The totalitarian urge is ubiquitous in human history, though in the United States, this has been expressed more as Nanny State, less Bolshevik Revolution. Familiar examples include dictating our food choices, demonizing smokers, and, most forcefully, micromanaging personal energy consumption. These policies all begin with seductive claims that government intrusion will benefit everybody, and cooperation will be largely voluntary; but as benign admonitions fall short, pressures via fines and taxes and even criminal sanctions grow more draconian. The mentality's latest pernicious installment focuses on the longstanding black/white gap in school performance and the poverty that, allegedly, undergirds these outcomes. In...