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John Derbyshire Knows There Are Worse Things In Life Than Being Canceled

A new collection, The Essential John Derbyshire, shows that the politically incorrect columnist remains more insightful and relevant than many of the supposed conservatives who played it safe.

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Besides killing cats, curiosity can also cancel commentators. In an age where language is aggressively policed and taboos continually proliferate, writers who stray just a bit too far from accepted opinion or ask one too many questions can find themselves shut out from polite society. Although the names of most cancelation victims vanish without a trace, there are a few with enough talent and stubbornness to continue writing in spite of it all.

One such writer is the British-American writer John Derbyshire, once a frequent contributor for publications like National Review and the Wall Street Journal, but then dropped because of his arguments on race. Specifically, Derbyshire noted the alarming rates of violence and dysfunction among black Americans and felt compelled to push back against falsehoods obscuring this fact. Like any good writer, he backed up his claims with solid evidence and avoided unfair generalizations, but America, particularly during the Obama administration, was not ready to have this discussion.

Even for the commentariat today, most will express discomfort with Derbyshire’s candor. Some of this is due to the ongoing (though diminishing) influence of woke culture, which still censors honest discussions about race, while some of this has to do with Derbyshire’s views on immigration and establishment conservatism (what he would call “Conservatism Inc.”).

And yet, as The Essential John Derbyshire — a collection of his essays from 2000-2025 — demonstrates, the so-called “mainstream” conservative movement as a whole suffered a far greater loss than Derbyshire himself did. While the latter went on to continue writing, the former has become increasingly irrelevant or outright........

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