In recent months, I’ve been following a number of Conservative voices on X, including the dudes from Daily Wire. Ben Shapiro stands out from the pack these days for his obviously stance for Israel—a stance in which he always maintains a strong America-first allegiance.

As a Shapiro fan, I looked up some of his old books and loved reading his “Opinion” articles from 2015 published as the book Evil in America (2017). That experience of rehashing the pre-Trump years drove me to this older collection of Opinions from July-December 2014, A Moral Universe Torn Apart.

The Enduring Legacy of President Obama

Because these opinion pieces were first published during the tail end of Obama’s second term, Shapiro had much to say about the President, his policies, and the legacy he was leaving behind. And let’s just say that Ben Shapiro was not an Obama fan! Here’s just one of several personal takes on the big-talking President:

Obama’s narcissism isn’t mere arrogance. It’s messianism. It’s pure faith that his verbiage can alter the course of history. (Oct. 1, “The Throat-Clearing President Versus the Throat-Cutting Terrorists”, 28)

He also had a great deal to say about Obama’s unabashed hatred of the Jews (something we’re seeing more and more in today’s society!):

The Obama administration had the opportunity to stand clearly against Jew-hating evil. Not only did it fail to do so but it funded that evil, encouraged that evil, militated against fighting that evil. But that’s nothing new. Jew hatred is as old as the Jewish people. It’s just found a new home in the White House. (July 2, “The Jew-Hating Obama Administration”, 4)

Opinions are opinions, sure, but Shapiro has never been one simply to wear red-colored glasses or read only those journalist that write what he himself believes. Instead, he is an investigative journalist who takes his high-IQ to the historical sources, and he builds his beliefs structure (yes, “opinions”) off the facts he discovers. It’s why he can write a claim like this and be trusted for it:

President Obama isn’t merely a reflection of 1960s politics. He represents a return to those ugly politics: the nastiness of anti-cop sentiment, the divisiveness of generalized anti-Western foreign policy, the idiocy of a war between the sexes and against the exclusivity of the traditional family structure. President Obama isn’t representative of a new breed. He is the child of the 1960s politics he once claimed to abhor.” (Dec. 31, “Return to the 1960s”, 53)

Ferguson and the “Anti-cop Sentiments”

Obama’s return to the 1960s was perhaps made most evident with the riots across America following the shooting of Michael Brown. Revisionist history began even before Brown’s body grew cold, and the fervor that it stirred set the whole country ablaze. People felt fervently that America had taken a racist turn, but as another great Shapiro quote reminds us: “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

President Obama willingly ignored the facts and then fueled the lies before he “dropped a doozy”:

“We need to recognize that this is not just an issue in Ferguson, this is an issue for America … there are problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up.” Obama did not specify what problems he wanted to discuss. Nor did he explain why Ferguson’s issues were America’s. But the largest lie was the notion that “communities of color” don’t make problems up. Because in Ferguson, that’s precisely what a community of color did. In the immediate aftermath of the Brown shooting, grand jury documents show, witness intimidation and lying became the order of the day. (December 3, “The Real Racist Conspiracy in Ferguson”, 45)

This issue of race and police-hatred was huge in the Summer and Fall of 2014, and Shapiro was willing to face it head-on, not merely by castigating the first Black President’s penchant for promoting racism instead of healing it, but by offering solutions. Here’s one example:

The only real answer to the antipathy between large segments of the black community and police is threefold: first, taking seriously fact-based allegations of racism against the authorities, and investigating and prosecuting such allegations if well-founded; second, not jumping to conclusions about non-fact-based allegations; and third, lowering crime rates among young black men, thereby lowering interactions between police and young black men. (September 3, “Of Racial Delusions and Riots”, 22)

He also considers it important that we stop listening to the “Ragers” in our society—and by golly, do we ever need this in the age of Antifa, Trantifa, and BLM!—and return to the common-sense facts that unite us:

Whether we’re watching thousands of Muslims across the world protest and riot over cartoons of Mohammed, or whether we’re watching hundreds of people in Ferguson riot over a media-manufactured story about a racial killing, Days of Rage provide the outlet for delusional anger. Radical Muslims need an external enemy to justify their own brutality; protesters in Ferguson need an external enemy to justify their own failure to make good in the freest country in the history of humanity. Every society has its Ragers. The West’s suicidal impulse to humor those Ragers, however, spells the end of the West. When facts become secondary to emotion, truth dies. And a society that doesn’t value truth cannot survive. Calling out the National Guard in Ferguson while lending a sympathetic ear to the Ragers does little good, long-term. (Nov. 19, “The Ferguson Days of Rage”, 42)

Other Sundry Comments

Shapiro covers so much ground in his half-year of opinion pieces that it’s hard to comment on everything, but the following were some of my favorite lines from this collection.

On the “Death Culture” of the Left

If America was built on life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, today’s leftist death cult devalues the first and destroys the second in pursuit of the third. And, in the end, there will be no happiness, for happiness is not ceaseless hedonism but living a moral and responsible life. (Sept. 24, “A Moral Universe Torn Apart”, 27)

On Media Corruption

The corrupt relationship between media and government means that Americans don’t find out about overreach and incompetence until far too late for them to do anything about it. (Oct. 15, “A Bowla Ebola Idiocy”, 33)

On Education

The achievement gap will never be closed, so long as school districts across the country punish good students, reward bad ones and let political correctness trump educational necessity. (Nov. 12, “America’s Education Crisis”, 41)

On Men and Women

Teaching respect for women begins with ensuring that solid male influences models fill the lives of young men — men who respect women, cherish them, treasure them, and believe in protecting them. This is an unpopular stance, because it suggests that boys require men to raise them. Which they do. (Sept, 17, “The Conversation We Won’t Have about Raising Men”, 25)

Conclusion

I had never before enjoyed reading collections of articles until I came across these publications from Ben Shapiro. His was a voice I wasn’t hearing in 204-2015, so I missed his strongly Conservative takes on issues that terrified me.

I’m glad to have found them later rather than never, as they’ve helped me understand not only my gut-feelings about issues past, but also the logic that makes those feelings legit. If you like rehashing politics in your free time, these books might be worth looking into.

©2025 E.T.

Read More from Ben Shapiro:

• What’s Fair? (2015)
• A Moral Universe Torn Apart (2016)
• Evil in America (2017)