Following pressure from Democratic leaders in Congress to stop transacting with gun and security companies, U.S. banks and financial institutions have begun implementing seemingly politically motivated service denials. “How did this happen?” an emboldened Ocasio-Cortez asked on Twitter. “Through organizing people & public pressure!” Just imagine the media reaction if a similar effort were organized against progressive companies and causes.

A recent letter signed by nearly 150 authors and academics, including J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky, suggests as much. Although the politics of most of the signers may lean leftward, these liberals and leftists have enough foresight to understand that “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted” by a growing movement to cancel individuals, businesses and ideas that one political class may disfavor.

On this liberals and conservatives should agree: cancel culture threatens innovation, creativity, scientific progress, freedom and any hope of unifying our country. In sum, it cuts off the very legs upon which this democratic republic stands. If president-elect Biden truly means what he says about unity, he can start by consistently condemning acts of cancel culture at every turn.