The Vision of the Anointed

Thomas Sowell, in his book The Vision of the Anointed, essentially presents the traditional conservative view of liberal social policy--he rejects it as unworkable and wasteful of taxpayers' money. There is nothing new or surprising in the book, except perhaps for the fact that Sowell accuses the liberal elites of being arrogant in their attitudes and policies, when he himself could not have written a more arrogant work. He essentially argues that those who are disadvantaged in this society, whether economically, politically, socially, educationally, or any other way, might as well get used to it (as a group) because those unfortunate souls are meant to be left out and there is nothing significant which can be done about it. He is not entirely against any funding or policies aimed at bettering the lot of the have-nots, but he argues for minimal funding and realistic policies which do not try to do too much simply because there is not too much that can be done. This arrogantly conservative view outdoes whatever arrogance the "anointed" (i.e., liberals with whom Sowell disagrees) demonstrate, because it essentially condemns the disadvantaged, the poor, the weak and the disenfranchised, to a life without hope. Sowell accuses the liberals of seeing themselves as superior beings, but then Sowell himself plays God with the poor and the weak, concluding that they had better get used to their lot, and that we shouldn't feel guilty because there is little we can do to help them no ma

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soon metamorphose into Nazis unless he can stop them. With that strict right-wing ideology guiding him, Sowell paints the portrait of an America divided into two camps: the liberal elite who will follow the fantasies of their social policies to disaster, taking the nation with them; and the "benighted," or those of the "tragic vision," meaning himself and other right-wing ideologues. Sowell says he and other right-wingers have just as much "compassion" for the "less fortunate" and just as much "concern" for "the environment" and are every bit as "anti-war" as the "anointed." However, he says, he and his fellow "benighted" conservatives are simply realistic about what can be done about human beings' and environmental and other problems, and the "anointed" are hopelessly unrealistic. The liberals, he says, will spend us into the poorhouse with their social policies, and will not only not solve any of the problems at which they throw our money, but they will make those problems worse. For example, the anointed liberals believe that people should have their constitutional rights protected, which leads to liberal judicial decisions which protect criminals, which leads to coddling of criminals, weak judges, and eventually rising cr

Category: Government - T