One of the few things left in American newspapers that is any good is the syndicated advice column, called “Ask Amy,” that Amy Dickinson writes for hundreds of papers across the country. Dickinson’s advice is a bit old-school, which is to say it’s sensible, though those who write to her generally are not. (READ MORE: Religious Leaders Shouldn’t Be ‘Inclusive’)

Case in point: a lunatic woman who last week approached Dickinson with this entry:

Dear Amy: Four months before my daughter’s wedding, she told me that her uncle (my brother, “Dave”) would make her feel unsafe if he was a guest. She asked me not to invite him.

My daughter is very politically progressive, as are many of her friends, and although she and Dave have always had a good relationship (I thought), he is a conservative voter and has supported candidates we all abhor. Dave has always been very nice, so my daughter’s request surprised me.

I wrote Dave a very nice note, telling him that we would not be comfortable with him at the wedding and that he would not be invited. Dave did not respond and did not attend.

Afterward, I sent him a card and pictures from the wedding, all in an effort to make him feel as if he was not being totally left out. I have not heard from Dave since then. When my siblings found out what I had done, they were angry with me. That is just one problem.

Another problem is that Dave has not sent my daughter and son-in-law a wedding gift. In the past, Dave has given family members wedding checks in excess of $1,000. She says she was counting on receiving the same type of gift.

My husband says I should drop it — but I can’t. Dave’s behavior is upsetting and embarrassing to me. How can I get my brother to recognize and change his petty behavior?

Please don’t tell me that I’m the one who started this by not inviting my brother to the wedding. After all, he’s a grown man, while my daughter is young and just starting out.

– Angry in Philadelphia

Dickinson’s response was spot on, noting that the daughter in question is, essentially, a harpy, and while it’s not particularly praiseworthy to protect her from the horrific implications of having a conservative uncle attend her wedding, it’s especially lousy to rub his nose in the wedding snub by sending him pictures of what he was banned from. Then Dickinson notes this moves into all-time “Bridezilla” territory when the complaint is made that Dave has sent no $1000 check as a gift to celebrate the wedding he was rebuffed from attending.

She said nothing about the politics of this. Which is probably appropriate; she’s an advice columnist, not a political columnist. And truth be told, it shouldn’t matter that Dave is a conservative and the bitchy females in question are “progressives” — you’d say that political affiliations don’t particularly inform social graces, and that this could just as easily have been lefty Uncle Dave getting mistreated by the MAGA side of the family while demanding his filthy lucre to ease the sting of the snub.

Except that isn’t how it goes.

There have been studies on this. You’ve seen them.

There was the Pew study from back in 2014 that showed that “consistent liberals” were far more likely than anyone else to defriend or block people with differing views on social media. That was perhaps the first piece of evidence in what became a consistent display of antisocial and obnoxious behavior on the Left; such antics became unmistakable after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.

Now it’s out of control, aided in large measure by the obnoxious antics of Democrat politicians like Barack Obama, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, and others.

You may not have seen this, but it’s a perfect exposition of the mindset at work here. It’s from the student newspaper at Xavier University in Cincinnati six years ago, and it’s something of a cult classic on this issue. It’s a gay leftist attempting to explain how tolerant he is toward conservatives who might want to be his friend:

I am openly liberal and I have conservative friends, but if one of them ever tells me that they think being gay is a choice or that they don’t approve of same-sex marriage, I will immediately cut them out of my life. I am allowed to discontinue our friendships because of your beliefs. As a human, I am entitled to have my identity respected and validated, and I have the right to defriend those who challenge the validity of my identity. Other minorities, I’m sure, feel the same way.

This is where I believe misunderstandings occur. Conservatives may feel that their beliefs aren’t being respected when liberals criticize the socially right-wing. Some might even think the criticism is unfair because they personally don’t attack minorities. Some conservatives may even feel that all liberals generalize all conservatives as anti-minority.

What may not be understood is that liberals are fully aware that there are conservatives who aren’t discriminatory. However, we are aware of the large number who are, and that’s who we criticize. So, no, conservatives, liberals do not hate you because they think all conservatives are horrible people. But you should be aware that your passivity toward, resistance to or opposition of the advancement of minority causes is not well-received and may not ever be.

“As a human, I am entitled to have my identity respected and validated.” If that isn’t the mantra of the modern Left, nothing is.

And validating the artificial identities of fellow travelers is what modern leftism is all about.

So when Uncle Dave dares to offer a differing view, one that perhaps doesn’t validate a certain Bridezilla’s identity, he’s cut out of the wedding.

But, of course, his wallet isn’t. And the leftist mindset sets immediately to anger at the injustice of a non-wedding guest’s recalcitrance in supplying his $1,000 check to lefty Bridezilla’s cause.

It’s almost like that wedding gift is intended as some sort of jizya the conservative relatives are required to pay as the price of their acceptance as second-class family members — you can’t come to the wedding, but your check can.

As Dickinson notes, the amazing thing is the expectation that this will be tolerated. That it was somehow unpredictable that Uncle Dave would neglect to send a wedding gift after being told by his sister that he wasn’t good enough to darken the door of his niece’s wedding or reception.

But that’s exactly how this plays out all over the country. You know about the deplatforming of conservative speakers, you’ve seen all of the “Trump voters, swipe left” stuff in which leftist women openly blacklist men they disagree with politically, and you’ve seen the incidents like the recent one in Rhode Island where a state senator was caught keying the door of a vehicle with an anti-Biden bumper sticker out of sheer psychopathy.

It’s everywhere, and while it isn’t wholly one-sided, there is a clear aggressor in the vast majority of these incivilities.

Uncle Dave’s response was to disengage. He didn’t read his sister the riot act — it sounds like her other siblings did, and good for them. But as the aggrieved party, all Dave did was nothing.

And until he gets an apology from Bridezilla and her mother, that’s how it ought to remain.

Nobody should accept being treated as a troglodyte or a second-class citizen for holding political beliefs half the country holds. It’s wholly unreasonable to expect they would.

And yet that’s what the rest of us get all too often from the “progressive” side.

Here’s the thing, lefties — your company isn’t really worth all this work. Eventually, you get treated the way you treat others.

There’s another perfect example of this dynamic. It popped on TikTok a month ago, and it’s a typical progressive millennial decrying the fact that she doesn’t know how to attract “masculine” (read: conservative, because modern leftism holds that masculinity, at least among men, is toxic) guys:

@ms_petch shares something on TikTok that has made dating very difficult lately. She calls it “one of the saddest realizations” she has had recently. “As a liberal woman, it is really hard to find a man who’s willing to play the more traditional masculine role in the relationship in today’s day and age who is not a conservative,” she admits. She attributes certain characteristics to a traditional, masculine man: paying for the first date, opening the door for the woman, caring for and providing for the woman. She wants all of this in a man—as long as he’s not conservative.

“Obviously as a liberal woman, I do want to be respected for my independence and I do want to have my own autonomy in the relationship and not be conformed to the traditional female homemaker, childbearing role,” she continues. “And most of the men that I dated who do have that more natural provider masculinity about them are normally conservative.”

She is at a loss because she wants to be with a masculine man but doesn’t want to compromise her morals and values. She asks her followers if she is asking for too much when she requests a man she can be “equal” with while he still provides for her.

Twitter ate that poor girl alive, and for a pretty obvious reason: Magical thinking is spectacularly unsuited to productive reality. (READ MORE: Liberal Women Apparently Want Conservative Men)

A few weeks back, Melissa Mackenzie and I had The American Spectator editor Paul Kengor on The Spectacle podcast, and we talked a bit about his book The Devil and Karl Marx. Kengor noted something that fits here, which is that Marxism, which modern leftism is built on, isn’t just wrong on economics — it’s wrong on anthropology.

Meaning that people who embrace that political and philosophical structure don’t even understand how human nature works. And of course they don’t understand it — they don’t even accept that nature has rules humans can’t change, so how would they accept human nature?

It’s not surprising that they’d be surprised how people would react to things like getting snubbed from a family wedding over a political dispute.

Uncle Dave isn’t the one asking Amy for advice. He gets it, and he’s moved on. He’s not alone.