How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support — and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed? There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity. The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (that is, the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding and public awareness of the impending danger. So out of nowhere,...