What Lincoln can teach us about Cancel Culture

While it’s important to hold people accountable for the things they say and do, cancel culture is ridiculous and something we should get rid of as fast as possible. It’s based on a fundamentally false premise—that a human being is some fixed entity—when nothing could be further from the truth. Are you telling me that moral growth is not possible? Or that we don’t or cannot change in life? I think not. Indeed, the whole point of life is change and growth.

So, you say or do something wrong. Ok, deal with the consequences. Face justice. Apologize. There’s no escape from all that. But get forever disqualified from all social and public life? What? What purpose does that serve? It doesn’t make any sense.  

I’ve had several close friends impacted by cancel culture so I have seen firsthand how terrifying it can be and how painful. We’re talking about people’s lives here and things like the ability to earn a living, take care of your family…etc. To be sure, there are some things you can do or even say that can unwind a life’s worth of work. Some people deserve to be canceled (think Harvey Weinstein). But things have gotten out of control and we’ve grown all too comfortable with the idea of summarily and forever judging people. This is not only unnecessarily ruining lives but it’s also damaging the very fabric of our culture. We’re sliding down a slippery slope and headed right in the direction of some of the worst societal conditions imaginable. Do we really want to end-up in a world that resembles the days of Stalin’s gulag or Mao’s cultural revolution? This is the inevitable conclusion for a society infected by the idea of canceling others. 

This is a subject I’ve been thinking about for a longtime but what sparked this article is a text I got from my Mom about a new documentary, “Stamped from the Beginning,”  that offered some critical perspectives of President Lincoln’s racial views. I’m not going to talk about the movie because I didn’t watch it but hearing this reminded me of the time during COVID when we almost cancelled Lincoln. Remember the calls to remove his statue on college campuses and take his name off of public schools? 

Let me clear something up right away. President Lincoln was no saint. He made a bunch of mistakes in his life, held views on race that we wouldn’t agree with today, and even violated the Constitution on several occasions during the war. But he’s still our greatest President and his life demonstrates perfectly why cancel culture is dumb, pernicious, and evil.

If we cannot love Lincoln, then who can we love? Lincoln was the greatest American President and perhaps even the greatest American period and deserves our admiration for so many reasons. Here are just a few: 

• His life arc is the most American, going from a childhood of extreme poverty in the obscure west to being spoken about in terms like this on his deathbed: “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.” You literally couldn’t dream up a better compliment or a life story more improbable. 

• He was a phenomenal writer and produced several of the most important works in the history of freedom—the Gettysburg Address and his 2^nd Inaugural Address to name a few. 

• Despite his views on race, he understood that slavery and democracy were fundamentally incompatible and used the crisis of the war to literally force a legal and moral transformation upon the land. 

• He freed the slaves, won the war, and saved the Union.

• Along the way, he established an important corollary to the right of revolution originally articulated by Jefferson. Remember, the Declaration of Independence basically says that we have the natural right to overthrow a government we don’t believe in or agree with. Well, Lincoln added a crucial caveat—only insofar as our cause is just do we have the right of revolution. I don’t want to get into it here but long story short:  it’s not at all clear from the US Constitution whether the Federal Government can prevent States from seceding. The States joined the Union voluntarily so presumably they could leave so as well. But Lincoln, by saying “No” at this critical moment in history, established the precedent that, if your cause is evil (e.g. slavery) you cannot just destroy a democratic bond because you don’t like how the law is evolving against you. 

People of our era don’t understand the extent to which Lincoln was an incredible democratic leader. But think about this for a second. Just how was he able to convince a largely racist society not only to fight the war to free the slaves but also to establish a permanent foundation for civil rights by passing the 13^th , 14^th , and 15^th amendments to the Constitution? It’s one thing to have a vision but another altogether to be able to build a consensus to achieve that vision and Lincoln basically achieved the impossible. Just on these historical terms alone, we should admire Lincoln. But we love him for another, more important reason. Lincoln is such a relatable President not just because he came from nothing but ultimately because he’s someone whose moral transformation happened out in the open. And he’s heroic because, unlike most, he actually became better, not worse, as more and more power accrued upon him. 

Cancel culture is crazy because it would destroy even someone like Lincoln. We could’ve canceled him in the 1830’s and 40’s for his views on race. We could’ve canceled him again in the 1850’s for only wanting to stop the spread of slavery not eradicate it and for being in favor of policies like colonization. Think of all that we would’ve missed if we had judged him too soon and too harshly? According to his contemporaries, we’re talking about missing out on the best leader of all time. And would someone else have been able to do what he actually did—i.e. win the war, free the slaves, and pass the critical constitutional amendments? It’s not at all clear. 

What we can learn from Lincoln is that moral growth is always possible and that a world where people are given the space to grow is what we are after, not cancel culture. This doesn’t mean there should be no consequences for bad choices. Not at all. It just means we want a culture that can forgive just as well as it can punish.

Remember the question that Jesus us challenged with, “who among us is without sin?” This is why we cannot be so quick to judge and cancel people. We’re all making mistakes, all the time. And the whole point of the journey of life is the opportunity to grow, change, and transform. To judge another person by one moment in time is neither right nor wise, for redemption is always possible. This is why we simply must give space for people to make mistakes, learn from them, and grow. At least that’s what people like, well, Buddha and Jesus tell us, two individuals I’m rather inclined to listen to!

So, let’s fight against cancel culture with all our collective might!

Let’s refuse to participate in it in any way. 

Let’s not jump on the bandwagon and publicly shame people who’ve made a mistake. 

Let’s not be so quick to unfriend, unfollow, or otherwise withdraw our support from people in crisis, until we know and fully understand the truth. 

Let’s speak out against it as loudly as we can.

And if someone we know personally gets caught-up in a cancel culture moment, let’s be a friend, not a judge. We can let them know we care about them, even if we disagree with what they’ve done. We can help them learn what they need to learn. There are so many better things to do than canceling.

Of course, there are some circumstances where a person can do something so egregious to permanently sever the bonds of friendship. But we all know what that looks like, right? For everything else, let’s forgive and move-on.

Cancel culture is an evil that we simply must remove if we are to preserve democracy and freedom in the world. This is especially true in the face of our increasingly powerful and pervasive digital technologies that are exposing so much of our private lives to mass public scrutiny. Given our human propensity to make mistakes, it won’t be long before we are all canceled. 

Housekeeping

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I just wanted to give you a quick update on the publishing schedule for the rest of the year. We will not be releasing a podcast episode on Tuesday December 26th so the next time you will hear from me is on Friday December 29th, a week from today, with another Profit+ article. We will be back in the first week of January with our regular twice-a-week schedule (podcast release on Tuesday and the Profit+ article on Friday) and some exciting new developments, including a premium subscription option for even more actionable and inspiring content!

Thank You again for all your encouragement and support. For those who celebrate, Merry Christmas🎄! Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are enjoying this holiday season.