The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie. —Joseph Schumpeter

Modern liberals and progressives have never been able to come to terms with the fact that some people just don’t embrace their worldview–that is, that the state should be the primary instrument of social change. Advocates of limited government see centralized power as dangerous–not only in terms of threats to human liberty, but in terms of economic decline. Like Madison, we know that men are no angels. Progressives, on the other hand, cannot imagine a world without elites running things. Higher education – a cloister for “progressive” thinking – has always been the place where Utopian plans are conceived before being passed to the pamphleteers–and then tossed into the sausage grinder of government. But their methods are changing. There’s a new twist on an old m.o. Call it “manufactured consensus.”