The Biden recovery bill is making its way through the Senate as I am writing this. Given its price tag, you would think the GOP would be treating it in public as an existential threat to the country. The problem for the leadership, of course, is that the bill is popular, even among Republicans. So, instead, we’re hearing a lot of talk about . . . Dr. Seuss!
As is typical with these kinds of episodes, this one involves a purely private actor taking action voluntarily to protect its long term economic interests. There was no coercion here by the government, the woke left, or the big tech companies. Nevertheless, the GOP is making it out to be another milestone in the history of the odious “cancel culture.”
Back in the day, when you heard stories about censorship, they typically involved some stupid small town librarian who refused to stock books about Shakespeare or Darwin or whatever because the very conservative community didn’t approve. In a similar vein, Donald Trump periodically threatened to defund governments and school systems that took the blue side in the culture wars in order to please his base. In other words, don’t be fooled by right-wing talk about free speech; the right, historically, has been far more apt to engage in “cancel culture” than the left. This is fundamentally a battle over power, not speech.
On the one hand, you have the woke left trying to use its intellectual and demographic power through social media and liberal local governments to treat elements of traditional American culture as illegitimate. On the other hand, you have the right trying to use political power as a vehicle for censorship of blue culture. In the middle, you have people like us, who actually believe in free speech, and who want all of this crap to just go away. Good luck with that.