The Sense of Entitlement and Fear In America’s Cancel Culture
Who are we as individuals to decide who is allowed a voice and who isn’t?
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Why have we come to decide that anything which offends or upsets us must suddenly be turned away from, blocked, or even erased altogether?
If this were to happen, our seemingly wildest wishes of shutting out and canceling anything that upsets us, what kind of society and world might this create?
Cancel culture is grasping for what we believe is “safety”, as we are sacrificing resilience, wisdom, and the opportunity to learn.
In Vermont at Middlebury College, Charles Murray, a libertarian scholar, was invited by a student group to speak about his 2012 book, Coming Apart. His book discusses the timely, crucial topic of the social and economic dysfunction of the white working class, which (according to many commentators) resulted in voters from that group responding more enthusiastically to the anti-immigrant and protectionist messages of Donald Trump.
Charles Murry also published a previous book in 1994 called The Bell Curve. In it, he and his coauthor, Richard Herrnstein proposed that differences in IQ scores found across racial groups might not be caused entirely by outside factors; genetic differences could play a role too.
Some Middlebury students and professors took this sentiment from The Bell Curve and decided that it made Charles Murray a white supremacist.
This group of students and professors then banded together and tried to get Murray’s impending talk canceled.
When that didn’t work, students attended his talk just to shut it down, chanting in unison and shouting over his attempts to speak. College administrators moved Murray and Allison Stanger, a political science professor who was going to question him after his talk, had to finish over live stream from behind locked doors. Students found them, though, and proceeded to pound on the walls and pull fire alarms throughout the building.
When the live stream ended, as Murray and Professor Stanger exited the building, they were swarmed by protestors. One…
