by Richard M. Ebeling
The American Institute for Economic Research
One of the new fashionable phrases has become “cancel culture,” the idea that ideas, institutions, and people of the present as well of the past must be overturned and dethroned from legitimacy and acceptance in society, so as to expunge the injustices, cruelties, and insensitivities existing in current life and lingering over from history. The question is: what exactly is the culture in America that is to be cancelled?
Elements of the “cancel culture” mindset and movement have been seen in the tearing down of statues, demands for removing from buildings and other monuments the names and imageries of various people, and the ostracizing of certain individuals, living or dead, who are accused of and condemned for racist, sexist, and other politically incorrect words or deeds at any time during their life.