How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

American culture. That culture is characterized by four distinct elements. First, a tough-minded tolerance for the rights of others, particularly when we don’t like how others exercise their rights—we have to agree to disagree, and to get over it. Second, our culture prizes and cherishes robust social institutions, which create a social fabric that allows us to trust one another in the absence of compulsion from government. Third, American culture has always carried a rowdy streak in defense of liberty: we must be willing to stand up for our freedom and that of others. Finally, American culture has always celebrated and rewarded those with a sense of adventure—the pioneers, the cowboys, the inventors, the risk takers.

This mentality used to be foreign to political liberals in the United States, who once suggested agreement with the phrase apocryphally attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Not anymore. The American Civil Liberties Union once defended the right of Ku Klux Klan members to march in heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois. But today, the ACLU has switched sides:

When we look at that broader picture—when we examine the histories of other nations and other countries, when we observe the suffering and barbarity expressed virtually universally—it is easier to see that American history is far more light than dark. In fact, it is fair to say that while America has participated in evils common to all humanity, America has brought to humanity immense good that is entirely unique. Without America, the world would have fallen to tyranny long ago; without America, the beauty of individual rights would have been completely subsumed by the collective long ago; without America, the notion of a multiethnic democracy would have collapsed long ago.

Lincoln called upon Americans to remember that they were, after all, brothers. “We are not enemies, but friends,” he said. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

The story of America is one of the great stories in human history. America was founded on great principles; America has struggled to live up to those principles, but with each step toward those principles, America has magnified its own greatness. The world is better off for America. We ought to understand the shadows and curses of our history; we ought to understand how history affects the present. But we all ought to understand, most of all, that we are part of the same history, not rivals in a country divided by identity or class.