There’s been quite a bit of back and forth over at Arc Digital and lesser publications about the merits of the Harper’s Letter. One of the signatories, Cathy Young, addressed it at some length in as straightforward and substantive a way possible. It’s not exactly a quick read, but it’s a worthwhile read. Unlike the sophist apologias, where people explain why they’re all for free speech, but the other side is worse, or they’re hypocrites so we can do it too, Cathy makes no excuses and refuses to bog down in ever-shifting parameters of “cancel culture.”

But there were many signatories to the letter, one of whom caught my eye in particular because, well, she’s regularly found egging on the townswoke with their pitchforks and torches. And when she signed onto the Letter, how could she know that instead of coming off as one of the elites, alongside such luminaries at Noam Chomsky, she would find herself in the midst of a shitstorm of anger and excuses by her very own tribe, defending destroying people because they deserve to be destroyed.

She managed to keep her head down. While slings and arrows were directed toward more prominently hated thinkers, few took notice that her name was on the Letter, and that if the Letter was white supremacy and patriarchy wrapped up in transphobia, she was just as guilty as any other person who claimed to care about free speech and thought (as long as it wasn’t icky, natch). But she’s now come out of the shadows to face the music.

At first I avoided wading into discourse about what’s now called the Letter. It seemed self-indulgent to write about media angst when the country is self-immolating because of unchecked disease and an economic catastrophe that’s about to get much worse. But as the debate over free speech grew and grew, I started to think I was using the burning world as an excuse to avoid personal discomfort.

A convenient reminder that there are bigger issues than Michelle Goldberg’s signing onto a letter with the very people she would ordinarily be demanding be silenced, then fired, then burned at the stake. Nifty trick, Mich, given how much you care about personal discomfort.

At the same time, a climate of punitive heretic-hunting, a recurrent feature of left-wing politics, has set in, enforced, in some cases, through workplace discipline, including firings. It’s the involvement of human resources departments in compelling adherence with rapidly changing new norms of speech and debate that worries me the most.

That was surprisingly, no shockingly, clear. Tell us more about what worries you.

In her scathing rejoinder to the Letter in The Atlantic, Hannah Giorgis wrote, “Facing widespread criticism on Twitter, undergoing an internal workplace review, or having one’s book panned does not, in fact, erode one’s constitutional rights or endanger a liberal society.”

This sentence brought me up short; one of these things is not like the others. Anyone venturing ideas in public should be prepared to endure negative reviews and pushback on social media. Internal workplace reviews are something else. If people fear for their livelihoods for relatively minor ideological transgressions, it may not violate the Constitution — the workplace is not the state — but it does create a climate of self-censorship and grudging conformity.

Notably, Goldberg still sees no issue with the heretic-hunters being on the side of truth and justice, but that it might have a chilling effect since no one can quite figure out where the edge of critical theory approved speech ends and the fall into the abyss of social justice starts.

But it’s a problem when the range of proscribed speech is so wide that the rules are hard to even explain to those not steeped in left-wing mores.

It could be a problem as well to those not inclined to let those “steeped in left-wing mores” dictate acceptable speech and ideas, but at the very least, Goldberg has justified within the limits she can understand her signing the letter. It may be less than a full-throated endorsement, but she didn’t lie and say she never agreed to sign it.

And so her fans, heads bowed, feet shuffling, appreciate her honesty and, to the extent the concept exists deep in darkest hipster Brooklyn, integrity? Not exactly.

You need “diversity of ideas and viewpoints.” Including racists? Including gross misogynist? I strongly disagree. We should not tolerate hate speech. If the speaker dislikes being cancelled, well, he should have watched his mouth. We’re done tolerating the hate of white men, we’ve suffered it for three centuries, and we’re pushing back.

Others, however, supported Goldberg’s choice and point. Not that any speech or idea they were informed was problematic should nonetheless be considered, because heresy is heresy, but that getting people fired was a step too far. Despite signing the dreaded Letter, and her personal tendency toward anxiety, Goldberg’s job appears secure. Unlike her former boss, James Bennett or colleague, Bari Weiss, but then, “we’re pushing back.”