The Right Side Of History: How Reason And Moral Purpose Made The West Great, by Ben Shapiro

The progressive left, for all of its moral decadence and rank hypocrisy, often smugly tells itself (and others) that they are on the right side of history. This book neatly turns that assumption on its head by showing that those who are on the right side of history are those who hold on to the embrace of both Athens and Jerusalem. This is by no means an easy task, as there has always been a great deal of tension between the demands of reason that are celebrated by philosophy and the intellect and the demands of morality that come from religion. Tension, though, does not mean contradiction, and to attempt to resolve the conflict by either denying the importance of God-given reason or denying the force of God-given moral standards is to deny some aspect of the way that we have been created. Moreover, it is in the uneasy and dynamic harmony between reason and morality that has provided the basis for any sort of improvement that humanity has found in its lot, whether we are looking at social institutions to benefit the health, education, and freedom for ordinary people to live lives that express their dignity and provide them with opportunity to better themselves and develop their God-given talents and abilities without being restrained by others.

To be sure, although I highly enjoyed this book, there are some who will find fault with this book because of its somewhat breezy approach to the very serious philosophical matters it discusses. Ben Shapiro, who proudly holds to the noble philosophy that the facts don’t care about your feelings (and they don’t), is nonetheless not an academic philosopher or historian by any means, and he has a personal stake in the issues he talks about, as the decline of respect for both reason and morality in society has led to a great deal of personal difficulty for him and other like minded people (myself included). The author’s clear understanding of the stakes of what happens when reason is replaced with narrow-minded partisanship that views political ends as justifying all kinds of horrible means, and views those who hold to honorable and decent moral codes as being monsters beneath contempt is something that demands attention. Over a process of many centuries, a large part of the world was blessed in large part because it was able to cover over its heathen ways with at least a veneer of sound reasoning and decent morality, but the re-paganization of the Western world carries with it the possibility for world-historical horrors of the kind that mankind suffered repeatedly during the 20th century in politically and ethnically-motivated genocidal hostility from evil regimes like Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as the barbaric slaughter of Rwanda. The author, a conservative American Jew, clearly has in mind this history when looking at the dangers of aggressive heathen hostility to God’s ways, and he is right to be concerned as he is a likely target of such hostilities. As am I.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit less than 250 pages and is divided into 9 chapters with clearly marked themes in mind. The book as a whole is compact and does not waste the time of its readers, even if it is not as complete as some might hope and is written with an obvious partisan slant (one I happen to share, it must be admitted). The book begins with an introduction. After this the author discusses the problem of the pursuit of happiness and what it means, especially to Americans who view it as a God-given and universal right (1). This is followed by a discussion of the moral standards that come from biblical sources and their importance to the West (2). After this the author discusses the philosophical origins of a great deal of Western civilization (3). This leads to a discussion of how these two strands came together (4), as they were often viewed in the ancient world as being incompatible. After this the author takes aim at the moral certainty of the far-left and far-right that semes to lack the humility that is necessary to build a robust civil society (5). This is followed by the author’s contrast of two different visions of the Enlightenment, an American marriage of faith and reason and a continental one that came out of the French Revolution that ultimately denied both (6). With this, the author then turns his attention to undermining the amnesia of the left that has led to idealistic means to remake the world that inevitably result in world-historical horrors (7). This leads to a discussion of the refusal of people to repent of their abandonment of reason and faith in the aftermath of World War II (8). This, in turn, leads Shapiro to discuss the contemporary return to paganism that augurs so poorly for our short-term social harmony and well-being (9), unless we repent. With this the author concludes, after which there are acknowledgements, notes, and an index.