This is a very funny thread, with more than a grain of truth in it. A couple points. https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1194742959243169792

1. In my experience, it’s not just conservatives who self-censor, but a lot of left-of-center establishment types.

2. A lot of this is due to 2016. A lot of conservatives responded to 2016 by saying "Hey, a lot of things I thought were true were maybe not true!" and responded by broadening their intellectual horizons, and putting questions where they used to have certainties.

A lot of conservatives are now reading Steve Sailer, sure—but a lot of conservatives are also now reading Jacobin! And @matthewstoller

3. What’s exceedingly odd isn’t that this should be happening, but that this should horrify so many progressives.

Progressives seem to be reacting like Bourbon restorationists, or ultramontane Catholics, did after the French Revolution, by hardening dogma and crushing dissent. Which of course only ‘worsens’ what they’re trying to prevent.

One of the strange features of our age is that self-described progressives and liberals should recoil with horror at atrocities like "reading widely," "questioning dogma," "understanding different points of view," or "trying to think for oneself."

4. You will think I’m trolling, but for once I’m dead serious: I’m constantly struck by how contemporary progressivism takes the form of a religion (or belief system) characterized by an intense focus on ritual purity.

There’s a fascinating obsession with proximity. Who is on a stage with whom. Who talks to whom. Who is friends with whom. It’s truly bizarre, and self-evidently unhealthy.