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by
Ben Shapiro
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October 14 - October 21, 2020
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.
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.
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.
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
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American history has traditionally been read as a story of ever-improving fulfillment of American philosophy and culture through proper exercise of American institutions.
American history, then, is a story of triumph of freedom over the tragedy of human nature, the victory of liberty over slavery and bigotry.
Without America’s philosophy, reason collapses into tribalism; without America’s culture, individual rights collapse into collectivist tyranny or duties collapse into libertinism; without American history, the symbols that unite us divide us.
The Disintegrationist view launches direct, unyielding attacks on American philosophy, culture, and history.
Instead of equality before the law, or equality in individual rights, Disintegrationists seek equality of outcome.
Disintegrationist culture seeks to replace America’s love of risk-taking with a sense of solicitousness from the collective.
Exploitation is a feature of every human society, and repeated mistreatment by some groups of other groups is a similarly common feature. What is uncommon—indeed, unprecedented in human history—are prosperity, peace, and freedom.
the underlying philosophical lie of the political left: that all disparity represents a form of discrimination.
by convincing Americans that any unexplained disparity is the result of the American system—philosophy, culture, institutions, and history—Disintegrationists have a succinct and irrefutable argument in favor of tearing down the system. Any evidence of disparate treatment becomes an argument against Unionism.
an awful responsibility on individuals: if you fail to succeed, you can certainly blame personal disadvantages, but it becomes difficult to blame a miasmatic, existential, systemic, flag-draped boogeyman haunting your dreams. Additional freedom means additional responsibility.
If, however, all disparity can be chalked up to the system, then personal responsibility becomes a secondary concern. Failures are no longer individual, but systemic. In fact, every failure becomes an additional brick in the wall of evidence against America. The only solution, again, rests in coalitional politics designed to rewrite the American bargain.
The philosophy of the United States centers on three central principles, as articulated in the Declaration: on the reality of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that preexist government; on the equality of men before the law; and on the notion that government is instituted only to protect those preexisting rights and equality of men before the law.
“God created man free and sui iuris [under his own dominion], so that the actions of each individual and the use of his possessions were made subject not to another’s will but to his own.”11
Human equality is the presupposition of Judeo-Christian thinking.
The founders understood the hypocrisy of declaring all men equal in a time of slavery; they understood they were not freeing black slaves. “They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit,” said Lincoln.
They meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. . . . Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.
In the natural rights model, the locus of power lies in the individual, who becomes the repository of indefeasible rights. Government is merely the delegated guardian of individual rights; government has no power to invade those rights, lest it lose its legitimacy.
If rights didn’t preexist government, if they were simply whatever a government chose to enforce, then no one was safe from the government’s whims.
It was not the job of governments to enforce virtue, but to enforce rights.
Freedom, not virtue, is the goal of government; virtue is the goal of individual men, pursuing right reason—a task itself that requires freedom.
That Constitution was designed to allow for action in cases of grave national need, as demanded by broad consensus; gridlock in cases of serious disagreement, to protect minorities from the tyranny of majorities; local control on behalf of local communities, but national protection of individual rights.
Purely democratic government is, by definition, compulsion directed by a majority. Sometimes that’s necessary. More often, it isn’t. Nothing states that a democratic majority must represent the highest good.
we must only give the government powers enough to do what we would not mind it doing were the government controlled by those who disagree.
If the government inserts itself into the business of guaranteeing some majority-approved “good,” the minority will often refuse—correctly!—to stand for it. Or, alternatively, that minority will look—again, correctly!—to outside forces to protect its rights.
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”44
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. . . . [They] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.”45
“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”48
Hamilton observed that the judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”51
Where the institutions of other countries have often preceded a philosophy, America is different: its institutions were designed in light of a founding creed.
The American founding philosophy rests on natural rights to life, liberty, and property that preexist government—rights inherent in human nature and deriving from human reason; human equality, not in attributes, but in those rights and before the law; and government designated to protect those rights, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Instead of equality before the law, Disintegrationists claim, we must aim for inequality before the law, so that we can achieve equality of everything else.
true equality of opportunity would require a nightmarish invasion of rights.
the Disintegrationist alternative posits three specific counters to the Unionist philosophy: that human nature is infinitely malleable, and thus carries no inherent rights; that equality before the law is injustice, and that equality in every aspect of life must be our goal; and that government is the only allowable mechanism for dispensing privileges and achieving equality of outcome.
The seeds of reactionary revolution lie in the increasing dominance of this philosophical tyranny.
John Dewey, perhaps the leading progressive thinker of the early twentieth century, explained that true liberalism—as opposed to rights-based, classical liberalism—recognized the perfectibility of human beings: “liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical:—including in ‘cultural,’ economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art.” Shortcomings in man were therefore shortcomings in institutions.16
the Disintegrationist vision is certainly attractive. It offers the beautiful absolution of personal responsibility: after all, your shortcomings can be blamed on the “system” rather than on personal choice.
as a Bernie Sanders campaign organizer famously said on camera, was reeducation camps: “there is a reason Stalin had gulags.”19
Computational biologist Laura Boykin recently told Wired magazine, “Science at its core is systematically racist and sexist.”21
“The scientific method is a tool for the construction and
justification of dominance in the world.”22
“It is . . . terrifying to watch as this attempt by activist academics to dismantle logic and hypothesis, falsification and rigor, gains ground. This is conflict, plain and simple.”26 Science, as Heying writes, has been supplanted with the politics of grievance, wherein results that do not meet with the approval of the Disintegrationists are simply shouted down, and their purveyors blackballed.
Disintegrationists, by contrast, see such preexisting rights—often termed “negative rights,” in that they are rights against the government—as a chimera, or worse, as we’ve seen, as an actual impediment to equality of outcome.
if we all have a positive right to health care, someone’s negative rights will be violated: either the doctor, who will be forced to alienate his labor without his consent, or the taxpayer, who will see his own labor confiscated to pay for the doctor, or other patients,
the Unionist founders never meant to contend that all human beings were made equal in abilities or talents, or that they were born into similar situations. They meant that men have species equality—we are all equal because of our membership to the species—and that therefore, we are equal in our inalienable rights. Disintegrationists, by contrast, suggest that all men are not created equal in the basic biological sense, which is true—and that equal rights, therefore, are unequal. A right to free speech, for example, does not result in equality for a man who cannot speak. A right to alienation
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example, does not result in equality for the man whose labor is less valuable.
Ardent advocates of slavery posited that innate human inequality provided a rationale for disparate treatment of human beings.
