Before descending into our Thanksgiving food comas, there was a profile worth reading in The New York Times about conservative commentator and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who has been taking on college progressivism for years through his writings and lecture tours. Those tours, hosted by Young America’s Foundation, recently became an exclusive item. To put it lightly, the man doesn’t take any of the Left’s crap. Period. He’s unafraid to venture onto hyper-left wing campuses and tear down the cesspool of ideas brought on by identity politics and political correctness:
Young America’s Foundation is excited to announce an exclusive nationwide partnership with @benshapiro! Learn more at https://t.co/CF0pZNPc1w#YAFonCampus #onlyatYAF pic.twitter.com/RkjWF9Aod0
— YAF (@yaf) November 16, 2017
Mr. Shapiro, conservative thinker, entertainer, trash talker and destroyer of weak arguments, has been called the voice of the conservative millennial movement. He represents the tastes of an emerging political class: If Rush Limbaugh is someone your dad listens to on his car radio, Mr. Shapiro, 33, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is the cool kid’s philosopher, dissecting arguments with a lawyer’s skill and references to Aristotle. He exists in places that young people inhabit — podcasts, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. His podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, is downloaded 10 million times every month. Seventy percent of his audience is under the age of 40.
“Ben is the source of a lot of philosophy for young conservatives,” said Kassy Dillon, a senior at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who has written for Mr. Shapiro’s website, The Daily Wire. “I think it would be really hard to find a young conservative who doesn’t know who Ben Shapiro is.”
Mr. Shapiro is trying to define conservatism at a time when its meaning is up for grabs and the Republican Party, and traditional conservative media outlets like Fox, are built for older audiences. He does not like President Trump and he disagrees with his old boss at Breitbart News, Stephen K. Bannon, that Trumpism is the future of the Republican Party. He likes to point out that Mr. Trump won fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney in 2012 and fewer votes in Michigan than George W. Bush in 2004. Most Republicans voted for Mr. Trump not because they loved him, he argues, but because they hated Hillary Clinton.
The latter part is think is mostly true; most GOP voters probably aren’t die-hard Trump fans, though the liberal media is doing a great job in pushing more reluctant deplorables into that camp. Regardless, this profile did not go over well with some liberals, which ironically the Times pointed out. Debra Messing actually canceled her subscription.
And why I cancelled my subscription to @nytimes https://t.co/gRsnwM9T0w
— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) November 24, 2017
Okay—whether this is true or not—and I’m saying that because of all the liberals who vowed to move out of the country if Trump won and didn’t—how soft are you? One article forces you to cancel the whole show; are you joking? We all know The Times is (and will continue to remain) a liberal publication. One profile of a conservative commentator does not change that. If liberals wonder why so many people think they’re soft, insular, and well—insufferable, look no further than the folks who cancel subscriptions because of one article with whom they have disagreements with.