By: Charles C. W. Cooke – nationalreview.com – February 3, 2022

If America’s institutions wish to improve the country’s culture, harmony, and mood, they would do well to practice using that most useful and elementary of Old English words: No.

That’s “No” as in, “No, I don’t care that you’re offended, go away,” or “No, I won’t punish others for your intolerance,” or, “No, you can’t stay here and make stupid demands. I’m busy, and you should be too.”

“No” can, of course, be used alongside other useful phrases such as, “I don’t care,” “Stop being ridiculous,” and, “If you can’t tolerate others, then please feel free to leave.” It can even be used repetitively, as in: “No, no, no, no, no.” But, however it is decorated, it must always remain in the mix.

A key to using “No” is to make sure you stick with it to the end:

“I want you to fire James for his tweet.”
“No.”
“But I’m upset.”
“No.”
“But I’m offended, and hurt, and shocked.”
“No.”
“But I’m struggling.”
“No.”
“But words are violence, and my safety has been imperiled, and I’m literally shaking in my room.”
“No.”

It is customary for commentators to describe the practitioners of America’s cancel culture as hypersensitive “snowflakes” who, having been stuck in perpetual adolescence, are unable to cope with the rigors of adult life. Increasingly, though, this seems naïve. These people aren’t snowflakes; they’re vicious, self-interested powerbrokers who have discovered that, by reciting a handful of carefully chosen words, they can exile their opponents for good. Used often enough — and widely enough — “No” helps to smash this expectation. Responding to the pressure campaign against Ilya Shapiro, William Treanor, the impotent dean of Georgetown Law School, said, “I have heard the pain and outrage of so many” and confirmed that he was “grateful to the many members of the community who have reached out to me and other leaders at the school to share their thoughts.”

What Treanor should have said instead is: “No.”

Happily, the word is available to everyone — and it’s free. It’s available at the Disney Corporation, where it should have been used to defend Gina Carano. It’s available at the New York Times, where it should have been used to defend Donald McNeil. It’s available at Teen Vogue, where it should have been used to defend Alexi McCammond. It’s available across corporate America, which seems not yet to have realized that its problems stem almost exclusively from its habitual inability to make a stand in the face of increasingly preposterous demands. And here’s the best part: The more often it is used, the less often it ends up being needed. Bit by bit, and use by use, the word diminishes the requests it is used to repel. One might think of its utilization as a lockdown strategy: Fifty Nos to stop the spread.

The dirty little secret about mobs is that they are as fickle as they are rambunctious. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the very worst thing that one can do when faced by a madding crowd is imply that one intends to give an inch. If one must respond at all, it should be with a firm “No,” followed by an affirmation of principled neutrality that leaves no room whatsoever for debate: “No, we are not firing James. No, this is not a consultation. Yes, academic freedom is the backbone of this school. Goodnight.” Better yet, one should seek to invert the regnant cultural presumption by making it clear that if anyone will be removed from a given institution, it will be those who have set out to destroy others’ lives. In a healthy culture, it would be the architects of intolerance who ended up as our pariahs, not their targets. “No,” a sensible dean of Georgetown Law might have said to the horde in front of him. “And as for you, you sniveling creeps. . . .”

Pythagoras is supposed to have said that “the oldest, shortest words, ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ are those which require the most thought.” Often, this is true. Here, it is not. The United States cannot live up to its promise without a robust, open, liberal culture, and it cannot thrive unless Americans’ instincts tend more immediately toward understanding and redemption than toward dismissal and retribution. Drunk on its own power, a small cabal has begun eating away at the roots of that culture. To sustain and repair them will take a series of swift, sharp, stable, and steadfast “No”s — issued without fear, favor, qualification, or even the slightest of misgivings.

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Source: Cancel Culture: The Power of ‘No’ | National Review