February 23, 2022

Notable and Quotable: Dr. Michael L. Brown

"We’re used to seeing TV series canceled: when they’re not popular enough, they go off the air and no new episodes are produced. Or subscriptions can be canceled. You no longer want to receive a particular magazine, so you notify the company: “I’m canceling my subscription.” From then on, no more copies of that magazine are sent your way.

Today, it is people who are canceled—not just rejected or ignored or even belittled but canceled. “We will hear from you no more!” Today, it is not just dissenting views that are dismissed. It is the dissenters themselves who are dismissed, as in eliminated, snuffed out, and removed.

These dissenters may not be eliminated physically, but they are elimi-nated ideologically. Their influence is removed to the point that they lose their voices and their relevance. It is as if they were no more. “You are hereby canceled!”

This is the type of thing that happened in totalitarian regimes like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, where dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, or executed. They were, quite literally, canceled. Now it is happening in America and other “free” countries."


Dr. Michael L. Brown

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