Lingamfelter: Cancel China
I’m not a supporter of what is now known as “cancel culture,” whereby individuals and groups advocate boycotting or withdrawing support from those they regard as saying things they find offensive. This phenomenon is self-righteous and fundamentally anti-intellectual. The former is evident. The latter may need a bit of exploration.
The cancel culture essentially seeks to block speech. That is not a good idea, certainly not one that our founders would have found either desirable or consistent with their understanding of freedom. For the Founders, freedom of speech was central to the pursuit of truth. Silence a person and you silence an idea. Silence an idea and you truncate the process by which truth-finding is debated, sustained, refuted, and dissected.
Having long ago found free speech salutary, I have determined that cancel culture must be opposed. If you want to protest the conservative bakers who choose not to make a pastry that supports a lifestyle they find morally and religiously repugnant, then do not be surprised if I swing by to buy a dozen of their doughnuts, particularly if they care about the traditional values that underpin the virtue necessary to sustain our republic. My standard is clear. I defend free speech and the expression thereof, particularly that of people who are unwilling to lie down and be walked on by cancel culture crybabies.
That said, I am just fine with not patronizing businesses and groups that I believe are advocating for policies and actions that tear at the fabric of our nation. For example, long ago I decided not to patron businesses that opposed the Boy Scouts of America. My decision had nothing to do with their speech, but rather their actions. I did not publicly call on others to follow my lead. I was quite satisfied to quietly register my disapproval by not placing my money in their register. I frankly could care less what they say. But what they do will get my response.
Which leads me to this. Recently I have suggested that it would be wise for Americans to withhold their dollars from China, given that nation’s behavior domestically and internationally. Consider the facts. They have engaged in the brutal suppression of religious minorities. They have pursued a policy of forced infanticide against unborn females. They hold hostage people—including their own Olympic athletes—who speak out against Chinese human rights atrocities and other criminality. They have unleashed a horrible virus on the world and, to this day, have obstinately refused to cooperate with the world on discovering its origins. Indeed, they have lied about the pandemic repeatedly. They have attempted to seize territory in international waters that is patently not theirs and then construct military bases on that land. They have stolen American intellectual property as blatantly as the thuggish crowds that “smash and grab” in broad daylight. And now they are overtly threatening the free nation of Taiwan with military action unless it agrees to prostrate itself to would-be communist masters in Beijing. Most worrisome is China using the money we fork over in trade to develop armed forces and munitions that threaten America and our allies. We’re feeding the beast that wants to devour us.
I have no interest in silencing what China says. The more they spout their nonsense, the better. But what I do care about is what they do. And what they are doing is bad, very bad. And yet countless businesses and individual Americans patronize China in trade and commerce as if it is a fait accompli. They think we are simply wedded to the Chinese in some unbreakable covenant.
Today I had occasion to visit a local school supply store. Virtually every item I picked up had a label “Made in China” on it. Yep, they make a lot of stuff and I have decided that I will not buy it, not one trinket of it. That will be hard. The components they make are in much of what we use daily. But I’m firm in this. We have to start somewhere.
There will be those who say what I’m suggesting is what the Romans advised us not to do: vir prudens non contra ventum mingit (A wise man shouldn’t pee into the wind). But think about it for a minute. If all of us walk away en masse, at some point our collective action might matter. Ask yourself this. Would you buy something that said, “Made in Iran” or “Made in North Korea?” I’m quite certain you would reflexively put those items back on the shelf. Why not those things made under a dictatorship that has unleased pestilential threats on the entire world.
Made in America is my standard. And Xi Jinping can take his trinkets and carefully place them where the sun doesn’t shine.
L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and combat veteran who served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2002 to 2018. He is the author of Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War (University Press of Kentucky). You can find him on www.copybookwarrior.com
