People like Caroline Hodes like to complain about people complaining about “the indoctrination of their children in our schools”. But school just is indoctrination. There’s no such thing as value-free education. So what she really means is she likes the values into which their children are currently being indoctrinated, and doesn’t want them replaced by what she calls right-wing values. Fair enough. But then she can hardly rail against those who want it their way rather than hers.

There is indeed a culture war raging, all across the U.S., but also here in Canada, especially here in Alberta, and especially here at the University of Lethbridge, where both Hodes and I teach. Certainly there have been skirmishes and minor battles, but it’s too early to tell which side is going to win the war. The war between the Woke and the Unwoke is a bit like the war in Ukraine. The Russians have the momentum, but the Ukrainians are pushing back with all they’ve got.

Aided and abetted by the same forces that are pushing back back here at home? No, this is an orthogonal cut. The Ukraine and its allies claim to be fighting for western democracy against Russian tyranny, as do the Unwoke against Woke illiberalism. But the Woke claim it’s the liberalism of the Unwoke that’s aiding and abetting settler imperialism. Two ships passing in the night, each firing feckless volleys at the other across the uncomprehending divide.

I’ve made no secret of on which ship I’ve enlisted. But Hodes has it wrong if she thinks her enemies of my ilk are all conservatives, big C or small. I, for one, am not a civil libertarian. I was raised a Marxist long before she was born. My concern about cancel culture is that if today we allow the left to do it to the right, when the winds shift tomorrow – and they will – it’ll be the right once again doing it to the left. Which I’m old enough to remember, but Hodes is not.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy, Why My Colleagues Are Idiots

Tags: cancel culture, Caroline Hodes, University of Lethbridge, wokeism