What is commonly referred to as \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d\u2014an alliance between Republican politicians and media polemicists\u2014is what I call Big Conservatism, or the Big Con.<\/p>\n
The movers and shakers of the Big Con, though styling themselves as an alternative to<\/em> the left are, in actuality, an alternative-left, <\/em>the alt-left.<\/p>\n That Big Conservatism is an alternative-left is gotten readily enough by their respective stances on a range of issues.<\/p>\n Ben Shapiro, widely hailed as a rock star of the Big Con, is a classic case in point.<\/p>\n Shapiro is talented. There can be no question about this. After all, it\u2019s quite the feat for one so young to have mastered the talent that many in the Big Con have labored decades to nail down: Shapiro, despite the fact that he is a left-leaning neoconservative,<\/em> has convinced legions of Americans, particularly younger, college-aged Americans, that he is not only a conservative, a man of the right, but a cutting-edge, risqu\u00e9 conservative.<\/p>\n Inasmuch as the men and women of the Big Con are distinguished on account of their ability to excite their base\u2014voters, readers, listeners, and viewers\u2014while simultaneously currying favor with the official left, Shapiro is its posterchild.<\/p>\n A Slate cover story<\/a><\/em> from earlier this year is revealing.\u00a0 Slate, <\/em>mind you, is a well-known left-wing publication. Yet the \u201cprogressives\u201d who run it see in Ben Shapiro a potential ally in their \u201cresistance\u201d to Donald Trump and his army of Deplorables.<\/p>\n Seth Stevenson, the author of \u201cThe Many Faces of Ben Shapiro\u201d (anything but an inapt description of the piece\u2019s namesake), interprets his subject through what he himself characterizes as a \u201cpsychoanalytic narrative.\u201d\u00a0 Shapiro, Stevenson explains, was bullied terribly as a child.\u00a0 This experience, he suggests, could account for why Shapiro despises Trump.\u00a0 \u201cIn my opinion,\u201d Shapiro remarks, Steve Bannon, the former editor of Breitbart, <\/em>for which Shapiro once wrote, \u201cis a bully\u201d who \u201csold out\u201d the \u201cmission\u201d of the outlet\u2019s founder, Andrew Breitbart, \u201cin order to back another bully, Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Breitbart, <\/em>Shapiro continues, was transformed into \u201cTrump\u2019s personal Pravda.\u201d<\/p>\n Stevenson writes that because Shapiro defended Kim Fields, a reporter who claims to have been assaulted by a member of Trump\u2019s entourage during the campaign\u2014a claim for which<\/a> Florida prosecutors concluded they had no grounds for prosecution\u2014he was then besieged with \u201canti-Semitic\u201d tweets by \u201calt-right bullies\u201d who, according to the Anti-Defamation League, made him the most attacked \u201cjournalist\u201d that year.<\/p>\n Because Shapiro is \u201camong a dwindling cadre of Trump-averse conservatives at a time when the mainstream GOP and its media apparatus are following (and sometimes leading) our cretinous president straight into the muck,\u201d Shapiro, Stephenson writes, is among those \u201cinfluential right-wing figures\u201d upon whom he can see himself \u201crelying\u201d to help the country \u201chold the line\u201d should Trump choose to \u201croll his tanks (metaphorical or otherwise) over the ramparts of American democracy [.]\u201d<\/p>\n Shapiro was all too happy to grant Slate <\/em>the opportunity to use him so as to contrast his reasonable<\/em>, principled <\/em>conservatism with the vulgar, unprincipled, \u201cracist\u201d and unthinking pseudo-conservatism shared by Trump, many of Shapiro\u2019s media colleagues who support President Trump, and, of course, the tens of millions of Americans, mostly traditional Republican voters, who constitute Shapiro\u2019s audience and who came out in droves to vote for the President.<\/p>\n Shapiro was all too happy, in fact, to highlight the chasm separating the two.<\/p>\n Ben Shapiro is among those \u201cconservatives\u201d who has earned the approval of the left.\u00a0 He is part of the controlled-opposition, a \u201crightist\u201d who has been deputized by the left.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s review some of Shapiro\u2019s record:<\/p>\n For starters, let\u2019s recall that for all of his caterwauling over Trump\u2019s \u201cbullying\u201d tactics, Shapiro has always been a loyal Republican whose support for George W. Bush was particularly adamant.\u00a0 This is revealing, for Bush, along with Congressional Republicans and <\/em>Democrats, used false pretenses<\/em> to embark the United States upon a path to war<\/em> that continues to the present day.<\/p>\n Shapiro, along with his colleagues in the Big Con, vigorously argued on behalf of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u00a0 Collectively, these invasions have come at the cost of trillions of dollars, the loss of over one millions lives, hundreds of thousands of orphaned children, and hundreds of thousands of human beings who have been permanently maimed and traumatized. \u00a0Far from ushering in a new Democratic Age throughout the Middle East, the Big Con\u2019s wars radically destabilized the latter, unleashing fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organizations like ISIS while decimating ancient Christian communities and the communities of other religious minorities that received some measure of protection from the secular rule of men like Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n The Big Con generally and Shapiro\u2019s voice in particular were instrumental in making these wars happen.<\/p>\n And yet Trump, <\/em>to hear NeverTrumpers like Shapiro tell it, is supposed to be the bully.<\/p>\n Shapiro and his ilk wax indignant over what they regard as Trump\u2019s crass tweets <\/em>and oral remarks\u2014even though they used their resources to support politicians who wielded their power in ways that have caused incalculable bloodshed, pain, treasure, and death for legions of human beings.<\/p>\n The Iraq War is today recognized as arguably the biggest foreign policy disaster in our country\u2019s history.\u00a0 The Afghan war, of which few people any longer even speak, is our country\u2019s longest-running war. Neither an end, nor victory, is in sight.<\/p>\n Shapiro has never apologized for his role in advancing these disasters.<\/p>\n To his credit, though, and unlike some of his fellow travelers, Shapiro at least did admit at the time that the wars to export Democracy to the Middle East were necessary features of a larger scheme for American empire\u2014<\/em>something in which he believes.<\/p>\n In 2005, Shapiro wrote an article<\/a> in which he castigated \u201cimpatient isolationists,\u201d i.e. the majority of Americans who had already, by this juncture, turned against the war in Iraq.\u00a0 Since, following the fall of the old Soviet Union, America is the world\u2019s only remaining superpower, the only remaining \u201cempire,\u201d it has a \u201cduty\u201d to preserve itself as an empire.<\/em><\/p>\n This, in turn, means that America has a duty to engage in pre-emptive wars, for pre-emption \u201cis the chief weapon of a global empire.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, it doesn\u2019t matter that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter that Iraq posed no direct or imminent threat to the United States. In \u201ctoppling Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq,\u201d America \u201cprevent[ed]\u201d Hussein\u2019s \u201cfuture ascendance and end[ed] his material support for future threats globally.\u201d<\/p>\n By this same principle, the principle that pre-emption is indispensable to advancing America\u2019s \u201cglobal empire,\u201d America should be considering invasions of \u201cIran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and others.\u201d<\/p>\n This Big Con celebrity argues that while advancing empire promises to secure America\u2019s \u201cfuture security,\u201d it is also a worthy end inasmuch as it consists in \u201cforwarding freedom\u201d throughout the world.<\/p>\n In another place<\/a>, Shapiro asserts that \u201cAmerica must be defended and her liberties spread abroad when possible.\u201d The only alternative is what Shapiro calls \u201ckowtowing\u201d to \u201cinternational multiculturalism\u201d\u2014which he equates with \u201ca relativistic sea.\u201d This last alternative is no alternative, for \u201cinternational multiculturalism\u201d leads inescapably to \u201ctyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2003<\/a>, Shapiro called for the removal of the five million Palestinians and Israeli Arabs from \u201cJudea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s an ugly solution,\u201d Shapiro wrote, \u201cbut it is the only solution.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the charge that such a policy is Nazi-esque, Shapiro has a response ready at hand: \u201cThere are no gas chambers here. It\u2019s not genocide; it\u2019s transfer. It\u2019s not Hitler; it\u2019s Churchill.\u201d<\/p>\n Because Winston Churchill approved of the forcible removal of upward of nine million Germans from the Polish territory that the Allies created by slicing off a portion of Germany, there is nothing objectionable about the Israelis forcing millions of Palestinians from the only homes that they\u2019ve ever known.<\/p>\n Churchill, Shapiro notes, shared his own view that when \u201ctwo populations are constantly enmeshed in conflict, it is insane to suggest that somehow deep-seated ideological change will miraculously occur, allowing the two sides to live together.\u201d<\/p>\n As for those who are reluctant to accept his proposal, Shapiro cuts to the quick: \u201cIt\u2019s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn\u2019t a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n