Iconoclast: The Poverty of Cancel Culture

The intellectuals being canceled “by the new revolution” were “products of the last cultural revolution” — and that one was a lot more fun, observes Matt Taibbi on his blog. The “animating principle” of the “sixties liberation movements” was that “once ignorance was conquered, we would be free to celebrate our common humanity.” That message “made great art,” and the left sold it “to the rest of the country by making music even squares and reactionaries couldn’t resist.” Nobody “needed to be driven by whip” toward the ideas of “peace, love, forgiveness and humor” — they “were born with a hunger for it, which is why it became culturally hegemonic for half a century after Vietnam and Woodstock.” The “woke revolution does the opposite,” with its “impenetrable vocabulary of oppression,” “total lack of humor” and “love of snitching and decency committees.”

Foreign desk: Beijing’s Unhealthy Health Policy

Whatever democracies do to “keep people safe” in the wake of COVID-19, they must resist the public-health vision of China’s leaders, Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Julian Gewirtz argue at Foreign Affairs. Beijing views health crises as “threats to public order,” demanding such responses as “intensified surveillance, tracking and control of citizens’ movements and harsh, often preemptive punishment” for rule-breakers, all framed as “the caring, curative intent of a doctor.” And the regime is now giving Chinese firms “aid and propaganda” to spread its approach worldwide. Democracies must “develop a clear and distinct vision” for public health “without giving up on privacy, civil liberties and democratic freedoms.” Otherwise, “the appeal of China’s approach” will only grow.

Cop: Demoralized, Dismayed and Derided

The police officer once served as “a reminder that society is governed by rules” — but now is “an object of derision and scorn,” sighs pseudonymous Officer Jack Dunphy at City Journal. Cops know “crime and disorder” have “increased alarmingly in many places” but shirk from using “reasonable or justifiable force” for fear of “the woke mob and the political leaders and media figures who amplify its demands.” For all the cop-bashers’ successes, “reality has a way of reasserting itself — often cruelly”: Shootings have increased 358 percent in New York and “homicides are up 34 percent” in Chicago. “How many lives will be lost before the country sees through this lie?”

Culture critic: Brooks Brothers, RIP

“Only two years ago, America’s oldest clothing company was celebrating its glorious two centuries of existence”; now the firm that “outfitted some 40 American presidents,” Brooks Brothers, has filed for bankruptcy, laments The Week’s Matthew Walther. It was the rare company “that still made things to a high standard of quality while managing to pay thousands of Americans honorable wages.” Contrary to critics, it wasn’t elitist: It “was remarkably egalitarian precisely because it had been worn so long by so many without significantly changing. It is a good thing in a republic, however far gone into decadence, for the president to be dressed in the same manner as the humblest citizen.” These days, “nearly everything is either a piece of junk made by wage slaves in China or Southeast Asia or a luxury good.” Brooks Brothers “stood in between,” belonging “to the noble but almost vanished tradition of cultural aspiration.”

Schools beat: Indoctrination Is Not Education

Because kids have a low risk of “contracting and spreading” COVID-19, parents should “demand that schools reopen” — but, Libby Emmons warns at The Post Millennial, they must also ensure students aren’t subjects of “a sociological experiment” to create “the most woke child.” Even during the pandemic, kids have been learning “critical race theory and revisionist history” at “pretty much every grade level.” Simply put, barring “our kids from receiving an in-person, hands-on, focused, dedicated learning experience” is “not right” — and neither is pushing “the yoke of race and anti-racism” on them. Parents must beware that “leftist indoctrination is not what passes for education.”

— Compiled by Kelly Jane Torrance & Karl Salzmann