The Vision Of The Anointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy

Read it long ago, loved it. This one I gave to my son, a liberal. He hasn't said anything so he probably never read it. This points out the foolishness of the liberals who are pretending to do good things, and uses examples that I remember while they were occurring. The most annoying is '{whatever} would have been worse if we hadn't done {whatever}' when in fact either there wasn't a problem or the problem would have corrected itself. Excellent documentation and proof.

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and if half of what Thomas Sowell says in "The Vision of the Anointed" is true, then the political left is leading us there at a record pace. With his lively mind and devastating pen (or I guess it would be a keyboard, heh), Sowell disdainfully lays waste to every politically correct sacred cow he can get his hands on in 260 pages. In every chapter, Sowell demolishes some bit of liberal "wisdom" with his meticulous research and relentless logic. Sowell is a staunch conservative, bordering on libertarian (I am a libertarian, so take that to mean what you will), and after reading this book's all-out assault on liberals it's easy to see why.
Now, plenty of commentators have taken on lefties before, but Sowell may have been the first to connect all the dots and present all of their disastrous ideas as the logical outgrowth of a single vision, what he calls (duh) the Vision of the Anointed. Who exactly are the Anointed and what is their vision, you might ask? Well, there are lots of them, and they tend to be concentrated in powerful and influential institutions like academia, the media, the courts, and of course, elected office. Their vision is of a world where nothing is impossible, and all "problems" can be "solved" by those with the superior wisdom and virtue necessary to do so, if only they're given unlimited power to carry out their programs. Naturally, the government is the best instrument for bringing their vision to bear, with little to no regard for the actual desires of actual people as expressed through the workings of free markets.
As Sowell makes clear, often stopping to name names, these people have constructed their own worldview, which has precious little to do with the world in which we live. You've probably heard a lot of the buzzwords they use: "rights," "public service," "social justice," "progress," and on and on they go.
These terms are all very clever when it comes to cutting off reasoned debate; after all, who can be against rights, social justice, or progress? Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world populated by imperfect people, and any benefits conferred by the Anointed on one group must inevitably come at the expense of another, possibly quite larger, group. While the Anointed like to talk of solutions, in Sowell's Tragic Vision there are only trade-offs. The actions of the Anointed may produce some largely illusory advantages for their mascots, such as bums, criminals, and minorities, but huge numbers of other people typically get the shaft as a result.
The book's powerhouse second chapter is an especially powerful example of the practical results the Vision of the Anointed has for the rest of us. Sowell examines the colossal failures of 1960's-era liberalism (although socialism might be a more accurate term), and discusses how exactly the Anointed were able to bring them about. He identifies a common theme to the Anointed's plans: first, they identify a "crisis" that can't be proven to exist, then they prescribe a "solution" that can only be produced through categorical government action, and when their solution only makes things worse they dismiss all evidence much like a man putting his hands over his ears yelling "I'm not listening!" Sowell specifically discusses how the Vision of the Anointed was expressed during the 60's in the areas of poverty, crime, and teen pregnancy. In each area, as Sowell demonstrates quite conclusively, there was no serious problem until massive government intervention created one. And as a quick look at statistics on social pathologies like crime and illegitimacy will tell you, we're still dealing with the results today, especially among the poor and minority people these policies were supposed to help.
And so it goes, with Sowell's brutal honesty exposing leftist chicanery at every turn. I think the most important point readers should get from this book is just how disconnected from reality the Vision of the Anointed has become. If we don't start taking a more rational approach to our problems soon things could really get ugly, as the leftward drift of the past few decades must inevitably produce an opposite reaction. Ideas like Sowell's provide some important clues for finding a way out of the current mess while there's still time.

If you were ever baffled as to why Laws, Policies and Regulations enacted by your elected representatives often defy common sense. Why inscrutable decisions handed down by the Judiciary at nearly every level run contrary to historic jurisprudence. Why a myriad of screwy decisions & dictates put forth from both individuals in power and institutions involving everything from climate change to children’s education are instituted in the face of readily available counter indicative data not to mention once again plain common sense. This book provides the answers.
Thomas Sowell pierces the veil of the men and women whose “differential Wisdom & Virtue” (read superior) animates many of those in the highest positions of power and influence in society.
Men and women whose disdain for the views of the “benighted” (read the average person) leads to half baked notions & untested theories being enacted into Law, engendered in public policy or instituted in government regulation.
From Johnson’s “Great Society” programs to the forced busing of children away from their neighborhood schools to a host of other society altering decisions the public becomes victim at the hands of the Anointed.
Elites who themselves rarely admit to no less ever pay a price for their reckless disregard for the consequences of their often wrong decisions leaving the general population to pay the ultimate price for their visions.

Reading this today, I realize how far ahead of his time Thomas Sowell was when he wrote it in 1995.

This book was advertised as "new." The book jacket had disgusting clumps of goo and stains all. This book has bent corners and definitely was NOT new!v ALSO, IT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS STOLEN FROM A LIBRARY!!! THE LABEL ON BACK OF JACKET WAS COVERING AN ISBN NUMBER AND WAS CLEARLY A LIBRARY BOOK. DOES NOT DESERVE 1 STAR

One of the downsides of finding a writer who has the facts to back up their opinion is you often end up buying and reading all their books.

A real eye opener as to how the elite in our society look at the population as a whole.
What a great treasure!

Another solid and prescient book from Thomas Sowell that is filled with common sense that apparently our judges and elected officials don't possess. Even though this book was written in 1995, it reads like Sowell was describing the problems of 2019. What Sowell is really pointing out is just like the countries that are plagued with communism or rampant socialism, we too have an overabundance of elites who feel they are infinitely smarter than the masses and it is up to those elites to control everyone else's life.

Dr. Sowell hits another home run. For a man of such monumental intellect, he can explain the very complex in terms completely understandable
for the less intellectual among us. He is a national treasure!!

While this book is a stand-alone text, it essentially serves as a follow up to A Conflict of Visions, where Sowell describes the basic conflict of visions that has divided political life in Western society for at least the past two centuries. While in A Conflict of Visions Sowell abstains from arguing a particular side, in The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell critically assesses the unconstrained vision and its track record in American political life during the 20th century.