the early 21st century in the United States.

Harari is right about one thing: capitalism, it turns out, cannot fulfill the human longing for meaning, even if it betters our material condition.