Speaking at the University of Santa Barbara on Tuesday night in a speech that was watched by more than 750,000 people online and a standing-room-only crowd of 1,000 more, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro had the crowd laughing during the speech before he rocked the crowd with another one of his scintillating Q&A sessions.
As the crowd started by cheering and chanting “Ben!” “Ben!” “Ben!” Shapiro began by thanking the crowd, drawing a laugh by quipping, “I want to thank, obviously, the College Republicans, for having spent all the time and energy organizing this, all of you for taking time out of your schedule of drinking and partying to come hear me. I mean. C’mon; it’s UCSB.”
Shapiro began with the body of his speech, in which he discussed the victim mentality plaguing college campuses, describing that mentality this way:
Your identity is your virtue. This creates a hierarchy of victimhood . . . straight white males are at the very bottom, because straight white males are the victimizers. We can tell whether what you say has value not based on what you’re actually saying, but based instead on your place in this hierarchy of victimhood. If we could somehow find the unicorn of intersectionality, the bisexual, transgender who’s three-quarters black, one quarter Native American and disabled, if we could find that person, we could all just go home, because that person would have every great view. No matter what that person said, it would have to be right; you could not be more of a victim than that human being. And victimhood in our culture now confers privilege.
Speaking of “virtue signaling,” Shapiro had the crowd laughing again: “I’ve heard that there are stickers being passed out on this campus and buttons being passed out on this campus in honor of me coming and speaking that say, what, ‘UCSB against hate,’ is that correct?” Someone in the crowd offered, “Hate-free UCSB.” Shapiro continued, “UCSB against hate” is the one I heard before I came, so I have my own button,” taking off his windbreaker to reveal a button on his shirt. He read, “It says right here, ‘Me against you sucking.’” The crowd cheered and applauded.
Shapiro continued, “It turns out facts are not hate. It turns out that truth is not hate. If you don’t like what I have to say, then maybe you should argue with what I have to say instead of simply declaring it hate speech and therefore off-limits.” He drew more laughter by adding, “I also have heard that they’ve planned half-a dozen events to prevent people from coming; clearly that was successful.”
Then he produced another surprise: “I’ve heard one of the events that they planned tonight was the social justice awards; now I don’t know what trophies …” pausing as the crowd started laughing, “I don’t know what trophies they hand out at the social justice awards; I don’t know what they hand out, are little statuettes, so I brought my own, actually,” as the crowd started laughing and cheering. Reaching down, Shapiro stated, “Its just a design suggestion for the social justice awards,” then held up a small toy golden toilet as the crowd started laughing again. He stated, “I think it’s perfectly appropriate. As you can see, it’s a golden toilet; I think it’s a perfectly appropriate suggestion for two reasons: one, social justice is a bunch of crap, and second, I made perfectly certain that when I purchased this that the toilet was sex-non-specific. Anyone can use this toilet; it doesn’t matter; you should feel welcome to use this particular toilet.”
After the applause subsided, Shapiro quipped, “Personally, I’m just disappointed that I don’t actually get to visit the poetry slam; I guess you’re having a poetry slam tonight. Nothing is more fun than a poetry slam, as we all know. I’m sure that we’ve got Keats and Shelley reading verse about ‘menstrual equality’ or some such nonsense.”
Shapiro discussed events on college campuses where violence had been fomented against conservative speakers, or instances of campuses attempting to shut down conservative speakers. He also spoke of students from UCSB who had complained that knowing he was going to speak had distracted them from their studies.
Coming to the theme of his speech, Shapiro explained, “It’s about the truth about America, which is that this is the greatest country on the face of the earth, and here, we’re not trying to stop you. If you’re black we’re not trying to stop you; if you’re Latino we’re not trying to stop you; if you’re gay, we’re not trying to stop you; if you’re transgender we’re not trying to stop you. No one cares about you. No one’s interested in you; no one cares about your life; no one is trying to throw up obstacles in your way.”
After the applause finished, he continued:
That’s not to suggest there aren’t isolated racists and isolated sexists and isolated homophobes and bigots; of course there are; of course there are. But the idea that the institutional society as a whole is out to get you is just plain false, and not only is it false; it’s counterproductive, and destroys your chances at success. Because if you imbibe the spirit that says that you are inherently going to fail, that anybody who says something, who disagrees with you, is going to cause you to be unable to study, and you get a “C” in your diversity studies course, and you can’t go to the law school you wanted to, that’s your own damn fault. That philosophy is your own damn fault. You want to succeed in America? Work harder. That’s all.
Shapiro concluded his speech:
You want to know why you couldn’t study for your class? It wasn’t cause of me. It’s because your teachers keep telling you no matter how you study, no matter what grades you get, you are bound to fail in American society. That’s doing a hell of a lot more damage than me standing up here telling you, “You can do it. You can control your own destiny.”
He continued after the applause:
So here’s the bottom line: Your life is in your hands. You can do whatever you want. This is America; no one cares. Do what you want; let your freak flag fly; no one cares. Do whatever it is that you want to do; no one is out there to stop you. And I’ll tell you what: if someone is out there to stop you, and you can show me evidence, you can show any of us evidence that that person is out there to stop you for any discriminatory reason at all, we will all stand with you. We will; we all want to be on the same side of this thing.
What tears us apart is when you immediately assume, when people immediately assume, that just cause my skin color is different than yours, or my religion is different than yours, I must have an agenda that is adversarial to yours, and I want to destroy you. I don’t. What I want is a country where we can all be free, where you don’t have to care what I think and I don’t have to care about what you think because we’re all leaving each other alone, and all we care about is the maintenance of that freedom that was guaranteed to us by those evil white Founding Fathers who constructed the greatest system in the history of humankind.
Then came the Q&A:
Q: Where does the fist of freedom of expression end and the nose of well-being of society begin?
A: I actually oppose a lot of the hate speech laws, because I think that once you give the government the power to decide which views are acceptable and which are not acceptable, then that gun can turn on you in a hurry, and that scares me a lot more than the idea of a couple of kooks walking around with silly-looking Hitler mustaches.
Speaking of the propensity for lying among politicians, Shapiro triggered an ovation as he pointed out, “It is your obligation as a citizen to determine for yourself what is true and what is false; you do not follow the leader. Be a human being; be a citizen; and be an adult. You’re not a child; you don’t need a politician to lead you by the hand. Check your own facts; decide what’s true, and then call it like you see it.”
A truly moving moment came when a questioner asked, “Who or what is God to you?”
Shapiro replied: “God’s my man,” drawing applause. He continued:
The Creator of the Universe; the Master of heaven and earth. Who is God to me? As an Orthodox Jew, I believe that God provided us a moral foundation in the Bible; if you live by that moral foundation, you will live a happier, better life; freer of sin. I think that God provides the idea of an objective moral standard that immediately begins to crumble as soon as you get to a subjective idea that everybody can create their own morality. That’s I think the role of God in society. As far as what is God to me personally, all I can say is that I don’t believe in God; I know in God. I don’t just have faith in God; I have trust in God. And so that may not end up well for me, because it doesn’t always end up well for people with faith, but I think that not recognizing God’s providence over the universe, for me particularly would be an act of tremendous ingratitude.
Asked about the strange coalition in which feminists joined with those who embrace sharia law, Shapiro commented:
I think that these are alliances of convenience; I think so long as people are dedicated to tearing down fundamental pillars of Western civilization, and a lot of feminists see Western civilization as a barrier, they see it as a patriarchal barrier to the utopia they want to create, anybody who’s willing to help them they’ll make an alliance with, no matter what other terrible views they hold, which is a negative thing, but I think that that kind of coalition politics, unfortunately, is far too common on all sides.
I think that a lot of people are willing to reach out to people who are willing to make common cause with them, even if those people are the worst people in the room . . . I think that the Women’s March is making an enormous mistake by pretending that women are oppressed in this country and suggesting that their top priority should not be the attempts to liberate women all over the globe, who really are living under oppression.
Asked about his position on the military draft, and the idea of paying soldiers more if needed to attract more recruits during a major war, Shapiro agreed with the idea of paying soldiers more to attract more recruits if necessary, but added:
I don’t think that’s going to be necessary; I think that the United States military is fully capable of defeating any military on planet Earth within the space of about two months. People forget this because of the insurgency that came afterward, but Saddam Hussein’s military was the fourth largest on planet Earth and he was done in three weeks. The United States military is the greatest war machine that has ever been constructed anywhere in history, even comparatively; it makes the Roman Empire look like a backwater.
Near the end of the Q&A, a young conservative black man who drove two hours from Pasadena to see him asked Shapiro, “How do you reach out to the black community?”
Shapiro gave him a comprehensive answer:
I think that the way you reach out to the black community is the same way you reach out to everybody, which is telling them the truth. I think that the message to the black community should be, “Listen, America is not going to get in your way.” As I said before, we will stand with you every step of the way if someone is trying to get in your way, but you have to show me the person trying to get in your way. I think that we should be doing a better job, as conservatives, of going into inner cities and saying to kids, “Here is a–”; I actually would like to do this, go into inner cities and set up a scholarship fund and say, “If you get these grades we will pay for your college,” and major companies should do this; they should say, “We’ll pay for your college, you work for the company for four years, and that’s the deal that we will make with you and so the job is guaranteed coming out.” But a social structure has to be achieved, and sometimes that has to be done artificially. Because right now the biggest problem in a lot of the black communities is that there’s no real social structure as far as a two-parent family where they’re telling the kids, “Go to school; get an education; you’ll succeed in America.”
Right now, well over 70% of black kids are born out of wedlock, very difficult to have a very successful social structure when a lot of guys that you know have abandoned their kids or are in prison. And that’s an individual decision by a lot of people making a lot of bad decisions. So I think that the best thing that we as conservatives can do is not lecture to the black community about all the things the black community does wrong, but what we can say is, “Look, we can all sit here bitching and moaning about how the United States is a terrible place. And the Democrats will be happy to do that with you all day. They will, they’ll be happy to bitch and moan and go to Washington D.C. and do nothing for you. Nothing for you. But if you actually want to succeed, here’s how we’re going to succeed. We’re going to sit down right now, and I’m going to make with you, right now, individually, a success plan for you. And if you stick with this plan every step of the way, I guarantee you that by the time you’re 25 years old you won’t be living in a hovel; you are going to be living in a nice apartment in a decent area with a job.”
I guarantee you that’s what’s going to happen. It has to be done not on a governmental level, on an individual level. Because here’s the thing: we’re all either dependent on government or we’re dependent on capitalism. And so we have to make people dependent on capitalism again; we have to make people dependent on markets again, on freedom again, and not on government again.
Video below: