[May 27, 2026] Political commentator Ben Shapiro, in his book Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics), tells us that the West is in a war for its survival. And, that this war is playing out both at the civilizational and personal level. His position is popular but also controversial. In a PragerU video, he spells this out the values that built the West.
Shapiro breaks our society down into two distinguishable categories: lions and scavengers. The lion is the part of each of us that prizes freedom, responsibility, and achievement. It knows that there are rules to success and failure; that we are creative beings with autonomy and power, and that freedom comes with an equal measure of obligation.
The scavenger, by contrast, is the part of us that believes that society, from top to bottom, is rigged and that powerful forces, not individuals, dictate outcomes. That personal failures are a result of a Great Conspiracy. And that rage, including violence, is the only response to this corrupt system.
“Will we take ownership of our problems and work to solve them, or will we blame others for our failures and wallow in resentment?” – Ben Shapiro
The values of the lion animate Western Civilization, and provide its founding principles:
- Free minds with the power to choose and innovate.
- Free markets, because we are autonomous creative beings who fairly earn what our labor produces.
- Public virtue, because virtue and duty give order to the exercise of liberty.
- Equal rights before the law, because otherwise justice is impossible.
America was founded to be a civilization of lions, certainly not scavengers.
And then there are other civilizations: civilizations rooted in grievance and anger, in conspiratorialism and barbarism. Those civilizations revel in a sense of victimhood; they blame their own failings on Western civilization. They see the world as a zero-sum game, in which they are deprived of their proper share thanks to the abuse of power by the West.
The scavenger is motivated by envy: what Adam Smith, the great eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher, defines as “that passion which views — with malignant dislike — the superiority of those who are really entitled to all the superiority they possess.”
In modern speak, if your neighbor has a nicer car or house, he didn’t earn it.
There are many types of scavenger civilizations. One of them is the Marxist civilization, based on the myth that free market prosperity is actually the result of exploitation. The consistent failure of these civilizations does not matter to the scavengers.
Radical Islam, too, is a civilization of scavengers. It is founded on the lie that Western success is a conspiracy designed to deprive Islam of world-spanning power. This means that the only pathway to overcome the West is through force of arms. Lately, this has been achieved through mass migration.
Shapiro asks, “How can the West survive?”
We can by relearning our moral roots; by reclaiming our classrooms; by revitalizing our key institutions; by vigorously defending our nation and culture against enemies within and without. In other words, we must regain our confidence in ourselves and our civilization, which has brought so much opportunity to so many.
“The West must roar again. Because if the lions sleep, the scavengers will devour them.” – Ben Shapiro
NOTE: Thumbnail of Ben Shapiro from PragerU.
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Thank you, Gen. Satterfield. Excellent summary of Ben Shapiro’s position.
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I agree with Paulette. Gen. Satterfield delivers a clear and powerful summary of Ben Shapiro’s lion vs. scavenger framework. The West thrived on values like courage, responsibility, and innovation from lions. Today’s scavengers erode those foundations through entitlement and division. We must actively defend and teach these core principles to preserve our society. Strong leadership starts with embodying lion values daily.