The mainstream media can no longer be trusted to present the full story, and our cultural and political leaders are in desperate need of a reality check. Ben Shapiro is here to provide a heavy dose of facts over feelings to help treat our societal ills and get the country heading back in the right direction. Here are some of Ben&#8217;s most popular pieces on the biggest stories and issues of the day.

ben-shapiro-collection

Since the death of George Floyd, our esteemed media, as well as their Democratic allies, have suggested that Floyd’s alleged murder is representative of broader American white supremacy, that Floyd’s experience with law enforcement is indicative of how American police pose an existential threat to black Americans. They have offered no evidence for this proposition. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that former police officer Derek Chauvin’s actions the day of Floyd’s death were motivated by race. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that black Americans live at threat of extermination from whites or police officers: As of 2013, according to Reuters, a black person&#8217;s chances of being murdered by a white person were 5 in 1 million, and according to The Washington Post database of police shootings, as of 2019, a black person&#8217;s chances of being shot by the police while unarmed were approximately 3 in 10 million.
But facts don’t matter when you’re pressing forward a narrative.
Now that Chauvin is on trial for Floyd’s murder, the facts will once again become secondary to the narrative. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said that police reform is dependent on Chauvin’s conviction: “If there was ever a case that you can just not argue, it is this one. This trial has got to come out the right way, and we have to deliver.” Floyd family lawyer Benjamin Crump stated, “Today starts a landmark trial that will be a referendum on how far America has come in its quest for equality and justice for all.”
That’s simply not true.
Bass, Crump and the rest of the establishment media assume that Chauvin’s case is clear-cut — that nobody could possibly vote to acquit. The fact pattern, however, presents serious issues for the prosecution. Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All three charges are a challenge.
The prosecution first has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd’s death was caused by Chauvin’s actions. But the autopsy report shows that Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system and had a serious heart problem, and that Chauvin’s neck hold did not in fact cause damage to Floyd&#8217;s trachea. That means that while Chauvin’s neck restraint may have contributed to Floyd’s death by ratcheting up his blood pressure, for example, it&#8217;s uncertain that it caused Floyd’s death more than, say, the excited delirium from which Floyd may have already been suffering.
Second-degree murder requires that the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin unintentionally killed Floyd while committing a felony — in this case, felony assault. But felony assault requires “intentional” infliction of bodily harm — that Chauvin wanted to hurt Floyd, not just use a suppression tactic already greenlit by the Minneapolis Police Department.
Third-degree murder — depraved-heart murder — doesn’t actually seem to fit the crime here, since it requires proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin acted in a way “eminently dangerous to others.” Others — plural. Usually, depraved-heart murder applies to someone who fires a gun into a crowd, not a person who targets an individual.
Second-degree manslaughter requires that the prosecution prove that Chauvin acted with “gross negligence.” But such gross negligence would have to show that Chauvin should have known that his behavior might cause Floyd’s death — an unlikely expectation, since the Minneapolis Police Department actively taught neck holds of the type Chauvin used, and which Chauvin applied only after Floyd resisted arrest and refused to be confined to the back seat of a police car.
The Chauvin case, then, is a legally complex one. But such complexities have been abandoned in favor of narrative. Should Chauvin be acquitted, we are likely to hear that America has proved its racism once again. The only thing that has already been proved, however, is that the “America as white supremacist” lie will remain the media&#8217;s dominant narrative, no matter the data.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

George Floyd Mural

SHAPIRO: No, The Derek Chauvin Trial Isn’t A Referendum On American Racism

Derek Chauvin

George Floyd

Readers Pass

This week, a white man shot to death eight people in Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American. According to Atlanta police, the man said he was targeting brothels and blamed the women for his alleged sex addiction. The gunman stated that he had visited two of the spas before and had planned to drive to Florida and target the pornography industry. So far, there is no evidence that the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus, making hate-crime charges unlikely at this point.
Nonetheless, the establishment media and Democratic politicians quickly began reflecting the lie that the shooting was an anti-Asian hate crime, the latest outgrowth of a major uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes — all driven supposedly by &#8220;white supremacy.&#8221; White House press secretary Jen Psaki connected the alleged increase in anti-Asian sentiment to former President Trump, stating that his &#8220;calling COVID &#8216;the Wuhan virus&#8217; &#8230; led &#8230; to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair.&#8221; Racial grifter Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: &#8220;Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror.&#8221; Nikole Hannah-Jones, pseudo-journalist and de facto editor-in-chief at The New York Times, tweeted in solidarity: &#8220;I stand with my Asian-American brothers and sisters, just as so many of you have stood with us. I grieve. We must own all of this history — ALL OF IT — and determine to fight for a truly multiracial democracy where we all can be free.&#8221;
This is cynical politicking at best.
The same sources decrying anti-Asian sentiment have spent years expressing anti-Asian animus in the form of discriminatory college admissions standards: President Biden&#8217;s administration dropped a discrimination case against Yale University just a month ago, clearly thanks to the administration&#8217;s position that affirmative action for black students outweighs Asian American success in a pure meritocracy. The same people blaming &#8220;white supremacy&#8221; for anti-Asian hate crimes have militantly ignored the location of the crimes — largely major metropolitan areas, with a large number of such crimes coming not from white Americans but from black Americans (a plurality of overall violent crimes targeting Asian Americans, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, were committed by black Americans in 2018). The same establishment media sources blaming Trump for anti-Asian hate cheer on the active closing of merit-based magnet schools in New York and San Francisco, thanks to those schools&#8217; disproportionate Asian American attendance: Hannah-Jones tweeted last year that it was &#8220;disingenuous&#8221; to talk about &#8220;specialized high schools being majority POC&#8221; (people of color) when referring to Asian Americans.
Here, then, is how the narrative works, according to the left: No matter the antecedent to any statement, the conclusion must be that America is systemically racist. When we are discussing Asian American economic success, Asian Americans must be treated as beneficiaries of a white supremacist system; when we are talking about hate crimes against Asian Americans, Asian Americans must be treated as people of color victimized by a white supremacist system. When a white person harms Asian Americans, as Trevor Noah explained, intent doesn&#8217;t matter — animus can be assumed. When a black person harms Asian Americans, as NBC News reported, &#8220;experts say it&#8217;s important to evaluate each case individually.&#8221;
All of this is morally base. Anti-Asian animus is anti-Asian animus, whether it comes from woke school administrators or street criminals. To treat such animus differently based solely on the identity of the offender is to make obvious that you simply don&#8217;t care about anti-Asian animus. For the left, it&#8217;s just the latest club to wield against the broader American system, facts be damned.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki And National Economic Council Director Brian Deese Brief White House Press

SHAPIRO: For The Left, Bigotry Is A Tool

Cancel Culture

Hate Crime

This week, President Biden&#8217;s military declared its first war &#8230; on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Carlson had committed the great sin of pointing out the oddity of the fact that the Biden White House had been promoting brand-new uniforms for pregnant soldiers, rather than America&#8217;s military efficiency in the face of a rising Chinese military threat. This prompted spasms of apoplexy from top brass in the military itself: Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that the Pentagon was filled with &#8220;revulsion&#8221; at Carlson&#8217;s comments, adding, &#8220;We absolutely won&#8217;t just take personnel advice from a talk show&#8221;; Army Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston tweeted that women &#8220;will dominate ANY future battlefield we&#8217;re called to fight on,&#8221; calling Carlson&#8217;s words &#8220;divisive&#8221;; Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt. Scott H. Stalker, the senior enlisted leader of the U.S. Space Command, said that Carlson&#8217;s opinion was &#8220;based off of actually zero days of service in the armed forces.&#8221;
Now, the military itself recognizes that pregnant women can&#8217;t exactly staff front-line positions. At 20 weeks of pregnancy, pregnant soldiers in the Army are exempt from field duty, deployment, wearing individual body armor, standing at parade rest or attention for longer than 15 minutes, or participating in weapons training; upon diagnosis of pregnancy, all pregnant soldiers are exempt from regular physical fitness training.
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And the military has reported in the past that mixed units underperform all-male combat units. In 2015, a yearlong Marine Corps report found that, according to NPR, &#8220;all-male units were faster, more lethal and able to evacuate casualties in less time.&#8221;
But the content of Carlson&#8217;s words was less important than the reaction to them, for it was unprecedented for top members of the military to unite in excoriating a civilian opinion journalist. Had it happened on former President Trump&#8217;s watch, the media undoubtedly would have used it as an example of politics infusing traditionally apolitical institutions. Dark buzzwords like &#8220;authoritarian&#8221; and &#8220;fascist&#8221; would have been tossed around casually. Yet when the military was mobilized to attack Carlson, the media cheered instead.
We are watching in real time America&#8217;s institutions being gutted on behalf of left-wing politics. Formerly apolitical institutions are being remolded top down to reflect the values of our New Ruling Class: those who speak the wokeabulary, who believe in the tyrannical and polarizing theories of Ibram X. Kendi and Kimberle Crenshaw, who see their roles as the social engineers of their fellow Americans. This is true in our universities; it&#8217;s true in our colleges; it&#8217;s true at our corporations; and now it&#8217;s true in the American military. No wonder we&#8217;re told that our military will somehow be stronger for tossing out gender-neutral physical fitness tests, or paying for transgender surgeries, or forcing soldiers to read the asinine musings of critical race theorists.
Our military is designed to deter and to defend, to kill people and break things. If diversity facilitates that mission, that&#8217;s wonderful. But to supplant the military&#8217;s chief mission with the woke protocols of the political left is to undermine that chief mission. The world is a dangerous, ugly, competitive place. If our masturbatory woke solipsism blinds us to that reality, the cost will be quite real — far more real than any supposed threat emanating from the musings of Tucker Carlson.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-debunking-transgenderism">More from Ben Shapiro: Debunking Transgenderism</a>
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Women Train to Become U.S. Marines

SHAPIRO: Wokeifying America’s Military

Military

Woke Culture

This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would stop the sale and distribution of six classic volumes from the great children&#8217;s author. Those volumes, said the company, violate its commitment to &#8220;messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.&#8221; The books include portrayals of people &#8220;in ways that are hurtful and wrong.&#8221;
Society has long held that activity that damages others ought to be curbed. John Stuart Mill posited the so-called harm principle — the belief that activity that harms someone ought to be condemned or even barred — in the mid-19th century. But Mill refused to conflate harm and offense: Being offended wasn&#8217;t cause for sanction of another.
Broadly speaking, society agreed with this formulation. But in the past few years, this formulation has been completely turned on its head. Now offense is not only considered a harm; it is considered the chief harm in our society. Physical injury, after all, is merely physical. But mental or emotional injury — that threatens our very sense of identity. Because we find our identity in our own sense of self-creation, any societal denial of that sense threatens our identity. As Carl Trueman writes in &#8220;The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self&#8221;: &#8220;The era of psychological man therefore requires changes in the culture and its institutions, practice, and beliefs that affect everyone. They all need to adapt to reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being of the individual.&#8221;
When individual self-creation becomes the chief goal of a society, institutions must be torn down — institutions, after all, foster a set of rules that may not be conducive to individual self-creation. Informational flow must be dammed — after all, information may allow others to take a different, objectively based opinion about you than you take subjectively about yourself. Books must be burned — after all, books carry with them implicit messages that may threaten your sense of yourself.
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Iconoclasm becomes the order of the day.
Our societal turn from actual, measurable harm toward subjective, psychological harm places us on the road to complete devastation of our culture and our rights. Now anyone who offends — or even has the potential to offend — can be, and indeed ought to be, fired. Now any book — no matter how old or how inoffensive — can be, and indeed ought to be, banned. Now any kernel of information — no matter how true — can be discarded.
This formulation puts all power in the hands of those who are most easily offended — or at least those who claim to be. The offense itself is the weapon. Legal torts require damages; societal torts merely require a claim of damages, without evidence. No one can explain just how a drawing in &#8220;If I Ran the Zoo&#8221; has contributed to actual racism; there are no recorded incidents of a single white supremacist citing &#8220;And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street&#8221; as a formative source in his racist worldview. But any academic with a computer and a degree in postmodern nonsense can take those books off the shelves simply by claiming that offense is possible.
In the end, the only literature allowed will be the literature that adheres to the values of our postmodern world — a world in which we are not expected to conform to societal rules but society is expected to conform to our own acts of self-definition. That means your child reading &#8220;I Am Jazz&#8221; but never — never, Gaia forbid! — the Bible. It means goodbye to cultural icons, large and small — goodbye to all vestiges of the past, replete with their &#8220;bigoted&#8221; value systems.
It means that the purges have only just begun.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Dr Seuss Holds ‘The Cat In The Hat’

SHAPIRO: Why Dr. Seuss Had To Go

Dr. Seuss

Imagine if your police force could just go on strike at a moment&#8217;s notice. It could hold up the entire business of a city. Imagine if your firefighters decided to go on strike in the middle of a fire. Imagine if the military decided to go on strike in the middle of the war.
These are the kinds of dangers associated with public sector unions, and it is a massive disruption to the American economy.
So over the past couple of months, we found out one specific and important thing about the Biden administration&#8217;s approach to COVID policy in America&#8217;s schools: The Biden administration doesn’t care about the kids. The Biden administration cares about the teachers unions.
One of the most robust scientific findings from the past year has been that schools do not provide additional risk above baselines to teachers. This is particularly true with regard to elementary schools, where the risks of transmission to teachers are very low. In fact, in the United States, there has yet to be — so far as I’m aware — a single documented case of a teacher infected by an elementary school student and then dying of COVID. 
So why exactly are we still talking about schools remaining closed? The CDC standards would require that the vast majority of students be at home right now, either via hybrid learning model or at home completely. There&#8217;s a reason for that: the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, specifically came out and said that she had shaped her criteria around the request of teachers unions. 
The story of unionization in American labor is quite a fascinating one. 
In the aftermath of World War II, there were a lot of private sector unions; a lot of employees were unionized but, as America began to break out economically, fewer and fewer employees wanted to be bound by the dictates of private sector unions. Private sector unionization began declining at an extraordinarily rapid clip. 
At the exact same time, public sector unions began to rise. And this was given the go-ahead by an executive order signed by JFK in 1962, which allowed public sector unions to be formed. 
Effectively, public sector unions are bargaining against taxpayers. And the people who represent the taxpayers in many cases are not actually representing the taxpayers; they&#8217;re representing precisely the people who got them elected in the first place — namely, the public sector unions.
Imagine, for example, if you could elect your own boss and then negotiate with him your salary, and he would just get to spend whatever money is in the kitty. Because he doesn&#8217;t own that money; because he ain’t the owner. 
There is a reason that the Wagner Act suggested that public sector employees not be allowed to collectively bargain. Even FDR agreed with that. One of the things FDR specifically didn&#8217;t like was the idea that public sector employees would be able to strike. 
Up until very recently, unions had really the run of American law. Unions were able to simply force, in many states, people who did not want to be part of the union to pay agency fees. 
So let&#8217;s say that you wanted to work as a teacher in California, but you didn&#8217;t actually want to join the union. Well, because the union was collectively bargaining on your behalf already — it had been established as the exclusive representative of all teachers in the state of California — you still had to pay agency fees to a union you didn&#8217;t even like. 
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck that down. They said you could not be forced to pay agency fees to a union that you didn&#8217;t actually want to join. This was supposed to provide a sort of crisis moment for unions because essentially, Janus argued that all states should become right to work states. 
Right to work states are states wherein you do not have to pay agency fees even if there is a union in your particular sector. In fact, if you&#8217;re not a member of a union, you still get to work in that sector without being a member of the union. 
There&#8217;s a reason that many businesses have moved from what are called “union shop states” to right to work states. The cost of labor in union shop states is extraordinarily high and employers don&#8217;t want to be bound by all of the restrictions.
What does all this mean? It means that public sector unions particularly require — require — politicians to cram down their interests, because the vast majority of employees in any given sector would prefer to be treated as individuals rather than being forced into collective bargaining circumstances where they could be lowest man on the totem pole.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, which was passed during the FDR administration, employees are allowed to collectively bargain with employers. In fact, employers are duty bound to bargain with employees if those employees can show that they represent a majority of the employees at a particular company. 
This can happen in one of two ways. First, you can have an actual election where there is a union that is approved by a majority of the employees. Second, you can have a union present signatures of a majority of people who are employees of a particular company. 
Now, the problem with the second way of creating a union is that obviously pressure can be exerted. If I can come up to you in the parking lot at 12:00 at night and say, “You know what would be great, Bob, is if you would sign this little card to join the union. And if you don&#8217;t sign the card, well, I can&#8217;t promise that your car is going to work tonight.”
There&#8217;s a reason that unions have openly promoted the idea that there should not be any such thing as secret ballot with regard to union elections. They&#8217;re deeply afraid that if given the ability to vote against forming a union, too many employees will vote not to form the union in the first place. 
It should be recognized that the National Labor Relations Act is actually a horrible piece of legislation. It is the law; we abide by it here at Daily Wire. It happens to be a crappy piece of legislation. That is because it allows collusion by labor in a way you would never allow collusion by the employer. 
If Daily Wire got together with Daily Caller, got together with Breitbart, and we all decided what pay scale to use for our employees, this would be collusion. It would be monopolistic behavior. But if all the employees of those companies got together and created a guild, then we would be duty bound to negotiate with them as a collective instead of approaching them as individuals. This creates a non-fluid labor market. 
At least you can make the case that banding together as laborers to negotiate with your employer makes some sense if you&#8217;re afraid that your employer is going to treat you adversarially, but it makes no sense with regard to public sector unions. Remember, if you&#8217;re an employee of a private company, you get to negotiate with your employer how much you get paid. 
But if you are an employee of the public sector, it is the legislature that is setting the pay scale. Usually it is elected officials who are deciding how much you ought to be paid. There ought to be no bargaining between employers and employees when all of the pay scale is set by the legislature. 
The great irony of teachers unions — and public sector unions generally — is that the biggest advocates for these unions are the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party happens to be the same party that is routinely suggesting that money in politics is dangerous and bad. This is why they push campaign finance reform.
As Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said:
<blockquote>The very real danger now is that special interests will be able to use vast sums of concentrated wealth to further dictate policy outcomes at odds with the American people&#8217;s wishes.</blockquote>
The idea is that if you or if I give too much money to a candidate, we have bought the candidate. Or, if a corporation supports a particular candidate, that candidate is now in the pocket of the corporation. 
Yet some of the biggest spenders in American politics are the members of big labor.
Labor unions — both private and public sector, mostly public sector at this point — spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars ensuring that Democrats get elected. You have public sector unions actively working to take union dues, spend them to elect politicians, then negotiating with those politicians to take taxpayer dollars and pay the unions. It is utter insanity. 
It&#8217;s incredibly corrupt, and it&#8217;s right out there in the open. 
In 2020, according to OpenSecrets.org, public sector unions spent $68 million directly to impact the election; 89% of all of those dollars were spent on Democrats. This did not include unions spending money internally on politics to get their own membership out. There are about 3 million members of the teachers unions, for example.
In 2018, according to one study, unions have spent $2 billion on politics and nearly all of it on Democrat-related causes. In 2020, the National Education Association spent some $26 million on politics, nearly all of it went to Democrats. The American Federation of Teachers spent $17 million directly, nearly all of it went to Democrats. 
According to The Washington Post, both the AFC and the NEA spent hundreds of thousands of man hours in order to help Democratic candidates. According to Fox News, Joe Biden received more money from the teachers unions than any other candidate in the 2020 election cycle, which of course is not a shock. 
So, public sector unions spend tremendous amounts of money to elect people they then bargain with to use taxpayer dollars to pay them off, so they can spend that money to elect those politicians again, and again, and again. And the cycle just keeps going round, and round, and round. 
There&#8217;s a reason that Joe Biden knows that the science says schools should open, and yet he is reticent to let them open. The answer is he&#8217;s in the pocket of the teachers unions, because Democrats typically are in the pockets of the public sector unions.
Right now, teachers unions are specifically bargaining to not open schools under virtually any circumstances. The Chicago Teachers Union was asking so much that even Lori Lightfoot — who is in the pocket of the Chicago Teachers Union — was saying that this is way too much.
According to Lightfoot, &#8220;these schools are open and safe and we are ready to welcome our students back. And frankly, they&#8217;ve been ready for some time.&#8221;
Teachers unions have been requesting full vaccination — not only for all teachers, but for students. The CDC does not even recommend vaccinations for young children.
Teachers unions have been saying that without proper ventilation, or more masking, or without social distancing they can&#8217;t reopen. The science does not agree with this. 
So what do the teachers unions care about? Well, they care about the same thing all other unions care about: getting the best benefits for their employees. The problem is that teachers unions are negotiating against students, because typically what they are negotiating is more money from taxpayers, less working hours, better working conditions.
Some of those things are perfectly plausible. But you know where you&#8217;re supposed to address those sorts of issues typically? At the legislative level. You&#8217;re supposed to allow taxpayers to defend themselves. Instead, what public sector unions do is they end around the process.
Unionization in America has a long and interesting history. Private sector unions did a lot of good in the early 20th century particularly, but public sector unions have always been a blight on the republic.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

SHAPIRO: The Real Reason Schools Are Still Closed

COVID

Education

Lockdowns

Teachers Unions

This week, The New York Times ran a long piece re-reporting a supposed race scandal from Smith College. The scandal, originally reported in midsummer 2018, featured a black student, Oumou Kanoute, who claimed that she was racially profiled while eating in a dormitory lounge. She suggested in a Facebook post that she was confronted by a campus police officer, who might have been carrying a &#8220;lethal weapon,&#8221; and a janitor, adding: &#8220;All I did was be Black. It&#8217;s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.&#8221;
The janitor was placed on paid leave. The college president issued a campuswide statement explaining, &#8220;This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.&#8221;
The incident was reported by establishment media outlets far and wide.
There was only one problem: It was a lie.
A full investigation by an outside law firm found no evidence of bias. Kanoute was eating in a closed dormitory, and the janitor was doing his job. The campus police officer had no weapon.
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<div class="mediavine">So, did The Times apologize for its original coverage? Of course not. It turned the story into an investigation of supposed structural biases based on race and class. In one of the more astonishing sentences ever written in a major newspaper, The Times reported, &#8220;The story highlights the tensions between a student&#8217;s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.&#8221;</div>
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For those who speak English, this sentence translates thusly: The story highlights the tensions between lies and the truth. But for those who speak the wokeabulary, this sentence actually makes equivalence between lies told on behalf of a self-serving victim narrative and factual truth. The two must be balanced against each other, not one dismissed for its patent falsehood.
This is the society we now inhabit: a society in which a &#8220;deeply felt sense of personal truth&#8221; must be weighed against &#8220;the facts.&#8221; And typically, our society dismisses &#8220;the facts.&#8221; That&#8217;s because it has been infused with the spirit of deconstructionism, which sees all facts as merely a manifestation of how our social structures &#8220;define&#8221; truth based on cultural context. &#8220;Facts&#8221; are merely a reflection of how your society sees truth. But there&#8217;s no reason your society&#8217;s definition of truth must be the only one. In fact, a more tolerant society would make room for the expressive self-definition of &#8220;your truth&#8221; and redefine truth along individual lines; an accepting, kind society would allow a &#8220;deeply felt sense of personal truth&#8221; to flourish by requiring others to accept it as fact .
What of those harmed by that &#8220;deeply felt sense of personal truth&#8221;? This is where structural arguments about power come in. We can choose which sense of personal truth ought to triumph with reference to societal structures: Those who are deemed more victimized ought to be given more credibility. Thus, Nikole Hannah-Jones, de facto editor of The New York Times, declared that the janitor put on leave might have been the truly privileged one in the story: After all, &#8220;What is the social class of the Black student that this entire piece centers on? What is the actual power dynamic at play here?&#8221;
This is how we arrive at the insanity of a transgender agenda that calls for banning books that demonstrate the unmalleability of sex: A &#8220;deeply felt sense of personal truth&#8221; is at odds with the biological facts, and the biological facts must lose.
In the end, perhaps the deconstructionists were right; perhaps a society&#8217;s emphasis on facts, data and actual truth reflects the values of that society. Such a society values the individual, since facts are accessible to individuals and aren&#8217;t the select preserve of a priestly caste. Such a society allows the possibility of consensus by appeal to verifiable facts. If facts don&#8217;t matter, there can be no common polis — or there can only be a polis as dictated by those in power. And perhaps that&#8217;s precisely the point.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-the-authoritarian-left-is-on-the-march">More from Ben Shapiro: The Authoritarian Left Is On The March</a>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Suspect In Custody After Driving Into Protest And Shooting One In Seattle

SHAPIRO: When Lies Matter More Than Facts

Anti-Racism

Critical Race Theory

This week, Democratic Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Jerry McNerny, D-N.J., sent out a series of letters to America&#8217;s largest communications corporations: AT&amp;T, Alphabet Inc., Cox Communications, Dish Network, Comcast, Apple, Amazon and others. Their letters demanded answers from these corporations on one simple topic: Why would these platforms continue to allow the dissemination of &#8220;misinformation&#8221; from conservative outlets?
&#8220;Our country&#8217;s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies,&#8221; the House Democrats wrote. &#8220;These phenomena undergird the radicalization of seditious individuals who committed acts of insurrection on January 6th, and it contributes to a growing distrust of public health measures necessary to crush the pandemic. &#8230; Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN?&#8221;
The overt move by members of the government to cudgel private corporations into silencing unpopular viewpoints was clearly violative of First Amendment principles. The Constitution clearly provides that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or the press; Democrats have now hit upon a convenient workaround where they bully private actors into doing their censorious bidding.
This clever gambit is rooted in the conflation between &#8220;disinformation&#8221; and &#8220;misinformation&#8221; promulgated by the establishment media since 2016. After the 2016 election, the media went berserk with the theory that Hillary Clinton had lost the election thanks only to Russian interference. &#8220;Russian disinformation&#8221; — meaning false information promulgated by a foreign government for the purpose of interfering in domestic politics — had twisted the election. Now even disinformation promulgated on American soil is protected by the First Amendment. But it soon became clear that the authoritarian left wasn&#8217;t interested merely in active disinformation springing from foreign sources. It was troubled by any narrative or information that contradicted its point of view . This information could quickly and easily be labeled &#8220;misinformation.&#8221;
And &#8220;misinformation,&#8221; it said, had to be policed.
Why, precisely, wouldn&#8217;t the answer to misinformation be factual rebuttal? Because, the authoritarian left argued, misinformation led to &#8220;incitement.&#8221; Now, there is a legal standard for &#8220;incitement&#8221; — and it&#8217;s a high bar to reach. But the authoritarian left has broadened out the meaning of incitement to include any verbiage that elicits strong emotions &#8230; so long as conservatives are responsible for such verbiage. Thus, it&#8217;s possible incitement to call people by their biological pronouns but perfectly innocent fun to wink and nod at widespread looting and rioting.
The answer to &#8220;misinformation&#8221; and &#8220;incitement,&#8221; however, can&#8217;t lie within government. So Democrats have turned toward hijacking the private instruments of informational dissemination, all in the name of reestablishing an informational monopoly the left lost with the death of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and with a monopoly that collapsed completely with the rise of the open internet.
And corporations are going along with all of this. This week, Amazon banned a book on transgender people, &#8220;When Harry Became Sally,&#8221; presumably because it took a non-woke line on the subject. Coca-Cola is now apparently indoctrinating its employees into the cult of Robin DiAngelo &#8220;anti-racism.&#8221; Facebook and Twitter and Google are all preparing new measures aimed at cracking down on &#8220;misinformation&#8221; — opaque guidelines and non-rigorous standards that will surely cut in favor of the same establishment media now pushing censorship, and the Democrats they support.
The establishment media are fond of saying that we&#8217;re experiencing a crisis of authoritarianism in America; they point to the criminal acts of Jan. 6 and suggest that right-wing authoritarianism threatens democracy itself. The far greater threat to democracy, however, lies with an authoritarian left that is now ascendant in virtually every powerful institution in America.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/its-time-to-uncancel-americans">More from Ben Shapiro: It&#8217;s Time To Uncancel Americans</a>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Capitol Storm

SHAPIRO: The Authoritarian Left Is On The March

Censorship

Free Speech

Leftism

This week, actress Gina Carano made headlines when Disney+ and Lucasfilm decided to cancel her from their hit series &#8220;The Mandalorian&#8221; over controversial social media posts. It is perfectly obvious that the corporations had been looking for an excuse to get rid of Carano thanks to her conservative politics — The Hollywood Reporter uncovered a source who snarked, &#8220;They have been looking for a reason to fire her for two months, and today was the final straw.&#8221;
What, precisely, was Carano&#8217;s sin? After the 2020 election, she put up a social media post decrying voter fraud and then put up a post referring disparagingly to elite-driven mask culture. This week, she put up a post pointing out that the Holocaust did not begin with mass murder but with neighbors turning on one another thanks to politics. The Holocaust comparison may have been overwrought, but it was certainly not anti-Semitic. &#8220;Nonetheless,&#8221; Lucasfilm stated, &#8220;her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.&#8221;
Carano&#8217;s cancellation came the same week as the cancellation of &#8220;The Bachelor&#8221; host Chris Harrison. Harrison&#8217;s sin: He said that one of the contestants on this season of &#8220;The Bachelor&#8221; ought to be given &#8220;a little grace&#8221; over having attended a sorority party with an antebellum theme several years ago. Harrison said, &#8220;I have seen some stuff online — this judge, jury, executioner thing — where people are just tearing this girl&#8217;s life apart and diving into, like, her parents, her parents&#8217; voting record. It&#8217;s unbelievably alarming to watch this.&#8221; And the woke authoritarians emerged to deem him racist.
Carano&#8217;s and Harrison&#8217;s responses, however, were polar opposites.
Harrison immediately kowtowed to the mob. He issued a mewling statement, no doubt at the behest of his corporate overlords, in which he suggested that he is now following a &#8220;path to anti-racism&#8221; and explaining, &#8220;My words were harmful. I am listening, and I truly apologize for my ignorance and any pain it caused you.&#8221; Not a single person could have explained how asking for &#8220;a little grace&#8221; for a young woman who had sinned by wearing a Scarlett O&#8217;Hara-style dress had harmed anybody. But that didn&#8217;t matter. The only one harmed was Harrison, whose apology was deemed insufficient. He has self-banished to the cornfield for at least this season, and maybe forever.
Carano, by contrast, took down the Holocaust post because she realized it was overwrought. But she didn&#8217;t apologize. And, more importantly, she made a ballsy move: She signed a deal with my company, The Daily Wire, to produce and star in a new film. She explained: &#8220;I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob. I have only just begun using my voice which is now freer than ever before, and I hope it inspires others to do the same. They can&#8217;t cancel us if we don&#8217;t let them.&#8221;
We at The Daily Wire are dedicated to that simple proposition. It&#8217;s time for the American people to stop allowing themselves to be canceled. The institutions of American culture are arrayed against individuals who think differently, from Hollywood to corporate America to the establishment media. But dissenters can band together, too, and support one another. Those who believe in open dialogue — people across the political aisle — need to come together. Otherwise, the authoritarians will continue their march toward woke dystopia.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-when-the-hateful-think-they-are-the-virtuous">More from Ben Shapiro: When The Hateful Think They Are The Virtuous</a>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Star Wars Celebration: “The Mandalorian” Panel

SHAPIRO: It’s Time to Uncancel Americans

Gina Carano

This week, Virginia Heffernan, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, unleashed the most perverse column in recent memory. The title: &#8220;What can you do about the Trumpites next door?&#8221; Heffernan wasn&#8217;t lamenting neighbors who had tagged her house with pro-Trump graffiti, or who had participated in the Jan. 6 riots, or who had even held an election watch party and turned the music up too loud. No, Heffernan was lamenting the travails of living next door to Trump supporters &#8230; who had cleared her driveway of snow.
Heffernan writes, &#8220;Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway &#8230; just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.&#8221; This simple act launched Heffernan into a journey of angst and rage. &#8220;How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?&#8221; she laments. &#8220;I realize I owe them thanks — and, man, it really looks like the guy back-dragged the driveway like a pro — but how much thanks?&#8221;
In order to justify the answer she wants to give — as little thanks as possible, because, after all, these are Evil Trumpites — Heffernan proceeds to speculate as to her neighbors&#8217; motives: Perhaps they only cleared her driveway because she and they were white. Or perhaps this whole event was a reminder that members of evil groups sometimes do good — she compares them to the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the Nazis. If she treats her neighbors with too much decency, she reminds herself, that might make her like an upper-middle-class family from France who collaborated with the Nazis and lamented the Nazis&#8217; defeat because of their commitment to being &#8220;polite.&#8221;
Heffernan seethes with the agony of cognitive dissonance. &#8220;My neighbors supported a man who showed near-murderous contempt for the majority of Americans,&#8221; she writes. &#8220;They kept him in business with their support. But the plowing.&#8221;
In the end, Heffernan&#8217;s solution is to be nice — but not that nice. She will offer a &#8220;wave and a thanks,&#8221; but she is &#8220;not ready to knock on the door with a covered dish yet.&#8221; She&#8217;s unwilling to give her neighbors &#8220;absolution,&#8221; ignoring the fact that they have not asked for absolution, nor do they require absolution for the great sin of voting differently and clearing her driveway of snow . &#8220;Free driveway work, as nice as it is,&#8221; Heffernan states, &#8220;is just not the same currency as justice and truth.&#8221; The only way she&#8217;ll be able to truly treat her neighbors decently is if they recognize &#8220;the truth about the Trump administration&#8221; and work &#8220;for justice for all those whom the administration harmed.&#8221; Then, she&#8217;ll be decent to her neighbors.
Heffernan&#8217;s neighbors should immediately pile as much snow as humanly possible back onto her driveway, hose it off and let it freeze.
The nasty snootiness Heffernan evidences is all too common these days. Heffernan obviously judges her neighbors not on the basis of what she knows about them but on stereotypes she holds about all Trump voters. When faced with the reality that those who disagree with her can be nice and decent people, she simply dismisses the possibility altogether, justifying her own viciousness by referencing their supposedly radical political beliefs. Which, of course, makes her the villainess in this particular morality play.
But she&#8217;s too blind to see it. These days, tens of millions of Americans are. And so, the social fabric continues to shred, all in the name of depraved, unearned moral superiority.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-this-is-not-normal">More from Ben Shapiro: This Is Not Normal</a>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Occupy Wall Street Movement Joins With Activists Group For May Day Demonstrations

SHAPIRO: When the Hateful Think They Are the Virtuous

Donald Trump

President Joe Biden took office pledging a return to unity and decency. A new era of good feelings is at hand, we were informed by both his administration and its sycophants in the media. A new world — a world of &#8220;equity&#8221; — is at hand.
Equity, you see, is the word of the day. Not equality — that would be a traditionally American concept. The Declaration of Independence declares that &#8220;all men are created equal &#8230; endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.&#8221; The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides that all citizens must receive &#8220;equal protection of the laws.&#8221; Equality, in the traditional understanding, means something simple and easy to implement: the protection of the rights of all individuals, along with the invasion of none of those rights.
Equity means something different. The two words are separated by one syllable — but that syllable represents the difference between justice and injustice, rights and infringements, individualism and tribalism. Equity, in the common political parlance, means that each group should receive the same outcome as every other group. Ibram X. Kendi, the chief expositor of the new Democratic &#8220;racial equity&#8221; theory, explains that &#8220;Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.&#8221; Because race is a social construct, says Kendi, the chief indicator that two races are on unequal footing can be found not in proof of differential treatment by race but in differential outcome by race.
To prove racial inequity, therefore, one need not show animus or discriminatory policy. All one must show is unequal outcome . Kendi explains in his massive bestseller, &#8220;How to Be an Antiracist&#8221;: &#8220;A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.&#8221; And, says Kendi, &#8220;There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy.&#8221; All policies either forward equity or oppose it. Any policy not explicitly designed to rectify unequal outcome is therefore racist.
This philosophy is both idiotic and perverse. It&#8217;s idiotic because all human groupings — literally all of them — will result in differential outcomes. Draw a line down the middle of any room in random fashion and the result will be unequal income distribution, criminal records, educational histories. When culture takes a hand, disparities can be more deeply rooted than random chance. Discrimination would still not be the cause of such disparity. As a basic logical matter, discrimination is not the cause of all disparity.
This philosophy is perverse because it attributes malice to those who have none; it fosters policy that actively discriminates , supposedly in order to alleviate unproven discrimination. Kendi himself explains: &#8220;The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.&#8221;
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<div>Unfortunately, this idiotic and perverse philosophy has become the root of Biden administration policymaking. &#8220;Equity&#8221; has been used as the keyword from environmental to economic to COVID-19 policy. Susan Rice, Biden&#8217;s domestic policy adviser, explained this week, &#8220;(W)e&#8217;re focused on racial justice and equity&#8230;It&#8217;s for everybody who has not had the benefits of a system that has not served everybody. &#8230; This is not about serving one group to the detriment of another.&#8221; This, of course, is a lie. It is utterly about group equality, which requires individual injustice.</div>
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America was rooted in equality and freedom. Equity requires freedom to be curbed. It&#8217;s therefore a national tragedy to watch equality of rights abandoned in favor of equity. If freedom is discarded to achieve equality of outcome, we no longer live in an America defined by the Declaration of Independence. We live in an America defined by tribalism and leveling — and, in short order, tyranny.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-this-is-not-normal">More from Ben Shapiro: This Is Not Normal</a>
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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