Corrections appended.

Last Tuesday, Brandeis Conservatives hosted a guest lecture by Ben Shapiro, the editor-at-large of Breitbart News and founder of the conservative news website Truth Revolt. The lecture was Brandeis Conservatives’ first event since the club formed earlier this year.

Shapiro spoke about what he sees as the four principles of leftism and conservatism, respectively, using current political issues to illustrate his points.

His lecture came three months after Daniel Mael ’15, a former writer for Truth Revolt, posted an article about a series of tweets by Khadijah Lynch ’16.

Shapiro mentioned that article when responding to a question from the audience, saying, “I have no regrets whatsoever about posting that sort of thing, and, in fact, would do it again in a heartbeat, and I’m very proud that we did it.”

The Justice confirmed with Shapiro after the event that these comments directly referred to Lynch. When asked about his response to Shapiro’s comments, Mael said they made “a compelling case for the intolerance of the Brandeis community.”

Shapiro’s first principle of leftism was that “equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity.” He said that “the way this [leftist perspective] works is that if you’re successful in America or anywhere else in the world, you must have exploited someone,” which he called a “denial of cosmic justice.” He connected this principle to allegations of racial bias in policing, saying that “blacks are disproportionately imprisoned … because blacks, unfortunately, disproportionately are responsible for crime in the United States.” Shapiro also connected this principle to Hamas, stating that Palestinians are “always good” and Israelis are “always bad” in left-wing discourse “because they [the Palestinians] are poor.”

The second leftist principle, Shapiro argued, was that “group justice is significantly more important than individual justice.” He began by stating that “social justice is evil,” which was followed by applause from the audience. Shapiro clarified that “social justice is fundamentally opposed to individual justice.” He stated that “adding any modifier to the word ‘justice’ perverts what it is,” and noted that the phrase “politically correct” is derived from Maoist doctrine.

Shapiro’s third leftist principle was that “truth absolutely does not matter.” He argued that the left seeks “a utopia” but that doing so means “truth is not a part of the equation because truth is sometimes going to argue with you.” He cited the protests in Ferguson, Mo. as an example of “an entire campaign … based on an outright lie, that ‘hands up don’t shoot’ happened.” Shapiro pointed to a discredited accusation of sexual assault at the University of Virginia in a December Rolling Stone article and stated that the statistic that “one in four women on campus are raped, [is] another statistical lie.” He argued that this statistic comes from “a self-reported poll, in which they define rape as any unwanted sexual conduct, meaning if a guy leaned in for a kiss and then the girl didn’t like it, that was now rape.” He also argued that pro-choice advocates disregard truth because “there’s no science to support the idea that a baby one minute before it enters the birth canal is not a baby.”

Shapiro then discussed transgender issues, stating that “there is a difference between a man and a woman, and it can’t be rectified by chopping a few parts off.” While he pointed out that “there are legitimately intersex people,” he denied that hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgeries change one’s gender.

He also distinguished between using the phrase that one is “born gay” to mean that one has “a genetic drive toward somebody of the same sex” and to mean that “homosexual activity is dictated by their birth.” Finally, he denied that the fourteenth amendment protects same-sex marriage as a right or permits the federal government to force same-sex marriage upon states.

The final leftist principle Shapiro identified was that “force itself, when used in the service of these other things, is praiseworthy.”

He pointed to universal health care, speech codes on college campuses and government enforcement against religious business practices—such as Christian adoption agencies which do not provide services to same-sex couples—as examples of this government compulsion.

The four principles of conservatism which Shapiro discussed were that “there is a basic nature to mankind,” that “individuals actually have rights that come from God or nature,” that “if you reject individual consequences for individual actions, you end up denying other people’s rights,” and that “the government was created to protect those rights, and the minute it invades those rights, it loses its legitimacy.”

Shapiro argued that a balance of powers exists in government because mankind is capable of both good and evil and that believing one’s rights come from God makes one less likely to allow governments to violate rights.

Shapiro also discussed why he believes in negative rights—that one’s rights come from what others cannot do to them and not positive rights—that one is obliged to take action for someone else.

He argued that governments cannot define rights because if they did, “your rights would shift based on who’s in charge.” He added that “democracy is not the be-all-end-all” but is “a tool toward the achievement of certain rights.”

Finally, he asked students to “look beyond the kind of shallow political analysis that gets done at the college level, which generally boils down to, ‘I feel like a nice person, and that means you’re nasty.’”

He urged students to consider alternative viewpoints and denied the existence of a right not to be offended. He went on to explain, “We can have a conversation about marginal tax rates, but that’s boring. What’s interesting is, ‘What fundamentally gives a government the right to tax people?’” Discussing politics on this deeper level, Shapiro said, can lead to conversations “that actually mean something.”

In response to a question about beginning deeper conversations, Shapiro said the key was to “define the parameters of the conversation,” such as framing a debate about gay marriage not as “I like gays, you don’t like gays” but as “what is the purpose of marriage?”

When asked about how to battle liberalism on campus, Shapiro stated that one should tell donors to withdraw funding and stated that aside from “the hard sciences,” university degrees are only part of a “credentialing process.” He added later that one ought not to retaliate against professors who discriminate based on political alignment because “if you’re a conservative, you’re here to use all those great liberal credentials and [later] turn them against your former masters.”

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Daniel Mael '15 as a writer for Truth Revolt. Mael, in fact, is no longer employed by Truth Revolt.  

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Shapiro argued against pro-life advocates by saying "there’s no science to support the idea that a baby one minute before it enters the birth canal is not a baby." Shapiro was arguing against pro-choice advocates.