Books – LibertySaints

The Authoritarian Moment is an (Incomplete) Complete Formulation of Shapiro’s Thesis on the New Left

There’s a problem with books from radio/podcast hosts: they usually contain nothing that the host hasn’t already talked about a dozen times. If you listen to the respective hosts’ shows a few times a month, there’s nothing to set books like Rush Limbaugh’s See, I Told You So, Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book, or Sean Hannity’s Conservative Victory apart from their daily radio shows except for a new framing device. The talking points remain the same, but at least Beck once had a sense of humor.

Books like this can be useful when they outline a complete version of the author/host’s worldview or their diagnosis of the current situation that we can then critique. Ben Shapiro is cleverer and better educated than any other conservative radio host, so he recognizes this need to write a book that defends a thesis about the social/political world in a complete and concise way.

Naturally, this means that The Authoritarian Moment, Shapiro’s newest book, is formed from a selection of the previous year’s worth of the talking points from his podcast. The fact that there’s nothing new is the natural consequence of talking nonstop for three hours a day. The Authoritarian Moment shapes Shapiro’s ideas into an overall theory that a series of recent trends perpetuated by the new left constitute an authoritarian push to silence dissent. These trends are obvious to anyone who has observed American culture and politics recently: the crackdown on social media, the acquiesce of corporations to woke demands, the bastardization of science, and the takeover of the academy, among others. Shapiro attributes these trends to a few social and psychological factors, like “renormalization,” ultracrepidarianism, the transformation of openly partisan news into partisan news that claims to give the unbiased truth, and the conjunction of the revolutionary instinct with the utopian instinct.

“Trump might have authoritarian tendencies,” writes Shapiro, “but he did not wield authoritarian power.” There’s a problem of definitions in the book that Shapiro seems to be aware of but is not capable of solving. We generally have a understanding of authoritarianism that involves the use of violence, threat of violence, or the use of government power – which is an implicit threat of violence. But the old leftist game is to confuse speech with violence, voluntary acts with fascism, everyday influence with authoritarian power.

If we’re going to create a new meaning of authoritarianism, one that includes non violent, non-state actions, we need to clearly define the new meanings of the term authoritarianism in opposition to each other. What is the difference between authoritarian instincts and authoritarian power? It’s a tricky question, and Shapiro isn’t quite able to give a satisfactory answer. But this matters, because it will take rational arguments within a logically consistent framework gain back ground in the war of ideas.

Shapiro attributes the takeover of certain institutions, like academia, to “renormalization,” a process in which the loudest and most stubborn in an institution are able to shift the status quo by intimidating those who want to take the path of least resistance into going along with their insane new normal. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as the saying goes.

This might explain why some members of administration cave to the radicals, but is renormalization really adequate to explain the total purge of the universities? How does renormalization work on notoriously intransigent groups like Burkeian conservatives, philosophical Pragmatists, and even classical economists? And why, for the entire twentieth century, were so many intelligent members of the academy intellectually unable to contend with the philosophical equivalent of snake oil-peddling quacks? Shapiro isn’t necessarily wrong here, but he’s trying to use a single theory to explain too much.

The Authoritarian Moment is a good guide/reminder of some of the insanities of the last couple of years, like the cancellations of James Bennett, Gena Carano, Barry Weiss, and the Covington students. Shapiro endeavors to connect these by a common thread. But he avoids going into the weeds to refute some of the core ideas behind this ideology. Critical theory epistemology underlies their “ethical” argument for silencing dissenters while Karl Popper’s idiotic “Paradox of Tolerance” in various forms underlies their practical argument. At some point, conservatives might have to stop talking about how crazy the people who advocate these ideas are and actually refute the core ideas themselves.

Every book like this has some kind of call-to-action in the short last chapter, suggesting how we might fight back against the evil that constitutes 95% of the Book. “They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them” is a good rallying cry, but it brings up a difficult problem. Do we let them cancel neo-Nazis? Would we cancel an anti-Semitic “Black Hebrew Israelite”? Where do we draw the line? Should those who suggest Nazis shouldn’t be canceled be canceled themselves? Should those who suggest that those who suggest that those who suggest that Nazis shouldn’t be canceled shouldn’t be canceled shouldn’t be canceled be canceled?

In his commentary elsewhere about the whimsical mandates of government entities regarding Covid-19 masks and lockdowns, Shapiro often speaks of the need of a “limiting principle.” What is the limiting principle in regards to what speech should get someone canceled? Can we draw the line at advocating violence? If that were the case, we could cancel people for advocating war in the Near East, enforcement of drug or firearms law, or BLM riots. If the standard for cancellation is only societal norms, then anyone with minority views outside the overton window should be canceled. The canceled can only complain that society’s norms have changed while looking in from the outside.

Maybe he’s suggesting that we should cancel no-one, and be tolerant and friendly with those who have evil beliefs. But if that’s what Shapiro is advocating, then he needs to actually say it. If not, what consistent principle protects conservatives but cancels actual real-life white supremacists? It a question that needs to be reckoned with if there is to be a cohesive resistance against the authoritarian left, and Shapiro leaves this important one unanswered.

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Top Image: Children line up in front of a mural in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo by Thomas Evans

Reviewing Moon’s Rare Books

The Greatest Collection of Church History in the World is Tucked Away in Provo

I would say it’s the “best-kept secret in Utah,” but according to a billboard I recently saw on I-15, that title belongs to a carpet warehouse in Spanish Fork, and I wouldn’t want to challenge them. But Moon’s Rare Books, located in the Shops at Riverwoods in northeast Provo, is a unique place that everyone should have a chance to visit. It’s more museum than bookstore, with museum-quality displays of books and historic artifacts from the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as well as displays from early modern Britain, middle Christianity, Victorian literature, and American film.

This is me with George Lucas’s original Star Wars script after an event at Moon’s Rare Books. You won’t see me this excited about something at any other time.

Reid Moon’s collection includes countless one-of-a-kind books and artifacts from both the Church and the wider history of the English-speaking world. Nowhere else do you have the chance to see the personal copies of the Book of Mormon owned by Joseph, Hyrum, and Samuel Smith during their lifetimes. Or the original fedora and whip used in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Or a first-edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone signed by an 11-year-old Daniel Radcliffe. Or a King James Bible that belonged to its namesake, King James I.

I say that it’s a like a museum, but it’s more of a journey, a unique experience every time. I’ve visited on multiple occasions. Once I left overwhelmed by the volume of knowledge in the world of which I’ve only scratched the surface. Once I spent several hours going from artifact to artifact, book to book, and Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article as I explored the past. Once I saw and held things so sacred, I hesitate to mention it online. And not just the Star Wars script.

The collection rivals the Church History Museum in content, and far surpasses it in engagement. It includes an original dictation of a revelation received by Joseph Smith, the only original section of the Doctrine and Covenants not owned by the Church today, as well as at least one article of scripture belonging to each Latter-Day Prophet.

The front room contains a large collection of early modern Bibles, a staple of any great book collection, while the back room contains an immense collection of Books of Mormon (Book of Mormons?), in every language in which it has been published, including a few in the nineteenth century “Deseret Alphabet.” The Bible collection includes a few large partially damaged Bibles, single pages of which are available for sale and framing as a beautiful display. The front room also contains a layout in the form of an old English street full of shops, each with various themed displays to view through the windows.

The front room and main area are free to visitors, open six days a week and alone are worth the visit. But some of the greatest treasures can only be seen on in the back room, on the giant side of a giant oak door imported from an English castle. The back room is typically only accessible during Mr. Moon’s lectures and live events, which he gives over a hundred times a year. It’s during these events that he shows off the amazing breadth of his collection, which he does in the form of requests for books related to any subject. For example, when given the subject of magic he pulled out a book of magic tricks owned and marked up by Harry Houdini himself.

Next time you’re in Provo, Moon’s Rare Books should top your list of things to do. And if you’re not visiting any time soon, it might be worth making the trip anyway. After your visit, I’d recommend either Seven Brothers or Happy Sumo for dinner, which are both just a few shops away in the Riverwoods. Seven Brothers has one of the best burgers in Utah Valley, and Happy Sumo has great sushi in a relaxing atmosphere. Reid Moon also has an Instagram page with enough history to make me break my resolution to never use Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/reidnmoon/

More information is available at https://moonsrarebooks.com/.

Neither Moon’s Rare Books nor any other business has offered any compensation in exchange for this review. Maybe one day…

The Necessity of Suffering in Frankl’s Existentialism

Victor E. Frankl’s experiences in the concentration camps, detailed in Man’s Search for Meaning, have enduring significance and popularity among contemporary Christians and Jews. They demonstrate that suffering can be the source of meaning, but Frankl stops short of saying that suffering is an essential: “But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering–provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable.”¹ He argues that there are other sources from which man can discover meaning, “There are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone…”²

Accomplishment, appreciation of art, and interpersonal relationships, then, are sources of meaning independent from suffering, according to Frankl. Frankl is considered a religious existentialist because he thinks deeply and examines the meaning of life and existence itself, and we can therefore examine and expand on the existentialist philosophy he created. In examining each of the sources of meaning Frankl identified, we can see that not only do they contain suffering in various forms (usually less severe and more subtle then that of the concentration camps), but that the suffering endemic to these sources is necessary for them to possess meaning.

The first source which Frankl names is the accomplishment of creating a work or doing a deed. The writer who has stared down a blank page struggling to find words and the academic who studies a lifetime to make a contribution to their field are both uniquely familiar with the true scope of their respective accomplishments once complete. Those who have not endured the suffering of bullying the brain to keep writing when it wants nothing but to quit cannot understand their accomplishment. But the person who has suffered to bring about an accomplishment knows its value and can truly appreciate it.

This suffering exalts and gives meaning to the purpose it is directed toward. We can see this even in more trivial accomplishments, like in winning a video game. Certain video games have options to increase or decrease their difficulty, and high difficulties result in a certain level of suffering to the player, as the player endures mental strain and frustrating failures before reaching their goal. Why does the player ever set the difficulty above the easiest setting? Because the difficulty gives meaning to the accomplishment of finishing the game, even if the difficulty is voluntary and minor compared to other sufferings of life.

The second source of meaning, in part, is “experiencing something,” or beauty and art. We can see that art involves certain subtle or vicarious forms of suffering, which gives it meaning. The richest works of art often deal with tragic subjects; Oedipus, Hamlet, Götterdämmerung, Citizen Kane, and The Godfather are each reliant on some form of empathetic or vicarious suffering on the part of the viewer to give the work emotional meaning. This applies to all art in some form. Those who study the theory of comedy find that it is based on pain examined in new perspective. A world without suffering, or at least minor inconvenience, would be devoid of all humor. Even the contemplation of perfect beauty involves a different, more subtle suffering; a hopeless longing to somehow be a part of that beauty which can never be fulfilled. The Book of Mormon is filled with accounts of wars and even genocides, which are a key part of how it teaches us about suffering, sin, and redemption through Christ.

The second part of this source is what Frankl calls “encountering something,” or love and friendship. Once again, this is an area of life that is not free of suffering, and it may be the case that love and friendship are made real by sacrifice. The most meaningful relationships in most lives are those with one’s spouse and children, those people for whom most is sacrificed.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury says that the importance of a book comes from its texture; “To me it means texture… They show the pores in the surface of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.”³ This is a principle that can apply suffering to all life; that if anything is to have meaning it must have texture, or some amount of suffering.

We believe in a God who suffers. Christ suffered tremendously as part of the atonement, but our Heavenly Father suffers as well because of the iniquities of his children. His status as a God entitles him to both the extreme joy of bringing about “the immortality and eternal life of man,” but also consigns him to the suffering of a worried parent.

When Frankl qualified his thesis in saying that suffering was not necessary to find meaning, he may not have wanted to compare the relatively trivial sufferings of everyday life to those of the concentration camp, or to say that maximizing suffering was the path to meaning. It seems from these examples that strategically minimal suffering can maximize its return of meaning, and that the path for those who follow Frankl’s tradition of existentialism is to minimize unnecessary suffering, to extract all possible meaning from the suffering that cannot be avoided, and to be willing to pursue meaning despite the suffering that may accompany the pursuit.

Note: This essay was written in part for BYU’s Philosophy of Religion course (PHIL 215) in August of 2019 and was revised in June of 2021 for publication online. I highly recommend reading Man’s Search for Meaning. Not only is it one of the most compelling accounts of the Nazi concentration camps ever written but, it also examines the experience through Frankl’s unique psychological and philosophical lens.

Endnotes:

1. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946; repr., Boston: Beacon, 2014), 106.

2. Frankl, Man’s Search, 137.

3. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1951; repr., New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 79

Top image: A prayer room at Theresienstadt, painting by Malva Schalek, circa 1942-1944. Viktor Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, where his father died. He was later sent to Auschwitz in 1944.