I am no advocate of "Cancel Culture." But I think your article missed the point. We should not cancel any person, but we should indeed cancel certain behaviors. In terms of child rearing, it is put as: Punish the behavior, not the child.

The problem is in labelling people and ideas, without considering the actual person or idea. This is what racism is. Nearly all my family in Europe were cancelled - brutally and literally - for the label put on them. I personally knew people who were blacklisted (or worse) as Communists. Cancelling people is a way to avoid their humanity. Cancelling ideas is a way to avoid considering the idea itself.

But that does not mean that the behavior of people, the consequences of ideas, should go unchallenged. I believe the "80's greed is good mentality" was more than gross — it was evil; and the stockbrokers and everyone else who took wealth away from those who created it should indeed lose all that wealth, not because they were evil, but because they didn’t contribute anything to society to earn it. I believe those who encourage or participated in the January 6 insurrection need to be punished for their actions. I believe that racist words and actions need to be called out and challenged.

There is also a difference between cancel culture and a boycott. Cancelling someone is just a moral judgment which is not meant to change that person's behavior. A boycott is a powerful tactic, if used properly, to effect change. Farmworkers called for a boycott of grapes in the 60's, unless and until the growers signed a union contract. It worked. That wasn't "cancelling" grapes, but using economic power to achieve real justice.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, the difference is "that the attack is directed against the forces of evil rather than against the persons who happen to be doing the evil. . . . We are out to defeat injustice and not the white persons who may be unjust."

For more on my own struggle as to someone who others may "cancel" see my article on The Paradox of Lucile Eaves.