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The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
One of America’s pre-eminent economists offers a provocative critique of the failures of liberalism
In The Vision of the Anointed , Thomas Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.
In The Vision of the Anointed , Thomas Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Thomas Sowell
88 books5,252 followersThomas Sowell is an American economist, social philosopher, and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.
Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In his academic career, he held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy.
Sowell was an important figure to the conservative movement during the Reagan era, influencing fellow economist Walter E. Williams and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was offered a position as Federal Trade Commissioner in the Ford administration, and was considered for posts including U.S. Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, but declined both times.
Sowell is the author of more than 45 books (including revised and new editions) on a variety of subjects including politics, economics, education and race, and he has been a syndicated columnist in more than 150 newspapers. His views are described as conservative, especially on social issues; libertarian, especially on economics; or libertarian-conservative. He has said he may be best labeled as a libertarian, though he disagrees with the "libertarian movement" on some issues, such as national defense.
Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In his academic career, he held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy.
Sowell was an important figure to the conservative movement during the Reagan era, influencing fellow economist Walter E. Williams and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was offered a position as Federal Trade Commissioner in the Ford administration, and was considered for posts including U.S. Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, but declined both times.
Sowell is the author of more than 45 books (including revised and new editions) on a variety of subjects including politics, economics, education and race, and he has been a syndicated columnist in more than 150 newspapers. His views are described as conservative, especially on social issues; libertarian, especially on economics; or libertarian-conservative. He has said he may be best labeled as a libertarian, though he disagrees with the "libertarian movement" on some issues, such as national defense.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 318 reviews
June 15, 2020
Thomas Sowell pulls no punches in this classic. In this classic gem, Sowell catalogs the efforts of the anointed, or rather cultural elites who believe they know better than the rest of us, to make society more just for those who they perceive to be victims. According to the vision of the anointed, equality can only be achieved using the power of the legislature and the courts because society is naturally broken. Sowell explains how their assumptions about society are inaccurate and have led to disastrous consequences. This book covers social policy from the 1960s to the 1990s and is still just as relevant as when it was when it first came out in 1995.
February 15, 2012
Ok I admit it I am a liberal and I read one of Sowells books, so sue me. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about and to be honest I was fairly pleasantly surprised. I am generally one of these that believes in the "root cause" of social problems as he puts it, perhaps I even have some of this anointed mindset "gasp". I like to think we can change people by changing behavior and circumstances, but I think he made a good number of points about when we should say enough is enough, does that mean I personally think these programs are not beneficial? Actually I don't but I do believe that we have to take into account the loss/benefit spectrum as there is always a trade off for what we determine to put our financial resources in to. I don't know if eliminating these programs is the answer, nor can I comment on the statistical aspect of it other than I think we can all agree that a lot of these "social problems" are getting worse. I think Liberals and Conservatives alike are fairly frustrated with the legal/prison system, at least I have always been fairly miffed by it. I hope we are able to elect leaders that are not so blinded by their vision as Sowell calls it that they can't see the other side of the issue. I think Liberals and Conservatives are possibly more alike in many of their goals than we all admit, perhaps none of our current approaches are good enough, perhaps we need a third perspective to put something completely new in place. A lot of what we are currently doing is not working and its true that this "self congratulatory" vantage point for viewing the world is not helpful at all.
May 30, 2018
This is such an excellent book that after the 1st read I'm going to buy it.
You have to know my copy was library loan and it has a cracked spine and has been in constant circulation for about 20 years. For good reasons. He has defined in precise terms and logic the "anointed" elite's social constructions set into their new religion of social "goods". And that he did this decades ago and saw where it was progressing! And foresaw that they would ultimately accept no other opinions but their anointed own.
The book is held together at this point with a rubber banding for shipping. I'm going to make sure it gets replaced. This year.
But I need to buy this for myself and slowly reread to understand the issues that I have actually seen with my own eyes (especially in the outcomes of dire, dire situations for the poorest and those who have lived for generation upon generation within social welfare ghettos)- in order to completely understand what he observed in such cause/ effect description.
What a superb work. What a clear and clairvoyant perception! Some only feel, some only think. Few are those who can think in such quantity to understand the onus of where the "feel" doesn't begin and end within wishes and hope filled theories. But instead common sense that takes plans only as a starting point.
You have to know my copy was library loan and it has a cracked spine and has been in constant circulation for about 20 years. For good reasons. He has defined in precise terms and logic the "anointed" elite's social constructions set into their new religion of social "goods". And that he did this decades ago and saw where it was progressing! And foresaw that they would ultimately accept no other opinions but their anointed own.
The book is held together at this point with a rubber banding for shipping. I'm going to make sure it gets replaced. This year.
But I need to buy this for myself and slowly reread to understand the issues that I have actually seen with my own eyes (especially in the outcomes of dire, dire situations for the poorest and those who have lived for generation upon generation within social welfare ghettos)- in order to completely understand what he observed in such cause/ effect description.
What a superb work. What a clear and clairvoyant perception! Some only feel, some only think. Few are those who can think in such quantity to understand the onus of where the "feel" doesn't begin and end within wishes and hope filled theories. But instead common sense that takes plans only as a starting point.
April 20, 2009
A must read. As apropos for today as when it was written in the 90's. If you tire of the lightweight stuff from the talking heads like a Hannity, a Rush, or an O'Reilly, then read Sowell's Vision of the Anointed. Watch Sowell fillet mostly leftist-type thought chapter after chapter, page after page, even paragraph after paragraph. Sowell brings to bear so many of his skills as a sociologist and economist that the reader cannot possibly master all of Sowell's arguments after just one read. So, not only does this book proved laughes-a-minute seeing Sowell trounce liberalesk positions on poverty, racism, sexism, crime, government, family, religion, etc., it could also serve as a non-technical textbook on how to do good sociological work. Thus, multiple reads are probably needed for maximum benefit. However, one read will do just fine in allowing you to knock around the majority of anointed you run into on the street, at the water cooler, or even at the next family Thanksgiving.
(P.S. Many Republicans, neocons, and even many evangelicals of the so-called Christian right fit into the camp of anointed; or so I say. So, Sowell's not a talking head for the Republican party. In fact, he's a brilliant Stanford sociologist and economoist who also happens to be black, which has to just grate on the nerves of many anointed, which I might in other circumstances be ashamed to admit gives me some mild sadistic pleasure.)
(P.S. Many Republicans, neocons, and even many evangelicals of the so-called Christian right fit into the camp of anointed; or so I say. So, Sowell's not a talking head for the Republican party. In fact, he's a brilliant Stanford sociologist and economoist who also happens to be black, which has to just grate on the nerves of many anointed, which I might in other circumstances be ashamed to admit gives me some mild sadistic pleasure.)
July 15, 2011
There is much that one could like here. The basic framework that Sowell lays down about the way many policies are drafted is clear and accurate. The problem, however, is that he seems to believe that only "The Anointed" (i.e. liberals) use this method to create policy. As I was listening, I kept thinking, "Wow, this seems like a playbook for George W. Bush's administration," but Sowell repeatedly lionizes Reagan and believes that the "Benighted" (i.e. conservatives) can do no wrong.
This might have been a great book, had he not belabored the idea that you are either one thing or the other. There is no room in Sowell's view for anything other than black and white. Had he attacked conservative policies that are equally bad and focused his attention on ALL public policies that are based in an elitist ideal, then this book would have potential. Any time someone believes, beyond all doubt, that they know what is the best thing for others, you are heading for trouble, but to Sowell, apparently only liberals are so inclined.
Sowell spends a great deal of time saying that liberals don't use any facts in their policy making, and then, to prove a point on how bad a policy is, uses innuendo and speculation as proof. He continually implies certain results based on the negative. This didn't happen, so this must have happened, but he rarely supports these claims.
I'm sure that for those that hold Sowell's political views, this reads like a brilliant text, but it is so utterly biased as to be nearly useless. As I said, there is a kernel of a great idea in here, but it needs to be applied without regard to one's political leanings.
This might have been a great book, had he not belabored the idea that you are either one thing or the other. There is no room in Sowell's view for anything other than black and white. Had he attacked conservative policies that are equally bad and focused his attention on ALL public policies that are based in an elitist ideal, then this book would have potential. Any time someone believes, beyond all doubt, that they know what is the best thing for others, you are heading for trouble, but to Sowell, apparently only liberals are so inclined.
Sowell spends a great deal of time saying that liberals don't use any facts in their policy making, and then, to prove a point on how bad a policy is, uses innuendo and speculation as proof. He continually implies certain results based on the negative. This didn't happen, so this must have happened, but he rarely supports these claims.
I'm sure that for those that hold Sowell's political views, this reads like a brilliant text, but it is so utterly biased as to be nearly useless. As I said, there is a kernel of a great idea in here, but it needs to be applied without regard to one's political leanings.
June 2, 2022
Simply a must read and would be great for a late high school student.
July 23, 2012
This is a superb book if you want to know precisely how statistics are manipulated, ignored, or misinterpreted in order to support social/political visions that are impervious to empirical evidence. It's wonderful for debunking a plethora of doomsday economic and social myths, and it provides a thorough outline of the type of specious arguments used to avoid addressing specific objections to specific policies and programs. Any student of economics, politics, or sociology should read this book and heed its call to intellectual honesty by committing to examining policies on the basis of their actual outcomes as indicated by empirical evidence rather than evaluating them according to their philosophical conformity with a pre-existing set of assumptions.
The book contrasts the two primary visions held by people: "the vision of the anointed" and "the tragic vision" and how these visions affect policy approaches. To the anointed, there are solutions, but, to the tragic, there are only trade-offs. "To those with the vision of the anointed, the question is: What will remove particular negative features in the existing situation to create a solution? Those with the tragic vision ask: What must be sacrificed to achieve this particular improvement?" For the anointed, "costless" solutions abound, requiring only their discernment to discover and their informed third-party decision making to implement. The vision of the anointed does "not…incorporate constraints as the central feature and ever-present ingredient in its thinking, while the tragic vision does." To those with the tragic vision, says Sowell, "the central question is 'Who is to choose? And by what process, and with what consequences for being wrong?'" Sowell bemoans how easy it is "to be wrong - - and to persist in being wrong - - when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."
Sowell has a bone to pick with "anointed" politicians: "political attempts to 'solve' various 'problems' ignores the costs created by each 'solution' and how that exacerbates other problems. Much of political rhetoric is concerned with presenting issues as isolated problems to be solved - - not as trade-offs within an overall system constrained by inherent limitations of resources and knowledge."
I've been reading Thomas Sowell for awhile, and I know he has long been disturbed by the way "anointed" politicians and bureaucrats enact policies in the United States: "To a remarkable extent…empirical evidence is neither sought beforehand nor consulted after a policy has been instituted. Facts may be marshaled for a position already taken, but that is very different from systematically testing opposing theories by evidence." Having worked as an economist for the government, he knows what it is like to be asked to ignore or gloss over data that doesn't support a particular policy. Having systematically studied the actual affects of policies throughout the world, he knows how little politicians care if the evidence does not support the theory. His frustration is palpable, and he makes me feel it in this book, just as he did (in a different way) in his autobiography. As always, he can be a little slow plodding at times, but I never leave his books without learning something new and being greatly impressed by his quest for empirical reality.
Naturally, those who do not share the "vision of the anointed" will ask: Why cling to a vision without regard for reality? Why promote policies regardless of whether or not they actually achieve the end you claim to wish to achieve? Because, Sowell says, the vision offers "a special state of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this vision are deemed to be…morally on a higher plane. Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are not merely in error, but in sin." Confront the vision with empirical evidence, and your evidence is not labeled a bad argument; rather, you are labeled a bad person. The evidence itself is not engaged: your character is engaged (and questioned). This is why words like "compassion" and "concern" are so often used by the anointed; such words imply that opponents of the prevailing vision are unconcerned and callous. To admit that opponents might be equally caring is an impossibility, for it "would mean that opposing arguments on social policy were arguments about methods, probabilities and empirical evidence—with compassion, caring, and the like being common features on both sides, thus canceling out and disappearing from the debate."
It would be nice indeed if words like compassion, concern, and patriotism could dissolve from the U.S. political debate, if we could acknowledge that both sides care about both our nation and about the suffering masses of the world, and if debates on policy could therefore be directed toward the actual costs, actual benefits, and actual long-term affects of actual policies on actual people. It would be nice, but I don't see it happening anytime soon - - on either side.
The book contrasts the two primary visions held by people: "the vision of the anointed" and "the tragic vision" and how these visions affect policy approaches. To the anointed, there are solutions, but, to the tragic, there are only trade-offs. "To those with the vision of the anointed, the question is: What will remove particular negative features in the existing situation to create a solution? Those with the tragic vision ask: What must be sacrificed to achieve this particular improvement?" For the anointed, "costless" solutions abound, requiring only their discernment to discover and their informed third-party decision making to implement. The vision of the anointed does "not…incorporate constraints as the central feature and ever-present ingredient in its thinking, while the tragic vision does." To those with the tragic vision, says Sowell, "the central question is 'Who is to choose? And by what process, and with what consequences for being wrong?'" Sowell bemoans how easy it is "to be wrong - - and to persist in being wrong - - when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."
Sowell has a bone to pick with "anointed" politicians: "political attempts to 'solve' various 'problems' ignores the costs created by each 'solution' and how that exacerbates other problems. Much of political rhetoric is concerned with presenting issues as isolated problems to be solved - - not as trade-offs within an overall system constrained by inherent limitations of resources and knowledge."
I've been reading Thomas Sowell for awhile, and I know he has long been disturbed by the way "anointed" politicians and bureaucrats enact policies in the United States: "To a remarkable extent…empirical evidence is neither sought beforehand nor consulted after a policy has been instituted. Facts may be marshaled for a position already taken, but that is very different from systematically testing opposing theories by evidence." Having worked as an economist for the government, he knows what it is like to be asked to ignore or gloss over data that doesn't support a particular policy. Having systematically studied the actual affects of policies throughout the world, he knows how little politicians care if the evidence does not support the theory. His frustration is palpable, and he makes me feel it in this book, just as he did (in a different way) in his autobiography. As always, he can be a little slow plodding at times, but I never leave his books without learning something new and being greatly impressed by his quest for empirical reality.
Naturally, those who do not share the "vision of the anointed" will ask: Why cling to a vision without regard for reality? Why promote policies regardless of whether or not they actually achieve the end you claim to wish to achieve? Because, Sowell says, the vision offers "a special state of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this vision are deemed to be…morally on a higher plane. Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are not merely in error, but in sin." Confront the vision with empirical evidence, and your evidence is not labeled a bad argument; rather, you are labeled a bad person. The evidence itself is not engaged: your character is engaged (and questioned). This is why words like "compassion" and "concern" are so often used by the anointed; such words imply that opponents of the prevailing vision are unconcerned and callous. To admit that opponents might be equally caring is an impossibility, for it "would mean that opposing arguments on social policy were arguments about methods, probabilities and empirical evidence—with compassion, caring, and the like being common features on both sides, thus canceling out and disappearing from the debate."
It would be nice indeed if words like compassion, concern, and patriotism could dissolve from the U.S. political debate, if we could acknowledge that both sides care about both our nation and about the suffering masses of the world, and if debates on policy could therefore be directed toward the actual costs, actual benefits, and actual long-term affects of actual policies on actual people. It would be nice, but I don't see it happening anytime soon - - on either side.
January 13, 2009
I love people who think in straight lines.
August 17, 2024
8/17/24 - reposting this today, as I just read a review of a book by one of my “friends” that almost made my head explode. I try to make Goodreads my refuge from politics, but as this election looms nearer I’m afraid it’s going to be harder and harder. I so admire people who are able to state their opinions intelligently and without denigrating and name-calling those who have a different viewpoint. I hope at least some of us, on either side of the political divide, will think twice before posting. If you want to fight and insult other people, we have Twitter for that.
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I often run across quotes by Thomas Sowell that resonate with me. "An influential African American economist who is known for his controversial views on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, Thomas Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1930."
Despite being written almost 30 years ago, The Vision of the Anointed could have written yesterday. Consider this:
Sowell promises in the book to offer "an empirical comparison between the promised benefits of policies based on that vision, and the grim and often bitter consequences of those political and judicial decisions. In short, the purpose is not simply to see what kind of world exists inside the minds of a self-anointed elite, but to see how that world effects the world of reality in terms as concrete as crime, family disintegration, and other crucial social phenomena of our times."
Sowell then describes a series of policies that have followed the "Pattern of Failure." He notes:
Remember, the above was written in 1995, and he describes policy failures from the previous 30 years. As far as I got in the book, it ironically makes me feel a bit better about the world - this has been going on for my entire lifetime, but I was never much interested in politics so I was just oblivious to it.
So now when I look around me, trying to understand why people can't have a rational discussion on important but controversial topics - e.g., gender issues, abortion, immigration, crime, climate change - I have to remember that this is not new. Instead of listening to and considering the opinion - or even evidence - of anyone with an opposing viewpoint, the default is just to assume that other person is evil, to insult and try to shut them down.
Although Sowell places the blame for this mostly on liberals as the "anointed," it absolutely goes both ways, and social media has made this problem much, MUCH worse than it was 30 years ago. It's a shame, and hard to see a way out.
—————————-
I often run across quotes by Thomas Sowell that resonate with me. "An influential African American economist who is known for his controversial views on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, Thomas Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1930."
Despite being written almost 30 years ago, The Vision of the Anointed could have written yesterday. Consider this:
The focus here will be on... the vision prevailing among the intellectual and political elite of our time...which means that its assumptions are so much taken for granted by so many people, including the so called "thinking people," that neither those assumptions nor their corollaries are generally confronted with demands for empirical evidence. Indeed, empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect...
...what the prevailing vision of our time emphatically does offer, is a special state of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this vision are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane. For those who have this vision of the world, the anointed and the benighted do not argue on the same moral plane or play by the same cold rules of logic and evidence.
Sowell promises in the book to offer "an empirical comparison between the promised benefits of policies based on that vision, and the grim and often bitter consequences of those political and judicial decisions. In short, the purpose is not simply to see what kind of world exists inside the minds of a self-anointed elite, but to see how that world effects the world of reality in terms as concrete as crime, family disintegration, and other crucial social phenomena of our times."
Sowell then describes a series of policies that have followed the "Pattern of Failure." He notes:
The great ideological crusades of the twentieth-century intellectuals have ranged across the most disparate fields...What all these have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government...several key elements have been common to most of them:
1. Assertion of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for government action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.
Remember, the above was written in 1995, and he describes policy failures from the previous 30 years. As far as I got in the book, it ironically makes me feel a bit better about the world - this has been going on for my entire lifetime, but I was never much interested in politics so I was just oblivious to it.
So now when I look around me, trying to understand why people can't have a rational discussion on important but controversial topics - e.g., gender issues, abortion, immigration, crime, climate change - I have to remember that this is not new. Instead of listening to and considering the opinion - or even evidence - of anyone with an opposing viewpoint, the default is just to assume that other person is evil, to insult and try to shut them down.
Although Sowell places the blame for this mostly on liberals as the "anointed," it absolutely goes both ways, and social media has made this problem much, MUCH worse than it was 30 years ago. It's a shame, and hard to see a way out.
Read
May 10, 2023This was a pre-read for me, as it’s part of Ambleside Online’s Year 11. This type of reading is the most difficult for me because it can’t just be skimmed, I had to read carefully and with a pencil marking the ha up so I could follow Sowell’s arguments. I can tell he is brilliant, and he has a knack for throwing a memorable alliterative phrase into a sentence, though I sometimes felt he was a bit repetitive, and occasionally wondered if he wasn’t falling into some logical fallacies himself, but no, I’m not going to cite examples here.
It was rather fascinating though. In the beginning when he is discussing the tactics of the Anointed he uses examples of policies that were somewhat before my time. I know of them but didn’t really have first hand knowledge of living through the times when those policies were put into place. But because they were just examples of the overarching principles/tactics he was discussing, I could see how exactly these ideas are still playing out in current events - and it was eerily on point. So, though published in the 90s, I’d say this is still a highly relevant read, and though it may not initially interest everyone, it’s very close to a Must Read, in my opinion.
It was rather fascinating though. In the beginning when he is discussing the tactics of the Anointed he uses examples of policies that were somewhat before my time. I know of them but didn’t really have first hand knowledge of living through the times when those policies were put into place. But because they were just examples of the overarching principles/tactics he was discussing, I could see how exactly these ideas are still playing out in current events - and it was eerily on point. So, though published in the 90s, I’d say this is still a highly relevant read, and though it may not initially interest everyone, it’s very close to a Must Read, in my opinion.
August 8, 2022
"The views of political commentators or writers on social issues often range across a wide spectrum, but their positions on these issues are seldom random. If they are liberal, conservative, or radical on foreign policy, they are likely to be the same on crime, abortion, or education. There is usually a coherence to their beliefs, based on a particular set of underlying assumptions about the world—a certain vision of reality."
The Vision of the Anointed was another great book from Thomas Sowell. He drops the above quote in the book's intro, setting the pace for the writing to follow.
Author Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he served as the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Sowell writes from a libertarian–conservative perspective. Sowell has written more than thirty books, and his work has been widely anthologized. He is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics and political science.
Thomas Sowell:
The Vision of the Anointed is my 6th book from Sowell. Sowell's writing here was exceptional, as usual. His analysis is super-nuanced and insightful, in line with other titles of his that I've read.
"The Vision of the Anointed" The title could be somewhat ambiguous... What does it mean?? Well, expanding on his quote above; people are born into a society and culture where often one dominant set of axiomatic assumptions about the way the world operates are bestowed upon them. Rarely are these fundamental tenets examined closely using empirical evidence. Rather they are assumed to be true by means of social proof.
Sowell takes a shot at the current ideological orthodoxy and the people who propagate these ideas. He calls these the "visions of the anointed." The French have a term for these people - "bien pensants". These are people who largely see the world as they'd like it to be, and not how it is. As the term implies, there is also a strong religious element to this line of thinking. There is original sin, heretics, protected groups, mascots, and protected symbols.
This viewpoint is contrasted with those who hold the "tragic vision" of reality; which is to accept the flawed nature of man, and find realistic solutions to social policy based on data, empiricism, and taking human nature into account.
He launches an opening salvo with this quote:
The scope of the book is broad in nature; Sowell covers much of the modern thought orthodoxy here. In this quote, he speaks to the failure of the welfare program to lift people out of poverty:
The writing here is very thoughtful and reasoned; typical of Sowell. He is a brilliant mind, for sure. Some more of what he covers here includes:
• The failures of sex education to lower STDS, teen pregnancies, as well as teen sex
• Criminal Justice
• The false assertion of mortgage "redlining"
• The long roots of this thinking; the French Revolution
• Trade-offs versus “Solutions”
• Crusades of the anointed
• The vocabulary of the anointed
• Personal Responsibility (REEEE)
• Judicial visions in court cases
• The world of the anointed
***********************
I haven't read a book by Thomas Sowell I didn't like, and this one was no exception. However, I will note that I felt the last ~third of it; where he takes a deep dive into Supreme Court Justices - went on for longer than it was worth. A minor gripe; the book was still excellent.
4.5 stars
The Vision of the Anointed was another great book from Thomas Sowell. He drops the above quote in the book's intro, setting the pace for the writing to follow.
Author Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he served as the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Sowell writes from a libertarian–conservative perspective. Sowell has written more than thirty books, and his work has been widely anthologized. He is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics and political science.
Thomas Sowell:
The Vision of the Anointed is my 6th book from Sowell. Sowell's writing here was exceptional, as usual. His analysis is super-nuanced and insightful, in line with other titles of his that I've read.
"The Vision of the Anointed" The title could be somewhat ambiguous... What does it mean?? Well, expanding on his quote above; people are born into a society and culture where often one dominant set of axiomatic assumptions about the way the world operates are bestowed upon them. Rarely are these fundamental tenets examined closely using empirical evidence. Rather they are assumed to be true by means of social proof.
Sowell takes a shot at the current ideological orthodoxy and the people who propagate these ideas. He calls these the "visions of the anointed." The French have a term for these people - "bien pensants". These are people who largely see the world as they'd like it to be, and not how it is. As the term implies, there is also a strong religious element to this line of thinking. There is original sin, heretics, protected groups, mascots, and protected symbols.
This viewpoint is contrasted with those who hold the "tragic vision" of reality; which is to accept the flawed nature of man, and find realistic solutions to social policy based on data, empiricism, and taking human nature into account.
He launches an opening salvo with this quote:
"The prevailing vision of our era is long overdue for a critical reexamination—or, for many, a first examination. This vision so permeates the media and academia, and has made such major inroads into the religious community, that many grow to adulthood unaware that there is any other way of looking at things, or that evidence might be relevant to checking out the sweeping assumptions of so-called “thinking people.” Many of these “thinking people” could more accurately be characterized as articulate people, as people whose verbal nimbleness can elude both evidence and logic. This can be a fatal talent, when it supplies the crucial insulation from reality behind many historic catastrophes..."
The scope of the book is broad in nature; Sowell covers much of the modern thought orthodoxy here. In this quote, he speaks to the failure of the welfare program to lift people out of poverty:
"Despite initial claims that various government services would lead to reduced federal outlays on welfare programs as more people became self sufficient, the very opposite happened. The number of people receiving public assistance more than doubled from 1960 to 1977.23 The dollar value of public housing rose nearly five-fold in a decade and the amount spent on food stamps rose more than ten-fold. All government-provided in-kind benefits increased about eight-fold from 1965 to 1969 and more than twenty-fold by 1974.24 Federal spending on such social welfare programs not only rose in dollar terms and in real terms, but also a percentage of the nation’s gross national product, going from 8 percent of GNP in 1960 to 16 percent by 1974.25"
The writing here is very thoughtful and reasoned; typical of Sowell. He is a brilliant mind, for sure. Some more of what he covers here includes:
• The failures of sex education to lower STDS, teen pregnancies, as well as teen sex
• Criminal Justice
• The false assertion of mortgage "redlining"
• The long roots of this thinking; the French Revolution
• Trade-offs versus “Solutions”
• Crusades of the anointed
• The vocabulary of the anointed
• Personal Responsibility (REEEE)
• Judicial visions in court cases
• The world of the anointed
***********************
I haven't read a book by Thomas Sowell I didn't like, and this one was no exception. However, I will note that I felt the last ~third of it; where he takes a deep dive into Supreme Court Justices - went on for longer than it was worth. A minor gripe; the book was still excellent.
4.5 stars
April 22, 2010
So very true; enumerates so many of the distractions I have run up against talking with liberals. They close their eyes to reality and logic and argue with blind emotion, trying to frame rational people as unfeeling even as they rob them to fund their wasteful and destructive programs.
"The perennial desire to make particular things 'affordable' through public policy or to have government provide an ever-expanding list of 'basic needs' suggests that the economic realities conveyed by prices are seen as mere arbitrary social conventions, rather than expressions of inherent constraints and inescapable costs. Similarly, the desire to spare people 'stigmas' for their behavior treats such stigmas as representing mere arbitrary narrowness by others, rather than social retaliation for very real costs created by those who are being stigmatized and deterrence to others who might create more such costs in the absence of stigmas."
"The perennial desire to make particular things 'affordable' through public policy or to have government provide an ever-expanding list of 'basic needs' suggests that the economic realities conveyed by prices are seen as mere arbitrary social conventions, rather than expressions of inherent constraints and inescapable costs. Similarly, the desire to spare people 'stigmas' for their behavior treats such stigmas as representing mere arbitrary narrowness by others, rather than social retaliation for very real costs created by those who are being stigmatized and deterrence to others who might create more such costs in the absence of stigmas."
June 15, 2018
I will never be bored with Sowel’s books - either more recent or older ones.
Souvenir from this one - don’t think solutions, think trade-offs (systemic analysis).
Souvenir from this one - don’t think solutions, think trade-offs (systemic analysis).
October 6, 2024
I’m not sure how this ended up on my TBR, but it was surprisingly good. Dr. Sowell took a somewhat dry subject and made it interesting. I ended up highlighting tons of stuff despite trying not to.
In this book, “the Anointed” are the self-proclaimed experts and elites who believe they are smarter and wiser and kinder than everyone else (“the benighted masses”). They get in power and infringe on basic rights and liberties as they attempt to reshape society according to their vision—because they couldn’t ever be wrong.
The anointed don’t see people as individuals or as people, really, but a single mass to be shaped according to their whims. They name something a crisis, whether or not it really is (crime, racism, overpopulation), blame it on “society” and implement their own “solutions.” They assume they have the omniscience to fix society and therefore refuse to notice unintended consequences. They refuse to accept evidence that shows their solutions are doing more harm than good. They are oblivious to the realities of the world because they have created their own reality in an academic setting.
It kept reminding me of this scripture: “O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.”
They tend to be socialists and progressives, believing they can create utopia if only they were in charge, no matter how many people communism kills. The book examines how they work, how they think, and gives tons and tons of examples and data. Very insightful. Even though this was published in the 90s, it is still relevant today.
Clean content
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HIGHLIGHTS (continued in comments)
1. Flattering Unction
What is intellectually interesting about visions are their assumptions and their reasoning, but what is socially crucial is the extent to which they are resistant to evidence. All social theories being imperfect, the harm done by their imperfections depends not only on how far they differ from reality, but also on how readily they adjust to evidence, to come back into line with the facts. One theory may be more plausible, or even more sound, than another, but if it is also more dogmatic, then that can make it far more dangerous than a theory that is not initially as close to the truth but which is more capable of adjusting to feedback from the real world. The prevailing vision of our time—the vision of the anointed—has shown an extraordinary ability to defy evidence.
2. By the Numbers
The fact that crime and poverty are correlated is automatically taken to mean that poverty causes crime, not that similar attitudes or behavior patterns may contribute to both poverty and crime. … The correlation between bad housing and high crime rates was taken to mean that the former caused the latter—not that both reflected similar attitudes and behavior patterns. But the vision of the anointed has survived even after massive programs of government-provided housing have led to these brand-new housing projects quickly degenerating into new slums and becoming centers of escalating crime.
Different racial and ethnic groups not only vary in which proportions fall into which age brackets but vary as well in which proportions fall into various marital and other social conditions—and these in turn likewise have profound effects on everything from income to infant mortality to political opinions.
3. The Irrelevance of Evidence
Automobile company representatives who pointed out that the industry cannot produce features that the consumers do not want, or are unwilling to pay for, were scorned by [Ralph] Nader for treating the issue as “wholly one of personal consumer taste instead of objective scientific study.” Like so many who invoke the name and the mystique of science to override other people’s choices, Nader offered remarkably little hard data to back up his claims, whether on the overall safety of the automobile over time, or of American automobiles versus from other countries (including socialist countries where “corporate greed” was presumably not a problem).
One of the problems faced by “consumer advocates” in general is how to make the consumers’ own preferences disappear from the argument, since consumer sovereignty conflicts with moral surrogacy by the anointed.
The confidence of the anointed in their own articulated “reason” has as its counterpoint their complete distrust in systemic racial processes, operating without their guidance and intervention. Thus the operation of a free market is suspect in their eyes, no matter how often it works, and government control of economic activity appears rational, no matter how many times it fails. … As bitterly resented as the gasoline lines of the 1970s were under government price controls, there were widespread predictions of skyrocketing gasoline prices if these controls were abolished. … President Carter blamed the benighted masses for not facing up to the situation as seen by the anointed. … Ronald Reagan issued an Executive Order during the first month of his administration, ending oil price controls. Within four months, the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline fell from $1.41 to 86 cents.
In academic circles, the equally vast generality is “diversity,” which often stands for a quite narrow social agenda, as if those who reiterate the word “diversity” endlessly had no idea that diversity is itself diverse and has many dimensions besides the one with which they are preoccupied. Advocates of diversity in a race or gender sense are quite often hostile to ideological diversity, when it includes traditional or “conservative” values and beliefs.
The cold fact is that the truth cannot become private property without losing its whole meaning. Truth is honored precisely for its value in interpersonal communication. If we each have our own private truths, then we would be better off (as well as more honest) to stop using the word or the concept and recognize that nobody’s words could be relied upon anymore. The more subtle insinuation is that we should become more “sensitive” to some particular group’s “truth”—that is, that we should arbitrarily single out some group for different standards, according to the fashions of the times or the vision of the anointed.
However modest a goal, “decent” housing does not produce itself, any more than palatial housing does. Be it ever so humble, someone has to build a home, which requires work, skills, material resources, and financial risks for those whose investments underwrite the operation. To say that someone has a “right” to any kind of housing is to say that others have an obligation to expend all these efforts on his behalf, without his being reciprocally obligated to compensate them for it. Rights from government interference—“Congress shall make no law,” as the Constitution says regarding religion, free speech, etc.—may be free, but rights to anything mean that someone else has been yoked to your service involuntarily, with no corresponding responsibility on your part to provide for yourself, to compensate others, or even to behave decently or responsibly. Here the language of equal rights is conscripted for service in defense of differential privileges.
5. The Anointed Vs. The Benighted
The refrain of the anointed is we already know the answers, there’s no need for more studies, and the kinds of questions raised by those with other views are just stalling and obstructing progress. “Solutions” are out there waiting to be found, like eggs at an Easter egg hunt. Intractable problems with painful trade-offs are simply not part of the vision of the anointed. … Far more important than particular reckless policies, even those with such deadly consequences as weakening the criminal law, is a whole mind-set in which omnicompetence is implicitly assumed and unhappy social phenomena are presumed to be unjustified morally and remediable intellectually and politically. Inherent constraints of circumstances or people are to be brushed aside, as are alternative policy approaches which offer no special role for the anointed. The burden of proof is not put on their vision, but on existing institutions.
The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge. But to those with the tragic vision, what is dangerous are will and power without knowledge—and for many expansive purposes, knowledge is inherently insufficient.
Although followers of this tradition [anointed] often advocate more egalitarian economic and social results, they necessarily seek to achieve these results through highly unequal influence and power, and—especially in the twentieth century—through an increased concentration of power in the central government, which is thereby enabled to redistribute economic resources more equally. While those with the vision of the anointed emphasize the knowledge and resources available to promote the various policy programs they favor, those with the tragic vision of the human condition emphasize that these resources are taken from other uses (“there is no free lunch”) and that the knowledge and wisdom required to run ambitions social programs far exceed what any human being has ever possessed, as the unintended negative consequences of such programs repeatedly demonstrate.
What is seldom part of the vision of the anointed is a concept of ordinary people as autonomous decision makers free to reject any vision and to seek their own well-being through whatever social processes they choose. Thus, when those with the prevailing vision speak of the family—if only to defuse their adversaries’ emphasis on family values—they tend to conceive of the family as a recipient institution for government largess or guidances, rather than as a decision-making institution determining for itself how children shall be raised and with what values.
In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong—surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. It is not that the anointed advocate such processes, as such, but that their preoccupation with goals often neglects the whole question of process characteristics. The very standards by which social “problems” are defined tend likewise to be third-party standards. Thus “waste,” “quality,” and “real needs” are terms blithely thrown around, as if some third party can define them for other people. Government actions in the form of bureaucracies to replace the systemic process of the marketplace.
To say that pesticides, nuclear power, medicines, automobiles, or other things must be “safe”—either absolutely (which is impossible) or within some specified level of risk—is to say that only one set of probabilities will be weighed. Put differently, to minimize the overall dangers to human life and health is to accept specific, preventable dangers rather than follow policies which would create worse preventable dangers. The issue thus is not whether nuclear power is “safe” but whether its dangers are greater or less than the dangers of supplying the same power from coal, oil, hydroelectric dams, or other ways of generating electricity, or the dangers in reducing the availability of electricity. Fewer or dimmer lights are almost certain to increase both accidents and crime, for example, and brownouts and blackouts create other dangers when people get trapped in elevators or fire alarm systems no longer function.
The language of politics, and especially of ideological politics, is often categorical language about “rights,” about eliminating certain evils, guaranteeing certain benefits, or protecting certain habitats and species. In short, it is the language of solutions and of the unconstrained vision behind solutions, the vision of the anointed. Indirectly but inexorably, this language says that the preferences of the anointed are to supersede the preferences of everyone else—that the particular dangers they fear are to be avoided at all costs and the particular benefits they seek are to be obtained at all costs. Their attempts to remove these decisions from both the democratic process and the market process, and to vest them in obscure commissions, unelected judges, and insulated bureaucracies, are in keeping with the logic of what they are attempting. They are not seeking trade-offs based on the varying preferences of millions of other people, but solutions based on their own presumably superior knowledge and virtue.
6. Crusades of the Anointed
Clearly, with no safety requirements at all, needless deaths from untested drugs would be numerous and unconscionable. But, beyond some point, the residual increment of safety from more years of testing declines to the point where it is outweighed by the lives that continue to be lost through delay. Safety can be fatal.
Here, as elsewhere, the anointed show what Jean-Francois Revel has called “a pitiless ferocity toward some” and “a boundless indulgence toward others.” Both the particular mascots chosen [criminals] and the particular targets chosen [general public] serve the same purpose—to demonstrate the superiority of the anointed over the benighted. To put themselves solidly on the side of the supposed underdogs, the anointed often place permanent labels on people, on the basis of transient circumstances.
Many have claimed that the “insanity” defense is not a serious problem because it is used in only a fraction of criminal cases, and used successfully in a smaller fraction. This understates tits full impact as another factor delaying trials and providing grounds for appeals after conviction in an already overburdened court system. Moreover, the demoralization of the public, as it sees horrible crimes go unpunished and violent criminals turned loose again in their midst because of psychiatrists’ speculation, is not a smaller consideration.
Criminals are the most obvious, and most resented, of those for whose benefit judges have stretched the law, in an attempt to achieve the cosmic justice of compensating for preexisting disadvantages. … That most people born in poverty did not become criminals, and that people born in more fortunate circumstances sometimes did, was acknowledged by Judge Bazelon, but this acknowledgment made no real difference in his conclusions or his judicial decisions. Correlation was causation.
Mistaken beliefs about the safety of untested blood did not originate with the public but with the anointed elites. This was only one of the many ways in which these elites pooh-poohed the dangers from AIDS. San Francisco nurses who used masks and gloves while handling AIDS patients were punished by hospital authorities for doing so in 1985, though such precautions later became accepted and then officially recommended in federal guidelines.
The very existence of families and the viability of marriage are both grossly understated through misused statistics … Similarly, the incidence of various problems in families is overstated by artful definitions and half-truths. For example, alarmist stories in the media about domestic violence often lump together husbands and boyfriends as “partners” who batter women, when in fact a woman who heads her own household is nearly three times as likely to be beaten as a wife is. Separated, divorced, and never-married women are all more likely to be beaten than a wife is. In other words, the traditional family is the safest setting for a women—though that is, of course, not the message which the anointed seek to convey.
The pervasive preferences of the anointed for collective and third-party decision making (“solutions” by “society”) takes the form of promotion of “day care” for children. Enabling families to take care of their own children at home by allowing the income tax exemption to keep pace with inflation and the real cost of raising children has no such support among the anointed. Indeed, this is an idea often pushed—in vain—by conservatives. While the anointed are often ready to spend vast amounts of government money on families, especially in ways which allow outsiders to intrude into family decisions, they are by no means equally willing to let families keep money that they have earned and make their own independent decisions. In family matters, as in other matters, power and preemption are the touchstones of the vision of the anointed, however much that vision is described in terms of the beneficent goals it is seeking.
7. The Vocabulary of the Anointed
When people choose their occupations according to what the public wants and is willing to pay for, that is “greed,” but when the public is forced to pay for what the anointed want done, that is “public service.”
Families who wish to be independent financially and to make their own decisions about their lives are of little interest or use to those who are seeking to impose their superior wisdom and virtue on other people. Earning their own money makes these families unlikely candidates for third-party direction and wishing to retain what they have earned threatens to deprive the anointed of the money needed to distribute as largess to others who would thus become subject to their direction. In these circumstances, it is understandable why the desire to increase and retain one’s own earnings should be characterized as “greed,” while wishing to live at the expense of others is not.
Since the bottom line of the prevailing vision is that the anointed are moral surrogates to make decisions for other people, those other people must be seen as incapable of making the right decisions for themselves. The concept of personal responsibility is thus anathema to this vision and the vocabulary of the anointed reflects this.
Anyone can be in favor of “social justice” without further ado. In short, the ideas of so-called “thinking people” often require much less thinking. Indeed, the less thinking there is about definitions, means, and consequences, the more attractive “social justice” seems.
In this book, “the Anointed” are the self-proclaimed experts and elites who believe they are smarter and wiser and kinder than everyone else (“the benighted masses”). They get in power and infringe on basic rights and liberties as they attempt to reshape society according to their vision—because they couldn’t ever be wrong.
The anointed don’t see people as individuals or as people, really, but a single mass to be shaped according to their whims. They name something a crisis, whether or not it really is (crime, racism, overpopulation), blame it on “society” and implement their own “solutions.” They assume they have the omniscience to fix society and therefore refuse to notice unintended consequences. They refuse to accept evidence that shows their solutions are doing more harm than good. They are oblivious to the realities of the world because they have created their own reality in an academic setting.
It kept reminding me of this scripture: “O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.”
They tend to be socialists and progressives, believing they can create utopia if only they were in charge, no matter how many people communism kills. The book examines how they work, how they think, and gives tons and tons of examples and data. Very insightful. Even though this was published in the 90s, it is still relevant today.
Clean content
=========================
HIGHLIGHTS (continued in comments)
1. Flattering Unction
What is intellectually interesting about visions are their assumptions and their reasoning, but what is socially crucial is the extent to which they are resistant to evidence. All social theories being imperfect, the harm done by their imperfections depends not only on how far they differ from reality, but also on how readily they adjust to evidence, to come back into line with the facts. One theory may be more plausible, or even more sound, than another, but if it is also more dogmatic, then that can make it far more dangerous than a theory that is not initially as close to the truth but which is more capable of adjusting to feedback from the real world. The prevailing vision of our time—the vision of the anointed—has shown an extraordinary ability to defy evidence.
2. By the Numbers
The fact that crime and poverty are correlated is automatically taken to mean that poverty causes crime, not that similar attitudes or behavior patterns may contribute to both poverty and crime. … The correlation between bad housing and high crime rates was taken to mean that the former caused the latter—not that both reflected similar attitudes and behavior patterns. But the vision of the anointed has survived even after massive programs of government-provided housing have led to these brand-new housing projects quickly degenerating into new slums and becoming centers of escalating crime.
Different racial and ethnic groups not only vary in which proportions fall into which age brackets but vary as well in which proportions fall into various marital and other social conditions—and these in turn likewise have profound effects on everything from income to infant mortality to political opinions.
3. The Irrelevance of Evidence
Automobile company representatives who pointed out that the industry cannot produce features that the consumers do not want, or are unwilling to pay for, were scorned by [Ralph] Nader for treating the issue as “wholly one of personal consumer taste instead of objective scientific study.” Like so many who invoke the name and the mystique of science to override other people’s choices, Nader offered remarkably little hard data to back up his claims, whether on the overall safety of the automobile over time, or of American automobiles versus from other countries (including socialist countries where “corporate greed” was presumably not a problem).
One of the problems faced by “consumer advocates” in general is how to make the consumers’ own preferences disappear from the argument, since consumer sovereignty conflicts with moral surrogacy by the anointed.
The confidence of the anointed in their own articulated “reason” has as its counterpoint their complete distrust in systemic racial processes, operating without their guidance and intervention. Thus the operation of a free market is suspect in their eyes, no matter how often it works, and government control of economic activity appears rational, no matter how many times it fails. … As bitterly resented as the gasoline lines of the 1970s were under government price controls, there were widespread predictions of skyrocketing gasoline prices if these controls were abolished. … President Carter blamed the benighted masses for not facing up to the situation as seen by the anointed. … Ronald Reagan issued an Executive Order during the first month of his administration, ending oil price controls. Within four months, the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline fell from $1.41 to 86 cents.
In academic circles, the equally vast generality is “diversity,” which often stands for a quite narrow social agenda, as if those who reiterate the word “diversity” endlessly had no idea that diversity is itself diverse and has many dimensions besides the one with which they are preoccupied. Advocates of diversity in a race or gender sense are quite often hostile to ideological diversity, when it includes traditional or “conservative” values and beliefs.
The cold fact is that the truth cannot become private property without losing its whole meaning. Truth is honored precisely for its value in interpersonal communication. If we each have our own private truths, then we would be better off (as well as more honest) to stop using the word or the concept and recognize that nobody’s words could be relied upon anymore. The more subtle insinuation is that we should become more “sensitive” to some particular group’s “truth”—that is, that we should arbitrarily single out some group for different standards, according to the fashions of the times or the vision of the anointed.
However modest a goal, “decent” housing does not produce itself, any more than palatial housing does. Be it ever so humble, someone has to build a home, which requires work, skills, material resources, and financial risks for those whose investments underwrite the operation. To say that someone has a “right” to any kind of housing is to say that others have an obligation to expend all these efforts on his behalf, without his being reciprocally obligated to compensate them for it. Rights from government interference—“Congress shall make no law,” as the Constitution says regarding religion, free speech, etc.—may be free, but rights to anything mean that someone else has been yoked to your service involuntarily, with no corresponding responsibility on your part to provide for yourself, to compensate others, or even to behave decently or responsibly. Here the language of equal rights is conscripted for service in defense of differential privileges.
5. The Anointed Vs. The Benighted
The refrain of the anointed is we already know the answers, there’s no need for more studies, and the kinds of questions raised by those with other views are just stalling and obstructing progress. “Solutions” are out there waiting to be found, like eggs at an Easter egg hunt. Intractable problems with painful trade-offs are simply not part of the vision of the anointed. … Far more important than particular reckless policies, even those with such deadly consequences as weakening the criminal law, is a whole mind-set in which omnicompetence is implicitly assumed and unhappy social phenomena are presumed to be unjustified morally and remediable intellectually and politically. Inherent constraints of circumstances or people are to be brushed aside, as are alternative policy approaches which offer no special role for the anointed. The burden of proof is not put on their vision, but on existing institutions.
The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge. But to those with the tragic vision, what is dangerous are will and power without knowledge—and for many expansive purposes, knowledge is inherently insufficient.
Although followers of this tradition [anointed] often advocate more egalitarian economic and social results, they necessarily seek to achieve these results through highly unequal influence and power, and—especially in the twentieth century—through an increased concentration of power in the central government, which is thereby enabled to redistribute economic resources more equally. While those with the vision of the anointed emphasize the knowledge and resources available to promote the various policy programs they favor, those with the tragic vision of the human condition emphasize that these resources are taken from other uses (“there is no free lunch”) and that the knowledge and wisdom required to run ambitions social programs far exceed what any human being has ever possessed, as the unintended negative consequences of such programs repeatedly demonstrate.
What is seldom part of the vision of the anointed is a concept of ordinary people as autonomous decision makers free to reject any vision and to seek their own well-being through whatever social processes they choose. Thus, when those with the prevailing vision speak of the family—if only to defuse their adversaries’ emphasis on family values—they tend to conceive of the family as a recipient institution for government largess or guidances, rather than as a decision-making institution determining for itself how children shall be raised and with what values.
In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong—surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. It is not that the anointed advocate such processes, as such, but that their preoccupation with goals often neglects the whole question of process characteristics. The very standards by which social “problems” are defined tend likewise to be third-party standards. Thus “waste,” “quality,” and “real needs” are terms blithely thrown around, as if some third party can define them for other people. Government actions in the form of bureaucracies to replace the systemic process of the marketplace.
To say that pesticides, nuclear power, medicines, automobiles, or other things must be “safe”—either absolutely (which is impossible) or within some specified level of risk—is to say that only one set of probabilities will be weighed. Put differently, to minimize the overall dangers to human life and health is to accept specific, preventable dangers rather than follow policies which would create worse preventable dangers. The issue thus is not whether nuclear power is “safe” but whether its dangers are greater or less than the dangers of supplying the same power from coal, oil, hydroelectric dams, or other ways of generating electricity, or the dangers in reducing the availability of electricity. Fewer or dimmer lights are almost certain to increase both accidents and crime, for example, and brownouts and blackouts create other dangers when people get trapped in elevators or fire alarm systems no longer function.
The language of politics, and especially of ideological politics, is often categorical language about “rights,” about eliminating certain evils, guaranteeing certain benefits, or protecting certain habitats and species. In short, it is the language of solutions and of the unconstrained vision behind solutions, the vision of the anointed. Indirectly but inexorably, this language says that the preferences of the anointed are to supersede the preferences of everyone else—that the particular dangers they fear are to be avoided at all costs and the particular benefits they seek are to be obtained at all costs. Their attempts to remove these decisions from both the democratic process and the market process, and to vest them in obscure commissions, unelected judges, and insulated bureaucracies, are in keeping with the logic of what they are attempting. They are not seeking trade-offs based on the varying preferences of millions of other people, but solutions based on their own presumably superior knowledge and virtue.
6. Crusades of the Anointed
Clearly, with no safety requirements at all, needless deaths from untested drugs would be numerous and unconscionable. But, beyond some point, the residual increment of safety from more years of testing declines to the point where it is outweighed by the lives that continue to be lost through delay. Safety can be fatal.
Here, as elsewhere, the anointed show what Jean-Francois Revel has called “a pitiless ferocity toward some” and “a boundless indulgence toward others.” Both the particular mascots chosen [criminals] and the particular targets chosen [general public] serve the same purpose—to demonstrate the superiority of the anointed over the benighted. To put themselves solidly on the side of the supposed underdogs, the anointed often place permanent labels on people, on the basis of transient circumstances.
Many have claimed that the “insanity” defense is not a serious problem because it is used in only a fraction of criminal cases, and used successfully in a smaller fraction. This understates tits full impact as another factor delaying trials and providing grounds for appeals after conviction in an already overburdened court system. Moreover, the demoralization of the public, as it sees horrible crimes go unpunished and violent criminals turned loose again in their midst because of psychiatrists’ speculation, is not a smaller consideration.
Criminals are the most obvious, and most resented, of those for whose benefit judges have stretched the law, in an attempt to achieve the cosmic justice of compensating for preexisting disadvantages. … That most people born in poverty did not become criminals, and that people born in more fortunate circumstances sometimes did, was acknowledged by Judge Bazelon, but this acknowledgment made no real difference in his conclusions or his judicial decisions. Correlation was causation.
Mistaken beliefs about the safety of untested blood did not originate with the public but with the anointed elites. This was only one of the many ways in which these elites pooh-poohed the dangers from AIDS. San Francisco nurses who used masks and gloves while handling AIDS patients were punished by hospital authorities for doing so in 1985, though such precautions later became accepted and then officially recommended in federal guidelines.
The very existence of families and the viability of marriage are both grossly understated through misused statistics … Similarly, the incidence of various problems in families is overstated by artful definitions and half-truths. For example, alarmist stories in the media about domestic violence often lump together husbands and boyfriends as “partners” who batter women, when in fact a woman who heads her own household is nearly three times as likely to be beaten as a wife is. Separated, divorced, and never-married women are all more likely to be beaten than a wife is. In other words, the traditional family is the safest setting for a women—though that is, of course, not the message which the anointed seek to convey.
The pervasive preferences of the anointed for collective and third-party decision making (“solutions” by “society”) takes the form of promotion of “day care” for children. Enabling families to take care of their own children at home by allowing the income tax exemption to keep pace with inflation and the real cost of raising children has no such support among the anointed. Indeed, this is an idea often pushed—in vain—by conservatives. While the anointed are often ready to spend vast amounts of government money on families, especially in ways which allow outsiders to intrude into family decisions, they are by no means equally willing to let families keep money that they have earned and make their own independent decisions. In family matters, as in other matters, power and preemption are the touchstones of the vision of the anointed, however much that vision is described in terms of the beneficent goals it is seeking.
7. The Vocabulary of the Anointed
When people choose their occupations according to what the public wants and is willing to pay for, that is “greed,” but when the public is forced to pay for what the anointed want done, that is “public service.”
Families who wish to be independent financially and to make their own decisions about their lives are of little interest or use to those who are seeking to impose their superior wisdom and virtue on other people. Earning their own money makes these families unlikely candidates for third-party direction and wishing to retain what they have earned threatens to deprive the anointed of the money needed to distribute as largess to others who would thus become subject to their direction. In these circumstances, it is understandable why the desire to increase and retain one’s own earnings should be characterized as “greed,” while wishing to live at the expense of others is not.
Since the bottom line of the prevailing vision is that the anointed are moral surrogates to make decisions for other people, those other people must be seen as incapable of making the right decisions for themselves. The concept of personal responsibility is thus anathema to this vision and the vocabulary of the anointed reflects this.
Anyone can be in favor of “social justice” without further ado. In short, the ideas of so-called “thinking people” often require much less thinking. Indeed, the less thinking there is about definitions, means, and consequences, the more attractive “social justice” seems.
January 21, 2022
What, in his earlier work Sowell called "the constrained vs the unconstrained vision," and what Steven Pinker renamed "the tragic vs the Utopian vision, in this book Sowell discusses as "the tragic vision vs the vision of the anointed." Of course, the "vision of the anointed" IS a Utopian vision uncompromised by the constraints of "Tragic" realities.
Why would anyone choose tragic constraints over Utopian possibilities? Think back to American civics classes. The Constitution is framed to "constrain" the corruptions and limitations of human nature in the exercise of power. Government of-the-people is based in trade-offs and compromises that always fall short -- that are subject to criticism and grievance from one or all sides.
Why do "the Anointed" choose an "unconstrained" or "Utopian" vision? I will try to summarize by saying that the Utopian vision gives "the Anointed" an edge over the "unenlightened." Utopian policies are the evidence of their moral superiority over the "less caring," or frequently "angry" masses. In this 1995 book, Sowell even goes so far as to say that the Elites even relish the outrage their policies may elicit from the masses, because the opposition increases the distance or the heights from which the Elites can look down upon the masses! (p.248) I am sure that were he writing today (over 20 years later), Sowell would point to Angela Merkel vs the common people of Germany. Merkel and other governing Elites of the EU have opened the borders of Europe to millions of unvetted Muslim refugees. Consequently and inevitably, Europe is plagued with riots, gang rapes and mass murders. Citizen opposition is mobilizing street protests and media mockery of Angela Merkel. Yet she is doubling down on her open borders policies. Insane?? or "the vision of the Anointed"?
"Consistent with this pattern of seeking differentiation at virtually all cost has been the adoption of a variety of anti-social individuals and groups as special objects of solicitude--which is to say, special examples of the wider and loftier vision of the anointed." (p.248) This explains to me the parade at the 2016 Democratic National Convention--mothers of cop killers, transgenders and victims of social injustice.
To rise above the masses, the Anointed espouse views more advanced than the norm; they must "progress" beyond the Founders, and purify society of the prejudices and superstitions of traditions. They are "change agents." Sowell quotes historians Will and Ariel Durant from their "Lessons of History:"
"No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." (p.112)
The reckless change in social, economic and foreign policy we see transforming our world today is the result of the Anointed exercising power. But the anarchy and ruin of civilization is necessary in order to install a new, better world order -- the Utopia of the Anointed.
Why would anyone choose tragic constraints over Utopian possibilities? Think back to American civics classes. The Constitution is framed to "constrain" the corruptions and limitations of human nature in the exercise of power. Government of-the-people is based in trade-offs and compromises that always fall short -- that are subject to criticism and grievance from one or all sides.
Why do "the Anointed" choose an "unconstrained" or "Utopian" vision? I will try to summarize by saying that the Utopian vision gives "the Anointed" an edge over the "unenlightened." Utopian policies are the evidence of their moral superiority over the "less caring," or frequently "angry" masses. In this 1995 book, Sowell even goes so far as to say that the Elites even relish the outrage their policies may elicit from the masses, because the opposition increases the distance or the heights from which the Elites can look down upon the masses! (p.248) I am sure that were he writing today (over 20 years later), Sowell would point to Angela Merkel vs the common people of Germany. Merkel and other governing Elites of the EU have opened the borders of Europe to millions of unvetted Muslim refugees. Consequently and inevitably, Europe is plagued with riots, gang rapes and mass murders. Citizen opposition is mobilizing street protests and media mockery of Angela Merkel. Yet she is doubling down on her open borders policies. Insane?? or "the vision of the Anointed"?
"Consistent with this pattern of seeking differentiation at virtually all cost has been the adoption of a variety of anti-social individuals and groups as special objects of solicitude--which is to say, special examples of the wider and loftier vision of the anointed." (p.248) This explains to me the parade at the 2016 Democratic National Convention--mothers of cop killers, transgenders and victims of social injustice.
To rise above the masses, the Anointed espouse views more advanced than the norm; they must "progress" beyond the Founders, and purify society of the prejudices and superstitions of traditions. They are "change agents." Sowell quotes historians Will and Ariel Durant from their "Lessons of History:"
"No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." (p.112)
The reckless change in social, economic and foreign policy we see transforming our world today is the result of the Anointed exercising power. But the anarchy and ruin of civilization is necessary in order to install a new, better world order -- the Utopia of the Anointed.
October 5, 2017
I have always wondered why so many social policies, all of which seem like good and even noble ideas at the time, turn out so badly. Sowell presents one view and a caustic one it is. Essentially, his thesis is that policy makers have far too often replaced rational analysis of outcomes with wishful and willful assertions that run counter to the facts of the case. The anointed live in a rarefied world in which reality plays little role and the opinions of the non-anointed even less:
"The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of the anointed in the twentieth century--regardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been 'overpopulation,' Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of the anointed must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The anointed do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others." -- P. 123-12
And of course the ends always justify the means even if inclusion and reflection play no part:
"In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences." -- P. 129
Sowell gives dozens of examples of the assertions that the anointed make to justify the policy and then subjects those assertion to rigorous and often statistical analysis to deftly illustrate the faulty and often false assumptions inserted into contemporary policy making.
"The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of the anointed in the twentieth century--regardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been 'overpopulation,' Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of the anointed must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The anointed do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others." -- P. 123-12
And of course the ends always justify the means even if inclusion and reflection play no part:
"In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences." -- P. 129
Sowell gives dozens of examples of the assertions that the anointed make to justify the policy and then subjects those assertion to rigorous and often statistical analysis to deftly illustrate the faulty and often false assumptions inserted into contemporary policy making.
Read
February 2, 2022Sowell at his prescient and ascerbic finest. He fires a volley of logic and research across the bow of the ship of self-righteous elitism in effort to warn them of the approaching icebergs. He synthesizes and builds on some of the ideas developed in his other works (notably A Conflict of Visions), and the result is an elegant and digestible summary of Sowell's thought.
He picks apart the insulated, echo-chamber ideas of the social/political elites--the anointed (since they have named themselves the de facto saviors of the world)--and argues for the historic, "tragic" vision of a world in which personal responsibility matters, human nature is not perfect, and there are no "solutions" to the world's problems, only trade-offs between equally good or equally bad options.
In essence, this is a book about how man is not and cannot be sovereign over the world, despite his fervent efforts to the contrary.
The implications of Sowell's reasoning are clear at a political and economic level, but there is a clear warning for personal and spiritual issues as well. The tendency to believe that we can "change the world" and bring about "social justice" is just as pervasive in the Church as it is in the world. We have to work within the responsibilities and possibilites given to us and guard against the temptation to usurp God's place as the only righteous judge.
He picks apart the insulated, echo-chamber ideas of the social/political elites--the anointed (since they have named themselves the de facto saviors of the world)--and argues for the historic, "tragic" vision of a world in which personal responsibility matters, human nature is not perfect, and there are no "solutions" to the world's problems, only trade-offs between equally good or equally bad options.
In essence, this is a book about how man is not and cannot be sovereign over the world, despite his fervent efforts to the contrary.
The implications of Sowell's reasoning are clear at a political and economic level, but there is a clear warning for personal and spiritual issues as well. The tendency to believe that we can "change the world" and bring about "social justice" is just as pervasive in the Church as it is in the world. We have to work within the responsibilities and possibilites given to us and guard against the temptation to usurp God's place as the only righteous judge.
February 27, 2012
Good, but needed more detail
Thomas Sowell, a noted conservative thinker and a genuinely interesting person (I've heard him as a guest on a local radio station several times) writes an effective book against the actions of those whom he calls 'The Annointed.' The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy is effective, but not a great work.
Who are The Annointed?
He uses the term in a sarcastic way here to illuminate those 'Teflon prophets' (he uses that term because some of them are still considered credible despite no evidence that their predictions have ever come true) that scream doom and gloom and offer the direst of predictions unless we immediately give them the power to save us - since we are too simple to see the problem for ourselves and take the actions needed to save ourselves.
Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2011/...
Thomas Sowell, a noted conservative thinker and a genuinely interesting person (I've heard him as a guest on a local radio station several times) writes an effective book against the actions of those whom he calls 'The Annointed.' The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy is effective, but not a great work.
Who are The Annointed?
He uses the term in a sarcastic way here to illuminate those 'Teflon prophets' (he uses that term because some of them are still considered credible despite no evidence that their predictions have ever come true) that scream doom and gloom and offer the direst of predictions unless we immediately give them the power to save us - since we are too simple to see the problem for ourselves and take the actions needed to save ourselves.
Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2011/...
November 18, 2023
Basically a case against woke-ism. Really important ideas. I read as audio and need to reread in print.
April 5, 2009
For some of the Libertarian opinions I have come to hold, I have been called “at least partially evil” on one occasion and told to “have a heart” on too many occasions to count – and both of these comments from some of the people who know me best. And that is to say nothing of the times my arguments have been called "simplistic" and yet no reason is ever given for why they are actually wrong. This form of attack is one which Sowell writes about to some length and in that, and numerous other respects his book resonated with me. The Vision of the Anointed is Sowell’s counter attack directed towards powerful elites whose "vision" can most easily be summed up as "we know better than you, due to our superior intellect, morality or both and we intend to use our political power to re-engineer society for you (all in your own best interest of course)."
Sowell's critique of this vision is directed almost entirely towards the political left. While an attack aimed primarily towards “liberals” is often justified, I think it could have very easily been applied to any big government vision be it liberal or conservative (especially given the hubris and big government conservatism surrounding George W. Bush's tenure. In fairness to Sowell however, his book was published in '95). The fact that Sowell's book didn't do this made the message less persuasive than it could have been. Yet at times, the message is quite persuasive. For example, Sowell contrasts those with the vision of the anointed with those of a "tragic" vision of the world. (The anointed being those who see the world in terms of "problems" and "solutions" while those with the tragic vision see the world as a balance of trade offs, each with their own set of problems.) When politicians say things like, "We know how to solve the problem of poverty/drug abuse/poor educational outcomes" they are making implicit assumptions that these problems are a fault of "society" and therefore they can impose a so called "solution" by re-engineering society. Those with a tragic vision see these problems as being either an inherent part of the human condition or often times even a direct result of the very "solutions" put in place to alleviate the problem in the first place. It is not a simple matter of imposing a solution because the very act of such an imposition has its own set of problems (think of the war on drugs - something I might add which is both a liberal and conservative obsession). Sowell writes:
The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge. But to those with the tragic vision, what is dangerous are will and power without knowledge - and for many expansive purposes, knowledge is inherently insufficient....
Although followers of this tradition [the anointed:] often advocate more egalitarian economic and social results, they necessarily seek to achieve thoseresults through highly unequal influence and power, and–especially in the twentieth century–through an increased concentration of power in the central government, which is thereby enabled to redistribute economic resources more equally. While those with the vision of the anointed emphasize the knowledge and resources available to promote the various policy programs they favor, those with the tragic vision of the human condition emphasize that these resources are taken from other uses ("there is no free lunch") and that the knowledge and wisdom required to run ambitious social programs far exceed what any human being has ever possessed, as the unintended negative consequences of such programs repeatedly demonstrate.
This is one idea which the book explores in much more depth and is quite compelling. At other times however, Sowell paints "the anointed" with such a broad brush or the examples he uses are not explored in enough depth to fully buy into all that he writes. In a book that explores the negative effects of a small class of elite individuals (politicians) making expansive decisions to re-engineer society, Sowell does a poor job to clearly define the boundaries between where individual liberty ends and appropriate state action begins. For example, based on the overall writing, Sowell would seem to be in favor of the death penalty, state restrictions on abortion, and certain individual rights to privacy (most notably where public health is–arguably–at stake). And yet in a careful reading of the book, one realizes that Sowell rarely expresses direct opinions on these issues but mostly critiques the way in which the "anointed" apply inconsistent logic in how the issues are dealt with.
On the whole the book had many strong areas and will likely give a reader a new look on the world at large. At times however it oversteps its bounds and is in murky water if it is trying to describe a comprehensive alternative to the vision of the anointed. I particularly liked the chapter "Courting Disaster" on judicial activism vs. judicial restraint and how with increasing judicial activism we seem to be slipping away from the ideal of "a government of laws and not of men" and the senseless debate that surrounds the "intentions" of the framers of the constitution vs. what they clearly articulated given the legal language of the time. (And he points out that a built in framework exists to chaning what we no longer agree with is in place but that framework does not involve the arbitrary decisions of individual judges.) In his conclusion, Sowell has a very brief but enticing section on the role of journalism and the media and some of the inherent problems within. Speaking as somone who majored in journalism in college, I found his ideas to mirror many of my own and I would have liked him to explore the subject further.
Sowell's critique of this vision is directed almost entirely towards the political left. While an attack aimed primarily towards “liberals” is often justified, I think it could have very easily been applied to any big government vision be it liberal or conservative (especially given the hubris and big government conservatism surrounding George W. Bush's tenure. In fairness to Sowell however, his book was published in '95). The fact that Sowell's book didn't do this made the message less persuasive than it could have been. Yet at times, the message is quite persuasive. For example, Sowell contrasts those with the vision of the anointed with those of a "tragic" vision of the world. (The anointed being those who see the world in terms of "problems" and "solutions" while those with the tragic vision see the world as a balance of trade offs, each with their own set of problems.) When politicians say things like, "We know how to solve the problem of poverty/drug abuse/poor educational outcomes" they are making implicit assumptions that these problems are a fault of "society" and therefore they can impose a so called "solution" by re-engineering society. Those with a tragic vision see these problems as being either an inherent part of the human condition or often times even a direct result of the very "solutions" put in place to alleviate the problem in the first place. It is not a simple matter of imposing a solution because the very act of such an imposition has its own set of problems (think of the war on drugs - something I might add which is both a liberal and conservative obsession). Sowell writes:
The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge. But to those with the tragic vision, what is dangerous are will and power without knowledge - and for many expansive purposes, knowledge is inherently insufficient....
Although followers of this tradition [the anointed:] often advocate more egalitarian economic and social results, they necessarily seek to achieve thoseresults through highly unequal influence and power, and–especially in the twentieth century–through an increased concentration of power in the central government, which is thereby enabled to redistribute economic resources more equally. While those with the vision of the anointed emphasize the knowledge and resources available to promote the various policy programs they favor, those with the tragic vision of the human condition emphasize that these resources are taken from other uses ("there is no free lunch") and that the knowledge and wisdom required to run ambitious social programs far exceed what any human being has ever possessed, as the unintended negative consequences of such programs repeatedly demonstrate.
This is one idea which the book explores in much more depth and is quite compelling. At other times however, Sowell paints "the anointed" with such a broad brush or the examples he uses are not explored in enough depth to fully buy into all that he writes. In a book that explores the negative effects of a small class of elite individuals (politicians) making expansive decisions to re-engineer society, Sowell does a poor job to clearly define the boundaries between where individual liberty ends and appropriate state action begins. For example, based on the overall writing, Sowell would seem to be in favor of the death penalty, state restrictions on abortion, and certain individual rights to privacy (most notably where public health is–arguably–at stake). And yet in a careful reading of the book, one realizes that Sowell rarely expresses direct opinions on these issues but mostly critiques the way in which the "anointed" apply inconsistent logic in how the issues are dealt with.
On the whole the book had many strong areas and will likely give a reader a new look on the world at large. At times however it oversteps its bounds and is in murky water if it is trying to describe a comprehensive alternative to the vision of the anointed. I particularly liked the chapter "Courting Disaster" on judicial activism vs. judicial restraint and how with increasing judicial activism we seem to be slipping away from the ideal of "a government of laws and not of men" and the senseless debate that surrounds the "intentions" of the framers of the constitution vs. what they clearly articulated given the legal language of the time. (And he points out that a built in framework exists to chaning what we no longer agree with is in place but that framework does not involve the arbitrary decisions of individual judges.) In his conclusion, Sowell has a very brief but enticing section on the role of journalism and the media and some of the inherent problems within. Speaking as somone who majored in journalism in college, I found his ideas to mirror many of my own and I would have liked him to explore the subject further.
December 22, 2022
Helpful for understanding why the prevailing narrative prevails. Sowell has keen insight into the motives and and thinking of the "annointed."
Sowell covers a lot of ground and there's a lot of gems in here. He also give you some tools to dismantle their tired talking points.
But truly, this book doesn't need to be read by the "benighted" so much as those who unthinkingly parrot the vison of the anointed so that they can fit in and feel like good people.
Sowell covers a lot of ground and there's a lot of gems in here. He also give you some tools to dismantle their tired talking points.
But truly, this book doesn't need to be read by the "benighted" so much as those who unthinkingly parrot the vison of the anointed so that they can fit in and feel like good people.
June 5, 2014
In his book Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell offers key insights into how and why the American left has run wild in it’s attempts to change America.
As the subtitle suggests, “Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy,” Sowell posits that the American left’s policies are egocentric exercises meant to establish themselves as saviors and their opponents as villains. Sowell shows that historically the left has been far more willing to condemn their opponents as evil even though the people they’re condemning will be more likely to tag them as merely mistaken.
Sowell points out the history of the left’s willingness to move the goal posts for policy proposals. When the War on Poverty was passed, the stated goal was to reduce poverty federal welfare roles through “hand ups not hand outs”, when sex education was introduced the goal was to reduce teen pregnancy. However when the programs were enacted and had the opposite effect, the liberals invented new goals to justify the programs saying things would have been worse had these programs not been implemented despite the fact that both poverty and teen pregnancy were headed down prior to the introduction of liberal efforts to fix them.
Sowell also gives a great clinic on how liberals will often manipulate statistics. He shows how liberals manage to magnify and exaggerate concerns over “income inequality” by failing into consideration simple factors such as the fact that younger people tend to make less than older people and that poverty tends to be much more of a transient state in America.
Sowe’ll’s wide-ranging treatise covers such items as the number of the people who manage to be ridiculously wrong without losing one iota of credibility such as Paul Ehrlich who made the bold yet very wrong predictions of a population bomb. He also cites many of the falsehoods behind leftist crusades including how the car that served as the basis for Ralph Nader’s “unsafe at any speed” campaign wasn’t so unsafe after all.
Sowell contrasts the vision of the anointed with what he calls the tragic vision, which many Christians would equate to our life in a fallen world. Because we live in an imperfect world, Sowell posits “there are no solutions only trade offs.” One example he cites was a proposed regulation that was offered after a baby was sucked out of an airplane when a cabin depressurized. The regulation would have required parents to purchase a seat for children under two when flying on planes. A study found that to pass a regulation that would prevent the death of one baby on an airplane would actually lead to the deaths of nine others due to parents who would be unable to afford the extra seat and be forced to take less expensive and less safe transportation, in addition to high economic costs.
Because the left fails to recognize this and because they shut themselves off to the impact of reality through moving targets and ignoring inconvenient facts, Sowell argues that the unquestioned predominance of the vision of the anointed is a danger to America’s economic and political freedom. While the book written nearly twenty years ago, the book feels as if it could have been written today as we’ve seen much of the same phenomena in the debates over same sex marriage and Obamacare.
If the book can be faulted, it’s that Sowell is great at pointing out problems and the strategies of the Anointed must has no suggestions for overcoming them. He points that, in many cases, the very nature of media (even more than the bias of those who work in the media) works against conservatives. We saw this during the Obamacare debate. While most Americans were satisfied with their health care and receiving the care they needed, it’s very hard to make a dramatic emotional point about that.
Still, the book is great for those who want to understand the polemics of the left and how a small minority has succeeded in an aggressive culture war. The Vision of the Anointed is a solid read that offers keen insights into how we got where we are today.
December 13, 2010
A truly devastating critique of the liberal mindset.
Quotes:
In reality, the entire population of the world today could be housed in the state of Texas, in single-story, single-family houses - four people to a house - and with a typical yard around each home.
Everyone is a “progressive” by his own lights. That the anointed believe that this label differentiates themselves from other people is one of a number of symptoms of their naive narcissism.
Rights from government interference - “Congress shall make no law,” as the Constitution says regarding religion, free speech, etc. - may be free, but rights to anything mean that someone else has been yoked to your service involuntarily, with no corresponding responsibility on your part to provide for yourself, to compensate others, or even to behave decently or responsibly.
For society as a whole, nothing is a right - not even bare subsistence, which has to be produced by human toil. Particular segments of society can of course be insulated from the necessities impinging on society as a whole, by having someone else carry their share of work, either temporarily or permanently. But, however much those others recede into the background in the verbal picture painted by words like “rights,” the whole process is one of differential privilege.
Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned - never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation.
To say that a shoe shine boy earns “too little” or a surgeon “too much” is to say that third parties should have the right to preempt the decisions of those who elected to spend their money on shoe shines or surgery.
...both poverty and dependency were declining for years prior to the Johnson administration’s “war on poverty.” Black income was rising, not only absolutely but relative to rising white income.
Those who wrote the American constitution were of course familiar with such terms as “due process,” “freedom of speech,” etc., from English common law and indicated no intention of giving them different meanings from what those terms already had.
[According to the anointed]: Opposition to the vision of the anointed is due not to a different reading of complex and inconclusive evidence, but exists because opponents are lacking, either intellectually or morally, or both.
The perennial desire to make particular things “affordable” through public policy or to have government provide an ever-expanding list of “basic needs” suggests that the economic realities conveyed by prices are seen as mere arbitrary social conventions, rather than expressions of inherent constraints and inescapable costs.
Quotes:
In reality, the entire population of the world today could be housed in the state of Texas, in single-story, single-family houses - four people to a house - and with a typical yard around each home.
Everyone is a “progressive” by his own lights. That the anointed believe that this label differentiates themselves from other people is one of a number of symptoms of their naive narcissism.
Rights from government interference - “Congress shall make no law,” as the Constitution says regarding religion, free speech, etc. - may be free, but rights to anything mean that someone else has been yoked to your service involuntarily, with no corresponding responsibility on your part to provide for yourself, to compensate others, or even to behave decently or responsibly.
For society as a whole, nothing is a right - not even bare subsistence, which has to be produced by human toil. Particular segments of society can of course be insulated from the necessities impinging on society as a whole, by having someone else carry their share of work, either temporarily or permanently. But, however much those others recede into the background in the verbal picture painted by words like “rights,” the whole process is one of differential privilege.
Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned - never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation.
To say that a shoe shine boy earns “too little” or a surgeon “too much” is to say that third parties should have the right to preempt the decisions of those who elected to spend their money on shoe shines or surgery.
...both poverty and dependency were declining for years prior to the Johnson administration’s “war on poverty.” Black income was rising, not only absolutely but relative to rising white income.
Those who wrote the American constitution were of course familiar with such terms as “due process,” “freedom of speech,” etc., from English common law and indicated no intention of giving them different meanings from what those terms already had.
[According to the anointed]: Opposition to the vision of the anointed is due not to a different reading of complex and inconclusive evidence, but exists because opponents are lacking, either intellectually or morally, or both.
The perennial desire to make particular things “affordable” through public policy or to have government provide an ever-expanding list of “basic needs” suggests that the economic realities conveyed by prices are seen as mere arbitrary social conventions, rather than expressions of inherent constraints and inescapable costs.
May 17, 2020
Bad sources and unvoiced assumptions make this ideological dogma in the guise of an adult non-fiction book.
The thesis is that "they" are concerned about non-issues, create policies that cause more problems, and ignore any feedback because of ideological blindness. His examples include seat belts, sex ed, and the Miranda rights.
This could work if he went a more Public Choice route and talked about how well-intentioned policies get chewed up by the political process. He could talk about some plausible examples of counter-productive legislation. These would talk about actual issues with nuance, but Sowell is only interested in selling dogma to the converted.
I'm not joking about those examples. He says that informing detained persons of their legal rights "provide greater means of escaping punishment for crimes committed by criminals who fall below the state of the art in criminal evasions of the law". Before this he talks about the morality of shooting mad dogs, and saying that capital punishment is the only humane option. Apparently Sowell's idea of the legal system comes from Dirty Harry movies.
He also uses highly questionable sources for contradicting statistics. A good examples involves sex education in the 60's. His line is that teenage births were declining until it was taught in school, and afterwords it skyrocketed. This confused me, since there's decades of well-established data showing a negative correlation between the two. The National Center for Health Statistics shows exactly the opposite that Sowell claims. His source? "The War Against Population" by Jacqueline Kasun, and who knows where she got her figures from. While his book is dotted with footnotes, most turn out to be garbage like this.
While Sowell complains that "THEY" ignore reality in place of ideology, this book is a tedious exercise in self-projection.
The thesis is that "they" are concerned about non-issues, create policies that cause more problems, and ignore any feedback because of ideological blindness. His examples include seat belts, sex ed, and the Miranda rights.
This could work if he went a more Public Choice route and talked about how well-intentioned policies get chewed up by the political process. He could talk about some plausible examples of counter-productive legislation. These would talk about actual issues with nuance, but Sowell is only interested in selling dogma to the converted.
I'm not joking about those examples. He says that informing detained persons of their legal rights "provide greater means of escaping punishment for crimes committed by criminals who fall below the state of the art in criminal evasions of the law". Before this he talks about the morality of shooting mad dogs, and saying that capital punishment is the only humane option. Apparently Sowell's idea of the legal system comes from Dirty Harry movies.
He also uses highly questionable sources for contradicting statistics. A good examples involves sex education in the 60's. His line is that teenage births were declining until it was taught in school, and afterwords it skyrocketed. This confused me, since there's decades of well-established data showing a negative correlation between the two. The National Center for Health Statistics shows exactly the opposite that Sowell claims. His source? "The War Against Population" by Jacqueline Kasun, and who knows where she got her figures from. While his book is dotted with footnotes, most turn out to be garbage like this.
While Sowell complains that "THEY" ignore reality in place of ideology, this book is a tedious exercise in self-projection.
January 2, 2017
Positives from the book:
- fairly representative of the American right-wing in their stated public policy dimension.
Negatives from the book:
- ideological in nature, but presenting itself as a fact based guide to policy issues.
- black and white thinking, with no room for nuance.
- frequent straw-man of liberal viewpoints. Liberal arguments in this book are almost a caricature, so they can be more readily debunked.
Some views found in the books:
- Homosexuals are a danger to others due to the AIDS epidemic (p.216-217).
- Reagan tax cut for the rich didn't cause the budget deficit, because we had more in revenues under his administration than previous administrations (as if other taxes could not be increased during the same period).
- Black/white disparities are only due to falling marriage rates among African Americans, and not because of slavery, Jim Crow, or systemic discrimination.
- welfare is the root of all evil
All in all, I think there are strong conservative arguments out there. But this isn't it.
- fairly representative of the American right-wing in their stated public policy dimension.
Negatives from the book:
- ideological in nature, but presenting itself as a fact based guide to policy issues.
- black and white thinking, with no room for nuance.
- frequent straw-man of liberal viewpoints. Liberal arguments in this book are almost a caricature, so they can be more readily debunked.
Some views found in the books:
- Homosexuals are a danger to others due to the AIDS epidemic (p.216-217).
- Reagan tax cut for the rich didn't cause the budget deficit, because we had more in revenues under his administration than previous administrations (as if other taxes could not be increased during the same period).
- Black/white disparities are only due to falling marriage rates among African Americans, and not because of slavery, Jim Crow, or systemic discrimination.
- welfare is the root of all evil
All in all, I think there are strong conservative arguments out there. But this isn't it.
January 7, 2018
A primer for understanding political correctness. Sowell brilliantly exposes the progressive mindset and methodology, and its cohesive dynamics in the irrational social system it propagates, including its psychological appeal to self-flattery, its lack of accountability or corrective feedback, and its special suitedness to media proliferation. The chapter “The Vocabulary of the Anointed” is particularly good and exposes the anointed’s successful mainstreaming of its language and all its in-built fallacies. My minor quibble is a few subtle notes of social conservatism. I recommend it to all those wanting, or merely willing, to question the established zeitgeist.
Rating: between 4 and 5 stars.
Rating: between 4 and 5 stars.
October 27, 2021
Thomas Sowell is a delight to read, the man has the clearest of proses.
His arguments aren't flawless - far from it, as he often engages in the type of fallacy he has just denounced just like any good ideologue. Still, the man says many important things that are very much worth being aware of.
The book, written in 1995, seems to be more relevant today than ever, as the vision of the anointed keeps spreading unrestrained.
His arguments aren't flawless - far from it, as he often engages in the type of fallacy he has just denounced just like any good ideologue. Still, the man says many important things that are very much worth being aware of.
The book, written in 1995, seems to be more relevant today than ever, as the vision of the anointed keeps spreading unrestrained.
November 16, 2021
This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand politics.
July 6, 2017
In attempting to write about this book, I have become aware of how well Sowell can discuss complex topics so succinctly and with such ease, and how I cannot. Nevertheless, I proceed.
In a way, this is a continuation of the ideas Sowell introduces in A Conflict of Visions, and in a way, it is not. In that previous book, Sowell defines a visions as a framework of assumptions that provide one with a sense of how the world works. The two main visions form there framework based on their view of the nature of man, that is, whether man is forever limited by external and internal constraints (chiefly man’s inherent moral limitations due to selfishness), or whether some parts of society are evolving the intellectual and moral superiority to lead all of mankind to a future not limited by these constraints. Ones thoughts about the limitations of man drives how people define terms such as equality, power, justice, and freedom, which in turn drives peoples view on how government should operate.
In A Conflict of Visions, Sowell pragmatically compares these two viewpoints, identified as the Constrained Vision and Unconstrained Vision. Though he hates these terms, the unconstrained vision is that of most liberals, and the constrained visions would be that of non-liberals. This discussion is done in a textbook style in order for the reader to make up their own mind on where they stand, as well as allow the reader to understand why some people view problems in society completely differently than themselves. It’s a great book.
In this book, Sowell chooses a side, dons his Libertarian hat, and goes on the attack of the Unconstrained vision, which he sarcastically renames the “Vision of the Annointed.” The followers of the Constrained vision are relabeled the Benighted. Sowell contends that the inherent self-righteousness of the Annointed have prevented them from actually reviewing data to see if the policies they promoted in the 60’s and 70’s were successful, and resorted to rhetoric and data slight of hand to convince society (and themselves) that they were improving society, where in fact much of the policies they enacted hurt society. Without directly saying it, Sowell feels the world acts more like whats understood in the unconstrained vision, and running a government with a plan drawn up by the anointed has lots of unintended consequences that have to hidden from society in order to make it seem like these “progressive” policies are working.
Sowell plows through American history, taking apart “facts” told by the Annointed and accepted by society, and breaking down the data to unearth to true effects of the Annointeds social fixes. The Rise of welfare programs, the addition of laws to protect rights of criminals, the introduction of sex education programs in schools, the apparent rise in domestic violence, etc, Sowell meticulously addresses all of these issues and demonstrates how what you’ve been told regarding these issues are not supported by facts. Even if you recognize that Sowell’s rapid fire nature in covering these topics does not allow for the deep study Sowell insists is required to make decisions on effectiveness of a particular policy, at the very least Sowell is convincing that many of these issues where just assumed to work and were never given a fair debate.
As much as I don’t like attack books (because all they tend to do is reinforce the opinion one already has), Sowells is something special. As I was reading it, two reports were released in June 2017 regarding preliminary results of Seattle’s gradual minimum wage increase (to reach $15/hr). One report from U of Washington indicated that the minimum wage increase was decreasing the amount of income per month the workers were receiving, while the other report from UC Berkeley contradicted these results. From what I read, the Berkeley report was performed by a professor who has never not concluded that minimum wage increases were beneficial, and was requested by the Mayor of Seattle in an attempt to do damage control after the Mayor had seen a draft of the first, negative report.
Sowell covers minimum wage increases in the book, and he not only predicts the results of the UW study (which the Berekely professor said were not logical), but he also predicts the responses of pro-minimum wage academics and media, and shows why there criticisms are wrong. This, from a book written in the 90’s and based on data from 1948. The point is not that Sowell is right about the minimum wage issue (considering that Seattle is not a laboratory setting, he may not be when all the cards are shown). The point is, his foundational view of the Annointed seems to match there behaviors, and identify their limitations quite well.
Still, this is an attack book, so I was disappointed with it. His attack of the “Annointed” seems almost personal. For instance, when the foundation viewpoints of the constrained and unconstrained visions are outlined in A Conflict of Visions, Sowell is very even handed and objective. But when this framework is repeated in Vision of the Annointed, Sowell has altered the vocabulary to provide the annointed with a self-righteous tone. Also, Sowell seems to treat the Annointed as taking up stances to deliberately oppose the Constrained/Benighted, instead of taking a stance because this is there gut belief. This type of spiteful interaction between visions is not discussed in A Conflict of Visions.
And at times Sowell seems to deviate on how he has defined a vision. For instance, at one point he mentions how it is understandable to see why people would choose the Vision of the Annointed. But by his original definition of vision, a vision is not really chosen like selecting a flavor of ice cream, it’s ones gut feel on how the world works. In another passage, Sowell mentions that the problem with the Annointed is that they never test there believes, but hold them as truths. But that in itself is the nature of visions as defined by Sowell. Only when logic or tests are applied to a vision does it become validated theory. So with this known, the Benighted vision also holds onto believes that are not tested.
I also think that a lot of the criticisms of the Annointed could be made to non-left as well, especially when it comes to using rhetoric to win arguments and ignoring facts if they do not agree with what you have been promising. If you leave the realm of politics and let the Annointed encompass liberal academia and media, Sowells argument makes more sense. And Sowell does make some very good arguments that Annointed Vision, when combined with our current media format (it’s a nice companion to “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neal Postman) is more able to mislead and convince that the topics of interest of the Benighted. There is a reason why the Annointed is staffed with with young academics who want to make a world a better place- it has great marketing material. Much better than saying, “the world is messed up, but we can make it slowly better.” But Sowell’s line of thought is brief and seems tacked on, at the end of the last chapter in the book.
This book doesn’t hurt Sowells concept of Visions, but he doesn’t spend the time needed to bolster his theories either. For the high level theory, it’s a rehash. An then its followed by lots of examples that will make people either mad, defensive, or embarrassed.
In a way, this is a continuation of the ideas Sowell introduces in A Conflict of Visions, and in a way, it is not. In that previous book, Sowell defines a visions as a framework of assumptions that provide one with a sense of how the world works. The two main visions form there framework based on their view of the nature of man, that is, whether man is forever limited by external and internal constraints (chiefly man’s inherent moral limitations due to selfishness), or whether some parts of society are evolving the intellectual and moral superiority to lead all of mankind to a future not limited by these constraints. Ones thoughts about the limitations of man drives how people define terms such as equality, power, justice, and freedom, which in turn drives peoples view on how government should operate.
In A Conflict of Visions, Sowell pragmatically compares these two viewpoints, identified as the Constrained Vision and Unconstrained Vision. Though he hates these terms, the unconstrained vision is that of most liberals, and the constrained visions would be that of non-liberals. This discussion is done in a textbook style in order for the reader to make up their own mind on where they stand, as well as allow the reader to understand why some people view problems in society completely differently than themselves. It’s a great book.
In this book, Sowell chooses a side, dons his Libertarian hat, and goes on the attack of the Unconstrained vision, which he sarcastically renames the “Vision of the Annointed.” The followers of the Constrained vision are relabeled the Benighted. Sowell contends that the inherent self-righteousness of the Annointed have prevented them from actually reviewing data to see if the policies they promoted in the 60’s and 70’s were successful, and resorted to rhetoric and data slight of hand to convince society (and themselves) that they were improving society, where in fact much of the policies they enacted hurt society. Without directly saying it, Sowell feels the world acts more like whats understood in the unconstrained vision, and running a government with a plan drawn up by the anointed has lots of unintended consequences that have to hidden from society in order to make it seem like these “progressive” policies are working.
Sowell plows through American history, taking apart “facts” told by the Annointed and accepted by society, and breaking down the data to unearth to true effects of the Annointeds social fixes. The Rise of welfare programs, the addition of laws to protect rights of criminals, the introduction of sex education programs in schools, the apparent rise in domestic violence, etc, Sowell meticulously addresses all of these issues and demonstrates how what you’ve been told regarding these issues are not supported by facts. Even if you recognize that Sowell’s rapid fire nature in covering these topics does not allow for the deep study Sowell insists is required to make decisions on effectiveness of a particular policy, at the very least Sowell is convincing that many of these issues where just assumed to work and were never given a fair debate.
As much as I don’t like attack books (because all they tend to do is reinforce the opinion one already has), Sowells is something special. As I was reading it, two reports were released in June 2017 regarding preliminary results of Seattle’s gradual minimum wage increase (to reach $15/hr). One report from U of Washington indicated that the minimum wage increase was decreasing the amount of income per month the workers were receiving, while the other report from UC Berkeley contradicted these results. From what I read, the Berkeley report was performed by a professor who has never not concluded that minimum wage increases were beneficial, and was requested by the Mayor of Seattle in an attempt to do damage control after the Mayor had seen a draft of the first, negative report.
Sowell covers minimum wage increases in the book, and he not only predicts the results of the UW study (which the Berekely professor said were not logical), but he also predicts the responses of pro-minimum wage academics and media, and shows why there criticisms are wrong. This, from a book written in the 90’s and based on data from 1948. The point is not that Sowell is right about the minimum wage issue (considering that Seattle is not a laboratory setting, he may not be when all the cards are shown). The point is, his foundational view of the Annointed seems to match there behaviors, and identify their limitations quite well.
Still, this is an attack book, so I was disappointed with it. His attack of the “Annointed” seems almost personal. For instance, when the foundation viewpoints of the constrained and unconstrained visions are outlined in A Conflict of Visions, Sowell is very even handed and objective. But when this framework is repeated in Vision of the Annointed, Sowell has altered the vocabulary to provide the annointed with a self-righteous tone. Also, Sowell seems to treat the Annointed as taking up stances to deliberately oppose the Constrained/Benighted, instead of taking a stance because this is there gut belief. This type of spiteful interaction between visions is not discussed in A Conflict of Visions.
And at times Sowell seems to deviate on how he has defined a vision. For instance, at one point he mentions how it is understandable to see why people would choose the Vision of the Annointed. But by his original definition of vision, a vision is not really chosen like selecting a flavor of ice cream, it’s ones gut feel on how the world works. In another passage, Sowell mentions that the problem with the Annointed is that they never test there believes, but hold them as truths. But that in itself is the nature of visions as defined by Sowell. Only when logic or tests are applied to a vision does it become validated theory. So with this known, the Benighted vision also holds onto believes that are not tested.
I also think that a lot of the criticisms of the Annointed could be made to non-left as well, especially when it comes to using rhetoric to win arguments and ignoring facts if they do not agree with what you have been promising. If you leave the realm of politics and let the Annointed encompass liberal academia and media, Sowells argument makes more sense. And Sowell does make some very good arguments that Annointed Vision, when combined with our current media format (it’s a nice companion to “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neal Postman) is more able to mislead and convince that the topics of interest of the Benighted. There is a reason why the Annointed is staffed with with young academics who want to make a world a better place- it has great marketing material. Much better than saying, “the world is messed up, but we can make it slowly better.” But Sowell’s line of thought is brief and seems tacked on, at the end of the last chapter in the book.
This book doesn’t hurt Sowells concept of Visions, but he doesn’t spend the time needed to bolster his theories either. For the high level theory, it’s a rehash. An then its followed by lots of examples that will make people either mad, defensive, or embarrassed.
August 30, 2024
This was somehow both interesting and a slog to get through. Sowell is definitely on to something - except for the dated examples it could have been written yesterday. AmblesideOnline schedules this in the high school years, but I haven’t been assigning it to all my kids. I think it could be helpful in wading through all the bad ideas out there, but it could possibly reinforce cynicism in those with that tendency. ;) The last (scathing) chapter is possibly the best:
“Desperate evasions of discordant evidence, and the denigration and even demonizing of those presenting such evidence, are indicative of the high stakes in contemporary culture wars, which are not about alternative policies but alternative worlds and of alternative roles of the anointed in those worlds. Because differential rectitude is pivotal to the vision of the anointed, opponents must be shown to be not merely mistaken but morally lacking.”
“Desperate evasions of discordant evidence, and the denigration and even demonizing of those presenting such evidence, are indicative of the high stakes in contemporary culture wars, which are not about alternative policies but alternative worlds and of alternative roles of the anointed in those worlds. Because differential rectitude is pivotal to the vision of the anointed, opponents must be shown to be not merely mistaken but morally lacking.”
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