One of my favorite recurring features in the mainstream media — maybe it’s a favorite of yours as well — is when some progressive liberal in The New York Times or The Atlantic or elsewhere writes a column on how to avoid your conservative family members during Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or even the Fourth of July.

The premise of these articles is always the same: The toxic rightwing views of your grandma, or your Uncle Steve, or your great aunt Betty, constitute a form of emotional labor that you, a good, moral, upstanding progressive should not have to be subjected to.

Some of these entries don’t merely suggest that liberals should avoid and shun rightwing family members and friends — they actually suggest that you should belittle or mock them. You may remember a ghastly Los Angeles Times column with this title: “Mocking anti-vaxxer’s COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but necessary.”

Indeed, COVID vaccine skeptics were a favorite target of liberal op-ed writers year after year. But now, one card-carrying member of the liberal........

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