Shortly after President Joe Biden spoke of uniting the country last week, Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center think tank quipped on Twitter, ¡°If Biden really wanted unity, he¡¯d lynch Mike Pence.¡± The joke ¡ª in case it doesn¡¯t sound funny to you ¡ª being that Pence is now hated on both the left and the right.

Wilkinson quickly lost his job. And the reaction was predictable: Fox News reported the tweet at face value. Reason magazine condemned ¡°cancel culture.¡± And other public intellectuals on Twitter fretted that if it can happen to Wilkinson, ¡°it can happen to any of us.¡±

That¡¯s right. It can happen to anyone ... who jokes on Twitter about lynching the vice president.