What is the definition of the phenomenon known as “cancel culture”? According to Merriam-Webster, “cancel culture” is defined as: “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling.” To the vast majority of conservatives, this definition probably sounds generally accurate. Is the practice of “cancelling” people inherently wrong, regardless of what they are being “cancelled” for? Should everyone be allowed to say and do whatever they want unless they infringe on someone else’s rights? A lot of “conservatives” would earnestly answer “yes” to these questions. However, I cannot see how any of these particular ideas align with a conservative vision for society — they seem more libertarian or classical-liberal in nature. As a conservative, I do not see how these classical-liberal/libertarian positions are doing us any favors. Actually, they seem to be harming us.
Unfortunately, it is easy to be fooled by a tactically ambiguous and imprecise term like “cancel culture.” The left wants you to believe that both sides of the political aisle can partake in “cancelling.” Just a couple weeks ago, the left was elated to exclaim “Republican cancel culture” at the ousting of Liz Cheney from House leadership. The same liberals who pretend to mourn over Liz Cheney’s “cancelling” will also point to the time Colin Kaepernick was collectively condemned by the right after he began taking a knee during the National Anthem (apparently disrespecting the American flag and all it stands for). Kaepernick’s NFL career ended soon after his protests began, leading liberals to venerate him and pronounce him to be a victim of “cancel culture.” The left fervently insists that Cheney and Kaepernick are examples of “right-wing cancel culture” or “Republican cancel culture.” I would argue that their claims are at best misguided, and at worst misleading.
In actuality, the right cannot “cancel” anybody because the term “cancel culture” strictly refers to a leftist phenomenon. I feel the liberal (or Merriam-Webster, though, I repeat myself) definition of “cancel culture” is inaccurate.
My proposed definition of “cancel culture”: when someone is “cancelled” (berated, deplatformed, shunned, etc.) for refuting, undermining, or contradicting the moral standard(s) of the left.
Under this (hopefully) more accurate definition, the right cannot “cancel” anyone. I think the left is well aware this is how “cancel culture” actually works, so they have conducted a tedious and methodical campaign to change the definition of the term. They carefully laid a trap for the right. Tragically, it appears we have fallen into it. The ostensibly “conservative” response to “cancel culture” (that is most commonly voiced) appears to be a subtler outgrowth of “free speech absolutism,” which, I believe, resembles the moral disregard displayed in the “conservative” right’s libertine idea of liberty.¹
“Free speech absolutism” is counterproductive and nonsensical. The notion that a society should have basically no standards at all as to what people should or should not say is ridiculous and no society has ever promoted such a dysfunctional principle. All societies throughout history have had standards of what people can and cannot say. It is good that some speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and it is (theoretically, since this does not currently exist in the United States) good to have a society that detests speech that is depraved and degenerate. Conservative opposition to “cancel culture” should not be premised on a fundamental adversity to “cancelling” in general, it should be because society is “cancelling” the wrong things. The response to “cancel culture” should not be to euthanize the concept, but to amass power ourselves and exercise it on those who truly deserve to be “cancelled.”
Though I think conservatives can find some common ground with the free speech absolutists, I believe their arguments ultimately fall short and their free speech ideas, carried out to fruition, are unfeasible. The free speech absolutists appear to consider the right to free speech completely absolute; therefore, they believe one may say whatever he wants since the individual has an absolute right to say whatever he pleases. Applying any moral standard to speech seems to be a foreign idea to the free speech absolutists. I cannot see how any actual conservative could reconcile a belief in the absolute right to say whatever one pleases with a vision of politics centered around the common-good.
Furthermore, not all beliefs are “equal” (the premise that all beliefs are equal is seemingly a premise that the free speech absolutists logically hold). The free speech absolutists have to display a flair of subjectivism since the “absolute right” to free speech renders all beliefs equally valid. What someone might consider moral, another might consider immoral and so on.
Though there is nuance to the world and some things are subjective, a lot of things are black and white. The existence of duties and obligations to the moral order is not subjective; the obligations and duties are real and require things from us. We have a duty to use our “free speech” in accordance with the objective good. Additionally, in the case of a right to free speech, some beliefs are contradictory to the right that allows them to exist. Therefore, the existence of the right itself is contingent on the prohibition of the incompatible beliefs, lest the right would be destroyed by the very thing it unconditionally permitted.
The abstract and theoretical right to “absolute free speech” seems to have never existed anywhere, and all societies since the beginning of time have had moral standards of what should and should not be allowed to be said.
A lot of free speech absolutist-types that I have seen will also argue for a Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) type of relationship to free speech. Free speech absolutism might seem incompatible with, well, anything at first — but that is beside the point since the right to absolute free speech will never exist and the NAP is, I believe, unreliable.
According to the NAP-based free speech absolutism, one has a right to say whatever they please unless it infringes on someone else’s right to say or do whatever they please (the NAP also seems to be a socially ordering principle a lot of libertarians and classical-liberals favor in their ideas concerning rights). The NAP as a principle for primary political interaction seems naïve, and I think a NAP-inspired attitude ignores objective morality and virtue (more on this later).²
The right’s inept solution to “cancel culture” seems to just be a byproduct of the broader misunderstanding the right appears to have on the concept of liberty. Our proposal to replace “cancel culture” with a speech-culture/culture of little to no standards is similar to the moral indifference classical liberalism/libertarianism display in their version of “liberty.” We disregard morality in order to take positions that impose no vision for society. In the name of “liberty,” we sacrifice virtue and good. Simultaneously, we conflate actual liberty with licentiousness.
As many have pointed out, the conflation of liberty with licentiousness, license, etc. is evident in the example of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Governor Hutchinson vetoed a bill intended to protect children from chemical castration (sex change procedures). His reasoning: protecting children from the evil of transgenderism using the power of the state curbs individual liberty (he preposterously invoked Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr. in his “limited government” spiel). The governor’s appeal to “limited government” and belief that government intervention in this scenario curtails liberty is the perfect encapsulation of a view that many on the right have. This shallow view of government and liberty create a “conservative” who is allergic to using power; one who is rendered impotent due to needless ideological constraints that confuse the contradictory terms of “liberty” and “libertinism.”
The conservative view of liberty is not one of libertinism and licentiousness; the conservative view of liberty is one of order. Additionally, as conservatives, we should understand that a key reason for the state’s existence is to restrain the passions of men. A primary job of the state is to “order” liberty and legislate morality. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 15,
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”
The legendary Irish/English statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke also seemed to believe in a vision of a liberty ordered by restraint and virtue,
“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”³
Governor Hutchinson’s “limited government” ideology is one that rejects a key function of the state. Using the state to restrain “the passions of men” is not a violation of liberty—it is merely the correct ordering of it. “Liberty” is not the unrestrained ability to follow one’s passions and desires — that is licentiousness. True liberty is the ability (or right) to do what one ought to do. This sense of “liberty” is inherently restrained since man is a fallen and depraved creature. Legitimate freedom is found in just restraint. In the case of Governor Hutchinson, the “passion” of a child to “change” their gender (or the “passion” of the parents to “change” their child’s gender) ought to be reigned in by the state. It is objectively just that the state protect the child and curb the immoral and confused appetites of the child/parents.
Returning back to the Non-Aggression Principle, I believe the NAP argument falls short in one key area: it does not consider what is good and true. For instance, should a drug addict be allowed to do drugs since he is only impairing and injuring himself? Promoters of the NAP will insist that he should be allowed to since his addiction is (apparently) not harming anyone outside of himself. NAP advocates believe that he is truly free since he has the option to do whatever he wants with his body. Additionally, since he is not (apparently) harming anyone else outside of himself, the government does not have the right to infringe upon him.
Contrastingly, the conservative knows that the drug addict is not “free.” He is enslaved to his passions and desires. His free-will is compromised by the narcotics and he is unable to exercise any form of higher reason or superior judgement. Moreover, he is not on his own little island in society and his “personal” decision to do drugs has larger implications for society. He ought to not be doing drugs, and it is the job of the state to justly correct his behavior and virtuously “order” his liberty.
Our aforementioned obligation to use speech in accordance with the higher-good does not singularly apply to speech; it also applies to our lives more broadly. Using the power of the state, we ought to order our liberty to align with what is good and true.
The objective moral order is discernable and we can know right from wrong. We have obligations and duties to the morality and virtue. A Christian moral prudence ought to affect our societal standards, laws, and fundamental mores — like it used to. I believe this notion is merely the idea of a political order centered around virtue and the common-good. This is a very basic and sensible starting point for the standards conservatives ought to be pushing for in society. We do not have to rely on the insubstantial and imprudent dogma of libertarian/classical-liberal ideology for solutions. Conservatives need a comprehensive and coherent vision for society.
We recognize certain problems like “cancel culture” or transgenderism, but we force ourselves into a pseudo-libertarian box that we refuse to get out of. We feel like we cannot promote a virtuous and adequate moral vision using political power and cultural combat. We have unilaterally disarmed ourselves in our frenzied push for the implausible concept of unfettered liberty.
I honestly do not want to bash the philosophy of libertarianism and I do not want to strawman it or mislabel ideas. However, conservatives’ adoption of a libertarian-esque view of liberty seems incompatible with what we know is real and virtuous. Accepting a view of liberty that recognizes no objective morality hamstrings us from exercising political power and commandeering cultural warfare. These attachments to (seemingly) libertarian/classical-liberal ideas bind us to ideology and debilitate our ability to utilize and rely on the conservative virtue of prudence. We cannot discern what is true and good when we accept ideology that is indifferent and apathetic to morality and virtue.
The American tradition of free speech is not one of “free speech absolutism” or subjectivism, but one that recognizes that no society can exist without moral guardrails on what people can and cannot say. Likewise, the American (or Anglo-American, Anglo-Saxon, etc.) tradition of liberty is not one of licentiousness and license. It is a tradition of ordered liberty — one directed towards the higher-good. By summoning actual American tradition, the right can surface strong solutions to oppose and correct the depravity of modern America. All is not lost, and conservatives can undoubtedly dig themselves out of the left’s traps. The first step to doing that, I believe, is realizing that a society without conservative standards is a society of liberal standards. We need an idea of what society ought to be, and we need the strength to apply it.
[1] The easiest way that one might refute, undermine, or contradict the left’s moral standard(s) appears to be through speech. Therefore, I only addressed the “free speech absolutism” calls from the right in this piece. Though I focused on the “free speech” side to “cancel-culture,” the right’s broader response to “cancel culture” seems to be tangibly visionless and dismissive of objective morality anyways, so I think my point is applicable outside of just speech and is why I lumped it in with the right’s “liberty” problems.
[2] As you have/will see, the discussion of the NAP later is more specifically focused on the principle itself, not so much the “free speech absolutist” application of the principle. The use of the principle as a primary tool for political order is my main concern.
[3] Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, pg. 120.
