Google has long been a leftist company.

America's liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected ivory towers for the pseudo-elite who earn their livings writing papers nobody reads about gender roles in the poetry of Maya Angelou.

Google is a private company. It has the capacity to utilize its massive power for whatever political agenda it chooses. But for it to pretend to be an advocate for Internet freedom while simultaneously disadvantaging messages it finds politically incorrect is deeply hypocritical.

There is no greater way to ensure that universities remain a hotbed of leftist thought than to guarantee that professors knight their own successors. But that's basically how the Ph.D. system works, with sitting professors approving the work of would-be professors.

2013 was a year of myths falling apart. The myth of President Obama - a myth in which Obama was a messianic figure descending to bequeath health care, equality, and brotherhood on mankind - imploded. The myth of an America embracing the leftist social agenda collapsed.

The Tea Party is almost solely grassroots-based; business interests have almost no grassroots organization. The Republican Party has for too long been run on behalf of business interests who favor candidates the grassroots hate; the minute that those candidates begin to flag, only loyal Tea Partiers stand behind them.