I grew up in a Midwest community with a long history of racial discrimination. I came of age politically during the middle of the baby boom, at the time Dr. King was calling on America to make good on its promise of equal opportunity for all of its citizens. Especially on that issue, I identified as a liberal. Over time, I conflated liberalism with the left, seduced by cultural shorthand and the din of talk radio. History exposes the error. I came to realize that in its relentless chase for Utopia, leftism has birthed guillotines and gulags, crushing the very souls it claims to champion. Short list: Lenin and Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro. As a young activist, I believed individual responsibility fueled social good, that freer people forged stronger communities. My essay and book were not renunciation of that creed; they were a moral reclamation. 

Many assumed "leaving the left" must mean I now embrace everything on the political right. Not true, but that's how binary thinking works. The right embraced me as a prodigal son; the left settled on betrayal or even treason. (I preferred blasphemy.) Both sides missed my point by a mile. But one reader's note lingered: "Thanks for having second thoughts." Those words held the heart of it. Second thoughts are the beginning of real thought. These days I often say I'd likely learn more over coffee with a former conservative turned progressive than with a partisan who's never questioned his faith. If we've both wrestled with orthodoxy, even if we reach different truths, we share a moral bond. We know the cost of honesty, the weight of standing at the edge of our own certainties. This is the soul of pluralism: that people of good will can pursue divergent paths yet meet as equals in their commitment to truth. If "celebrating diversity" is a moral good, then diversity of thought must be its cornerstone.
 
I celebrate people who learn out loud. F.W. De Klerk, who upheld apartheid until he couldn't stomach its moral cost. Gorbachev, who loved the Soviet ideal until he saw what it had become. Or Xavier Le Pichon, the geophysicist who abandoned his theory on continental drift when the data no longer fit. These are not just political or intellectual decisions. They are spiritual acts.

We are told this is a dangerous time. It is. But the danger is not in hate speech, or misinformation, or whatever euphemism is currently being weaponized by the censors. The danger is in what we no longer allow ourselves to say aloud, the silence we impose in the name of safety. 

I entertained second thoughts not because I ceased to care, but because I reclaimed independence of thought and affiliation. Outside, the wind had picked up. Leaves rustled like old pages turning. I looked up at the sky's resounding vastness and felt it: finally, a place to think free.