The Vision of the Anointed - Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, by Thomas Sowell -- from a long review.
The idea that humanity can be analyzed into two major competing groups has stimulated many types of social theory. Marxist theory has occupied itself with the conflict between capitalists and proletarians. Certain kinds of modern-liberal theory have attempted to elucidate relationships between a managerial class and the populace that it tries to manage. Classical-liberal and conservative theories have focused on the conflict between people who produce wealth (whether these be considered capitalists or workers) and people who govern but do not produce.
In The Vision of the Anointed, the distinguished economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell makes an important contribution to classical-liberal and conservative thought by scrutinizing the ways in which a self-consciously elite, or “anointed,” group uses ideas to maintain its power in American political life. Sowell regards American political discourse as dominated by people who are sure that they know what is good for society and who think that the good must be attained by expanded government action. This modern-liberal elite exerts its influence through institutions that live by words: the universities and public schools, the media, the liberal clergy, the bar and bench. Its dominance results from its command of the information that words convey and the attitudes that words inspire.
People who live by words should live also by arguments, butas Sowell richly documentsthe modern-liberal elite is not so good at arguing as it is at finding substitutes for argument. Sowell analyzes the major substitutes. Suppose that you doubt the necessity or usefulness of some great new government program. You may first be presented with a quantity of decontextualized “facts” and abused statistics, all indicating the existence of a “crisis” that only government can resolve. If you are not converted by this show of evidence, an attempt will probably be made to shift the viewpoint: outsiders may doubt that there is a crisis of, say, homelessness, but “spokesmen for the homeless” purportedly have no doubts.
There may also be an attempt simply to declare victory by relabeling current political proposals as inherent rights: it will be announced, in vague yet dogmatic terms, that everyone has a right to decent housing and that government is therefore compelled to provide it. If necessary, substantiation for this new right can be discovered in a Constitution that means whatever the latest school of jurists decides that it means.
If even these methods fail to win you over, attention will be redirected from the political issue to your own failure of imagination or morality. It will be insinuated that people like you are simplistic or perversely opposed to change, lacking in compassion and allied with the “forces of greed.” (As Sowell observes, it is always the payers rather than the spenders of taxes who are considered vulnerable to the charge of greed.)
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