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

by Ben Shapiro

Politics is about working to build the framework for the pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of it; politics helps us establish the preconditions necessary for happiness, but can’t provide happiness in and of itself. The Founding Fathers knew that. That’s why Thomas Jefferson didn’t write that the government was granted power to grant you happiness: it was there to protect your pursuit of happiness. The government existed to protect your rights, to prevent those rights from being infringed upon. The government was there to stop someone from stealing your horse, from butchering you in your sleep, from letting his cow graze on your land.

Act well, and in accordance with your value as a rational being, and you will be happy. We find moral purpose in cultivating our reason, and using that reason to act virtuously; pursuing moral purpose makes us “great-souled.”

Happiness is the pursuit of purpose in our lives.

Only living with moral purpose can grant profound happiness.

We need, in my estimate, four elements: individual moral purpose, individual capacity to pursue that purpose, communal moral purpose, and communal capacity to pursue that purpose.

Genesis 1:26: we are all made in God’s image.

That means we all have inherent value, and that our mission in life is to draw close to something beyond ourselves.