Posted on 06/08/2021 8:19:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
The question of how to counteract cancel culture goes far deeper than the question of legal or illegal speech.
While some Republicans build their campaigns around cancel culture in the form of a broad bumper sticker slogan or rebuke the party for seeking leaders dissimilar to neoconservatives like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the issue of standards—and what those standards ought to be—should be at the heart of the cancel culture discussion on the right. It’s time for conservatives to make morals a focal point and not overgeneralize by invoking free speech as an end-all, be-all.
Cancel culture, which Federalist writer Tristan Justice aptly defined as “the deliberate de-platforming or ultimate unemployment of an individual for views fraudulently held to be outside an increasingly turbulent public square,” is no doubt one of the consequences of a society controlled by woke millennials intent on eradicating any dissent. The zealots champion “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” but prepare to be excluded if you do not believe in systemic racism and other extremist dogma. It’s a catch-22.
In the left’s crusade to capture all of America’s institutions—which happened as Republican lawmakers twiddled their thumbs and preached about the holiness of the free market—the leftist mob has pushed to realign the culture within its censorious, morally arbitrary, and deficient philosophical framework.
The left has flipped the script on what moral standards warrant negative social consequences and put in place material outcomes for conservatives that ought to instead be implemented for legitimately immoral actions. Hence, the left seeks to transform what is socially permissible, and the right must make an attempt to re-align the culture to what they know already is.
What is behind cancel culture, and why is it wrong? To libertarian thinkers, such as Reason Magazine’s Robby Soave, or some on the neoconservative right like The Dispatch’s David French, the phenomenon is often communicated as an issue of freedom and free speech. So, it goes, the forcible removal of Americans from the public square is wrong predominantly because speech is sacred, not because both free speech should be encouraged and the particular speech under discussion is, in fact, positively good or at least neutral.
“Illiberalism on the left is not confronted and defeated by the right,” French said in a radio interview last year, claiming ordered-liberty conservatives with an interest in the moral direction of the nation are not the right people to take on cancel culture. “It has to be confronted and defeated by small-l liberals on the left, just like illiberalism on the right is not going to be confronted and defeated by left-liberals. It’s got to be taken on by classical liberals on the right.”
French is disastrously wrong. The way to oppose the unreasonable targeting of our fellow Americans is not to merely preach about freedom. Rather, Americans must think deeply, all the way back to defining when it is morally just for someone to face economic and social consequences, and when it is not.
Thinking there were mail-in ballot issues during the 2020 presidential election or that Dr. Anthony Fauci is incompetent is not immoral, and thus, shouldn’t be subject to censorship or cancellation. Nor should someone be canceled by a company that does business with Communist China for a vague Nazi reference that was not antisemitic—see Gina Carano. However, a person making clearly antisemitic remarks against Jewish people that also present a conflict of interest with her occupation should face professional consequences—such as Emily Wilder.
Indeed, speech is important. It also true that the types of speech being quashed by Big Tech are mostly not types such as obscenity, defamation, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, and so on that are unprotected by the First Amendment. French may be correct that much speech triggering cancelation is legal, but he misses the point by not focusing on the necessity of establishing societal standards for appropriate and inappropriate speech.
By not putting this to the forefront, conservatives abandon our societal common good in favor of establishing a common preference for atomized freedom. Freedom is only valuable if it accompanies a moral order sufficient to ensure not only inalienable rights are protected but also that society does not blackball those who say perfectly appropriate things.
Instead of using the First Amendment as the sole rationale for why cancel culture hurts our society, conservatives can do much better. The situation warrants further deliberation about what public behaviors we Americans believe are necessary to ensure a just nation.
The right would be better off by first reinforcing the actions that warrant someone facing such life consequences as those accompanying the typical cancellation. Off the bat, this of course includes pedophilic behavior, publicly threatening to murder the president, urging violence motivated by racism, and so on. People who do or say things that are objectively wrong, not necessarily out of our nation’s morally bankrupt and leftist-run culture, should face appropriate consequences for such actions.
The problem with cancel culture is not only that legal speech is being censored or resulting in unfair outcomes for individuals, but more pertinently that legitimate and ethical values and ideas are subject to unjust social punishment. Whereas social penalties such as firing or losing positions of authority are warranted for the above examples, the left has organized and is enforcing a framework that results in people being canceled for not accepting their false ideologies. Cancel culture, in other words, is essentially a tool for enforcing immoral and false leftist ideology. That’s what’s wrong with it, not only that it chills people’s free speech.
To adequately fight such dogma, the free speech argument is a weak hill to stand on. Americans can at a minimum begin to fight its impracticality by recognizing (a) the standards are not being administered in a way that honors our human dignity and (b) the left’s immoral standards—such as promoting the killing of the unborn, preaching America’s systemic racism, flirting with a terrorist group that attacks Jewish people, refusing to disavow riots that destroyed businesses and took lives—are worth fighting, repudiating and, yes, canceling. It would not be unjust for those vocally espousing such ideas to be financially affected in some respect.
If the other side declares ideological war on American values, including on objective truth and goodness, how could it possibly be appropriate for the right to merely discuss free speech and not why particular speech is not only moral, or at a minimum not immoral?
In a Fox News “Primetime” monologue last week, Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech noted how institutions other than government have corrupted America. “I’ve been exhorting you to wake up to what’s going on at the country,” Domenech said. “It’s happening right in front of us and it’s troubling and demands a response from all of us who recognize the need to restore self-government. Taking it on in small ways and confronting hypocrisy, and returning power back to where it belongs—the people–is our mission now.”
As Domenech described, elites have embraced a dangerous ideology and coordinated to overtake virtually all American institutions. This has led to unrest and the evil application of power. This power includes punishing Americans for completely moral, and appropriate views, simply because the left has dedicated itself to undermining truth and justice.
Cancel culture is harmful to America’s social fabric, and it unravels the country. But the question of how to counteract it goes far deeper than the question of legal or illegal speech.
It boils down to a question of where and how we derive our principles, a question of what morals ought to dictate our world. The left’s flatly immoral ideology should not.
How about both?
I would take one dead Confederate over a thousand living so-called “progressives”.
In other words, we don’t like what the Left is doing, although we support doing the same things when it’s done to people we don’t agree with.
Back when they called it McCarthyism, people who did it had no shame.
Cancel culture is nothing new. When the Left takes control they censor, suppress, monitor and imprison. The Communists would not tolerate a free press, religion, individual freedom of conscience or even independent thought or criticism. Today the Left has seized power and controls powerful regulatory agencies, police, Federal law enforcement and most prosecutors. Judges are intimidated. The Left also controls the media, huge tech, communication corporations, sways the boards of key industries, Academia and many religous groups. Elections are openly fraudulent.
Cancel culture happens whenever the Left achieves power. They now have it. The big question is will the American nation survive. History says no.
Huge swaths of our population no longer care about morals because they’ve been raised on relativism.
The problem is making this a moral issue results in “preaching to the choir”. Making this about free speech addresses those people who are not overtly religious but who are still potential political allies. This is not about achieving ideological purity but rather building a majority.
Why give CC any credence at all?
“However, a person making clearly antisemitic remarks against Jewish people that also present a conflict of interest with her occupation should face professional consequences”
What consequences, and why? Words are not deeds.
I think you're right. Framing Cancel Culture along moral issues doesn't work if and to the extent that the "The left has flipped the script on what moral standards warrant negative social consequences.."
We need free speech to flip the script back on moral standards. But we need moral standards to protect free speech.
The left believes they get to define “morals”, but theirs are Godless.
Bookmarked.
Irony: Ben Domenech is one of the individuals who made sure that I got canceled starting a LONG time ago. He actually bothered to hassle me in person - this was in about 2009 or so on twatter, when I was using an account I don’t have anymore. So he’s been canceling me for, haha, more than 10 years now. He just doesn’t sign off on it personally.
We’re supposed to blame “the Left” of course. I don’t know why Domenech considered me someone who needed to be gotten rid of but what seemed to start the avalanche of BS (that hasn’t let up to this very day) was me posting about “the born gay hoax.” (https://selfdefinition.org/celibacy/Ryan-Sorba-The-Born-Gay-Hoax.pdf) He messaged me on twatter and asked me about gay people I had known and why I thought that and so on - the exchange was very brief and I didn’t think much of it. But suddenly some people that I thought were out of my life forever started showing up and boy, howdy, were they ever PISSED.
I used to call myself a “libertarian” and even registered to vote as a libertarian. I donated to “the libertarian party” which is now - as we are all aware, or should be, just a mouthpiece for globalism and open borders and pot “legalization” (which is just another tax and regulations scam that enables organized crime and not true legalization). My experience has been that those journalists/editors/pundits who call themselves “Libertarian” these days are accepting funding from globalist entities; they don’t want to alienate their conservative readers so they only get liberal-y once in a while.
So, anyway, the article doesn’t really say anything that controversial, but sort of muddies the waters a little bit more by saying one should impose a “moral standard” on the interweb and social media and blah-de-blah, conservative stuff, and why do we frame it as freedom of speech when it’s about morality, and so on.
The need for social media and the interweb - is that moral? I mean, we’re the ones who are addicted to this stuff. We THINK we need it. Of course! A junkie needs his fix. Nobody’s more sincere, pathetic, and convincing than a junky pining for his next dose. So, we should be able to impose standards of morality on the dose-deliverer, you know, like a junky from a nice neighborhood should be treated nicer when he’s making a buy on the street the a poor junkie who lives under a bridge.
I don’t read “the federalist” on a regular basis but how many of their articles lately are about electoral fraud and what we’re going to do about it when the next election comes up? Have they addressed the issue of all the murders and executions taking place in Mexico right now because there was an ELECTION TAKING PLACE? I was reading that 88 people who were candidates for office have died in this last election cycle in Mexico. This is really what libertarians are taking a stand for lately: The Mexicans’ right to come here without any sort of hassle so they can establish rule by drug cartels in the USA. (Like they’re going to let the “libertarians” live and flourish when they do take over.) What’s moral about open borders? Oh, right: It bothers the globalists.
And lastly: “Libertarians” lecturing me about morality. Excuse me while I fall down laughing.
Don't for a second think that Trump lost because of Cancel Culture. He lost because of ballot fraud. Period.
I support Cancel Culture to the limit and to the Feapers who have been deplatformed by their precious Facebook because of Cancel Culture, boo f'ing hoo. You got deplatformed, suck it up, did your 3 comments from the same 3 people for every laughable "all the animals died" bullshit posts really make it worth it?
You should be very very suspicious of this call to end Cancel Culture by someone who makes their living humping their 'work' on social media -- although Gabe is so bland he has not been suspended -- ever! lol.
But look to the truth of it -- Obama today repeated his same bland call to "end Cancel Culture":
"urged party activists to reconsider a culture of "canceling" those who run afoul of their worldview, adding that he believes his daughters' generation understands that people have gone "overboard" in demanding perfection."
Gee Gabe, fellow traveler much? Why do you think Bammy wants to end Cancel Culture? Because it is a Democrat Disease! It hurts Xiden every day in every way.
Cancel Culture has wrecked the Left from politics (Al Frinkin, remember him?), to Hollyweird (Whinestain), to NPR (all of them lol! Garrison Keeledover, remember him?), to ending the careers of bourgeois sexcapaders in many metropolitan strongholds.
#MeToo has been the greatest gift to the conservative movement in a lifetime. We have decapitated more Manhattan and DC insiders than ever imaginable by any other means.
#CancelCulture is the new Constitutional Conservative billy club. I say Cancel Culture today, Cancel Culture tomorrow, Cancel Culture forever!
What’s the difference? They were both Democrats.
What’s the difference? They were both Democrats.
The dead Confederate can’t do any more damage?
Correct on that point but their ancestors are still bitching and moaning.
Frankly, I’ve little sympathy for the North.
Texas should have never joined the Union and it’s a pity gold wasn’t discovered earlier.
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