Ben Shapiro Quotes
Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.
Shapiro, Ben. "The Thought Fascists." Creators Syndicate, 9 Apr. 2014.
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
This became a critically important quotation a half century after it was made. Judge Hand articulated the majority Western and Judeo-Christian value proposition between dissent and heresy. However, for the majority of the Islamic world, the reverse represents the majority value that is held. There is a minority in the West that agrees that avoidance of heresy is paramount and a minority of the Muslim world that agrees that the protection of dissent is the more important value, but the two civilizations were at odds in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. 600 years ago, the Christian world agreed with the Muslim society and prevention of heresy was the more important value. The Reformation and the enlightenment followed by the world example of America produced a transformation and this may occur in the majority of the Islamic world in time.
The 1st Amendment is almost absolute in its protection of speech. However, ironically the Untied States has much less internecine conflict with minorities better off than the nations where hate speech is illegal and criminal.
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is an American conservative political commentator and media host. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he founded, and hosts The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News between 2012 and 2016. Shapiro has written eleven books, the first being Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (2004) and the latest being How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps (2020).