“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” —Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, from the story “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

American leftists have made it contemptibly clear which direction they have chosen: They have fully embraced a burgeoning Cancel Culture, in all its book-banning, career-destroying, “un-personing,” Orwellian glory.

Dr. Seuss is Exhibit A. During 2016’s “Read Across America Day,” which occurs annually on Dr. Seuss’s March 2 birthday, Barack Obama’s presidential proclamation described Seuss as “one of America’s revered wordsmiths” who “used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear.” In 2018, President Donald Trump’s proclamation celebrated Seuss’s efforts in “uniting all Americans behind the common cause of literacy and to ensuring that every citizen receives the rewarding gift of learning how to read.”

2021? President Joe Biden made no mention of Dr. Seuss at all, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki wouldn’t say exactly why, other than to state the Department of Education instead decided to celebrate “diverse authors whose work and lived experience reflect the diversity of our country.” It is likely Biden simply capitulated to those who see racism around every corner. “Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” the Loudoun County, Virginia, school district said in a statement following its own decision to drop Seuss from its annual reading event.

Even Dr. Seuss Enterprises, an organization that ostensibly protects the author’s legacy, has capitulated to America’s racial arsonists and decided to stop publishing six of his books. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said.

No, it’s part of a broader plan to join the clamoring chorus of totalitarian wannabes looking to destroy an American culture they despise — one purge after another.

That Seuss himself was an FDR-supporting leftist who spoke out against racism? That his works include “The Lorax” and “The Sneetches” that embrace environmentalism and racial equality, respectively?

For today’s self-aggrandizing arbiters of “morality,” it’s not enough. Like their allies who embrace statue toppling and institution renaming, one’s entire life is either morally pristine — or completely canceled.

Thus, it doesn’t matter that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence codifying the idea that human rights transcend government, or that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, or that the Constitution provided by our Founding Fathers is the most enlightened government philosophy in the history of mankind.

All that matters is that dead Anglo-Saxon Europeans, some of whom owned slaves, must be considered beneath contempt.

Why? “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” wrote George Orwell in 1984.

Make no mistake: The Cancel Culture warriors are seeking full control. And it’s finally beginning to dawn on some of their own that, as it is with any movement that demands ever-increasing levels of ideological “purity,” no one is immune.

HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher apparently gets it. “Is this really who we want to become?” he asks. “A society of phony clenched a—hole avatars, walking on eggshells always looking over your shoulder about getting ratted out for something that actually has nothing to do with your character or morals? Think about everything you’ve ever texted, emailed, searched for, tweeted, blogged or said in passing, or now even just witnessed.”

Maher further asserted that Andy Warhol was wrong: “Everyone will not experience 15 minutes of fame, but 15 minutes of shame.”

Not 15 minutes, Bill. Permanent career destruction and/or societal banishment. It’s what happens in a nation where an avalanche of personal information collected by our data-mining, all-encompassing Big Tech masters can be easily accessed by those with a desire to digitally assassinate anyone of their choosing. It’s what happens when people with access to more information than ever before in the history of mankind embrace the most destructive, puerile, and infantilizing method of communication in existence, better known as social media.

America has become a digital Roman Colosseum, with a bloodthirsty “audience” rooting for the digital lion of their ideological choice to rip to shreds those they deem unworthy. And no group of Americans has become more emboldened by it than millions of younger Americans who wear their ignorance like a badge of honor. People “educated” to believe their own nation is beneath contempt.

“Mature people understand humans are continually evolving as opposed to Wokeville, where they’re always shocked we didn’t emerge enlightened from the primordial ooze,” Maher insists.

Really? Like the “mature people” who run The New York Times, where a de facto purge has claimed writers Donald McNeil Jr. and Bari Weiss and editor James Bennet? Or the U.S. Soccer Federation, which decided to remove council member Seth Jahn simply because he voiced his disapproval of the organization’s decision to repeal its anti-kneeling policy? How about those “mature” executives at Hasbro deciding that Mr. Potato Head should no longer be gender specific, those at Coca-Cola training their employees to be “less white,” or a Cartoon Network that urges children to “see color,” which is a direct contradiction of Martin Luther King’s efforts to get people to see content of character?

Last month, Amazon decided to remove a documentary chronicling the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from its Prime platform. That last month was Black History Month? Thomas apparently had the “temerity” to believe a cowardly Supreme Court should examine allegations of election irregularities instead of dismissing them out of hand. Thus, he himself must be dismissed.

Maher sees the writing on the wall: “Memo to social justice warriors: When what you’re doing sounds like an Onion headline. Stop.”

But it won’t stop until those who have created the monster get devoured by it.

There are signs. An Emmy-winning Governor Andrew Cuomo, who likely believed he could withstand the outrage of putting coronavirus-infected elders in nursing homes, will likely be consumed by a far less serious #MeToo environment he fully supported. Dedicated leftist and Bill Clinton advisor Naomi Wolf warns that “we are turning into a version of totalitarian states before everyone’s eyes.” University of Texas alumni donors have made it clear that they will stop donating millions to the university if it dumps its alma mater song, “The Eyes of Texas,” because of its Confederate origins. A virtue-signaling Golden Globes awards show lost 60% of its audience from last year.

Yet the ultimate battle remains un-fought. Until those appalled by our frog march toward totalitarianism focus on the nation’s schools, nothing will improve. Teaching children what to think instead of how has metastasized to the point where America’s school systems are fully emulating the worst excesses of Soviet Russia and communist China indoctrination.

In short, historically illiterate America-hating, race- and gender-obsessed social justice warriors are made, not born.

Nothing needs canceling more than that.