The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.

'This is how democracy works,' Barack Obama lectured the country before giving everyone the specifics of his expansive one-man executive overreach on immigration. If you enjoy platitudinous straw men but are turned off by open debate and constitutional order, this speech was for you.

Modern Democrats aren't the first political party to abuse power - far from it. Obama isn'€™t the first president to abuse executive power - not by a longshot. But he has to be the first president in American history to overtly and consistently argue that he's empowered to legislate if Congress doesn'€™t pass the laws he favors. It's an argument that's been mainstreamed by partisans and cheered on by those in media desperate to find a morsel of triumph in this presidency.

The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.

Ferguson argued that British involvement in World War I was unnecessary, far too costly in lives and money for any advantage gained, and a Pyrrhic victory that in many ways contributed to the end of the Empire.

Political correctness is one of the engines of nannyism. Allowing and even encouraging offensive ideas is vital for the intellectually health of a free society.

Aside from the occasional genocide, oppression, evil and torture, etc., it is inarguable that public policy could be implemented more rapidly in an autocracy.