This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg.

America is being called out.

There's a reckoning taking place,

and at times a quite confrontational push

to face up to our country's racist roots.

150 demonstrators just gathered,

and they have just torn down the statue of Christopher Columbus.

Yesterday, Coulter announced she would not make a planned appearance at University of California,

Berkeley. People are talking a lot about what happened after a dinner date between the comedian,

Aziz Ansari, and a young woman going by the name of Grace. In America's streets, across our

university campuses, and every day on social media,

people are battling about what should be done to address racism, sexism, and other forms

of historically embedded prejudice and injustice.

Battling power differentials that disadvantage people is the central goal of basically being any kind of moral

actor in society. As justified as this outrage is, it comes in places with its own intolerant edge.

Demands to conform rather than debate, to suppress and punish rather than engage.

In other words, cancel culture is a real thing.

Many people say, why do these people have to be so mean?

But you wouldn't ask that if it was about pedophilia.

Nobody thinks that we should be very gentle in ejecting a pedophile from general society.

But is firing someone always the right fix to shutting down debate equal progress, has cancellation become a form of left-wing McCarthyism?

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