Kerby Anderson

The cancel culture has been around for many years. John Stossel gives a new perspective to it in his interview with 23-year-old Rikki Schlott. She is the co-author of the new book, The Cancelling of the American Mind. If the title sounds familiar, it should. Her co-author was the co-author of the earlier book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

As a college student, she felt she had to hide her conservative views. She says she was even “afraid to have Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson books on my bookshelf." She rightly feared that if her classmates saw the books she might be “verbally attacked on social media.”

John Stossel reminds us of the long list of people who have been canceled. “A teacher in Virginia lost his job for calling a transgender student she. An art history lecturer lost her job simply for showing a painting of Muhammad. A University of Virginia med student was banished from campus for merely questioning the importance of microaggressions.”

Generally, the younger you are the more likely you are to have a positive view towards cancel culture. But there is an interesting exception. Generation Z reverses that trend. Rikki Schlott has an explanation. “That’s because if you’re a young person who grows up in a graceless society, you’re always looking behind your back. You see friends torn down on social media.”

Also, many universities encourage students to report other students. She says that when she went to college to pick up her ID card, she found emergency numbers on the back. One number was for the bias response hotline in case you were offended. The university sanctioned the idea of reporting other students.

It’s time to speak up and end the assault on free speech achieved through the cancel culture.