New York City's Stuyvesant High School is one of those all too rare public schools for 
intellectually outstanding students. Such students are often bored to death in schools where
the work is geared to the lowest common denominator, and it is by no means uncommon
for very bright students to become behavior problems.

Recent statistics on the students who passed the examination to get into Stuyvesant High
School raise troubling questions that are unlikely to receive the kind of serious answers they 
deserve.

These successful applicants included 9 black students, 24 Latino students, 177 white 
students and 620 Asian Americans.

 Since this is definitely not the ethnic makeup of the general population of New York City, we
can expect to hear the usual sort of comments from those who are in the business of being
indignant and offended.

The most common of these comments is that the tests are "unfair." That is of course 
possible, but it is also possible that the groups themselves are different. Yet only the first 
possibility is allowed to be mentioned, in an age when race can be discussed only with 
pious hypocrisy and obligatory lies.

However shocked some people may be by the ethnic breakdown among students who 
passed the test to get into Stuyvesant High School, similar disparities can be found among 
students from different ethnic backgrounds in other countries around the world. Back in the
decade of the 1960s, students from the Chinese minority in Malaysia earned 20 times as 
many Bachelor of Science degrees as students from the Malay majority.

In Sri Lanka, children from the Tamil minority consistently outperformed members of the 
Sinhalese majority on university admissions tests and, in at least one year, made an absolute
majority of the A's on those tests.

Back in the days of the Ottoman Empire, Armenian students did better than Turkish students
when it came to writing in the Turkish language.

What does all this mean? That people are different. Would ordinary observation and 
ordinary common sense not tell you that? Or dare you not even think that, in the suffocating 
atmosphere of political correctness?

These differences are not set in stone. Back during the First World War, low mental test 
scores among Jewish soldiers in the U.S. Army led one mental test expert to declare that
this tended to "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent."

But many of the men taking the Army's mental tests during the First World War were the
children of immigrants, and had grown up in homes where English was not the language
used. Mental tests in later years showed Jews scoring above the national average.

Every study I know of that compares the amount of time that black students and Asian 
American students spend watching television, and how much time they spend on school 
work, shows disparities as great as the disparities in their academic outcomes.

When teaching at UCLA, years ago, I once went into a library on a Saturday night, noticed 
how many Asian students were studying -- and looked around in vain for any black students.
 How surprised should I have been when Asian students did better in the courses I taught?

A few years ago, Professor Amy Chua of Yale caused a controversy when she wrote a 
book about Asian "Tiger Moms" who put heavy pressure on their children to succeed in
school. But a more recent book ("Gifted Hands") by black neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson 
shows that his mother was as much of a Tiger Mom as the Asians.

Not only did Dr. Carson rise from the ghetto to become an internationally recognized 
neurosurgeon, his brother became an engineer -- both of them children of a poverty-stricken
mother with only three years of education. But Tiger Moms get results.Unfortunately, we are
at a stage where the interests of race hustlers is to cry "unfair" at the tests -- and they have
a lot more political clout than black Tiger Moms have. So long as the rest of us are silenced
by political correctness, racial progress on that front is unlikely.

Put differently, whole generations of black young people can continue to go down the drain 
because their fate carries less weight than fashionable racial rhetoric.
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---------------------------

 2)The Man Obama Fears the Most

Who is the man Barack Obama fears most?

If the White House’s actions toward Fox News are any clue, it’s Roger Ailes.
Ailes is the creator and chairman of America’s No. 1-rated cable news channel, 
Fox News.

A just-released biography — “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets — gives
 the first and most revealing account of the battle between Fox News and President
 Obama.

Rush Limbaugh says it’s the best book ever written about Ailes and Fox News, 
disclosing stories never before told.

Among these stories is the dramatic struggle that has been taking place between
 Fox News and Barack Obama.

To say that Obama hates Fox News may be an understatement.

Early in his first term, Obama actually sought to ban Fox News from the White 
House press corps, ripping away its press credential.

Even liberal media were aghast at the president’s authoritarian move. The Obama 
administration backed down and Fox kept its White House seat.

But no love has been lost between the two sides.

Ailes tells Chafets what he really thinks of Obama.He doesn’t mince words, saying
 the president lied to him at their first meeting, which took place in 2008 at New
 York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel with News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert
 Murdoch in the room.

Ailes also called the president “lazy,” based on the president’s own evaluation of 
himself with Barbara Walters.

Chafets recounts the private meeting between Ailes, Obama, and Murdoch.

The author gives a blow-by-blow account of the tense confrontation that ensued.

As Chafets recounts, when Ailes confronted Obama about his plans for unilateral 
arms cuts, Obama denied he ever made such a statement.

Ailes described Obama’s response this way: “He said this looking me right in the 
eyes. He never dropped his gaze, which is the usual tell. It was as good a lie as 
anyone ever told me.”

Obama became icy and his press secretary jumped up to end the meeting.

Chafets’ book is drawing high praise not only for its penetrating look at the man 
credited with building Fox News into the top-rated cable news channel, but also for
 the significant revelations it offers about Ailes, the fight with Obama, and other
 fascinating vignettes.

The book also carries credibility. Chafets is not a conservative — a frequent 
contributor to the New York Times Magazine and a former columnist for the New 
York Daily News, he was given unprecedented access to Ailes and others at Fox 
News with no strings attached.

Some of Chafets’ many surprising revelations include:
  • Obama’s obsession with Sean Hannity for “battering” him on radio and TV 
  • shows
  • How Glenn Beck’s exposé on Van Jones led to the White House efforts to 
  • ban Fox News.
  • Obama’s surprising remark at a White House Christmas party, telling Ailes 
  • that he was “the most powerful man in the world”
  • The truth about the Soros-backed efforts to torpedo the “two Great Satans” 
  • — Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh
  • Why Glenn Beck really left Fox News to start his own network
  • Fox and Hollywood: the funny account by Ailes of the time he went to dinner 
  • with Al Pacino and Shirley MacLaine
  • White House days: Ailes’ time as a media adviser to Richard Nixon and why
  •  chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and Nixon’s inner circle kept him on the outside
  • 1984: Ailes’ role in saving Reagan after his disastrous debate performance 
  • against Walter Mondale
  • Nancy and the Gipper behind the curtain: a side most people never saw before
  • The Rush Limbaugh television show and the advice Ailes gave to Rush when
  •  dealing with the liberal media — Rush has never forgotten it
  • O’Reilly wars: the inside story of how Fox dealt with MSNBC’s Keith 
  • Olbermann and why to this day, Bill O’Reilly hates his liberal critics at NBC
  • Backfire: O’Reilly’s push to sue Al Franken for his book criticizing Fox and 
  • how it helped Franken gain best-seller status
  • Kennedy clan: Ailes’ surprising relationship with the Kennedy family that goes
  •  back more than four decades

Chafets talked with hundreds of Ailes’ friends and enemies, and constructs an 
intimate portrait of the man who has been called “the most powerful in news.”

He offers revealing insights into Ailes’ relationship with News Corp. chairman 
Rupert Murdoch and Fox stars such as O’Reilly, Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, 
Megyn Kelly, Brit Hume, Shep Smith, Bret Baier and others.
Ailes gave Chafets his candid take on many of his closest friends, including Rush
 Limbaugh, and Chafets chronicles Ailes’ relationships with U.S. presidents Nixon,
 Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

And there is Ailes’ candid take on some of his critics: He called Vice President Joe
 Biden “dumb as an ashtray.”

Chafets notes that Ailes, who served as a media consultant to three Republican
 presidents, “used his populism, his showbiz savvy and his political strategist’s
 canny understanding of creating narratives to build Fox News into a huge profit
 machine for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., while helping to steer the country’s
 conversation to the right,” The New York Times observed in a review of the book.
Rush Limbaugh said Chafets’ Ailes biography is “great because Ailes opened up to
 Zev like he hasn’t opened up to anybody else.”

Limbaugh has encouraged his listeners to “get ‘Roger Ailes: Off Camera’ and you
 find out who this Roger Ailes guy is.”

Veteran political analyst Dick Morris also has touted the book, saying in a recent
 column: “Most of the time when a biography of a famous man mired in current 
controversy comes out, the reader asks an odd question: Is it favorable or not? 
Chafets’ is neither. It is accurate.

“Chafets’ book shows Ailes’ full dimensions — how the combination of a remarkable personality, creative genius and business acumen have helped him make Fox News.”

Morris adds: “Every Fox News fan should read this book.”

The Media Research Center said the bio is “required reading for anyone looking to
 gain insight into the mind of the man who created the number-one cable news 
channel in America.”
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3)Cardozo Law School's Honoring of Jimmy Carter Provides an Educational 
Moment


The ill-advised decision by a student-run journal of conflict resolution at the Cardozo Law School to
 honor Jimmy Carter provides a long overdue opportunity to set the record straight with regard to 
Carter's dishonorable history with regard to conflicts.
Carter causes conflicts by encouraging terrorism, supporting some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world,
and interfering with American foreign policy.
Let's begin with the Middle East. In 2000-2001, Jimmy Carter was advising Yasser Arafat, with regard to the 
ongoing peace negotiations with Israel. President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak had offered the 
Palestinians a state on more than 95% of the disputed territories, captured by Israel in a defensive war. They
 also offered Jerusalem as a the capital of that state. Jimmy Carter believed that if Arafat were to accept this 
generous offer his life would be at risk. He repeated that assessment subsequently in his book Palestine: 
Peace not Apartheid, in which he wrote "There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such
 terms (as the ones offered at Camp David) and survive." Carter surely shared that assessment with Arafat, who
 rejected the offer and initiated an intifada in which several thousand Palestinians and Israelis were needlessly 
killed. The blood of these victims is, at least in part, on the hands of Jimmy Carter. Had he urged Arafat
 to take the deal, we might now be celebrating a dozen years of peace and a two-state solution.
The blood of Israel's victims of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism is also in part on Carter's hands, since
 Carter has embraced every Mideast terrorist leader, while showing contempt for democratically
 elected Israeli leaders. While in Israel in 2008, he visited the grave of his "dear friend" Yasser Arafat, but not
 the graves of Arafat's victims or of Yitzhak Rabin.
Nor does he deserve all the credit he has gotten for brokering the peace treaty between Egypt and
 Israel; that peace, which cost Anwar Sadat his life, is the result of two courageous leaders: Menachem
 Begin and Anwar Sadat, who took enormous risks for peace. Carter almost ruined it by insisting that 
Egypt not take back the Gaza Strip – a decision that has cost many lives over the past 30 years. While Carter
 was president, he stood idly by the mass murder of more than 2 million Cambodians by Pol Pot.
Since leaving the presidency Carter has helped build homes for the poor, which deserves commendation. But 
he has refused to speak out against some of the worst human rights abuses committed by the Saudi 
regime, which has bought his silence by significant contributions to the Carter Center. While 
accusing Israel of apartheid, he has allowed Saudi Arabia to escape that description, despite the 
reality that the Saudis explicitly practice gender, religious, and sexual orientation apartheid.
Perhaps Carter's worst offense is to have helped the hard left hijack the human rights agenda, and 
turn it into an ideological tool to be used primarily against America and its western allies.
None of these historical facts will be mentioned by those who bestow the award on Jimmy Carter at Cardozo 
Law School.But facts are stubborn things and Carter should be confronted with these facts by 
students in attendance. The students should prepare a leaflet which would tell the truth about Jimmy Carter -- 
he should be asked to respond to these charges in his acceptance speech. He should be challenged to debate 
his record.
Jimmy Carter does not like conflict or controversy when it's about him. When Brandeis University invited him to 
have a discussion with me about his apartheid book, he refused. He likes to spark controversy and stimulate 
debate, but then he refuses to participate in the debate or respond to the other side of the controversy.
Let the students who disagree with this honor take the high road and respond to half-truths with full truths, to 
fiction with facts, and to dishonor with honor. Law schools are supposed to be places of debate. So let there be
 a debate about Jimmy Carter's dishonorable record in conflict resolution and human rights. Let the 
students of Cardozo turn this wrongheaded honor into an educational moment, so that Jimmy Carter 
will regret having accepted this undeserved accolade.
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4)

Conversations With a Bear

By 
"Stocks Likely To Crater From Here," read the subject line of an email that landed in my inbox last week.
"Sequestration cuts, weakening GDP growth, higher taxes and high gasoline prices are all but a few 
reasons why author and economic researcher Chris Martenson PH.D foresees the stock market likely to 
plummet within the coming months," it warned.
I usually ignore such hyper-specific emails, but I gave this one a look for one reason: I feel better about 
the economy now than I have in a while, and in an attempt to avoid confirmation bias, it's always best to 
bounce your thoughts off someone who disagrees with you.
So Chris and I exchanged a back-and-forth chat about the economy and investments. Here's the
 transcript, condensed for clarity. 
Morgan Housel: You cite an increase in taxes and gas prices as a reason you expect stocks to plummet
. But the last time we raised taxes in the early 1990s, stocks surged. Same with tax hikes in the 1950s. 
And gas prices are up 40% over the last three years, yet stocks are up by more than a third during that
 time. I'm not saying it's causation; just that the relationship is much more complicated than we often think
. I just don't see the evidence that higher taxes or higher gas prices automatically lead to poor stock 
returns. (And for what it's worth, gas prices have been falling for a month now).
Chris Martenson: My thinking here is that stocks do respond poorly to are falling earnings and 
recessions are a powerful driver for falling earnings. Rising energy prices are well correlated with 
recessions and so I see high gasoline prices as a headwind to economic growth. The US economy is
 barely above stall speed when measured in terms of real GDP, and is a tick below the 3.7% nominal 
growth threshold that has been breached in every recession stretching back to 1980 (and at no other
 times, I should note). It is in the context of a weak economy that I wish to observe that the recent tax 
hikes and spending cuts of the US government provide yet more recessionary weight to the current 
environment. 
Morgan: So the call, then, is for a looming outright recession? I agree that recession would be bad for 
stocks, of course. And while you can never rule out the possibility of a recession -- we're very bad at 
predicting them -- the negatives of higher energy prices and tax hikes can be countered by a number of
 things going right in the economy. Housing starts are rising at an annual rate of more than 25%, and will
 likely keep rising given low inventory and demographic trends. Household debt payments as a share of 
income are at a three-decade low, and there's evidence that consumer deleveraging is now complete. 
Energy production is booming. The near-stagnant GDP growth in the fourth quarter was almost entirely 
due to a big pullback in defense spending, which itself was the echo of a big rise in defense spending in 
the third quarter. And while gas prices have risen since last fall, prices are lower today than they were a 
year ago, and considerably lower than they were in mid-2011 -- to say nothing of real prices after 
nominal wage growth. 
I would never rule out a recession, but the odds of one occurring in the coming year seem rather low to 
me, perhaps one in five. What odds do you place on a recession occurring? 
Chris:  I consider one to be far more likely than not, well over 50% in the US ... and the combined 
impacts of the sequester and Obamacare which I peg at between -1.5% and -2.5% for 2013. The 
sequester is easy to peg, that's going to be 0.6% full year, but at an annualized rate of -1% between here 
and Oct 1, 2013. ...
You cite many positive aspects, including booming energy production, and I'm pretty much in agreement 
with all of them with two caveats. First oil production is up, but this isn't your grandpa's oil, it is expensive 
oil. With the all-in cost of production for new oil in range of $70-$90 per barrel, we'll see a nice reduction
 in our import requirements, but not in the hits to disposable income. By my records at $3.50 gal avg., 
gasoline is twice as expensive as it was a decade ago, and that is an important factor to consider.
Second, household debt payments are as low as they are principally because of low interest rates, and 
less so because less debt is being carried, an essential part of the definition of (and psychological benefit
 of) deleveraging. To put numbers to this, the Debt Service Ratio (DSR) has fallen from a bit over 14% at 
the end of 2007 to 10.4% today for a decline of ~35%. However, household debt has declined from 
$13.763 trillion (Q108) to $12.844 trillion or by just a bit over 7%. ... I feel it is essential context.
All told, I am increasingly convinced that the risks of recession are higher than not and that prudence will
 serve investors better than greed.
Morgan: So let's say we're heading for a recession this year. What's should an investor do with his or her
 money?
Chris: I am especially leery of high yield bonds which have just hit all time, as in never-before-seen, 
highs. The class of companies that comprise the high yield bond universe do quite poorly in times of 
stress, for obvious reasons.
 My general advice goes like this:
  1. Get out of high interest debt that is higher than your likely investment returns. Paying down credit 
  2. card debt, auto loans and the like is one of the better investment moves you can make. Plus it feels
  3.  good.
  4. With your next tranche of funds, invest in your house, if you own one. Investments in things like 
  5. insulation ,energy efficiency, solar hot water and/or geothermal typically have double digit returns,
  6.  sometimes even triple digit, where your only risk is that energy prices fall dramatically. It's time to 
  7. broaden the definition of 'investment' to include prudent investments to day that reduce your future
  8.  cash flows tomorrow. 
  9. Put a minimum of 10% of your portfolio in gold. I have been giving this advice since 2003 and 
  10. continue to give it because gold is the only monetary instrument I know of that is not simultaneously 
  11. someday else's liability. Given all the QE and other overt forms of debasement ongoing in the world, 
  12. coupled to negative real interest rates, and high deficit spending by governments gold has a natural
  13.  tailwind for price appreciation. However, I am most enamored with gold's hidden option potential. 
  14. Seeing that various cross-border currency stresses and imbalances are only increasing, there is a 
  15. non-zero chance that gold is one day remonetized. While that is a small chance, it remains a 
  16. possibility and this gives gold an embedded call option. Should that option value ever be realized the 
  17. gains should be rather exemplary.
  18. Got money left over? Then have your wealth managed carefully and safely with an eye on return of 
  19. principal rather than a return on principal. This is no time for buy and hold, but to carefully weigh the
  20.  risks and rewards. With the Dow and bonds at all time highs financial assets are as pricey as  they've
  21.  ever been and require a very generous future to distribute more gains to all their holders.
Morgan: I agree with a few, and disagree with others. 
High-yield bonds -- yes, they're lurking with danger. Housing -- agreed, when valued against average 
rents or average incomes, they're by and large a great deal. 
Gold, I'm skeptical. With prices surging over the last decade, the gold market appears to be well aware of 
the policies you describe. As an investor, my worry would not be that high inflation will soon take off, but
 that gold is already priced for such an event. What's more, gold has a low correlation with inflation over
 time. It correlates fairly well with A) negative real interest rates, and B) Market panic, either of which are 
entirely possible going forward, but less likely in a strengthening economy (which you and I seem to 
respectfully disagree on). And deficit spending is declining rapidly, with deficits as a share of GDP falling
 by a third over the last three years. I wouldn't count gold out, but I feel the past decade's returns have
 created a dangerous perception that it is a particularly safe asset, which history is not kind to. 
Furthermore, I think the last decade has shown that trying to time the market's ups and downs can be 
dangerous. Buy and hold, on the other hand, has performed remarkably well. No one consistently buying
 and holding a low-cost S&P 500 index fund over the last 13 years has lost money -- even in real terms,
 with dividends reinvested -- yet the number who have lost out by trying to jump in and out of the market is
 off the charts. The S&P 500 trades at 14.3 times expected 2013 earnings, which is nowhere near the 
priciest of all time. On a CAPE basis, the index now trades at 22.5 times earnings, versus 19.5 average 
since its inception in the 1950s. Robert Shiller, who pioneered the method, recently said he expects 
stocks to produce annual returns of 4% real, or 6%-7% nominal, going forward. Not a king's ransom, but 
very likely more than one will earn elsewhere. 
Let's say I'm an investor who can stomach volatility and has a long-term outlook. Doesn't it make sense for
 me to sit tight? 
Chris: Well, I guess that depends on your definition of 'long-term.' For myself here at the tender age of 
50, I consider anything over ten years 'long term' and on that basis I am just not a fan of equities (in 
general) here for reasons that go well beyond the possibility of a near-term recession.
Warren Buffet once noted that corporate profits are unlikely to grow faster than 6% per year and that 
when people forget this they are likely to get into trouble. The reason for this is that it is impossible for 
corporate profits to grow faster than nominal GDP for very long, let alone forever. Today corporate profits 
are near 11% and the main reason for those excessive profits can be traced to government deficits and 
reduced personal savings. As you note, government deficits are on the way down and, if that is a
 structural condition of the next ten years (hopefully!) then we have a serious headwind to corporate
 profits that will tend to bring them into alignment with historical norms. As a believer in reversion to the
 mean, I have a pretty strong affinity for the idea that corporate profits are due to moderate.
But more importantly, I have serious doubts about nominal GDP growth even managing to achieve the 
6%+ necessary to even support normalized corporate earnings over the next ten years. The reasons are 
related to structurally and permanently elevated oil prices (new finds are required to keep production up 
and they average $70-$90/barrel, so this is the new floor) and the still entirely too high debt levels that, 
although moderated from the recent peak, remain over 350% of GDP. To me this provides sufficient 
cause for concern that equities might badly underperform both their recent and historical performance 
over the next ten years. On the basis of cyclically adjusted earnings stocks are anything but cheap here. ...
If one does have a stomach for volatility and a long term outlook I do think there are companies and 
sectors that make sense, so I am not saying one must be entirely out of stocks, but the broad indexes are
 very much out of my favor at this time and will remain so until fairly valued and earnings are back in a 
middle historical range. I'd hate to pit myself against Robert Shiller and his call for 4% real gains in 
equities, but until and unless nominal GDP roughly doubles from here, I think a strong case could be 
made for returns near zero over the next 5 -- 10 years.
Morgan: Thanks, Chris
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---------------
5)Where's the Progress in Progressivism?
By Daren Jonescu

As we know from the climate change farce, progressives are never deterred by reality's refusal to fall
 in line with the theories they use to justify their authoritarian advances.  This obstinacy reveals the 
extent to which, contrary to honest reasoning, their political agenda determines their theoretical 
framework, rather than vice versa.  Nowhere is this more evident than with regard to the most 
fundamental premise of progressivism itself, namely the repeatedly falsified mythology of "progress."
The propensity for what we may call pseudo-theorizing has been at the heart of progressivism from the
 start.  The nineteenth century spawned a mutant philosophical subset, intellectuals for tyranny, who 
produced ersatz scientific, moral, and even metaphysical arguments to persuade men that their desire 
for unlimited state power was in fact an unavoidable inference from an objective reasoning process, 
rather than the authoritarian impulse plain and simple.  This philosophical mutation -- reason as 
handmaiden of authoritarianism, rather than as its natural rival and limit -- was made possible by the 
anti-rational turn in German thought during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most
 dramatically signaled by Immanuel Kant's condemnation of previous Western philosophy as a "dialectical illusion," in his Critique of Pure Reason. 
From that moment, intellectuals were in effect barred from taking previous thought seriously "on its 
own terms," for fear of being accused of willfully embracing the "illusion" of pursuing theoretical 
understanding about the world.  Thus was born the idea that previous thinkers were not to be learned 
from or disputed, but rather dismissed as negated -- as disqualified from even being represented in 
subsequent philosophical discussion, except as unscientific precursors to "genuine" philosophy.  Kant, 
Fichte, and Hegel cut the golden thread connecting the greatest minds across the ages, by positing a 
new theoretical framework in which all previous philosophy was by definition "immature" and lacking 
in "self-consciousness."
This was the seed of modernity's deadly invasive plant, political historicism.  In effect, this nineteenth 
century weed, authoritarianism in the guise of theory, was the latest and greatest revival of Socrates' old 
nemesis, sophistry -- the art of rhetorical persuasion in the service of political efficacy, grounded in the 
denial of any distinction between truth and power.  The basic method of this newer, more devilish 
sophistry was to obliterate the truth/power distinction by flat-out denying the reason/politics distinction. 
 In other words, the intellectuals for tyranny reduced the mind itself to the play of political forces, hence
 conflating logic, the abstract method of development in the search for knowledge, with power struggle, 
the practical mechanism of political development. 
But if logic has inexorable rules and inescapable inferences, and if political struggle is the embodiment
 of logic, then political struggle itself has inexorable rules and inescapable inferences.  By such 
arguments did history become History, an impersonal force that must inevitably play itself out to its 
conclusion.  The difference between history in the old sense and History in the nineteenth century 
European sense (epitomized by the Marxist dialectic) is that the former is understood as the collective 
product of individual men's choices, whereas the latter is, in effect, the engine of men's actions, thus
 dissolving individual choice in favor of collective movement under the control of History's unstoppable
 mechanism. 
Several interrelated conclusions follow from this theoretical reversal of the causal relationship between 
mankind and history (or History). 
For one thing, the individual human being becomes, if not an outright logical fallacy, then at least an i
nsignificant term in the new morality which flows from the elevation of political history to the status of a
 logical argument, or dialectic.  Ethical individualism is thus obliterated, in favor of a collectivism that is
 as much metaphysical as it is ethical.  (I have repeatedly noted that progressivism literallydenies the 
logical priority of the individual human being, and declares instead that the individual is derived from the
 collective.  Some may have found this description hard to believe; nonetheless it is not only true, but 
absolutely unavoidable if one radically reverses our relationship to history, as progressivism does.)
Secondly, if reason is reduced to political history, and the brute force of collective action identified with
 the force of logic, then death and oppression, the practical means of progressive authoritarianism, are
 as objective and amoral as a syllogism.  In this way, historicism becomes man's most ingenious moral 
sophistry: the rationalization of mass murder, and of carelessness about life itself.  What, after all, is 
mere individual life against the glorious march of history?  Furthermore, what is individual moral 
responsibility in the face of collective historical necessity?  This is perhaps the ultimate explanation of 
every progressive atrocity, real and prospective, from the Communist Manifesto to Bill Ayers'
 projection of the need to kill twenty-five million Americans who resist re-education; from the millions 
slaughtered by Stalin, Hitler and Mao to Barack Obama knowingly ignoring the cries for help from the 
victims of Benghazi for over seven hours, or his support for death panels and post-birth "abortion."
And from here we arrive at the ultimate implication, the nub and neatest trick of the nineteenth century 
pseudo-theoretical project of reducing the mind of man to historical conditions: the all-justifying, 
debate-proof mythology of Progress. 
Progress, in this special sense applicable to politics for the past century and a half, does not mean 
growing prosperity, technological development, increased understanding, or any of the other things we
 might regard as progress in the limited, contingent world of history understood (properly) as the 
product of the choices and actions of individual men.  (Modern liberty, for example, led to progress in
 the cause of general human prosperity.  Socrates' moral questioning led to progress in the development of human self-understanding.) 
But Progress, as this word is used by progressives, means the inescapable logic of History, leading 
mankind "forward," ultimately by means of the historical dialectic's peculiar means of drawing logical
 conclusions, namely violent upheaval, aka "revolution." 
This progressive mythology -- the myth of political history as a logical dialectic -- explains the 
Marxist "science" of determinism, in which classical liberalism, i.e., "capitalism," is reinterpreted as a
 precursory step on the road to communism.  It explains the early twentieth century progressivism of 
Woodrow Wilson and Edward Mandell House, with their statements to the effect that limited republican
 government was suited to an earlier set of circumstances, but that constitutional limits on government 
have outlived their usefulness.  It explains Obama's declaration, "We are the ones we've been waiting 
for." 
Who was waiting for someone?  How is Obama's declaration anything but a fatuous non-sequitur?  
And yet it makes perfect sense to progressives, and to those raised and educated through immersion in
 progressive mythology, for whom all humanity is always, by definition, waiting for change, i.e., for
 collective coercive authority to lead us forward towards the final conclusion of History's dialectic, i.e., 
to equality, freedom, and everything else progressives promise, if only we will join them in destroying 
the final resistance to all these good things.  If only, that is to say, we will join them in destroying all 
men who resist.
The Marxist dialectic disintegrated in the face of actual historical developments, as surely as "global 
cooling" fizzled as Earth entered a warming period in the late 1970s.  But just as the climate alarmists 
adjusted their "theory" to accommodate precisely the opposite of their original "proof," and so kept 
their political agenda alive at the expense of any believable pretense of science, so the post-Marxist 
progressives modified their rhetoric to obscure the real-world falsification of Marx's theory of surplus 
value.  And in reworking their theoretical underpinnings in order to keep the Marxist conclusion, 
progressives revealed that this conclusion -- revolution and the establishment of a global authoritarian 
state -- was their real agenda and purpose all along, and not merely the logical result of History's 
economic determinism as they had previously claimed. 
In sum, the original Marxist revolutionary dream, just like the original climate alarmist lie, was always
 susceptible to contradiction by changing historical realities, which is why its proponents urged
 immediate, radical action; even the best lie can only hold up to scrutiny for so long.  Given
 progressivism's repeated failures, both as explanation of history and as practical solution, supporting
 it with new variants of historicist pseudo-theory has become untenable as a means of overcoming the
 deficiencies of the old historicist pseudo-theory.  Such efforts have been reduced to the hot-house
 flowers of academic obscurity -- they are the angels-on-a-pinhead arguments of leftist academia.
In the wake of the disintegration of any all-encompassing grounding for revolutionary socialism, the
 latter day ("post-modern") intellectuals for tyranny have become increasingly issue-focused, hitting us
 with their ever-expanding collection of --isms, the litany of historical injustices supposedly in need of 
revolutionary correction.  Lacking an ounce of reasoning in support of their underlying principle that
 logic is political struggle -- that Thought is History -- they gamble everything on the hope that Progress
 in general is now so embedded in the public consciousness as a matter of faith that theoretical
 justification is no longer required.
Progress as a matter of faith, in defiance of all reasoning and science -- God's last laugh on the
 nineteenth century's "scientific" socialists -- is the catch-all justification for the moral and political 
absurdities that have collectively destroyed Western civilization and the modern project of individual 
liberty.  The irrational faith in the logical necessity of History, and in the irresistible need for violent 
upheaval and the destruction of the past to reach the next stage in the argument/struggle, explains so 
much of what has been most grotesque, evil, and just plain stupid over the past century.  It explains the
 Holocaust.  It explains John Dewey's lifelong fight against individualism, and his fawning over the 
promise of Soviet Russia.  It explains the Ukrainian famine and China's Cultural Revolution.  It explains
 the apologies of Western intellectuals, from Dewey to Christopher Hitchens, for Trotsky -- their way
 of clinging to their progressive dreams without appearing to approve of "Stalinism."  It explains the
 dismantling of the family, "You didn't build that," Bill Ayers as a respected professor of education, 
and Hillary Clinton's latest "impassioned" speech declaring "women's rights" the "unfinished business"
 of the twenty-first century.
"Unfinished business."  "The ones we've been waiting for."  These empty slogans gain portent and heft
 from the underlying implication that the changes indicated are not merely ill-defined policy proposals,
 but a call to participate in the inevitable next stage of History, to be part of the collective embodiment
 of Progress.  The Great Finish Line is calling us.  The alternative to heeding this call is to be part of the
 resistance to Progress, and hence to doom oneself to annihilation by History's logic of revolutionary
 change.  That is, as an impersonal logical process, History must and will work itself out; to stand 
against this is to stand against truth itself, justifying any and all actions taken by those on the vanguard
 of Progress to stamp out the deniers in the name of truth, progress, and the great god History itself. 
That history (i.e., human action) obeys the laws of cause and effect, and that patterns rooted in the 
nature of the soul will be manifested in behavior, are not controversial assertions.  That history's causal 
mechanism is fundamentally independent of human thought and choice, however -- or that thought and
 choice are merely derivative effects and instruments of the great logic of History -- is a different claim
 entirely, and one with neither theoretical nor experiential evidence.  This has not prevented the latter
 claim from becoming perhaps the most successful sophistical argument of all time.  The myth of 
History as an inescapable and inexorable logical system has worked wonders in the service of tearing 
down the structures of Western civilization in favor of establishing forms of political oppression as
 inhuman as any the world has ever known. 
Thanks to this grand sophistry, resistance to so-called progressivism is now broadly perceived not as
 standing against tyrannical men (which is what it is), but as defying the force of History.  This leaves a
ll of us who reject the pseudo-theory of historicism, with its new religion and idols of Progress, in the 
position of Socrates on trial: hated, mocked, and condemned by our contemporaries as impious and a
 threat to established power.
Our fate may be similar to that of Socrates, but so must be our defiance in the face of irrational power.
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Best,