Commentary We live in an age of social engineering, in which unprecedentedly large numbers of people know, or think that they know, what is best for society. They mistrust spontaneity, believing it necessarily to result in injustice, and have a profound faith in their own wise guidance, under which humanity will at last be led to the sunny uplands of freedom, justice and equality. It does not generally occur to them that their desiderata may conflict with one another. The most important tenet, perhaps, in the drive for totalitarian social engineering of the proto-Stalinist variety is that all differences in desirable—or at least desired—outcomes between identifiable groups, even in the most open society, can only arise from injustice or the exercise of illicit influence by the already powerful. This idea is now so deeply entrenched in a large part of the intelligentsia that it has become almost an unassailable orthodoxy. …