Welcome to the podcast. My name is Douglas Wilson. This is episode 381. 3801.

So what I want to talk about today is the troubling trend of people using anonymous accounts online.

And one of the troubling things about it

is that people are just flatly refusing to make obvious distinctions that need to be made.

So, for example, let's say someone works for a big corporation, and let's say this corporation

has an HR department that is sort of hyped up on steroids and would attack, fire, ruin the

life of anybody who disagreed in any way with the policies of the company or the

zeitgeist of the current woke left. Okay. And let's say that there was some guy who worked for

this corporation. And let's say he started a Twitter account or a blog that was

anonymous. And what he did with this anonymous account was he wrote long form articles on why

this particular policy or this particular issue was contradictory, unjust, and wrong.

Okay.

If he wrote this way, he would be writing in the same spirit that John Jay and

Alexander Hamilton and Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers.

The Federalist Papers were newspaper articles that were written in defense of ratifying the Constitution,

answering objections, and doing that sort of thing. There are all sorts of reasons

why someone might want to maintain anonymity in arguing for a particular position. It might be

humility. It might be they don't want to cause embarrassment or controversy for the family.

Or, you know, there are all sorts of good and righteous reasons why someone might want to

be anonymous. And particularly, if someone writes anonymously in a tyrannical state where

the Gestapo or the Secret Service will bust down your door in the middle of the night,

there are excellent reasons for writing anonymously. What isn't okay is personal attack,

...