The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Thomas Sowell is part conservative, and part libertarian. Being that I am fully libertarian, I tend to agree with most of his ideas, expecially those regarding economic issues. And even in those cases where I don't agree with him, I still credit him with having good arguments and sound logic.The title of this book refers to the fact that there are certain people who think that they know exactly how everyone else should live. In this book Sowell talks about how these people tend to use the government to force their values and ideas onto everybody else. Being that Sowell is part conservative, he himself is actually somewhat guilty of this to some degree. For example, he often favors using the U.S. military to interfere in the affairs of other countries. Despite this, Sowell's busy-body attitude pales in comparison with those of the people whom he targets in this book. Specifically, the people that he targets are those on the left-wong of the political spectrum. The typical attitude of liberals is that whenever there's any kind of a problem, there's always a government solution. Liberals hold this idea even when it was the government that caused the problem in the first place.For example liberals are big supporters of government farm subsides. The government pays farmers not to grow food. This reduces the supply of food, and this causes the price of food to go up. Then these very same liberals complain about the millions of hungry women and children, and the liberals claim that in order to solve this problem, we need to spend more money on welfare and food stamps. Thus, the real purpose of farm subsidies is to increase the price of food, so that poor people will become dependent on welfare and food stamps, so that the poor people will vote for the Democrats. The Democrats pretend to care about poor people, but if this was really the case, then why do the Democrats support these farm programs which make food more expensive?And it's the exact same thing with low income housing. Liberals favor all sorts of laws that make it illegal for the private secotr to build decent, affordable housing. Zoning laws, density restrictions, anti-development laws, and all sorts of other laws make it illegal for the private sector to build low cost housing. Liberals are big supporters of these laws. And of course liberals are also the same poeple who complain the loudest about the lack of decent, affordable housing, and then they say that we need to spend more money on HUD and public housing and other such things. Sowell loves to point out the hypocrisy of liberals with regard to this kind of thing.Forty years of the War on Poverty has resulted in massive increases in illegitimacy rates, irresponsibility, and fatherless homes, and has taguht millions of people that there is no need to work or to plan for the future. And of course the liberals' solution to all of these problems is to spend even more money on government programs.Adjust

Thomas Sowell demonstrates how anti-intellectual the current intelligensia are and how closed minded. When good intentions are more important than outcomes, a closed belief system results, insulated from real world feedback, with catastrophic results. Modern political discourse has degenerated into name-calling ("mean-spirited," "reactionary," "racist") without reference to actual merits of a proposed course of action. Until I read Dr. Sowell's discussion of "mascots" and the "benighted," I never understood why organizations like the ACLU display the most passion of the behalf on those who exhibit the most anti-social behavor (Nazis marching in Skokie, drunks yelling obscenities at ballball games): Now I do. Dr. Sowell's description of the genesis of government "solutions" (a phony crisis, a proposed program whose critics are shouted down and a retroactive redefinition of the program's goals when the critics prove correct) was also a revelation. Read this section and then turn to any N.Y. Times article discussing either global warming or the gender "wage gap" to see this cycle in action today. If you read the book (and I highly recommend it), look at the Kirkus Review of it for an example of what Dr. Sowell is talking about. Isn't funny how articulate liberal writers are "passionate" and articulate conservative writers are "venomous?"