February 15, 2018

Conservative Insurgent Thursday - Episode #2

Insurgentnoun a rebel or revolutionary.
      "an attack by armed insurgents"
synonymsrebel, revolutionary, revolutionist, mutineer, insurrectionist, agitator, subversive, renegade, incendiary

Last week the inaugural episode of Conservative Insurgent Thursday I profiled Milo Yiannopolous.  As I mentioned, he has not only alienated most of the Left, he has also managed to alienate some on the right.  Most notable among them is Ben Shapiro.  Ben Shapiro's acutely incisive ability to talk intelligently, backed by an armada of factual information (which he seems to so easily pull from his memory with amazing accuracy) enables him to debate and engage with others with the forceful ability to convince or halt opposing viewpoint in their tracks.

Ben thinks and talks with such rapid fire precision that you have to imagine his thought process must run at about Mach 6.

Who is Ben Shapiro?

Ben Shapiro is not only an author, journalist, radio talk show host and frequent guest on mainstream media, he's also a lawyer.  He's just 34 years old, and recently at that.  Ben was born in Los Angeles in 1984 to Jewish parents who immigrated from Russia.  He graduated UCLA at age 20 (where at age 17 he was the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in America).  By 2007 he had graduated Harvard Law School.

Background: 

Ben is quite young and as a result a lot of his background involves things that are still active, and in many cases he is still actively involved in them.  Ben published his first book in 2004. His fifth book was published in 2013. From 2012 through 2016 he worked for Breitbart.  He founded the conservative website The Daily Wire in 2015.  He also co-founded Truth Revolt, a conservative version of the liberal Media Matters.  Ben is Jewish.

Notable achievements:

In addition to all of the items listed in his background, Ben has frequented the university campus speech tour which has highlighted the duplicitous nature of the vocal left.  Despite Ben's unoffensive, factual approach to discussion, his speeches and Q&A sessions have required him to hire security and caused riots when he tried to speak at U.C. Berkeley, not because of any sort of insensitivity or racially insensitive remarks, but just because he was espousing, and making the case for conservative ideas.  That's all.  Ben, unlike Milo is no bomb thrower, he is a fact thrower.

Why we need him:

In contrast to the bombastic and sarcastic approach taken by Milo, Ben's fact-based, logic-driven approach to advocating for conservatism makes his points almost impossible to dispute.  In some cases, completely impossible.  Ben provides a roadmap for conservatives with respect to how to approach a debate; preparation, keen observation, consistency of approach and logical rigor with respect to issues.  We can all learn from him, and we should.

Ben advocates for a conservative approach to problems, and his ideological purity often puts him at odds with the likes of Breitbart, president Trump and of course his arch-rival/nemesis Milo.  That's not a bad thing; there is still plenty of common ground between them, and the president while assuming the current mantle of conservatism, is not always right, nor always it's best face.  The right is supposed to be a big tent party and a party of ideas.  Keeping everyone in lockstep as the Democrats do, is ultimately unhealthy.  Currently Ben serves as a reality check for conservatives who blindly follow the president regardless of his positions or approach. If we are to really self assess, we would not always blindly advocate for the president's positions or actions.  We should not do that, or at a minimum we should assess the rationale for doing so, as well as the cost/benefits of taking such positions.

Additionally Ben touches on varied topics like metaphysics and in such forays, gets us to think about them and to think about political and social issues in those contexts as well.

Highlight Reel:

I've included a couple here, because no single 'highlight reel' does Shapiro justice.






Social Media:

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube

Others:
-His own website (The Daily Wire)

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