Laura Ingraham’s Website Attacks Shapiro’s ‘Constitution Worship’

Source: Daily Wire | August 22, 2016 | Ben Shapiro

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So Kozak obviously gets it wrong, because he doesn’t understand the basis of the Constitution.

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This, Kozak wrote, was “hysterical.”

First, Kozak said that anyone who opposed the alt-right was a member of the “Establishment GOP Elite” – typical Laura Ingraham language applied to anyone who disagrees with the Dartmouth and University of Virginia Law School grad who pulls down several million dollars per year. So by opposing the alt-right, I had fallen in with the wrong crowd, presumably. This made me complicit in “Conservative Inc.,” which “dupes the base of the party into handing more power and campaign cash to an Establishment network that operates primarily against their interests.” Of course, this is absolutely nuts – if I’m establishment, there is no such thing as the establishment. But the term means nothing in the hands of ardent Trump supporters.

Then, Kozak got to his point: my definition of conservatism was wrong. What was wrong with a definition obviously based on the thought of the founding fathers as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution? Said Kozak:

In his criticisms against the French Revolution, Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, Kirk’s biggest influence and the recognized godfather of conservatism, attacked the abstract nature of the revolutionaries’ ‘rights of man.’ Burke argued that men are not born with inherent abstract rights to which they are entitled. Instead, he highlighted the ancient inherited rights and liberties of the English people, the result of a specific set of historical circumstances and political and social developments unique to the English nation.

Of course, this neglects to mention that Burke explicitly called these rights “natural rights,” and that I and all other Constitutional conservatives speak of God-given rights in the same sense that Burke did – as rights inherently connected to a uniquely Western civilization rooted in Judeo-Christian philosophy. Whether the founding fathers defined rights as inherent from John Locke’s state of nature or Burke’s Ciceronian jus naturale means little when it comes to the presence of such rights, particularly those to life, liberty, and property.

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Finally, Kozak says, “The Left, however, has remembered the importance of culture and politics, which is why it attacks Western culture relentlessly. This comes in the guise of attacks on white privilege and racism. Indeed, if the Alt-Right is merely a white nationalist movement, it’s not difficult to see why that such a movement has arisen.”

So, in the end, Russell Kirk and Edmund Burke are just a smokescreen for Kozak and Ingraham – Kozak thinks the Alt-Right offers something valuable. Their only error: mistaking ethnic solidarity for cultural maintenance. And Kozak thinks the Constitution is passé – we just need a Christian leader, a Strongman to fight the culture war.

Of course, he then endorses Trump, who rejects virtually every aspect of the natural law Burke claims to uphold. But don’t ask for coherence from Trump supporters writing on Laura Ingraham’s behalf. In the end, it’s all just excuse-making for ardent Trump supporters who can’t stand the fact that Constitutional conservatives aren’t falling into the trap of supporting a man who couldn’t care less about either the Constitution or conservatism.

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