The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great is a 2019 book by American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro was scheduled to give a speech at California State University, Los Angeles for Young America's Foundation's campus group on February 25, 2016, titled "When Diversity Becomes a Problem".

The other factor was Shapiro becoming the top recipient of anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists from August 2015 through July 2016 after he criticized Donald Trump and indicated his support for the #NeverTrump movement.

Shapiro introduces the topic of the book by contrasting the rising quality of life in Western societies with statistics highlighting a societal decline across the West such as increasing levels of polarization, depression, divorce rates, and drug overdose deaths among others.

He further references an incident in February 2016, when he gave a speech at California State University, Los Angeles, resulting in a violent confrontation between protesters and those attending Shapiro's event.

He further analyzes the sense of discord and disunity amongst those of different political parties and beliefs, and proposes that such a rift was developed due to a drift from the understanding of applied ethics that served as a fundamental building block of Western society.

[9][10] As he details the spread and influence of Judaism upon the ancient peoples of the Southern Levant, he argues that the introduction of Biblical ethics to the Israelites was the first catalyst for the roots of Western civilization to develop.

According to Shapiro, the two fundamental birthplaces of modern Western society are Jerusalem and Athens, the epicenters of Judeo-Christian faith and Aristotelian reasoning, respectively.

[12] He posits that the revolutionary intellectual advances achieved during the Enlightenment were correlated with the religious and moral convictions of some of its greatest minds, such as Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.

He argues that the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and the killings of those living under Communist rule are all consequences of discarding morality and virtue as defined by Judeo-Christian ethics.

With a collective sense of purpose and hope having disintegrated, Shapiro posits that the West has turned to hedonism and materialism in place of Judeo-Christian values and Greek reason.

In closing his book, Shapiro stresses that it is paramount to teach the next generation of children to cherish their existence and the world they live in, that they must recognize and respect the value of their humanity, and that they must be willing to stand up and defend their way of life.