The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell
The Vision of the Anointed/Thomas Sowell
Disclaimer: Controversial topic below, if you are easily offended, do not read. This is a review of the author’s argument and does not necessarily reflect my own political stance.
The Vision of the Anointed is a trenchant critique of the moral exaltation and the vision of differential rectitude of the anointed (leftists), and an examination of the catastrophic consequences the defects of their visions have led to in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology.
There are various social policies discussed in this book, such as the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to conquer poverty that ended miserably with doubled the population depending on welfare programs, and the late 1960s spending on sex education that ironically increased teenager preganancies. I am not going to focus on those social policies as I do not necessarily agree with everything Thomas concluded. However, I am more interested in the trend and general self-congratulating mindset of the anointed being depicted in this book.
The author, Thomas Sowell, demonstrates that the prevailing vision of our time emphatically offers a 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. To paraphrase, to disagree with these visions, even if backed by statistics and empirical evidence, one will still be deemed as not merely incorrect, but selfish or evil. With various examples, Thomas enumerates the pattern of the anointed holding on to their visions, their quest is not for reality but for vision—the vision would allow them to assume their own moral superiority.
Thomas illustrated that when the actual course of events of a social policy crashed and burned, or followed a pattern diametrically the opposite of what was assumed and proclaimed by the anointed, they made not the slightest dent in the policies they advocated, or in the vision of the anointed, had achieved a sacrosanct status, cowardly sealed off from the contaminating influence of facts. Thomas further deconstructs how statistics can be distorted to prove assumptions, the seemingly “politically correct” visions, are they actually correct when confronted with statistics and facts?
Despite Hamlet’s warning against self flattery, the vision of the anointed is not merely a vision of the world and its functional reality, but is also a vision of themselves on their moral high horses. They believe problems exist because other people are evil, selfish, not as wise or virtuous as them, so whoever disagrees with them, their words are not worth considering. This is a dangerous growing trend that we have witnessed nowadays....the cancel culture, the “toxic” label, “good vibes only”, and “trust your feelings”, the list goes on...
Disagree with someone one the right and he is likely to think you are wrong or foolish. However, to disagree with someone on the left, he is more likely to think you are selfish, a sell-out, a racist, an ableist, an agest, a bigot, insensitive, and evil.
Can you spot the difference?
Disagreements should be on methods, probabilities, and empirical evidence, with compassion of course. Yet, this has not been the case with the anointed. When opponents disagree with the social policies of the “good” people who “want to help” out of “decent” and “generous” motives, they are often being demonized and labeled as uninformed, selfish or motivated by unworthy purposes. The concept of being “politically correct” can be a double-edged sword, arguments that adhere to the politically correct prevailing vision can easily pass muster without further scrutiny. I believe aiming to be politically correct is out of a decent intention to avoid offense or disadvantage of members of particular groups in society. Yet, the fact that “correctness” is being defined in absolute gives me nightmares, as a believer of all facts, moral, evidence being circumstantial, I believe all thoughts are worth being heard and evaluated, even at the risk of offending others.
This review is not to examine whether the visions, social theories, or policies being pointed out in this book were indeed failures or not--that is up to the economists to debate. All social theories can be 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 the line with the facts. Put differently, it doesn’t matter how close the vision was to reality, if that vision is resistant towards evidence and reality, this makes the vision far more dangerous than a theory that may be initially farther from the truth but is more capable of adjusting to feedback based on evidence. This is one key takeaway from reading the book.
Lastly, I believe it is respectable to have compassion for the less fortunate, concerns for the environment, and empathy towards the minority social groups; however, the very belief that one’s opponents are mean-spirited just because they disagree with the effectiveness and realisticness of a social policy one proposed is the most detrimental vision of the anointed that requires change.
