# Cancel Culture and Canceling versus consequences for actions **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 8, 2025, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644 "2025-07-08T22:55:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/61 "2025-07-10T20:35:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > These questions are so incredibly broad and vague as to be meaningless. Occasionally killing people is morally acceptable. That doesn’t make me an advocate for murder. If you have an issue with anything I’ve said, be specific. Killing people is bad, so we have quite specific rules for when it’s acceptable to kill someone. What are your rules for when it is okay to censor ideas? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/62 "2025-07-10T21:02:19Z")
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how to respond to “bad” speech. Do the right thing as best we can. Occasionally that will involve “extreme” tools like boycotts or even (much more rarely) doxxing. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/63 "2025-07-10T21:11:45Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Killing people is bad, so we have quite specific rules for when it’s acceptable to kill someone. If you want to nitpick, this isn’t true. At the micro level, we have courts that decide case-by-case whether a killing is acceptable, and the decisions have been violently disputed since forever. At higher levels, the discretion given to police and the military varies tremendously from that given civilians. This is true for everything in societies, from jaywalking to porn. Even the Constitution appears to be a jello-like substance when trying to pin it down. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/64 "2025-07-10T21:12:22Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Conservatism is genuinely awful. Conservatives have been on the wrong side of every major issue in my lifetime, which started in the McCarthy era; their every thought has been fatal in any number of ways. Conservatism not only killed 100 million people worldwide in my lifetime, but millions more at home, as last seen during the Covid debacle. Conservatism has kept hundreds of millions in the U.S. living in poverty and fear for decades, and those numbers are currently ready to explode. And some conservatives in the federal government today are known Russian assets. Anyone who has ever voted for a conservative should suffer guilt by association. > > Everything I just said there is true, as true as your statement about communism, using exactly the same terms. ‘Conservatism’ is not a coherent ideology like communism. It’s an overarching term for a whole group of ideas. All modern democracies have conservative parties; they regularly attain power democratically, run those countries without notable extremism, threats to freedom, or creating widespread poverty, and give up power democratically. (The US is an unfortunate outlier in this respect.) It is not comparable to communism. And please note that I am _not_ in favour of censoring, firing, or blacklisting communists. I’d just like the same courtesy to be extended to conservatives, and any other group that disagrees with progressive dogma. And to any group that disagrees with other dogma, too: I don’t think sex researchers should be cancelled because self-righteous mobs want to virtue signal about how strongly they disapprove of paedophilia. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > A change is gonna come. It already has. The last few attempted cancellations I saw failed. People just assume it’s a nothingburger now. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/65 "2025-07-10T21:14:50Z")
If you think my quoting “A change is gonna come” was in reference to cancel culture, then it’s our communication that has truly failed. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/66 "2025-07-10T21:31:38Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If you want to nitpick, this isn’t true. At the micro level, we have courts that decide case-by-case whether a killing is acceptable, and the decisions have been violently disputed since forever. At higher levels, the discretion given to police and the military varies tremendously from that given civilians. We don’t ask juries to make it up as they go along, and decide what is acceptable based purely on vibes (imagine how biased they’d be if they did!) There are laws about when killing is legal, and the job of the jury is to decide whether a given case satisfies the conditions defined in those laws or not. Eg whether there was really a threat to someone’s life, or it was reasonable to believe there was. And the police and military also have rules about when it is and isn’t acceptable to use lethal force, and can be prosecuted if they break them egregiously enough. I daresay @iiandyiiii could tell us these rules, since he was in the navy. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/67 "2025-07-10T21:38:05Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If you wished to draw a swastika on your house, but decided against it, because you realised it might offend, that would be self-censorship. This is a very real example to me. I own a lovely little tablecloth that my grandmother made when she was a child. It is covered with hundreds of little swastikas, that she hand embroidered as a child. When it was an innocent “good luck” symbol that happened to be fairly easy to embroider. I leave it in my drawer, with the other table cloths, and don’t ever use it. Because … Yeah, partly I’m afraid I’ll offend someone, partly i wonder what they’ll think of me, and partly i don’t want to have to explain my tablecloth. I self-censor. Censorship is sometimes good and appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/68 "2025-07-10T21:46:02Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > We don’t ask juries to make it up as they go along, and decide what is acceptable based purely on vibes Right, that’s the Supreme Court’s job. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/69 "2025-07-10T23:21:51Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Right, that’s the Supreme Court’s job 🤣 Accurate. Having an unelected court deciding things is great when the decisions go your way, and terrible when they don’t. And the alternative is to let your elected representatives decide. There’s really no way around the fact that public opinion matters. Living as I do in a country without a codified constitution, where - in theory at least - any right can disappear with the next election, makes that crystal clear. Because all those rules and laws and checks and balances are only as good as the people enforcing them. They are exactly as important and powerful as you collectively believe them to be. * * * > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how to respond to “bad” speech. Do the right thing as best we can. Occasionally that will involve “extreme” tools like boycotts or even (much more rarely) doxxing. You can surely understand why I might take a dim view of someone who said “there are no hard and fast rules for when it is acceptable to kill someone”? Not because every situation is black and white and easily decided, but because having no rules or guidelines at all is so open to abuse. What would happen if an army had no rules about killing prisoners, or unarmed civilians? Having rules helps people know what is acceptable, and it reduces bias by mandating the same punishment for the same crime regardless of who committed it. It also creates a standard of evidence, which is something mob justice almost invariably lacks. I think there is a benefit to sitting down and thinking about what you find acceptable and what unacceptable, and examining your own biases here. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/70 "2025-07-10T23:28:30Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > You can surely understand why I might take a dim view of someone who said “there are no hard and fast rules for when it is acceptable to kill someone”? > > Not because every situation is black and white and easily decided, but because having no rules or guidelines at all is so open to abuse. What would happen if an army had no rules about killing prisoners, or unarmed civilians? I’m struggling awfully hard to see how this is remotely relevant to anything I’ve said. Speech isn’t murder. > [@](#): > > Having rules helps people know what is acceptable, and it reduces bias by mandating the same punishment for the same crime regardless of who committed it. It also creates a standard of evidence, which is something mob justice almost invariably lacks. > > I think there is a benefit to sitting down and thinking about what you find acceptable and what unacceptable, and examining your own biases here. If you think you have a good idea for what the “rules” should be about responding to objectionable speech, I’m listening. I still don’t know what I’ve said, specifically, that you actually object to. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2025, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/71 "2025-07-10T23:30:08Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Having rules helps people know what is acceptable, and it reduces bias by mandating the same punishment for the same crime regardless of who committed it. That’s certainly how it works in the US. /s ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/72 "2025-07-11T01:22:05Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > It is, of course, not censorship. Hollywood money can do what it wants. By some of the definitions in this thread, choosing not to fund movies based upon the ideas it encourages _is_ a form of censorship. > [@steronz](#): > > It’s probably not a good thing that Hollywood acts like an effective monopoly Yes, but that’s a broader topic. > [@steronz](#): > > and can end someone’s career over thought crimes. People say that happens, but money trumps ethics. If there’s a way to make money, someone will fund it. I mean, consider Tom Cruise at the height of his jumping up and down on couches or Mel Gibson. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > But i think “cancel culture” usually refers to “cancelling” people. (Like the red scares.) Not to refusing to publish politically charged symbols. Fair enough. I guess I’m lumping forms of preventing free expression as a means of contrast. ---
**Author:** ![TheBryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@TheBryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBryan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/73 "2025-07-11T13:15:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Does that mean that my denying subsides request to draw a swastika on the side of my house is censorship? That depends on your motive. If you, like most rational people, find the swastika offensive, then yes. That is censorship. If your goal is to prevent the defacing of your property and/or the potential loss of value to your property, then no. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > As a loud-mouthed descriptivist I’m normally on the side of those who point out that modern usages of words are determinative. Occasionally, however, I’ll balk when I think that the use actively prevents understanding. As it’s doing throughout this thread. This is a bit of an odd stance coming from someone who was attempting to assign a concrete definition to a term. But I would submit that this does more than create confusion. It’s the source of much of the conflict. Any conversation about censorship can only bear fruit if we start with the understanding that 1) everyone supports some kind of censorship, 2) censorship is oftentimes necessary and 3) censorship is not inherently evil. I think we can all agree, or at least I hope we can all agree, that child pornography should be censored. A common response I get when I say that is “that’s not censorship”. The point being, the vast majority of the people I engage with who are opposed to censorship are trying to redefine the term to fit their viewpoint when the reality is that they aren’t opposed to censorship at all. They are opposed to censorship being applied in a specific context. (closely related to this topic is the fact that, in most cases, the First Amendment only applies to government censorship) ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/74 "2025-07-11T13:45:21Z")
> [@TheBryan](#): > > I think we can all agree, or at least I hope we can all agree, that child pornography should be censored. A common response I get when I say that is “that’s not censorship”. It isn’t censorship because the SCotUS has ruled that child pornography is not speech, it’s obscenity, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/75 "2025-07-11T14:02:10Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > It isn’t censorship because the SCotUS has ruled that child pornography is not speech, it’s obscenity, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. “Censorship” and “speech” are not defined by the US Supreme Court, outside of their authority vis a vis US law. If you’re arguing that the sentence “child pornography is censored” is incorrect… I think you’re using some very specialized definitions for those words. Perhaps useful when talking about current application of the law, but not that useful otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![TheBryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@TheBryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBryan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/76 "2025-07-11T14:19:07Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > It isn’t censorship because the SCotUS has ruled that child pornography is not speech, it’s obscenity, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Thank you for helping to elaborate my point. The fact that the SCOTUS labeled this an “obscenity” is what makes it censorship. Notice that the word “censor” does not appear in the First Amendment. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/77 "2025-07-11T18:17:31Z")
> [@TheBryan](#): > > Notice that the word “censor” does not appear in the First Amendment. Neither does obscenity. The framers certainly understood - and meant - the First Amendment to apply to political speech. They were motivated by the laws of Europe, which barred attacks on the government and especially against monarchs: what was called seditious libel. Attacks against political figures therefore became immediately almost the sole purpose of 18th century newspapers; not until today has the news reached those heights of invective and lies. (Lincoln a possible exception.) John Adams responded with the blatantly unconstitutional Alien and Seditious Acts, which were revoked as soon as Jefferson took office. Only in wartime did they appear again. Very little actual censorship is practiced by the government today, with active harm the excuse as in child porn and national security secrets. The US has no laws against hate _speech_, although _actions_ motivated by hate are prosecuted as hate crimes. Looking at the history of the First Amendment is the reason I caution against confusing government censorship and private cancel culture. Utterly different domains with different intentions, procedures, and consequences. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/78 "2025-07-11T18:54:56Z")
“Freedom of Speech” is a shorthand for a specific Enlightenment era / natural rights / humanist belief, and should be understood to be nothing more nor less than that. As example, from John Milton’s Areopagitica: > [@](#): > > Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligences to join, and unite in one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but forgo this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among us, wise to discern the mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to make a Church or kingdom happy. > > Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectaries; as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every piece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that, out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure. > > Let us therefore be more considerate builders, more wise in spiritual architecture, when great > reformation is expected. For now the time seems come, wherein Moses the great prophet may sit in heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our seventy elders, but all the Lord’s people, are become prophets. No marvel then though some men, and some good men too perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret, and out of their own weakness are in agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits the hour: when they have branched themselves out, saith he, small enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he sees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches: nor will beware until he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these supposed sects and schisms, and that we shall not need that solicitude, honest perhaps, though over-timorous, of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to persuade me. > > First, when a city shall be as it were besieged and blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up even to her walls and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of, argues first a singular goodwill, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight and safe government, Lords and Commons; and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well-grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us, as his was, who when Rome was nigh besieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms. > > What would ye do then? should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions, degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capricious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others? not he who takes up arms for cote and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. Or, in short, the goal is to seek truth. If the truth is that age limits of varying kinds are harmful to society, then people should be free to make that case, so that we might one day arrive at that truth among society. If people are free to make that case, and no one is buying it, though, then age limits are free to be imposed as law and enforced through society. But still, people are free to continue making the case. There’s no saying, ever, for sure that there isn’t some argument that would sway everyone, that merely needs to be found. Just, that you do need to successfully sell people on your argument, and pass laws, before engaging in criminalized behavior. Minus that, and you’re just a criminal and creep. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/79 "2025-07-11T19:59:52Z")
> Average Reading Level Consensus > > Score: 23.8 [= grade level] > U.S. Grade Level: College Graduate > Reading Level: Extremely Difficult > Age Range: 23+ ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cancel-culture-and-canceling-versus-consequences-for-actions/1020644/80 "2025-07-11T20:03:04Z")
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