A year and a half ago I sent an email to a woman I admired who works as an herbalist, inviting her to be a guest on my podcast. I received the following response:

Based on our review of the podcast, past guests, and the way some messages have been platformed/discussed, we are concerned that this collaboration does not align with our core values and so must decline.

It was August 2021, and I had just released several episodes that I knew were controversial, but that I was confident I had presented in a respectful, intentional, and balanced manner. I interviewed Steve QJ, an African American man, about his concern that some aspects of anti-racism rhetoric might be contributing to racism, as opposed to helping to eliminate it. I interviewed Rachel Foster, a woman who had transitioned to become a man, only to realize years later that she was not in fact a man, but simply a different kind of woman than what she was told a woman was allowed to be as a part of her (sexually) abusive, Christian fundamentalist upbringing. I had also interviewed Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian woman who made a brilliant film called Dysphoric (featuring Rachel Foster), exploring the possible connection between global misogyny and the increase of female-to-male gender transitions worldwide, especially in extremely misogynistic places like India. Lastly, I had interviewed  Clementine Morrigan and her partner Jay, two of the most left-leaning humans I know, who spoke about the authoritarian nature of cancel culture, and the damaging effects it’s had on both of their lives, and the lives of many others.

So, okay. I get it. These sorts of conversations rarely appear in “liberal,” left-leaning spaces these days. But to be clear, this is not because they contain any implicit critique of liberal values. I have always been a staunchly supportive of liberalism which, for the sake of brevity, I will summarize as a belief in equality and opportunity for all, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation and economic background. Instead, the reason these conversations are hard to find in liberal, leftist spaces is because under the spell of “wokeness,” liberals stopped believing that it was important for liberalism to extend not only to their (supposed) values, but also to the strategies used to uphold, promote, and defend those values.

In this article on ethics.org.au titled “Calling Out for Justice,” Oscar Schwarz writes that, “While there may be instances of collateral damage [as a result of cancel culture], even people innocently accused, a more pressing problem to address is how and why institutions we are supposed to trust are deaf to many of the problems facing … minority groups.”

In other words, many liberals have come to believe that the end justifies the means – a phrase coined by Niccolò Machiavelli, the infamous 16th century father of political science whose philosophy for acquiring and maintaining power depended upon removing ethics from politics.

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