When I cut ties with the progressive establishment to launch The Ivy Exile, I wondered how much hate mail to expect. But, gratifyingly, real humans not consumed in social media pissing matches have been mostly generous and kind, even when detailing all the ways I’m so wrong, wrong, wrong!

I especially appreciated an edifying exchange last week with a fiery lefty social worker who nonetheless strained his mightiest to meet me as halfway as possible. It was a bit like corresponding with my former self, with everything I’d been raised to believe, before I hit the brick wall of finally meeting my heroes.

The aim of this dissident Substack is less selling any fixed conclusions than making my best stab at maximum experiential honesty to help foster further consideration. That’s what real liberalism is supposed to be all about, encouraging genuine conversation now verboten under today’s vindictive managerial progressivism. I don’t need people to agree with me, but I do need people expansive enough in spirit to try to empathize with different points of view. So special thanks to @DadofDraco—a self-described “fragment of the World Spirit”—for making the effort.

[This is worth reading in full. Engagement is always better than name-calling. — Ed]