"The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for
Social Policy", by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books 1995, $25.

Given an opportunity to interview Thomas Sowell, I've always
wanted to ask him if he would ever revisit the topic treated in
his 1987 book, "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of
Political Struggles." There he explored how usually unstated
moral premises determine political world-views. He identified
two "visions" which have been distinct strains of thought over
the last two centuries. He called these, somewhat cumbersomely,
the "Constrained" and "Unconstrained" visions. The former
roughly corresponds to the Conservative/Traditionalist/Right and
the later to the Progressive/Radical/Left camps in political
opinion. He did not claim to explain all opinion by this scheme,
or say that any person holds one of the visions exclusively. And
some ideologies are distinctly hybrid: Marxism and
Utilitarianism, for example.

In this new book, he does return to the topic, focusing on
recent history. Where in the first book he was largely neutral
in his presentation, he is now definitely taking sides. As
we might expect from a conservative free-market economist, he is
a strong adherent of the Constrained, or as he calls it in this
book, the "Tragic" vision. The Unconstrained becomes the
"Anointed" vision. While, in the past, he has delivered the most
devastating arguments in the coolest of tones, he now becomes
rather angry.

Briefly: the "anointed" vision became ascendant in the 1960s and
America has been rapidly going to hell since. The themes are
familiar ones in Sowell's writing: the anointed believe in
"solutions", where those of the tragic vision believe in
imperfect trade-offs. The former believe that they have vast
power and the right to do good, while the latter believe that
human capability is severely limited and that freedom is
exemption from the power of others. The former believe in
outcomes, the latter in processes. For the former, "knowledge"
largely consists of "the articulated intelligence of the
educated few", while for the latter it means "the unarticulated
experiences of the many".

Dr. Sowell understands traditionalist conservatism and often
quotes Edmund Burke and James FitzJames Stephen. He exhibits a
libertarian dislike of one person too closely governing another,
and a populist outrage at ruling elites. (Whether he would
similarly object to a prudent Burkean elite, I do not know). He
works for a neo-conservative think tank, so I don't know what to
make of him as a package, but I have enjoyed several of his
books.

Criticisms: he sometimes displays a reflexive
"Reagan-Republicanism". He claims that his targets believe they
are morally superior and often defame those who disagree with
them. Obviously these offenses are not limited to the
"anointed".

I reproduce his closing paragraphs in full:

    After the vision of the anointed was given increasing scope in
    the education and public policy of the United States and other
    Western societies during the decades beginning with the 1960s,
    the social disintegration became palpable, documented beyond
    issue, and immense across a wide spectrum of social
    phenomena--declining educational standards, rising crime rates,
    broken homes, soaring rates of teenage pregnancy, growing drug
    usage, and unprecedented levels of suicide among adolescents.
    This social devastation was not due to poverty, for the material
    standard of living was rising substantially during this time. It
    was not due to repression, for an unprecedented variety of new
    "rights" emerged from the courts and legislatures to liberate
    people from the constraints of the law while they were being
    liberated from social constraints by the spread of
    "nonjudgemental" attitudes. Neither was this social degeneration
    due to the disruptions of war or natural catastrophes, for it
    was an unusually long period of peace, and science conquered
    many diseases that had plagued the human race for centuries, as
    well as providing better ways of protecting people from
    earthquakes and other destructive acts of nature. It was instead
    an era of self-inflicted wounds.

    The full dangers of the vision of the anointed cannot reveal
    themselves immediately. Even the anointed themselves are
    currently under at least the residual influence of traditional
    philosophical, religious, and moral inhibitions. To the extent
    that their vision prevails and endures, however, successive
    generations of the anointed will be less and less under the
    influence of these eroding traditional constraints, and the pure
    logic of their vision can operate more fully. Conversely, among
    those not convinced of this vision's virtues, the spirit of
    resistance may well erode and the sense of outrage at its
    consequences become dulled by the accumulation of precedents for
    policies and actions that might once have been considered
    intolerable.

    In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly "thinking
    people" who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a
    great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively
    small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler
    than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose
    heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes
    but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of
    personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.