The Cancel Cancer Spreads

The extended critique in these pages last week of cancel culture was sobering. That phrase refers to the recurrent phenomenon in which someone who says or does something that runs afoul of left-leaning orthodoxy is set upon on social media by a swell of calls for ostracizing the culprit, banning his work and firing him from his job.

Protest is one thing, but this is about intimidation, humiliation, and ultimately, silencing — in a word, “canceling” — not just a person’s books, speaking events, and employment, but the person himself, his reputation, his self-expression, and basic humanity. It happens to individuals, to businesses and institutions, and it is occurring ever more frequently.

Cancel culture is immoral and un-American, a threat to democratic norms, and as the article contended, a potential threat to Jews too. And although it’s often framed as a problem on the left, it exists across the contemporary ideological spectrum.

A recent example: Republican senator Mike Braun of Indiana introduced a bill to reform the legal doctrine of qualified immunity — a judicially created doctrine that shields  government officials from being held personally liable for constitutional violations (and paying monetary damages) as long as the officials did not violate “clearly established” law — which we discussed here several weeks ago. There’s a strong case to be made that the doctrine — “legislated” by judges, itself a conservative anathema — has produced many miscarriages of justice for ordinary citizens. Numerous conservative jurists, including Justice Clarence Thomas, and conservative groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, Americans for Prosperity, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Cato Foundation support reworking, rather than jettisoning, the doctrine to make it fair by balancing the rights of citizens with those of the public officials who serve them.