1/ I asked folks who wished to continue following me on Twitter from anonymous accounts to identify themselves privately. I was deluged with messages explaining that anonymity is necessary because they have (some) conservative beliefs and fear being fired if their employers knew.

2/ Many people who replied in this way were academics. A few even had tenure--yet feared it could be revoked, or that their professional lives could be made untenable in other ways. Some were students who aspired to academic careers. But many were in non-academic fields.

3/ Is this the country we now live in? One in which many people feel they must hide their beliefs in order to keep their jobs or maintain their careers? One in which people live in fear of speaking their minds--worrying for their futures and their families' well-being if they do?

4/ Even as I'm composing this thread, a message came in from someone reporting professional consequences of a statement that transgressed some aspect of Woke orthodoxy: "I'm not conservative, but the Woke Taliban won't spare progressives that don't accept their platform 100%."

5/ Now I'm getting deluged with a new set of messages, most asking "What can we do?" "What can be done?" Well, since you asked: WE NEED COURAGEOUS PEOPLE TO STAND UP TO THE BULLYING. Risky? Sure. And there will be casualties. I don't pretend otherwise. But there is no other way.

6/ And decent, honorable people need to stand in solidarity with those who defy the bullies and come under fire. An attack on one must be regarded as an attack on all--any such attack threatens principles that are essential to the functioning of universities and decent polities.

7/ Progressives have come under attack as well, sometimes from the Woke, others from the right, and conservatives need to defend their rights as fiercely as we do our own. Liberals and civil libertarian progressives need to adopt the same stand toward the rights of conservatives.

8/ Our fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers at ages 18, 19, 20 bravely fought the armies of the Third Reich, or fought valiantly under appalling conditions in the Pacific. Many of their comrades fell in combat. Shall we tremble in fear of...nothing remotely comparable?