The result has been the self-silencing of much of America. According to last year’s “Hidden Tribes” report on U.S. political polarization, “Around two in three Americans feel that there is a pressure to think a certain way about Islam and Muslims, as well as about race and racism.” Similarly, a 2017 poll by the Cato Institute found that 58 percent of Americans, most of them conservative-leaning, “believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs.”

The data confirm what one hears and experiences anecdotally all the time: In the proverbial land of the free, people live in mortal fear of a moral faux pas. Opinions that were considered reasonable and normal a few years ago are increasingly delivered in whispers. Professors fear their students. Publishers drop books at the slightest whiff of social-media controversy. Twitter and other similar platforms have delivered the tools of reputational annihilation (without means of petition or redress) into the hands of millions, so that no comment except the most private is entirely safe from the possibility of instantaneous mass denunciation.

If you’re of a certain ideological persuasion, you might think this isn’t such a bad thing — especially if you also assume the beliefs being repressed are genuinely ugly and dangerous. Up to a point, you aren’t wrong. Some opinions are unmistakably shameful. Thinking before speaking is always good practice.

America long ago crossed the point of “up to a point.” Six years ago, Barack Obama was inaugurated for a second term under five immense American flags, including the circular 13-star variety of Betsy Ross’s famous design . But Colin Kaepernick objected when Nike, the company that pays him millions per year to be a brand ambassador, emblazoned the flag on the back of a shoe, on the view that it was connected to the era of American slavery, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Nike capitulated almost immediately.

The story has resonated widely not because it’s outrageous, but because it’s predictable. It’s a similar story with Mayim Bialik’s cringing apology for her alleged “victim-blaming” in the Harvey Weinstein saga, or Adidas pulling a sneaker it had designed for Black History Month because it was white, or the firing of Google engineer James Damore because he wrote a memo that offended corporate orthodoxies.