The Right Side of History

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分享：The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great by Ben Shapiro

Amazon Best Sellers of 2019 in Books #17，定格日期：2019年4月19日。

It is 2019, and Western Civilization is having a crisis. Specifically, it is having a crisis of meaning. Suicide rates are rising, even among the wealthy and successful. Young children are questioning their gender. Young men are questioning existence itself. Killers are writing nihilistic manifestos and livestreaming their own crimes. We seem to be a ship unmoored, drifting on a sea of hopelessness and unanswered questions—or worse, questions to which ideologues of all stripes are supplying the worst possible answers.

Drawing on an antagonism first sketched by Leo Strauss, Shapiro argues the twin pillars of Western society are Judeo-Christian moral law and Greek scientific reasoning: Jerusalem and Athens. Both are essential to the structure of our civilization, and removing either pillar will collapse it:

“The USSR rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law… and they starved and slaughtered tens of millions of human beings. The Nazis rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, and they shoved children into gas chambers.”

The book is rounded off by a recap of our 21st-century return to paganism, as the last remnants of rationality have been cast aside for good. Here Shapiro argues that “the new scientific Athenians” and “the devotees of Jerusalem” can make common cause. To Shapiro’s credit, he does not limit his criticism to the intersectionalist insanity of the left. He also censures the “reverse racial solidarity” of the alt-right, which plays the exact same game of identity politics. Whatever side it comes from, tribalism is not the answer. The meaning it promises is a corrosive substitute for the real thing.

Where, then, can we find the real thing? Not in politics, and not in wealth either. Enlightenment ideas like capitalism are a wonderful thing. But capitalism cannot fill your soul. Instead, in fine Petersonian fashion, Shapiro proposes that meaning is found in sacrifice and responsibility—specifically, the responsibility to train the next generation. We must teach them that life has purpose. We must teach them that they are free to choose, and their choices matter. We must teach them the value of what they have inherited.

Finally, we must teach how they might come together for the common cause of liberty and the preservation of virtue. We must teach them to pull in the same direction. Shapiro quotes a wise word from his father that there are not six directions in life, only two: forward and backward. There are those who would force us to turn around and go backward, to a drunken paganism that knows nothing of Jerusalem or Athens, while calling it “progress.” Athwart their path, Shapiro has squarely planted himself, like a diminutive young Tevye, crying “TRADITION!”