Against Ben Shapiro-ism
No, The Conservative Answer To America’s Affordability Crisis Isn’t Just To ‘Move’
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Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City is widely seen as a radical response to the cost-of-living crisis and economic hardships facing not only New Yorkers but Americans across the country.
During his victory speech, Mamdani leaned into that interpretation, declaring that his mandate was not only to make New York “a city we can afford” but to “prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”
Reaganite conservatives, such as Sen. Mike Lee, wasted no time in pushing back against the notion that government can solve anything, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted a variation of Reagan’s oft-used quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Unsurprisingly, when confronted with questions on how to combat this very real affordability crisis, mainstream conservatives have once again failed to meet the moment by regurgitating empty “free market” rhetoric and the same tired, soulless “conservative” talking points.
Case in point: On a recent episode of TRIGGERnometry, popular conservative commentator Ben Shapiro weighed in on New York City’s affordability crisis and the appeal of politicians like Mamdani.
While acknowledging that it “absolutely is unaffordable” to live in and around New York City, Shapiro returned to the same libertarian prescriptions that “conservatives” have championed for decades: deregulation and the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mantra of personal responsibility.
“We have trained an entire generation of people to believe that if their lives are not what they want them to be, it’s the fault of systems as opposed to decisions that are in their own control,” he argued.
He later added, “If you are a young person and you can’t afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I know that we’ve now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up. But the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that.”
The dismissiveness of Shapiro’s last statement, belittling the human desire for rootedness and framing it as entitlement, triggered immediate blowback. He later posted a video response claiming his words were taken out of context.
But the problem for the right runs deeper than one comment. For conservatives like Shapiro, solving the affordability crisis still boils down to free markets, hard work, and, when all else fails, moving.
What goes unaddressed is the obvious fact that “conservatism,” as a political ideology, has failed to conserve anything meaningful. The long-term health of a nation rests on the ability of young people to financially afford to get married, buy a home, and raise children. Conservatives have unfortunately outsourced this responsibility for community cultivation, and leftists have welcomed their abdication.
For millions of Americans priced out of the towns and cities where their families remain, “just move” isn’t a serious solution but rather a callous dismissal of the deep, conservative, human need to build families, maintain community, and preserve continuity across generations. That human instinct is precisely why socialists like Zohran Mamdani are resonating with a larger swath of Americans: They at least acknowledge that people are not fungible cogs in an economic machine.
Fortunately, a growing postliberal right is beginning to challenge the stale orthodoxies of Reaganite economics.
Seven years ago, Tucker Carlson warned about how the failures of conservatism would lead to the rise of socialism, ironically, in a conversation with Ben Shapiro. In discussing how conservatism needed not simply to cater to those who seek to lower marginal tax rates but rather to focus on the needs of American families, Carlson correctly observed:
“If the goal is preserving the family as the core building block of any successful society … what are you doing about it? If you wake up one morning and find yourself in a society where 23-year-olds with four-year college degrees and initiative … can’t make enough to buy a car, much less a home, much less get married, much less have children, then why should you be surprised when half of them say they prefer socialism?”
Fast forward seven years, and America now has a card-carrying socialist leading America’s largest city, in part because conservatives refused to take that warning seriously. Instead, conservatives continued to insist that government remain “limited” in its scope, and any notion from those on the right that government could play a role in fostering a better society is instantly decried as collectivist or “woke right.”
In reality, the question is not whether we have a “small government” or a “big government” but whether we have an effective government that provides the social structures that allow Americans to flourish without having to abandon their roots and move across the country.
The unrestrained worship of markets has created a widening chasm between the few and the many, thanks to conservatism’s embrace of globalization and mass labor importation. Championing GDP maximization above all else led to globalization and the offshoring of American jobs. This has not only decimated entire regions like the Rust Belt and hollowed out communities due to the loss of manufacturing but also led to a feeling of despair that has fueled an opioid epidemic, all while enriching America’s chief geopolitical rival: China.
The globalization of the labor market has also allowed untold numbers of immigrants, through H-1B visas and the Optional Practical Training program, to undercut American workers, as companies pay immigrants below market value, while also driving up housing prices.
We are told this is the price we must pay for our system of “free market” capitalism, but there are two problems with this that conservatives must grapple with.
First, capitalism, while a successful economic system, is not sacrosanct. As Carlson emphasized to Shapiro,
“Capitalism is the best economic system…that anyone’s ever thought of, but that doesn’t mean it’s a religion and everything about it is good. There’s no Nicene Creed of capitalism.”
America’s economy should work for Americans. And if certain expressions of “free market” capitalism begin tearing at the social fabric of our nation, as offshoring and the hollowing-out of manufacturing communities clearly have, conservatives must be willing to acknowledge this and adjust accordingly.
Second, we are not even living under a true free-market system. America is increasingly mired in a crony form of capitalism that predominantly benefits the wealthy and connected.
Take, for example, the 2008 financial bailouts. In a genuine “free market” system, these large banks would not have been “too big to fail.” After all, American small businesses that mismanage themselves don’t get multimillion-dollar lifelines at taxpayer expense.
Thus, conservatives must reorient their allegiance to the well-being of the American people over their religious adherence to an economic system, big businesses, GDP charts, or libertarian abstractions. Fortunately, we have a guide for fostering the common good within our American tradition: the U.S. Constitution.
Its preamble lays out the true ends of government, specifically the goal of forming a more perfect union, ensuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and future generations.
The founders saw liberty as ordered freedom, a freedom that is tied to moral responsibility, balanced by duties to others and the community. In short, they believed in promoting the common good. This vision rejects the libertarian model of economics entirely. We are not atomized individuals but members of a political community with obligations to one another.
As Edmund Burke wrote, society is a contract “between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Mainstream conservatism, in its reflexive hostility to governance, has forgotten this. As such, it has ceded political ground, moral ground, and now America’s largest city to the likes of Zohran Mamdani.
What the right needs is a fundamental reorientation toward the well-being of its own citizens. A conservatism worthy of the name must conserve what matters: our culture, the stability of American families and communities, job opportunities, and wages. What it must stop doing is catering to multinational corporations, fetishizing GDP metrics, and clinging to stale “free market” dogma.
The choice ahead is clear: MAGA or Mamdani. Until conservatives are willing to confront the orthodoxies that have defined their movement, they will remain incapable of addressing the problems that produced Mamdani’s victory in the first place.
This article is featured at The Federalist. If you liked this article, be sure to head over there for more great Conservative content. You can also subscribe to The Federalist, or donate to help support all their great journalism. Thank you!