Excellent, brave foray into the vision of activists judges and self-rigtheous politicians and journalists. Perhaps a bit dated in the Bush/Obama era, but the historical parts are really interesting, especially the ones regarding judicial activism, and the analysis of the "vision of the anointed" (versus the "tragic vision" of the conservatives) is spot-on. ( )

Are we completely unaware of the initiative a select few have claimed to push policies based not on logic or evidence, but their own assumptions and desires for what is best for others? Sowell tackles this question, showing how elitists have overrun individual decision making and trampled basic rights. Once a stance is successfully positioned as the moral high ground, it becomes accepted such that even "thinking people" take the underlying assumptions as a given, without testing validity, even if the basic facts are readily accessible. The typical pattern leveraged by the anointed begins with assertions about a crisis requiring urgent action, government intervention to solve the problem, and dismissal of any evidence that the methods are actually worsening the situation. Sowell shows clear examples ranging across education, environmental policy, and crime. Good intentions trump everything, including stark evidence of undesirable results. The advocates sometimes even shift their emphasis to a broader agenda. This occurred when sex education in schools reversed a long-term improvement, upon which the proponents shared their real agenda of revising cultural attitudes and supplanting the role of parents. Crusaders assume the role of anointed, and succeed because others let them retain that position. ( )

This is the kind of conservative thinker who should be closely associated with any Republican administration ( )

What Sowell later was to name “those with a constrained view and those with an unconstrained” in “A Conflict of Visions,” are here named the “tragic” and the “anointed.” The tragic are those who like Sowell has a constrained view of man’s potentialities, who admits the realities of life is the necessity of making often painful tradeoffs, of always having to “pay for one’s lunch,” the anointed are those who take admirable intentions as more important than available empirical evidence, and as Sowell here tries to prove, in their self-congratulatory arrogance often destroys proven good policies.
In his dissection of left-wing propaganda tactics, which is presented intermittingly with specific cases of wrong policies, I find him brilliant, and at times reminiscent of Tom Wolfe, though admittedly I can’t often read him as intently sardonical. The description of failed policies is impressively demonstrated in statistical numbers and the guilty denying their guilt are given their just send-off.
But while I’m unconditional in praising his incisive attacks on the arrogant “anointed” left, his defence of the laissez-faire-economics right is to me less impressive. He quotes Noam Chomsky on page 223 saying: “freedom is illusion and mockery when the conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist,” and answers that by claiming that such a definition of freedom gives freedom only to a creator god. That is not good enough, the economists have demanded a dynamic definition of value so they can’t demand a static definition of freedom. Shortage and abundance decides the marginal value of goods, the farmer with only one sack of grain can’t trade - the worker with only one possible employer can’t bargain. I don’t see Chomsky being refuted.
De Quincy, in one of his less quoted paragraphs on style, defines this as the “disentanglement of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in each other.” I read this as a praise of the beauty in clarity, and I think that De Quincy himself would have enjoyed reading Sowell, he is at times beautifully clear. ( )

Sowells book is a great one for anyone who wishes to stop and really examine their own motives. How much "anointed" hubris forms my opinions? This is a valuable question for all of us - liberal and conservative alike. ( )