One of the many benefits of political liberalism is that it provides a means of avoiding other, less desirable forms of liberalism, such as theological liberalism and social liberalism. When people are treated equally under the law, when their rights to speak and publish, to worship, and to engage in commerce are all secure, then under the shelter of that political liberalism we discover room for profound disagreements—philosophical, political, moral, religious. 

But first, Ben Shapiro. 

I like Ben. I don’t know him very well, but he has always struck me as a smart and decent guy, and he has helped me promote books over the years. I like to think—and I do hope that I am right about this—that he is basically the Andy Kaufman of the New New Right, that one of these days he’s going to sell his company for a billion dollars or two or six and then sail off into the sunset, two middle fingers raised to all the rage-addled rubes whose money he took over the years. In the earliest days of the Trump phenomenon—back when Breitbart was publishing antisemitic attacks on its former editor-at-large and the Trump campaign was using the Star of David as an emblem of corruption—guys like Ben had a choice: Go big or go home. Ben’s a graduate of Harvard Law—he was going to be just fine if he went home. But he decided to go big on the most lucrative kind of Trumpish and Trump-adjacent political entertainment. I am with Don Corleone on this stuff: I don’t judge a man for how he makes his money, but I know a dirty business when I see one. There’s a difference between profit-seeking and bad faith, but the balance can be delicate. That being said, I’m pretty sure Ben Shapiro hired Candace Owens—and a lot of the other dopes who work for him—because he thought it would be good business, not because he thought she was smart or interesting, that her contributions to the public discourse were going to help right this teetering republic.

But as another big-time gangster put it: You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.