Back about fifty years or so we studied the works of a man known as William Shakespeare. He was “popular” then, although he had three things going against him that would harm his impact today: he was dead, we was white, and he was a male. But back then one could still rise on merit despite such handicaps, and the man could write a decent play. Here are some well-known lines that he wrote in a play titled “Julius Caesar”: “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.”
We have been told there is a great deal of evil that lives after many men in the last few weeks, but there also is much good that has been buried. Take a few moments to contemplate those lines from Shakespeare as we move to the current phenomenon of the cancel culture, which doesn’t practice those Christian, and American, virtues of forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation and rehabilitation.
Have you ever noticed that the cancel culture cuts in one direction only? That is, that one piece of evil undoes any of the good that is interred. Those tolerant folks whose judgment matches their historical knowledge and their means of understanding, which is to say all three are completely lacking, care not at all for facts, nor context, nor nuance, nor anything beyond a violent vengeance against someone who lived and died so many years ago.