Ben Shapiro: “When the Enemy of Your Enemy is–Your Enemy”

(Note: Please read through the article and do not stop after the 1st page, hastily thinking that the article is an argument about free speech. It is not.)

Over at NR, Ben Shapiro writes:

Unfortunately, many conservatives have embraced this sort of binary thinking: If it angers the Left, it must be virtuous. Undoubtedly, that’s a crude shorthand for political thinking. It means you never have to check the ideas of the speaker, you merely have to check how people respond to him.

That’s dangerous. It leads to supporting bad policies and bad men. The enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend. Sometimes he’s your enemy. Sometimes he’s just a dude sitting there minding his own business.

You don’t have enough information to know.

The logic of “if he melts snowflakes, he’s one of us” actually hands power to the Left, by allowing leftists to define conservatives’ friends.

I’d be inclined to think that Ben’s been cribbing off Revo discussions for the last few weeks/months when we were talking about binary, tribalist tendencies (though I know he’s sharp enough to come up with his own material, of course).

Ben’s absolutely right. We’ve all seen this perplexing tendency of folks to reflexively support public figures on no basis other than the thinking that, “Well, they seem to have the right enemies.” At best, this entitles them to a closer look, but it does not and cannot mean that they are necessarily your ally.

It is, actually, the height of intellectual laziness to try to collect allies just by seeing who your enemies are hating on. And it puts you on irredeemably unsound intellectual footing. Do not do this.

Some helpful advice to you Revoistas:
David Duke is not your friend just because the left protests him.
There are more than two tribes.
There is no single, absolutely evil tribe.
There is no single, absolutely good tribe.
Good and evil is not clearly defined on the political spectrum.
Do not fall into the trap of black and white thinking.
Use your gray matter.