Excuse Me, But You Seem To Have Misspelled “Promoting Human Decency” as “Cancel Culture.”
Please forgive this intrusion, but I only mean to render you aid.
I realize that you may regard with disdain the editorial advice of a self-educated man who never went to college. Or one who never worked as an editor. Or one who has been dead for 150 years. However, I think you will thank me when I bring the following to your attention: I could not help but notice that there is a glaring typographical error appearing ad nauseum in your current political discourse, and I wanted to advise you of it before you embarrass yourselves further. You persistently misspell “promoting human decency” as “cancel culture.”
So I encourage you to rectify that situation promptly, and no thanks are necessary. . .
Wait, what? You say it is no mistake? Seriously? Oh. . .I see.
No, wait — no, I don’t. Please help me understand: people have made many forceful and public reprimands directed at those who discriminate against other people and/or treat them without basic human decency, and you . . . have a problem with that?
I know times have changed, but back in my day, we relied on a very popular and influential book — it was called “The Bible.” It’s a good book, which you should probably read sometime. It pretty clearly says — in multiple places — that people should treat each other as they would like to be treated. I am not as well-versed on the writings of the Confucians or the Mohammedans, but it is my understanding the same basic rule is at the heart of those traditions as well. It seems to be as close as there exists to a universal rule of human decency. Now this is a free country, and anyone certainly has the right to contradict The Bible’s Golden Rule. But others also have the right to defend it, true?
Incidentally, do you know who else made a forceful and public reprimand directed at someone who discriminated against other people and treated them without basic human dignity? The Continental Congress, on July 4, 1776. It approved something called “The Declaration of Independence,” and it is one of the foundational documents of our great Republic. You should probably read this, too. If you are too lazy to do so, here is what I understand people call the “TL;DR”: It says — right at the outset — that we are all created equal and have a fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Again, you are free to “cancel” (if that is indeed the current parlance) the Declaration of Independence, but anyone who does so is an unpatriotic, anti-American scoundrel, and is worthy of derision according to our founders.
Now take this fellow, Congressman James “Jim” Jordan, for example. He calls himself a Christian, but routinely violates these basic Christian principles. He also wants to hold Congressional hearings on the pro-human-decency movement, saying “The wave of cancel culture spreading the nation is a fundamental threat to free speech rights in the United States.” Apart from (apparently) not having read The Bible or the Declaration of Independence, it seems he has also not read the Constitution of the United States. I would like to direct him to a passage called “The First Amendment” if he thinks that people or businesses refusing to countenance hateful or malicious pronouncements violates the Constitution’s Free Speech protections.
The TL;DR: It does not.
If he finds it too odious to read all forty-five words of the amendment, he need only read the first five: “Congress shall make no law…”. Here is a simple test to see if your free speech rights have been violated: Did Congress make a law preventing you from saying something? If not, then no. There! Now you do not have to go through the time and expense of holding hearings — you’re welcome!
Lying in one’s grave for a century and a half gives one ample opportunity to think about a lot of things. After pondering over the issue for quite some time, I have concluded that no matter how revered a person may be in life, the judgment of history ultimately tends to turn on how well or poorly that figure lived up to those basic standards of human decency. So, Mr. Jordan — “Jim,” if I may — in the spirit of helpfulness, I would like to offer you a cautionary tale.
Back in my day, we had a fellow named The Reverend Richard “Dick” H. Rivers. He was a minister and a college professor who wrote the book Elements of Moral Philosophy. It became a popular textbook throughout the Confederacy because it used The Bible to defend slavery as a God-ordained institution. To modern ears it must sound repugnant and perverse for a minister of the Gospel to use the Judeo-Christian scriptures to justify a system of human enslavement that reduced human beings to the status of property and deprived them of their lives, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness. But that is what Dick Rivers espoused, and what happened? Hardly anyone knows about him anymore, and those who do revile his memory. I guess you could say he has been “cancelled,” but does anyone of good character want to vouch for him now?
In other words, here we have a person who undermines the founding principles of the United States and perverts the very faith he claims to profess by heretically, hypocritically, maliciously, and repeatedly violating the Great Commandment of Jesus to treat other people with love and human decency — a person who is unpatriotic, anti-American, and un-Christian. And we also have Dick Rivers.
The choice is yours. If you do not wish to be targeted by “cancel culture,” Dick’s example offers a very simple solution:
Stop being a Dick.
