Some thoughts to consider from the world of higher education.
"Conservative professors are
frightened, invisible, and often embarrassed. Ideological exile is
scary. It gets tiring when colleagues ask you to defend birthers, the
Westboro Baptist Church, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, George Zimmerman,
and David Horowitz before you've even had your morning coffee,
especially when they are going to vote on your tenure."
"The ignorant
asides about Fox News are usually thrown in during department meetings,
somewhere between announcements of the latest conference about
homosexuality and elections to the personnel review committee. Hold
your tongue and count to ten, then scream as you jog at dawn the next
day."
For a very good example of how this has happened, read Thomas Sowell on intellectuals.
Actually, you need to read everything by Thomas Sowell anyway-but particularly his astonishingly clear thoughs about intellectuals, and his explanation of the mindset of the "annointed" and of those who hold a more "tragic" view of life and human nature.
