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WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murray's appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced "eugenics," thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In "The Bell Curve," Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming "cognitively stratified," with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and "a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution." They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were "resolutely agnostic" concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are "part of the story," there would be "no reason to treat individuals differently" or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middlebury's mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivism's premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders' natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to "social Darwinism" belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science "we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part."

Progressivism's concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era," says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in society's saddle, determining the "human hierarchy" and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said "God works through the state," which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: "We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation." Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing "that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind." The mentally and physically disabled were deemed "defectives."

In 1902, when Wilson became Princeton's president, the final volume of his "A History of the American People" contrasted "the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe" with southern and eastern Europeans who had "neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence." In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jersey's, which applied to "the hopelessly defective and criminal classes." In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia's law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of "imbeciles" he was "getting near to the first principle of real reform."

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Army's findings influenced Congress' postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Army's data demonstrated "the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups."

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middlebury's turbulent progressives should read Leonard's book. After they have read Murray's.

George Will writes for the Washington Post. His syndicated column appears Sundays and Thursdays.

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Progressives part with their past - Bismarck Tribune

After the epic failure of the Democratic Party losing to a reality TV star in November theres been (the predictable) talk among the party aboutreflection.

Apparently corporate media executives skipped those meetings, as they continue to force feed the same stale, Democratic political operatives whose collective failures and faulty thinking created President Trump.

Over the last 24 hours, Ive seen disgraced former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, Hillary Clintons communications chairman Jennifer Palmieri, and Clintons longtime aide and adult fan girl Neera Tandenall on MSNBC to fear monger on the great Russian boogeyman and give their pearls of wisdom on how to resist President Trump.

Over on CNN, the network continues to book the same establishment Democrat pundits who graced the screens before the election. You know, the ones who were wrong about Clintons strength, Trumps unpalatability, and how angry and economically hurting a substantial portion of America is (easy to miscalculate when they all live in coastal bubbles).

One of the figures who led the pack of Democratic Party dummies was John Podesta, who WikiLeaks exposed as a ruthless, tone-deaf, and stone-cold political operative whose elitism and embrace of 1990s political thinking helped push an inauthentic, unpopular candidate like Clinton, while helping to smear a verypopular Bernie Sanders. (For his great success, he landed a cushy columnist gig with The Washington Post.)

Dont get me wrong: Im not saying being politically inept and questionably corrupt means you dont have the right to go out and earn a living. This Murderers Row of centrist, slayers for the status quo, have every right in the world to appear on cable news and in prestigious newspaper columns. More power to them.

The question is: Why does the corporate media, who sat stunned after Donald Trump became President Trump, reflexively go back to the same well that got everything so wrong rather than, gee, I dunno, book some progressive pundits who warned against the catastrophe lying ahead if the establishment pushed Clinton as the nominee.

Not to be a homer for my boss, but as Cenk Uygur wisely forecasted, Iceberg right ahead! as early as last summer.

But you dont see Cenk on cable outlets or in The Washington Post much. OrSanders national surrogate Jonathan Tasini, who loudly warned against a Clinton nomination and underestimating Trump; or Glenn Greenwald, whose website The Intercept did some of the best reporting on Clintons conflicts and corruption during the campaign (cable news will have him on only to fear monger and try and pound him into submission over Russia).

The list of other strong progressives whose political instincts were much sharper and correct than the usual suspects continuing to stain the airwaves is long: Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, David Sirota of International Business Times, Lee Fang of The Intercept, Michael Tracey of The Young Turks, Shaun King of The New York Daily News/The Young Turks, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and many more. (Ironically, these figures probably view it as a badge of honor not to take part in the corporate-media-industrial-complex echo chamber, but thats not the point.)

What corporate media is showing in its continual embracing of failed politicos who excel in regurgitating progressive-sounding platitudes but, in reality, love the big-money, Wall St. Democratic Party theyve helped build, is that they themselves want the status quo.

Cable news, print, and digital would rather follow the day-to-day web of President Trumps tweet storms and the resistance to him than focus on the exploding progressive movement swirling around this country (and winning many local legislative seats).

And why wouldnt they? These failed pundits are their friends: As WikiLeaks showed, Chuck Todd held Jennifer Palmieris birthday party at his home during the campaign; bigger picture, the revolving door between anchors and columnists and pundits and operatives has been wide open for years.

As I exposed, Donna Brazile was literally feeding questions to the Clinton campaign while working as a CNN contributor so naturally, MSNBC had to have her after her DNC Chair position ended!

For the Americans who still consume traditional news on TV or in newspapers, the result of being continually exposed to these failed politicos who keep passing on their failed ideas and thinking is the status quo remaining.

After all, why would voters choose something different if they have no idea there is a progressive movement exploding all around them.

Jordan Chariton is a Politics Reporter for The Young Turks, covering the presidential campaign trail, where hes interviewing voters on both sides. Hes also a columnist for Mediaite and heres his latest column. Follow him @JordanChariton and watch videos at YouTube.com/tytpolitics.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Why Media Still Loves Failed Corporate Democrats Over Progressives - Mediaite

Saber-rattling, or agenuine threat? Left-wing groups arewarning Democratic Senators that if they don't fight against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, they may find themselves out of a job. It's unclear if these organizationshave the wherewithal or resources to follow through on that challenge, but Chuck Schumer's caucus is no doubt acutely aware that their base is demanding nothing short offull-blown "resistance" at every turn -- and some of the loudest elements of said base are making sure that these lawmakers never forget it (via Jazz Shaw):

A "do or die" issue, says the woman from the extremeabortion lobby. Fact check: Literally true. A quick digression on abortion, since the Left is obsessed with maintaining America's radical status quo on the issue: In case you missed it, Planned Parenthoodturned down an offer from the Trump administration to maintain its federal funding if the organization stopped performing abortions. That's no surprise.Despite all the misleading and downplayingspin, abortion is amajor component of Planned Parenthood's business model -- especially when they could augment their revenues through theghoulish sale of harvested fetal organs. It should be underscored that in the event that Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would not become illegal nationwide; instead, states would set their ownabortion-related laws, with some abortions remaining legal in all 50 states. Many jurisdictions would, however, implement additional common-sense restrictions on the practice, a good number of which arebroadly popular with the American people. Anyway, back to Gorsuch. The Hill piece notes that conservatives are "winning the message war," as liberals have failed to convince the public that Trump's pick is an extremist:

Yet some within the professional Left are ratcheting up their threats, led by unserious bomb-throwers like Michael Moore (who recentlytweeted about the wonders of Socialism in, um,collapsing Venezuela):

These rumblings must be music to the National Republican Senatorial Committees' ears. The Democrats' left-wing base is not representative of the overall American electorate, especially in the 30 states carried by Donald Trump last fall. Senate Democrats from ten of those states (this list, plus Michigan)are up for re-election next year; five of whom represent states Trump won by 19 percentage points or more. If incumbent Democrats are forced to spend energy and money fending off insurgencies from their ideological left, they'll be in an even weaker position in a general election setting. Numerous Democrats have already indicated that a Gorsuch blockade isn't going to materialize, with somecandidly admitting that he'll be confirmed. I'll leave you with some positive reviews from Democrat-aligned Maine Sen. Angus King, who's sounding an awful lot like a "yes" vote:

Parting thought: If thenot-entirely-unsubstantiated buzz is true, and there's another vacancy on the Court opening up in the relatively near future, the calls for an all-out Democratic filibuster will grow much louder. If Schumer and company choose togo that route, Senate Republicans must be prepared to follow through on the Reid Rule and break the filibuster with 51 votes, or re-implement the'two speech' precedent. The stakes would be too high not to hold Democrats to their own standards.

Tillerson Recuses Himself from Keystone Pipeline Decision

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Angry Progressives: Damn Right We'll Primary Democrats Who Don't Oppose Neil Gorsuch - Townhall

CJ Letters Published 3:09 p.m. ET March 9, 2017 | Updated 15 hours ago

Yes, we provoke, poke, prod, and challenge our students.(Photo: Illustration - ALLVISIONN, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Regarding liberal bias in academia, Dr. Jones says, Admittedly, there are probably more liberal and progressive thinkers in the professorate than not. He then tells us that the more educated you are, the more liberal you are, on average. Then he says that he is in the less than 1.7 percent of the population that has a Ph.D., that he is educated, smart and a thinker. The only thing missing is but best of all, Im not conceited!

So, education yields progressives, which yields thinkers. Ergo, conservatives are not thinkers. Since he thinks his job is to teach his students to think, the only way they can demonstrate proficiency is to become more liberal. Therefore, professors arent biased; theyre just trying to get those dumb conservatives to think.

Paul Stine

Louisville 40204

It is coincidental that on the sameday I read Professor Ricky Jones' columntouting the intellectual superiority of liberal college professors I also read an article in the conservative magazineThe Weekly Standardon the death of conservative intellectual Michael Novak by Joseph Bottum, who writes, "If you can't picturea worldwithout widely read outlets for intellectual conservatism --a worldin which socialism and secularization were the unquestioned air thatallAmerican thinkers were assumed to breathe -- you should offer a prayer for the life of a man named Michael Novak."

Personally, I suspect thatJones has spent much of his life and time hobnobbing with professors of like-minded ideology and that his question of "why do well-educated people tend not to self-identify as conservative" suggests he is likely oblivious to the intellectual conservatism that abounds outside the confines of college campuses. Most liberals believe they should be in control of our culture, our society, and our nation for the simple reason they believe themselves smarter than the rest of us. Professor Jones need not worry about being considered "dangerous." He is so only to those who are actually convinced of his superior ability tothink.

James A. Ritz

Salem, Indiana 47167

Read:Yes,professors are dangerous | Ricky Jones

Read:Trump,Bevin are both bullies | Ricky Jones

Read:Trump,'true' Americans triumph | Ricky Jones

Read:RickyJones on bullies in leadership | Letters

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Liberals in the classroom | Letters - The Courier-Journal

Since the election of Donald Trump, liberals and leftists have been discussing how to best respond to American conservatisms transformation from a shopworn, Cold War, anti-government philosophy into something else.

To the anarchists and socialists who consider themselves part of the global antifa movement (an abbreviation for anti-fascist), the transition currently taking place on the right is all too familiar. The rise of the alt-right and white nationalism within the U.S. is something the mainstream left doesnt take seriously enough, they say, even as many Democrats compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

If it is actually true that the civic nationalism of Trump and his top strategist Steve Bannon are helping to lay the groundwork for a more radical right intentionally or otherwise then their self-described opponents on the left need to do more than wear safety pins and post Facebook denunciations of the president they didnt vote for.

As Natasha Lennard wrote earlier this year at the Nation, coming to such a realization is difficult for many on the left. (Lennard is a former staff writer for Salon.) Despite their posture of desiring radical change, most are actually conservative in a certain sense:

Liberals cling to institutions: They begged to no avail for faithless electors, they see evisceration in a friendly late-night talk-show debate, they put faith in investigations and justice with regards to Russian interference and business conflicts of interest. They grasp at hypotheticals about who could have won, were things not as they in fact are. For political subjects so tied to the mythos of Reason, it is liberals who now seem deranged.

Instead of merely talking among themselves about opposing racism, say the antifa activists, leftists need to take direct action to make being a white nationalist as difficult as possible. Thats why many antifas have concentrated their efforts on such tactics as doing targeting the financial means of support of websites they see as enabling or promoting fascist views, and even engaging in physical acts of assault against members of the far right.

Only by fighting and destroying fascism can we actually defeat it, an anonymous members of the website Its Going Down told Salon via email.

The antifas anonymity is one of several superficial characteristics they share with their bitter rivals on the alt-right. Another is that they take politics much more soberly than their less extreme counterparts. For the antifas, understanding that white nationalists are deadly serious about instigating a racial holy war is the key to countering them.

During the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, while anarchists and communists were literally fighting the fascists in the streets, the liberals and social democrats attempted to debate the Nazis point for point in the halls of power, the anonymous activist continued. This did nothing, and also normalized the positions of the Nazis and also made them into legitimate positions.

The center-leftsdesire for an open society is itscritical weakness, a Nebraska-based antifa collective told Salon via email.

Liberalism [has] proven itself unable to prevent the rise of fascism over and over again, the activists said. By the time liberals are comfortable with cracking down on fascism, its almost always too late. Antifa wants to make sure that no roots can take hold; that every attempt to organize and recruit for the fascist agenda is physically confronted and shut down.

Beyond targeting far-right activists financial means and showing up to physically confront them at their events, many antifas have made it their mission to expose the true identities ofpopular alt-right figures so they cannot hide their views behind pseudonyms. The Nebraska activists provided an example of theis tactic last December when they exposed the identity of Cooper Ward, a University of Nebraska student who was outed as the co-host of a popular neo-Nazi podcast. He quit the program after being identified and has not returned.

Building a fanbase as an overt racist has become much easier in the eyes of some antifa thanks in part to the mainstream media, several antifa activists told Salon.

There is nothing objective about writing [an] article about alt-right neo-nazis without including perspectives of their ideological opposites, argued the Nebraska activists. We have noticed a marked lack of Antifa views in the mainstream media; we are denied a voice while they are elevated and made to seem mainstream.

That alleged refusal to allow the antifa voice to be heard within mainstream journalism pieces about the alt-right is indicative of a systemic bias on the part of the press, Its Going Down wrote:

The world the Alt-Right wants is not that much different from the one we live in now, just one where the class, gender, and racial divisions are more crystallized.

Anarchists, who fight for a world where power is horizontally organized and political power is taken out of the hands of a centralized State and decentralized into human communities, where people dont work for wages but instead human labor is put towards needs and job, and where industrial production is destroyed in favor of sustainability is such a radical vision, and one that truly seeks to liberate all poor and working-people from the sinking Titanic that we now currently inhabit, most journalists dont want to touch it.

Antifa activists also take issue with liberals who think that letting people with racist or anti-Semitic views state them publicly somehow serves as a method of relieving societal pressures. Instead, as an anonymous essayist on the anarchist website CrimeThinc expressed it, such expressions merely increase the reach and influence of the far right:

Fascists are only attempting to express their views peacefully in order to lay the groundwork for violent activity. Because fascists require a veneer of social legitimacy to be able to carry out their program, giving them a platform to speak opens the door to their being able to do physical harm to people. Public speech promoting ideologies of hate, whether or not you consider it violent on its own, always complements and correlates with violent actions. By affiliating themselves with movements and ideologies based on oppression and genocide, fascists show their intention to carry on these legacies of violence but only if they can develop a base of support.

The antifas brutal approach to politics has earned them no love from many liberal and leftist quarters. Even Occupy.com has featured a highly critical essay of the anonymous activists for being a a devolution in the philosophy of the left.

Radical and even violent action against the far-right probably does alienate some people, antifas are quick to admit, but it is also clear that direct street action also attracts support in ways that political speechifying or angry letters to the editor simply cannot. It is certainly true that more extreme supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have made many right-wingers more antagonistic toward advocates of police reform. Its also true that both the mainstream Democratic and Republican hierarchies were completely ignoring the issue before fires began burning in Ferguson and Baltimore.

An anonymous essayist writing at IGD late last year explored this point in detail:

Liberals and much of the Left claim that confrontational tactics hurt us more than they help, from breaking windows to blocking streets. But in reality, each and every time this plays out in our communities, it is simply not the case. In fact, confrontation and disruption, in other words: physically fighting, brings more people in than sign holding or writing letters to the editor ever did. If anything, the wet blanket and attempts to control things by protest managers and liberals kills social movements, not combative actions which can be disruptive and at times violent.

We see this playing out in every social struggle and movement. The riots, blockades, and clashes with the police in Occupy Oakland grew the size and scale of the movement, and were themselves informed by the Oscar Grant riots and student occupations of several years prior.

The Ferguson Insurrection inspired youth across the country and led to other uprisings and rebellions which pulled in tens of thousands. Despite leaders within the Black Lives Matter movement attempting to endorse the Democrats, channel the movement back into politics, and reduce it to simple reforms, the movement continues to evolve and remain combative and disruptive over a period of several years.

Liberals and Leftists claim that confrontational actions scare away people from getting involved. But we find the opposite to be true. When people see a struggle is real; when there is skin in the game, something to fight for, and people are putting their bodies on the line, they often come out in droves. It is symbolic and legalistic protest which is pointless and doesnt work and ends up turning many people away.

By definition, the antifa arguments are both radical and controversial. The unanswered question is whether liberals, moderates and others who oppose the radical right can learn something from the antifas confrontational stance. Or will the violent tactics advocated by the antifas only worsen tensions in a divided society and beget more violence?

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Anti-fascist radicals: Liberals don't realize the serious danger of the alt-right - Salon