But I don't want to talk about Ayn Rand. The article was never even about her. I just gave a list of people and things that I perceived were damaging or crazy as an example to illustrate my point in that article. As a result, I got pulled into an angry shouting match where people insisted I should be ashamed to have criticized their favourite author, and all of my (entirely unrelated) posts got downvoted. I take issue with the fact that there is this one group of people (no idea how large) on Less Wrong that gets to silence dissent like this, and everybody else just sits there and nods along because they're not allowed to discuss politics.

It doesn't matter to me how radical your political views are. What matters to me is whether you are willing to entertain people with other views, or just want to shut down all dissent.