Tyranny on the Installment Plan
Cancel culture is tyranny on the installment plan, and it is more dangerous than any political tyranny could hope to be.
Dear friends and supporters:
Dr. Brian G. Mattson has been cancelled. Brian is the Senior Scholar of Public Theology for the Center for Cultural Leadership, the educational foundation I launched in 2000. I often say jokingly (but only half jokingly) that he is the brains of the outfit. He holds a Ph.D. from a major European university. He is a credentialed theologian. He speaks with balance, insight, and thoughtfulness. He is the antithesis of a Molotov-cocktail-lobbing scribal ideologue. He’s a profoundly gifted, easy-going guitarist and vocalist.
None of this matters, of course, to the regnant Leftist cultural regime, for whom substance and not style (as we like to say) is all that matters, when ideological culture is at stake.
Twitter, that great digital paragon of free speech, recently locked Brian out of his account, so he has in effect been “de-platformed.”
His transgression? Pointing out reality, one of the most subversive and unforgivable acts in an age increasingly committed to radical individual autonomy as its towering principle.
Brian had merely drawn attention to the sex of Richard Levine, a four-star admiral. The only problem is that Richard “identifies” as Rachel, and is now “the first openly transgender four-star officer in the nation’s eight uniformed services. She [ = he] is also the first female [ = male posing as a female] four-star admiral in the commissioned corps.”
Brian tweeted:
This was a bridge too far for Twitter, for which reality is a social construction and not reality. Brian appealed this punitive decision, requesting a reason for it, and he received this darkly illuminating response:
Notice the colon at the conclusion of the third paragraph. One would expect that after that colon, Twitter have would supplied the reason for Brian’s de-platforming. This was boilerplate communication from Twitter with a generic response into which they would be expected to fill the answer to his question. Instead, he got … literally nothing.
The Null Set
In elementary school I learned the very basics of mathematical set theory. In my elementary mind, one set that always perplexed me was the “null set.” This was a set consisting of … nothing: It looked like this: {}. Why, I thought, would anybody even consider this? If it is nothing, our interest in it should be, nothing.
That’s what Twitter gave Brian, a great big nothing burger. But the reason they did not feel obliged to provide an explanation for their punitive action is that the social construction of reality has now become such a self-evident truth that to insist on reality is to stand beyond the pale.
Today, reality, particularly sexual reality, is not a part of the plausibility structure. By plausibility structure I mean what is permitted as reasonable discourse in a society (see “When Plausibility Structures Collapse”). While we might reasonably disagree over whether heroin should be legalized, we may not reasonably disagree over whether a male can become a female. This is just an issue that has already been settled, and should not — and may not — be discussed.
The topic is not entitled to discussion but only dismissal, even purgation.
Cancel Culture
This is a part of cancel culture. Cancel culture is driven by the conviction that free speech is not necessary to people whose views are so far outside acceptable social norms that they need not be bothered with. If you argue that a male must always be a male and can never be or become a female, you are simply a crank, and undeserving of a digital platform.
Twitter’s Conditions for Repentance and Restoration
With a heart full of grace and forgiveness to all who truly repent, Twitter offered to restore Brian’s platform if he only deleted the reality-affirming, constructivist-denying tweet. Just as ancient pagan Rome forgave Christians their insistence that Jesus is Lord if they only offered a pinch of incense at the altar of Cesar, so Twitter gave Brian an easy way out.
An easy way, but not the right way. He refused. He remains canceled.
(continued below)
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The 19th Century Prediction of Cancel Culture
Alexis de Tocqueville was a famous Frenchman who visited the United States in the 19th century. He was a keen observer of the relatively new nation, and many of his predictions about its form of government in his classic Democracy in America have uncannily proven true. He writes of the “tyranny of the majority.” This is a tyranny unique to democratic societies that is more dangerous than the political tyranny of the old European despots. He writes:
Fetters [chains] and headsmen [executioners] were the coarse instruments that tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has perfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothing to learn. Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as the will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of one man the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; but the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose proudly superior. Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The master no longer says: “You shall think as I do or you shall die”; but he says: “You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow citizens if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence worse than death.”
The U. S. Founders were all imbued with what we today would call a libertarian streak. By bitter experience, they were keenly aware of the dangers of the state, in their case, an overbearing British king and parliament. They arranged a political system with checks and balances on power. Statism they understood to be hazardous to humanity.
We sometimes hear about “state-sponsored terrorism,” but in the Bible, the state is a legitimate terrorist. That’s the language of Romans 13. It is also the reason that state power and authority must be severely circumscribed. An institution with that much legitimate coercive power must never be permitted to step out of its very narrow limits.
But Tocqueville understood statism is not the only tyranny democracies need fear. Another tyranny, a more dangerous one, is cultural tyranny. It is a socially enforced tyranny, not a politically coerced tyranny. It happens when the free exchange of ideas is thought to permit dangerous or unpopular ideas, and when a majority of a society, or a very strong minority, is able to intimidate individuals who embrace and articulate unpopular opinions.
In other words, cancel culture.
Neither Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi de-platformed Brian Mattson. Twitter did. Twitter is a private company. They do not enforce their will by fines, prisons, and lethal injections. They simply remove the capacity to speak instantaneously to a potentially large audience, an important tool for free speech in a digital world. They can succeed at this because a majority of Americans, or at least a large minority, holds that this action is acceptable, or don’t know about it, or don’t care even if they do know. Their attitude might be, “No big deal, Brian can always find another platform.”
But what if other platforms embrace the contra-reality, pro-constructivist view? What if all of them eventually come to believe that to say men are always men and women are always women is to deny radical individual autonomy, the highest virtue of modern democratic society? Then there will be no other platforms available, perhaps not even a church platform, or a platform at a public restaurant table.
This is a tyranny coerced by social sentiment and not statist bullying. If you don’t speak merely on the grounds that you will be de-incentivized, ostracized, and marginalized, nobody is forcing you not to speak. They are simply giving you plenty of reasons not to speak.
Alexis de Tocqueville understood that this cultural tyranny is more ominous than political tyranny. Why? Because you can always remove political tyrants from office, either forcibly or democratically. But how do you remove the majority of the population? This is the infamous “tyranny of the majority,” and cancel culture is a precipitous step in that direction.
Conclusion
Tyranny often comes starkly and rudely, like in the late 1940’s civil war and Maoist revolution in China. Everybody sees what’s happening, graphically displayed before their eyes.
But tyranny in democracies often comes gently and imperceptibly. Little by little, a society permits the squelching of speech and unpopular opinions, driven by ideologues that punish dissent via major media and the universities and digital platforms, and convince much of the population that certain ideas are not simply wrong, but unworthy of being proven wrong. And over time, it is not simply those ideas that are stamped out, but the capacity to think and to speak freely at all.
It is tyranny on the installment plan, and it is more dangerous than any political tyranny could hope to be, “an existence worse than death.”
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Personal
This Sunday I’ll be preaching on “Our Promissory God” at City Church, Corpus Christi, Texas. It was great to see so many of you last week, and I look forward to even more in attendance this Sunday. I’ve been preaching at City Church for over 20 years, and it seems every time I’m here, they’re adding new members. What a growing, thriving, faithful church:
Economics is sometimes known as the “dismal science,” but there’s nothing dismal about it to people who believe in the goodness of God’s creation. Please note below the announcement for CCL’s annual Symposium, December 4. Our theme is (bad) economics, and there are still a few seats left. Please send me a Facebook private message or phone me at the number below if you’re interested in attending. It will prove to be an exciting, informative, memorable event.
Yours for canceling cancel culture,
Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership
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We're under constant attack by Flat Landers--non-self creatures from the Void. All that exists is the Void, thus, all that is not Void must be cancelled (voided).