But let’s imagine for a moment that some form of sociocultural conservatism was once more in the ascendant, privileging communitarian values, a resurgent religious faith of some sort and a stronger set of mores around sexual continence and family integrity.

These are commonly values being argued for by those calling for greater ‘viewpoint diversity’. But, once in control, would such a society be any more tolerant than the diversity-oriented one to — say — a dissenter from the dominant religion or someone advocating for non-traditional family structures? My hunch is they would not.

Viewpoint diversity is an underdog argument; it was deployed by the now-ascendant liberals, who, now victorious, seek to shut it down. Of course they do: if those advocating for viewpoint diversity ever in the future gain the upper hand, they will do the same. Ideological competition is not wholly zero-sum, in the sense that political viewpoints hybridise and evolve in the course of battling for top spot. But it is nearly so. Political pluralism cannot be conceived of as an end state, only as an enabling condition for our ongoing cultural and political evolution.