When President Biden omitted “Dr. Seuss” from “Read Across America Day,” he cemented his alliance with the politically “woke” class of cancel culture warriors. He made no empirical judgment on whether Theodor Seuss Geisel’s children’s books objectively discriminate against a particular class of persons based on race or ethnicity. They may indeed. But that’s not the point. Instead, without any meaningful investigation, he unilaterally accepted the premise of cancel culture as a dogmatic fact: if someone is offended, the cause must be eliminated. But this kind of moral puritanism, if it is authentic, must apply across political barriers in order to appear authentic.
Plenty of Americans were offended — indeed, outraged — when evidence surfaced connecting the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Shouldn’t the Crown Prince receive sanctions from the President and his allies? Shouldn’t he be “cancelled” from diplomatic relations? Sadly, the moral perfectionism of the cancel culture purists only applies when it’s politically expedient.
Much like the early puritans, elimination never serves the truth, but the interests of the powerful. Although the proponents of cancel culture cloak themselves in moral superiority, they forget that these standards could one day apply to them whenever someone else is offended by their insensitivity. Will they accept the tenets of their own creed when faced with the possibility of their own “cancelling”? It seems unlikely.
