It is high time we cancel “cancel culture” — if not the phenomenon then at least the slogan, which has engendered tedious and dishonest debates that fail even to address the issue that those two words describe.
Such debates begin when someone makes a comment that offends leftist sensibilities. The offender may be a public figure or a private citizen; he may be a rock-ribbed conservative or a heterodox liberal. Whatever the circumstances of the offender, leftist activists mobilize to attack his reputation and destroy his career. Conservatives then decry “cancel culture,” attack leftist “censorship,” and extol the virtues of “free speech,” at which point the leftist censors observe that the First Amendment does not prevent “private companies” from censoring whomever they please.
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