Some of us knew, well before it became universally obvious, that 2020 was going to be a very bad year, insomuch as it greeted us cruelly with the death of Sir Roger Scruton, possibly the most important (and certainly most intellectually gifted) political philosopher of our time. His insights on the cultural upheavals of the last two years would have been very welcome indeed.

Scruton was one of the first to comment on what has come to be known colloquially as “cancel culture,” the lamentable phenomenon of silencing speech (predominantly conservative) that the prevailing culture-minders (predominantly leftist) find disagreeable. Scruton used the more erudite term “culture of repudiation.” It is perhaps unsurprising, but no less obnoxious, that he himself was a victim now and then.

The rather ridiculous Spotify-Joe Rogan affair is the current apex of this cultural aberration. Last Sunday, Spotify’s CEO sent a groveling letter to his employees addressing the issue. To his credit, he stood by his decision to not cancel Mr. Rogan’s show. To his discredit, it was a cringe-worthy diatribe of Mea Culpa’s that shows just how far and how fast we have descended into submission to ideological mob mentality.

Now, to be clear, I have no particular truck for Joe Rogan; he ranks right up there with most of the rest of pop culture for me, which means I’ve never listened to him. What little I know of his views I wager I would agree with some and disagree with much. But he is the most popular podcast on that platform, and evidently his style and speech met the vetting requirements of 2020, which was hardly the Dark Ages.

Ah, but he spreads “misinformation,” I hear you cry. Well, who is the arbiter of that? Anyone who advocates for minimum wage, price controls, or graduated income tax espouses economic misinformation, and yet we allow Bell Policy Center to exist. And so we should.

Yes, the whole issue of political correctness, “wokeness” (what illiterate hater of the English language came up with that term?) and cancel culture is at best a bore, and worst a menace. But it does raise some pertinent questions; Joe Rogan, Roger Scruton, and (God forbid) yours truly aside, is there some speech which ought not be tolerated?

It’s not a new question, and one that tends to be most satisfactorily answered in the extremes. For instance, were either of them alive today, would it be acceptable to welcome Vladimir Lenin or Adolf Hitler to speak at a college political science symposium? What about Karl Marx? From a purely academic and historical perspective there would be some obvious value; but given that each was the architect of an inhuman sociopolitical structure that systematically murdered millions of people, the moral injunction would surely overcome the academic interest.

That when we diverge from the extreme examples the question gets trickier speaks to a growing inability to make distinctions. For example, there are modern day followers of both Marx and Hitler whose expulsion from the public square few reasonable minds would object to. But we’re not talking about Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Similarly, one can argue for restrictions on pornography, including keeping it away from children, without pulling James Joyce’s Ulysses off the shelves.

We see a version of this more and more in party politics, too. Generally speaking, when Republicans get in the mood to go a-cancelling, it is against themselves. The use of the censure as a bizarre form of enforcing party discipline is reaching levels that would have been admired in the Soviet’s Communist Party apparatus. Last year Arizona Republicans censured sitting Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and the widow – the widow – of late Sen. John McCain (as the state’s Democrats did to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema). Earlier this month, the RNC formally censured Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for “actions in their positions as members of the January 6th Select Committee not befitting Republican members of Congress.” Here in Colorado, the El Paso Republican Party considered a resolution to do the same to those they deem insufficiently Republican.

Now, one can raise legitimate concerns over the Jan. 6 Select Committee – overt partisanship, over-zealotry and so forth – without assailing Republicans who wish to get to the bottom of the debacle; what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, was not “legitimate political discourse” any more than the riots the summer before were. And clearly, a political party should have the right to eject from its membership those whose views are diametrically ill-aligned – I would not remain welcome in the Democratic Party for very long, I wager. But again, we face the need to distinguish; John McCain was not John Lindsay; Elizabeth Cheney is not Elizabeth Warren (yes, she was once a Republican).

The whole miserable enterprise of cancel culture and indiscriminate political censure – the culture of repudiation – exerts a reductionist and dampening pressure on truly legitimate political discourse. Roger Scruton would have had much illuminating to say on the matter, assuming he would have been permitted to.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.