When Truth Is the Enemy

At its base, says Dr. Frank Wright (Pres./CEO of D.James Kennedy Ministries), the progressive ‘cancel culture’ is less about de-platforming extreme ideas and more about persecuting people with whom they disagree.  Their aim is not correction, but destruction— and they want to make sure nobody hears ideas with which they disagree.

Within the rotunda of Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, there are many inscriptions adorning the walls.  Among them are these words: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Given today’s ‘cancel culture,’ one can only wonder what the man who crafted the Declaration of Independence might say about it.  Perhaps he would resight the Declaration’s self-evident truths: “That we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Well, apparently what the Lord giveth the Lifetime Network taketh away.  After nearly 3-years of Lifetime airing DJK Ministries’ weekly “Truths That Transform” television program— one in which they apply biblical truths to the great moral, ethical, and cultural question of our day— officials at Lifetime have suddenly decided their program content is too “controversial”— forcing this Christian ministry off their network.

They objected to their exposé on Planned Parenthood— in which they documented their sale of baby body parts derived from abortions.  They objected to our exposé on billionaire radical George Soros and his systematic efforts to undermine American laws and institutions.  They even objected to their program on the spiritual life of George Washington.

While Lifetime Channel cancelled DJK Ministries, other Christian broadcasters on other major cable television channels and networks are cancelling entire blocks of religious programming. This is the new face of corporate responsibility in America— viewpoint discrimination, prior restraint, and outright censorship.

This spitting in the face of those with viewpoints differing from the new ‘woke’* orthodoxy by broadcast and cable television is bad enough— but it gets worse.  Others providing business services to those holding non-favored viewpoints are falling all over each other to demonstrate their ‘woke’ bona fides by denying services to those with the heretical audacity to hold views diverging from those permissible under Progressive woke-ism.

Witness the good folks at wannabe-gatekeeper Mail Chimp— the simian-friendly email platform— whose ‘Standard Terms of Use’ were recently modified to include this language: “Mail Chimp does not allow the distribution of content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances.”

How Mail Chimp is singularly qualified to adjudicate matters of truth or falsity across a wide range of cultural issues escapes the notice of most neutral observers.  But herein lies the genius of Progressive thinkers: If the viewpoint in question is different than ours, it must be false.  Case closed.

Or witness the noble work of the enlightened folks at Wells Fargo in forcibly closing the financial accounts of people highly visible in the conservative and Christian landscape. Or California-based Logix Federal Credit Union refusing accounts to people even doing business with religious organizations.  Naturally, the elephant-in-the-room question is: When will ‘woke’ financial institutions begin targeting the supporters of Christian and conservative organizations?

In a biblical context, many are familiar with the predictive prophecy that restricts buying and selling to those with “the mark of the beast.” (Revelation 13:16-17; 14:9-10; 16:2; 19:20; 20:4) What we see emerging today is a secular version— in reverse order. Instead of everyone having the mark, those with disfavored viewpoints and ideals are anointed with a latter-day scarlet letter.  More like the “No soup for you” pronouncements from Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi (Season 7, Episode 6, Nov. 2, 1995).

However it’s characterized, foundationally the progressive ‘cancel culture’ is less about de-platforming extreme ideas and more about persecuting people with whom they disagree. Their aim is not correction— but destruction.  If the Southern Poverty Law Center were true to their own disingenuous and defamatory definition of hate, they would have to include two-thirds of the Progressive left (and themselves!) on their infamous map.

Today’s Progressives more resemble Orwell’s dystopian epic ‘1984,’— where Winston Smith, who was outed as non-conforming, is brainwashed back to Oceanian orthodoxy and then awaits his execution.

One might argue that the foundational question here is: Why are Progressives so deathly afraid of the free marketplace of ideas?  They are in urgent need of reading—– perhaps for the first time— John Milton’s ‘Areopagitica.’  In his polemic against the state-sponsored cancel culture of his day, this Puritan(!) declared: “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

Milton argued that the best defense of freedom of speech and expression was the debate and discussion of ideas— where good ideas would tend to rise and bad ideas to fall.  Perhaps the ‘cancel culture’ is a latent acknowledgement that Progressive ideas suffer under the weight of scrutiny.

Whatever the case, it is self-evident that the solitary idea nearest to the Progressive heart is to make sure nobody hears your ideas.  This is nothing less than Jefferson’s “tyranny over the mind of man.”  For those who understand how hard-won freedom is, we too must swear eternal hostility against the efforts of those who would steal it.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel

* If you frequent social media, you may well have seen posts or tweets about current events that are tagged #staywoke.  ‘Woke’ is a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE).  In AAVE, ‘awake’ is often rendered as ‘woke,’ as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.”  The word ‘woke’ became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement; instead of just being a word that signaled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action.  Activists were ‘woke’ and called on others to ‘stay woke.’