The podcast host Ben Shapiro appeared at the Heritage Foundation on Monday to sound an alarm about the direction of the conservative movement and call on its leaders to enforce “clear intellectual boundaries.”
He likened the task to policing the country’s borders and stamping out illegal immigration. “If America does not protect its borders, America ends,” he said. “Conservatism requires ideological border control.”
But with the movement in flux, Shapiro argued that movement leaders have failed to “do what any good leader must do: define and maintain the foundations of that movement”—and called on them to “stand against those who would pervert and twist the conservative movement into a movement without principles.”
While he did not call out Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts by name, it was clear his remarks were aimed in his direction. Shapiro’s comments came amid ongoing turmoil at Heritage, where three board members have resigned in recent weeks—continuing fallout from an admittedly clumsy video Roberts posted defending the podcaster Tucker Carlson as critics assailed him for conducting a chummy interview with the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
“If, as Heritage Foundation proclaims, our goal ought to be to ‘formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense,’ then we must stand against those who would pervert and twist the conservative movement into a movement without principles,” Shapiro said. “Or worse, a movement that promotes the very opposite of the principles that conservatives hold dear.”
Shapiro was at the Heritage Foundation to promote his new book, Lions & Scavengers.
Roberts, for his part, praised Shapiro as a “patriot,” a “man of faith” and as “someone who understands geopolitics.”
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