The Vision of the Anointed

I am 25 years late reading Thomas Sowell's “The Vision of the Anointed” (1995), yet his main points could have been written yesterday. That's because what he terms the "vision of the anointed" hasn't changed, not just since 1995 but for hundreds of years.

By anointed he means those people — mostly in government, academia, the arts and the media — who consider themselves not just smarter than the common rabble but on a higher moral plane, as well. Those who disagree with them, Sowell writes, "are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin." If you disagree with them you are not just wrong, but evil.

Thus democracy, in which their votes count no more than those of ordinary people, is viewed as an error in need of correction. To show more accomplish this requires a crisis of some kind. Almost anything will do — a pandemic, climate change, racism, poverty, forest fires, whatever happens to be handy.

Often, Sowell points out, problems are already in the process of correction when the anointed identifies them as crises. Then they advocate corrective measures that tend to make these problems worse, not better. Sowell mentions Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, which came at a time when poverty in the United States was shrinking. The Great Society programs led to significantly more poverty, a trend that continues to this day. More recently the furor over racism in the country came at a point when racism was less evident than at any time in history.

Despite their presumption of intellectual superiority, both facts and logic mean little to the anointed, Sowell says. In today's world, the anointed preach the importance of following science, while ignoring any science that conflicts with their vision.

Sowell says the anointed speak of solutions, while more sensible people speak of trade-offs. Attempting to correct one problem can cause another, something the anointed refuse to accept. Any new problems just create new crises for the anointed, in their wisdom, to solve. And something new to blame on somebody else.

The anointed, the author writes, focus on what he calls mascots and targets. The mascots are those, such as women, blacks or transexuals, whom the anointed choose to patronize, while the targets are those they choose to blame.

Perhaps the statement Sowell makes in 1995 that most sounds like it could have been written in 2020 is this one: "Those who have most consistently undermined the police and other elements of law enforcement are among those most shocked by the escalation of crime and violence." show less

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 show more 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. show less

Book title and author: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell reviewed 9-10-23

Why I picked this book up: I have been on a Sowell spree and continued with this one.

Thoughts:
This is another book based on logic, history, legal, economics, just society and relevant societal directions and decisions. Dr. Sowell dissects the egocentric and self-centered minds of "the anointed," those we call "the woke" or Neo-Marxists today and illuminates the dire consequences of their much celebrated "solutions." In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during show more that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites—the anointed—have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy. It reminded me how psychiatric and psychological factors sway legal standards which I knew as a psychologist, gender, biological sex factors we deal with nowadays, religion, Supreme Court, etc.

Why I finished this read: I finished because it flowed quickly, was fun to read and another Sowell book that was thought provoking as usual.

Stars rating: 5/5 stars show less

Sowell does a wonderful job of describing how and why the libertarian minority of the population have set the social policy agenda in the developed world, with such disastrous results. Most interesting of all is the description of the tactics employed to discredit opponents, message statistics and flatly ignore evidence that has become standard operating procedure for this phenomenally intolerant group of people the author labels 'the anointed'.

The book is very well written, crisp and coherent without itself becoming dogmatic - this is no rant from the Daily Mail. On my shelf next to `The March of Unreason' and `Life at the Bottom' which are also excellent.

Buy, read and share with others.

The author of this book makes some good points about the difficulty of social planning and about biased language in political rhetoric. However, the book's own political bias reduces the value and clarity of the arguments. Much of what he says seems sensible and right, but several times he goes overboard with ad hominem accusations. I found it amusing that he correlates old social policies with increasing social misery across several decades, thereby committing the same correlation-causation fallacy for which he (correctly) criticizes "the anointed" in other parts of the book. He also has an annoying habit of backing up his arguments with one-sentence quotes out of context. I imagine that this book appeals to American conservatives and show more infuriates liberals, and that was obviously the author's intention. But behind the invective lie some general philosophical questions which remain sadly undeveloped in this work. show less

Thomas Sowell says in few words what others take many to say. And he makes a great case that many of the modern-day "causes" have hidden agendas. An example is "child abuse." Child Protective Services focuses largely on 11 year olds playing outside, ignoring real horror stories.

This is an outstanding piece of work. Sowell's critique is devastating to the vision of those who lead the failed social experiments and policies of the last 50 years. Written in 1995, this book is even more germane and prophetic to today, the strange times in which we live.