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

by Ben Shapiro

Does self preservation of the human species or wide social pressures to agree by a global code potentially not offer this as well?

Again shades of current techo o logical advances seeking to modify or perfect the human mind and body have some similarities in the thoughts and ideas outlined here by Nietzsche

Isn’t this still an open question?

Robespierre defined virtue in a speech extolling the new French republic: it is “nothing else than love of the patrie and its laws.” To defend that virtue required everything up to and including political violence: “If the driving force of popular government in peacetime is virtue, that of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent.”

This is extremely similar to current Chinese doctrine of submitting to the state above all other duties, and only under those circumstances to have individual rights that are respected by the collective. Extrapolating this line of thinking would lead to the conclusion that China’s fate will be similar to that of the doomed model as described of post Revolution France

But aren’t there always necessary limits to free will, and those are expressively determined by the laws of each state, and therefore the only key difference is where such line of freedom is drawn?

Similar scripts have been used by countries ever since then, with the possible exception of the mid 1800s, when a balance of power between France, England, AustroHungary and Russia kept all out wars at bay

This perspective swept aside the imperialistic attitudes of England, Dutch and Spanish and points the fingers at the French for the power struggles of the next 2 centuries. But didn’t imperialism cause immense damage to civilisations in India, Africa and South America? Not mentioning this and only connecting philosophical thoughts of England to the success of the West is definitely an incomplete account of what it took for this success to be achieved. How many lives did the American and English path to power claim?

It is here that the question arises again of what would have happened if Trotsky got his way strategically over an increasingly paranoid Stalin, and pushed the Soviet communist machine and the International for a push to enabling communist voices to triumph in Germany over the Nazis, rather than sitting idly as Hitler took power. It seems clear that it was one of the other so how would history have looked with a communist Germany instead of Nazi Germany in the 1930s?

Annoyingly this sweeps by the complexities of Bolshevik Russia and the crucial differences of a leader with an ideological viewpoint such as Lenin and a pure tyrant and power and political mastermind such as Stalin. This lack of context doesn’t allow for a discussion of how labor laws set basic working standards for all, forbid child labor, etc., which would have been likely labelled Marxist at the time

Does this then argue against Bernanke and central bank actions having a positive effect? Didn’t fiscal tightening and lack of trust in the financial system have a lot to do with the extension of the Great Depression?

This is still accepted, and I’m not sure post a crash such as COVID can be a reasonable argument

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.”66 Fully sixteen states embraced eugenic sterilization during the 1920s and 1930s; over the coming decades, the states would sterilize sixty thousand people.

This is crazy!

Whoa.. pretty heavy words for who is commonly viewed as the father of modern psychological studies!

While his views might appear to be contradictory to each other, in a way it means that the arguments could be looked at separately- why can’t we use reason and self created moral judgement to recognise our mental flaws and tendencies from studying evolutionary biology, recognise our unique potential to change the reality of our habitat, and armed with that knowledge determine a set of values that can guide our actions?

I’d argue that what people need is purpose, rather than meaning. Can maybe argue one is connected to the other, but different interpretations of how can this happiness be achieved would likely derive from each of those terms

The lack of exploration of terrestrial spirituality concepts in eastern religions makes this narrative a bit incomplete. Don’t Buddhist derive similar values from the eternal search of knowing our own minds and bodies through meditative practices?

Why did it take the west so long then if it was partially the religious ideas based on Judeo Christian values that ilegalidad slavery? Doesn’t seem a complete argument to say that because the west, led by England, outlawed slavery first that this means ideologies led by judeo christian values were the source of this

Is the argument that we should acknowledge that good values have a root in Judaic religions? Can society claim those same values with a basis away from following religious guidelines and structures?

Super Bolshevik thought and one of the most uncomfortable truths and ironies about that movement - freedom from the capitalist system and guarantees of a new era through the elimination and censorship of any capitalist thought whatsoever, to the extreme of complete elimination and purge in Bolshevik society. How can one honestly claim that the way to a free society be to eliminate the human spirit of entrepreneurship and thirst for self improvement and achievement?

So here there is an acknowledgment of the issues of racism and injustices perpetrated by many structural forces, but the argument is against the proposed solution of left wing ideologies of tearing the system down - voices that are resonating again in similar movements in 2020.

This whole self esteem system rings a bell of white suburbia across political lines, not necessarily a left wing ideological system so I’m missing the link of left wing socialist ideals to this

Whoa, that’s quite the leap of saying that in order to seek self esteem, left wing politics sought to eliminate structural injustices created by the self preservation forces of a capitalistic model.. if historical repression of black Americans caused structural issues that make their advancement in a capitalistic society more difficult, and policies were to be directed towards curbing that effect towards a fairer and more equitable system, how is that a pursuit of self esteem of black Americans rather than purely a policy of ensuring equal access to the benefits of capitalism?

Yeah this is a similar argument as the one made in Marxist ideology of ensuring equality by shutting down any possibility of a capitalistic ideology and repressing the right to make decisions that you want to maje

This self selection of the most extreme left wing ideas in order to strengthen Shapiro’s political and philosophical views is a bit too self serving. While it might be true that those voices exist, that does not mean there is not a wide range of approaches in the left to tackle societal issues, which have not yet been given any weight here. You can effectively argue that Malcolm X wanted a full elimination of the current system, but many readers would implicitly link that with the broader Democrat party which for the most part would not agree with that approach. There is a separate inherent problem in a two party system that allows political opponents of both to point the finger at their most extreme members as evidence of their dangers towards America, but that is a separate thought exercise

Which makes complete sense?

That is def a bit more of a stretch

Which voices are given credence here? Is the whole purpose of the book to argue against a slice of a broader ideological group or implicitly to pretend that all members than lean towards left wing policies support this no dialogue, victimhood approach? Voices like Ezra Klein and Barack Obama who are clearly left leaning, are not against dialogue, and definitely not against destruction of the whole system, and I’d argue they have a lot more influence and weight than the voices of the left that Shapiro is referring to here

The philosophical line of thinking was very clear up to this point but it broke off at this stage- is the reference to Tanahasee Coates meant to portray the evolution of the self esteem philosophy to present ideologies?

I have to say that there are some good arguments to be made here, and I believe that policies that seek to improve diversity at that level are more difficult to effectively argue for, but this doesn’t mean that the challenges to be in the same positions to succeed for disadvantaged groups

Why would this be the first time I see this framed this way? Why would popular left wing ideological voices not highlight and argue against the impact of this when the opposite side is clearly concerned about it? Is it a matter of political conveniency and not wanting to alienate left wing voices or a true belief that these issues are not important to highlight in the way that Peterson, Shapiro and other academics are highlighting? However, a move against academia altogether, which was a big part of the driving message behind brexit and trump, is definitely not the correct approach. A much better one would be to fight these moves in the ideological and intellectual arena, which to be fair to Shapiro he is doing with this book, but does not appear to be replicated in a lot of the other channels that are driving the anger and rage behind extreme right wing politics

This is a very wide sweeping comment though.. how common is this in academic institutions? I sit on the business side of it where clearly it wouldn’t be expected to be seen, but it’s unclear what the path towards main stream America and political power is connected to those forces

Does it make sense to point the finger at the left as the ones to blame for this? At some point it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.. influential voices on both sides point the finger to the other side to blame for polarisation, their followers follow, making the polarisation worse, and on and on...