But for the average online anonymous commenter, I suspect they fear something much less far-reaching and far more immediate—namely, the nosy secretary down at the office “accidentally” stumbling upon the Facebook comment you once made about how you think Donald Trump is funny, leading her to demand that the lesbian boss fire you immediately. If you used your real name, you’d have to deal with the constant terror of some humorless fanatic breathing down your neck and searching for a thought they deem unacceptable and deserving of punishment.

I don’t want to live in that kind of country.

I don’t want to live in a country where I’m constantly biting my lip for fear of offending someone into yet another tiresomely spontaneous conniption. It’s only when you stop biting your lip that you realize how hard you’ve been biting it all along.

These days, people who express opinions that fall afoul of KultMarx orthodoxy are essentially where the gays and communists were in the 1940s and 50s—living in a closet, afraid to reveal their faces for fear of brutal public retribution.

So, yes, I understand why people use screen names. It’s because the current cultural regime is insane and totalitarian. Modern elites see nothing wrong with using their dippy, drippy, and bourgeois-hippie notions of morality as a hammer with which to crush you.

But do you want to live in that kind of a country?

Whether or not you’d like to pretend otherwise, censoring your own name is an act of surrender. If you’ve been frightened into anonymity, you’re conceding power to people who don’t like you and who don’t like what you have to say. It’s an act of submission. It means you’ve agreed to play on their game board. And the more that people willingly toss themselves down the Spiral of Silence, the less likely they are to uproot the powers that have scared them into silence in the first place. As long as they’re keeping you scared, you don’t have a fighting chance.

I’d like to live in the type of country where you can express any opinion and people don’t wind up publishing your mother’s home address and urging some schizophrenic meth head high on “justice” to slash her throat.

Forget what anyone else tells you—the reason Trump won is because he has balls and he fights back. No one can frighten you into silence without your consent.

Therefore, come out of the closet, ye bigots, and be proud! Instead of letting the leftist freaks run the game board and having you live in constant terror of being doxed, maybe it’s best to declare your identity to the world, as well as announcing that you have several firearms and trained attack dogs ready to repel anyone foolhardy enough to pay you an unwelcome visit.

Otherwise you’re living in fear, and people who live in fear can never really be free.