Op-Ed: Bob Ehrlich: 3 Ways You Can Help Cancel ‘Cancel Culture’

There is an interesting paradox in today’s politics in that those who are most often the targets of cancel culture are not themselves practitioners of the art.

Americans with right-of-center opinions simply do not switch to shutdown mode when confronted with opposing viewpoints. It is not the way we think, not the way we are wired and not the way we conceive of democratic debate.

But there is another, more pragmatic reason for conservatism’s lack of enthusiasm for censorship and cancelation: We could not pull it off if we had to. Think about it. Our friends on the left own the culture these days — especially the levers of power.

A brief review of the previous observation might keep you up tonight, but the truth is often painful. Indeed, conservative academics were last seen on the backs of milk cartons. Hollywood studios have been known to blacklist or simply fire right-leaning actors.

Public broadcasting has been a subsidiary of the left from the jump. Ditto for network and cable news networks (except Fox News and Newsmax).

More recently, professional sports leagues, Wall Street and a major sector of corporate America have joined in on the woke parade, while Silicon Valley has gone all-in on deplatforming the opposition.

Any conservative who nevertheless insists on a cancel approach would accordingly fail. I guess one could exist solely on Tucker Carlson