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When fighting a bully you must punch twice as hard. It’s war. Conservatives must define who the bullies are: Democrats. This was Ben Shapiro’s message during his talk about his new book, “Bullies, How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America,” which he gave on Tuesday, April 9 at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Wednesday Morning Club in Beverly Hills.

This advice should be obvious, but, noted Shapiro, it is hard for conservatives of all stripes to absorb. The Left does not have “positions”; it has “feelings,” and that is why it goes about demonizing its opposition. This trait was on full display during the presidential election when every attempt was made to marginalize Governor Romney as someone who was an elitist with a wife who went horse-riding and was out of touch with mainstream America; a man who strapped his dog to the roof of his car and who enjoyed firing people so their wives could die of cancer. He was portrayed as being opposed to a woman’s right to contraception or to have an abortion. The usual canards of racism, bigotry and homophobia were strenuously applied to Romney to the extent that many people believed that Barack Obama was more like them: someone to whom they could relate much more easily and who was more concerned about their own personal circumstances. The Liberal Myth Machine, that well-oiled, extravagantly funded, clanking contraption of distortion, went into top gear spreading its muck around with unprecedented vigor and it prevailed by characterizing Republicans as obstructionists.

According to the liberal psyche, if you are opposed to gay marriage then you hate gay people; if you approve of voter I.D. requirements then you are a racist; if you don’t want sequestration then you dislike poor people; if you oppose certain gun-control measures then you don’t care about dead children.

The Liberal Myth Machine distorts everything it touches and, said Shapiro, the righteous indignation of the Left is always in inverse proportion to their ability to argue the facts. That is why the Left lies about what it really is and hides its agenda from view. It has to give the impression that it supports the down-trodden, the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. If people really understood the totalitarian nature of its goals, the Left would never get elected to anything. Who would have voted for the results produced by Stalin, Castro or the Greek government if they had known of them beforehand?

Shapiro observed that Obama’s policies are designed to fail. That failure will overload the system and create more and more dependence on government. The policies of Democrats have deliberately impoverished inner city black communities in favor of their friends who control the big unions. The more people who are unemployed and receiving food stamps, the more people you have who will vote for Democrats. The more illegal immigrants who are granted some sort of amnesty, the more potential voters Democrats will gain. The more people receive welfare checks, the more people will vote for those who promise to keep the checks coming. The goal is to create a permanent majority for Democrats through the guarantee of one long stroll in the government perambulator. When you combine all of this with the habit of coddling those who complain about the results they did not get from the work they did not do, you will have the Left in charge of America for as far as the eye can see. It’s hard to vote against Santa Claus.

As Shapiro’s talk highlighted, Obama’s stewardship proves that attending Harvard is not sufficient proof of brilliance. His administration confuses mere activity with political achievement. This, in fact, has become the administration’s habit and illustrates its preference for style over substance. In this regard, Obama himself is much like the policies he promotes: they look good and sound good, but, on closer examination, they are actually highly destructive and counter-productive. It is all part of his moving curtain of lies on everything from the economy to health care reform to so-called global warming and to our national security. Obama is a political wrecking ball swinging violently out of control landing here, there, and everywhere, but seldom on the proper target, at least as far as most ordinary Americans are concerned. If you ever wanted to see Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” in action then you need look no further than Obama’s administration. Grasp that and you will have grasped the essence of Obama — a man who actually dislikes the country he is supposed to be leading. Grasp that and you will understand why he and his fellow-travelers consider the U.S. Constitution to be a mere list of suggestions.

Ben Shapiro entered UCLA at age sixteen and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in political science. He then attended Harvard Law where he graduated cum laude in 2007. To say that he is a “wunderkind” is no exaggeration. Piers Morgan found this out the hard way. When he had Shapiro on as a guest to discuss his book and gun-control, Morgan mounted his high horse, an animal he always keeps closely tethered, and tried to make Shapiro’s position look callous and unfeeling. Shapiro eviscerated Morgan using reason and evidence — two things as distasteful to the Left as garlic is to vampires. At that moment Piers understood the central message of Shapiro’s new book when Shapiro hit him back twice as hard and right between his eyes (with intellectual wisdom of course). As for the rest of us, we can learn the lesson the easy way by listening carefully to what Ben Shapiro has to say and by acting upon the perceptive insights contained from cover to cover in “Bullies.”

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