Ben Shapiro At Vanderbilt: America Is Entering A ‘Golden Age’ Under Trump

The United States appears to be entering a golden age, as signaled by President-elect Donald Trump’s reelection last week, according to Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro spoke at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday evening on the significance of Trump’s election and what it means for the future of the United States. 

“For the first time in a long time, I really feel like we are entering the best days of America,” Shapiro began his speech. “It does feel like we are entering a new golden age for the country for three specific reasons, because there are three things that make a golden age for a country or a civilization or even an individual in their life: liberty, strength, virtue.”

While it may seem odd that the man leading the U.S. into its golden age is Trump, Shapiro said that the American people made the decision to pursue the “golden age” through liberty, strength, and virtue.

“I don’t think the election so much was about President Trump – obviously, he’s a singular figure in American history – as much as it was about the American people who were just done,” Shapiro said. “We were just done. We were done with the age of stagnation. We were done with the age of moral confusion. We were done with an age that suggested that weakness was a substitute for strength, and that foolishness was a substitute for virtue, or that regulation was a substitute for liberty.”

Shapiro said that the golden age will see an expansion of liberty that can be measured in economic terms. Liberty combined with property rights leads to innovation, and with Trump’s government cutting regulations, the U.S. will see a surge in investment and economic growth. Trump’s agenda will create an environment where the best innovators in the United States can succeed and thrive.

“Liberty means we have to let geniuses be geniuses. In fact, we should help geniuses achieve their very best,” Shapiro said.

“The world only has freedom and prosperity because of the United States of America. Only. Okay, it is the threat of military force, or the use of military force by the United States of America that keeps the world free safe and prosperous. It is simply that. That’s all. There is no one else. Okay, if the United States were to disappear tomorrow, the world would decay into darkness almost overnight.”

On American strength, the first four years under Trump were the best American foreign policy “in my lifetime,” Shapiro said. The Daily Wire host attributed that foreign policy success to what he defined as the four pillars of the “Trump doctrine.”

The first pillar of the Trump doctrine is that “America is governed by her interests.” The second pillar builds on the first and is a recognition that, because resources are scarce, the United States needs to calibrate its response wisely to global events to ensure its most critical interests are protected.

The third pillar concerns military conflict: “If you are going to go [to war], you use every means at your disposal to achieve your interests.”

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During Trump’s first administration, the United States did not enter any new foreign conflicts, which could be attributed to what Shapiro defined as the fourth principle of the Trump doctrine: “The final principle is, you let everyone know the first three principles.”

“The credible threat of use of force is the basis for all solid foreign policy, and if you express all of that, then you barely ever have to use military force,” Shapiro said.

Finally, the third component of a U.S. golden age will be a resurgence of virtue, which Shapiro defined as “people acting like responsible human beings with actual real roles and duties in the world.” Virtue built on religion is a prerequisite for any society that wants to incentivize strong families.

“If you’re not building a civilization around successful families, the civilization falls down,” Shapiro said.

“These three things – liberty, strength, and virtue – these are what’s going to save Western civilization,” Shapiro concluded.