Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Thomas Sowell is one of the very few intellectuals alive today that can present wide ranging topics in clear, precise terms. Trained as an economist, Sowell became disillusioned with academia and has spent most of his career making precision attacks on those of the political left. In this book, Sowell examines the underlying vision of liberals. We all know what liberals do. Sowell shows us WHY liberals do what they do. This isn't an easy book to read, but it may be one of the most important books written in the last ten years. After I read this book I wondered how the Left could survive. Sowell exposed all of their tricks in this book. Regardless of how the Left reacts, this book is extremely important. You'll be able to recognize the rhetoric of Leftists after reading this book.Several areas of this book make quite an impression. One of the best areas is the so-called "Aha! statistics", which is when liberals distort statistical information to back up their ideas and programs. Many times, Sowell explains, they use the statistics to try and show that a certain institution is "racist". Sowell shows how statistics can be manipulated and informs the reader on how to spot potential problems. One of the biggest problems is confusing causation with correlation. Many times liberals try and show that a certain event is caused by one other event. It is seldom that cut and dried. Many events have numerous causes that are difficult to track down. Leftists love to have one cause to point a finger at because it allows them to marshal all of their forces and aim them at one spot. In my opinion, the best part of the book is when Sowell lays out his theory of the two great visions on how the world operates. According to Sowell, these visions are the tragic view, and the view of the anointed. The tragic view sees the world as a series of events that can't be controlled by humans. This worldview involves trade-offs that must be made in order to try and come up with the outcome that benefits the most people most of the time. Those who believe in the tragic view realize that every problem can't be solved to perfection. Every decision will create suffering for others, but the idea is to find a way in which the LEAST amount of people suffer. Those with the vision of the anointed believe in "all-or-nothing" solutions, in which every problem must be solved so that ALL people benefit, and that there will be no suffering to any people. As one can see, the vision of the anointed just isn't realistic. I enjoyed many of Sowell's examples of how the anointed are trying to exert their control over everyone else. Sowell shows how the judiciary has been completely compromised by the vision of the anointed. Judges are now creating laws instead of making rulings by the law. A big part of judicial rulings today consists of "interpretations", which lead to confusing and contradictory judgments that have caused more harm than good. One example is the Kreimer ruling, in which an obnoxious bum that was causing problems in a New Jersey library won a lawsuit against that town because they had tried to keep him out of the building. Instead of making a ruling that would have benefited the many who were disrupted by the behavior of this miscreant, the judge ruled in favor of the bum. Sowell presents this as one example in which those that the Left has chosen as mascots (AIDS victims, bums, minorities, women, etc.) have been elevated over the needs of everyone else. There is much more meat in this book then what I've detailed here. It is sufficient to say that Sowell has a huge intellect, and is absolutely devastating in his attacks on the Left. I almost felt sorry for them while I was reading this book. If they weren't causing this country so much damage and grief, they would deserve our pity. I almost always recommend the books that I review for Amazon.com, but I really recommend this one. It's that good.
Rating:
Summary: Like reading a stolen liberal secret "playbook"!
Review: That's just what you'll think as you read this book...you'll be saying "Oh yeah, I've heard that a million times" as each bit of rhetoric is exposed. Mr. Sowell leaves no stone unturned as he comprehensively catalogs the left's various plattitudes. Factually correct, liberals will resent this book as being full of "cheap shots", and will probably find the cold, rational approach quite abrasive. No "feel good" solutions here. Conservatives/centrists: Read this book and you'll be cutting of rebuttals in mid sentence as you debate liberals...Immediately identifying one of the standard "plays" that make up so much of their arguments.
Rating:
Summary: Exposing the Compulsive Meddlers
Review: I read this book a while back, and I highly recommend it because of how well it exposes those who see themselves as the anointed. The hubris at the heart of the modern left is that they and not you can best decide how you should live, and what kind of society you should live in. Against this, Sowell stands for the "unarticulated wisdom" of ordinary people. He stands for letting people decide how to run their own lives and for traditions embodying the wishes and experiences of everyday people.
Rating: 
Summary: Sowell lies too much in this book.
Review: This book is one of the worst I've ever seen. Most notably: it contains one of the most unethical lies I've ever seen in a book. I am refering to Sowell's claim on p. 77 that the world-famous Club of Rome think tank predicted in their 1973 book The Limits to Growth that industrial growth would grind to a halt all around the world (due to depletion of resources) at the end of the 20th century. The truth is that the book predicts that growth would halt sometime (anytime) during the 21st century. I'm very careful when making accusations, and I've thought about this one a lot. I really can't avoid the conclusion that Sowell knowingly wrote this falsehood. Hence, it is a lie, and not merely an error of proofreading or something like that. As a way to insure against the possibility of falsely accusing him, I phoned Sowell's employer (The Hoover Institute, at Stanford U.), complained about the lie, left my name & phone number, and waited for a reply. No message ever arrived on my answering machine. What disgusts me very much about this lie is who it defames: the Club of Rome is such a good think tank. Started by an Italian businessman, Aurelio Peccei, it consists of 100 experts who want to provide guidance for politicans who they regard as bound by national loyalties. They are good, careful thinkers who would never make such an absurd prediction. Another example of a "rhetorical atrocity" done by Sowell in this book is a claim he makes in it about John Rawls famous book, A Theory of Justice. Sowell claims that Rawls' theory places so much emphasis on equality that it would require that if 300 people are on a sinking boat with only 200 life preservers, then equality should be maximized by all drowning! Sowell's claim is incredibly absurd. Rawls theory emphasizes fairness, but NOT equality. In Rawls' examples equality is always sacrificed to get more fairness. Rawls defines "fairness" very carefully: what people would do if they all believed that they could be anyone affected by decisions, including any of the least-advantaged persons. Rawls claims that under such conditions people would naturally focus on improving the situations of the worst-off persons. His system starts with equality (as the least-fair possibility to be considered), and introduces inequalities that improve the situation of the worst-off persons. E.g., Rawls uses his method to justify capitalism (because it greatly improves the situations of the poor in societies with capitalism). In the example of the sinking boat, Sowell's claim requires that Sowell demonstrate that the 100 persons destined to drown are better off if all the others drown. Good grief, How? This can't be done, of course, and Sowell's conclusion is an absurdity. Note: Sowell makes the absurd claim about A Theory of Justice in only 4 short sentences that say nothing about Rawls emphasis on a type of fairness. This is "hit and run" arguing, so typical of Sowell. In this case, at least a page of clarifying information is required in order to fairly make such a pointed criticism of a famous thinker like Rawls. But if Sowell provided more information, the absurdness of Sowell's attack on Rawls would become apparent to readers. I found many such terrible flaws in this book. I regard the book as one of the worst I've ever seen. Persons reading it and trusting Sowell's claims will have many severe falsehoods implanted in their minds.
Rating:
Summary: A vigorous and solid polemic!
Review: Dr. Sowell uses erudition and brute logic to expose the sophistry and moral bankruptcy of liberalism. The first three chapters in which he sets forth just what the "vision of the annointed is," along with just what constitutes being "rich" or "poor" provide a powerful discrediting of the basic tenets of leftists. He is at his best, however, when he unmasks the intellectually dishonest way in which statists, povertarians, and others who have a vested interest in perpetuating "the vision of the annointed" utilize statistics to further their agenda. This book should be must reading for every college student and anyone else interested in the future of America. A truly outstanding read!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Sowell's Best Work
Review: The book started out very good, it provided thought provoking ideas backed up with logical evidence as Sowell's books normally do. The remainder of the book which was precisely the next two-thirds, however, could have been done in fifty pages as opposed to the painfully repetitive one hundred-ninety or so that it took. He took a few ideas and repeated them over and beat them to death until, in the end, he told the same stories a dozen different ways. The message he provides in this book is very valuable and it is good information. I have read numerous other Sowell books and find them very valuable. However, the style in which this was written was too repetitive and the message could have been delivered in less than half the pages.
Rating: 
Summary: A conservative manifesto
Review: This book belongs with Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" in its timelessness. Sowell put together another masterpiece of incredible scholarship. Behind the title of the book is its premise that failed liberal policy is a result from a fallacious implicit worldview that the left wing holds, namely, that They are the Annointed, send from God to save us all. He presents this premise by showing self-congratulation at the end of numerous failed social policies (this book reads not only as good nonfiction but as an excellent source of statistical information!). Sowell uses quotes from before and after each liberal fiasco, and finishes his analysis by presenting an alternate Vision, the "tragic vision." As much as I like Sowell, his tragic vision (based on a very dim view of human nature) conceeds the moral, idealistic argument to the left, as every conservative has done for decades. Still, his biting criticism of the left is necessary reading for any freedom advocate. Buy it now.
Rating: 
Summary: Half Right
Review: Thomas Sowell does a credible and thorough job demolishing any pretense the left may have that the War on Poverty has been anything but a dismal, expensive, counterproductive failure. He also exposes many of the "arguments" the left uses to brush away the mountain of evidence that amount to little more than chicanery and obfuscation. Although in this specific aim Sowell succeeds, it is in his more general aim that he comes up short. He claims that the vision of the anointed is both the prevailing worldview and one with a lineage going back at least two centuries. To bolster his claim that there is an intellectual continuum from today's liberal elite to at least the 18th century, he singles out for attack John Stuart Mill and Marquis de Condorcet. This is where his attack on modern liberalism becomes an attack on libertarianism. It's doubtless that Condorcet did resort to some lofty rhetoric about the perfectibility of man, but he also said that inequality is "the result of natural and necessary causes which it would be foolish and dangerous to wish to eradicate; and one could not even attempt to bring about the entire disappearance of their effects without introducing even more fecund sources of inequality, without striking more direct and more fatal blows at the rights of man." The gross inequalities in 18th century France were not the result of "necessary and natural" causes and the removal of the artificial inequalities of inherited status and education has brought about greater equality and a vast improvement in the living standards and contributions of the mass of men. Condorcet's optimism regarding humanity's future was remarkably prescient. A few years before Thomas Malthus' infamous An Essay on the Principle of Population, Condorcet wrote "A very small amount of ground will be able to produce a great quantity of supplies of greater utility or higher quality; more goods will be obtained for a smaller outlay; the manufacture of articles will be achieved with less wastage in raw materials and will make better use of them. Every type of soil will produce those things which satisfy the greatest number of needs; of several alternative ways of satisfying needs of the same order, that will be chosen which satisfies the greatest number of people and which requires least labor and least expenditure. So, without the need for sacrifice, methods of preservation and economy in expenditure will improve in the wake of progress in the arts of producing and preparing supplies and making articles from them." Condorcet recognized that there is an intellectual elite, but also recognized that more common men, rather than being dim and incapable and thus requiring the special wisdom of the anointed were also quite capable. "[T]ruths that were discovered only by great effort, that could at first only be understood by men capable of profound thought, are soon developed and proved by methods that are not beyond the reach of common intelligence." Within a decade or so of winning the Nobel Prize, Einstein's theory of relativity was standard fare in undergraduate physics texts. What begins as an attack on a particular elite, the "anointed" degenerates into an attack on elitism in general. This can be seen in Sowell's reading of Mill. If a characteristic of the anointed is to compel a person to behave in a way that the "anointed" deems morally appropriate, it is quite clear that Mill does not belong to that class: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise." Mill's defense of individual liberty is not only to defend various unpopular or even self-destructive or degenerative behaviors but also behavior that allows for the innovation, eccentricity, that may prove unpopular. Mill is defending the pillars of the community not the pillagers of the community. It is this sense of the elite that Sowell also attacks. The same freedom that allows for innovation also permits self-contained degeneracy. Sowell claims "truth is boring" and even chooses to vent his disgust with avant-garde music, art and theatre. My what a boring world he wishes to condemn us to. Other reviewers have pointed out that there are certainly many conservatives who have more than there share of characteristics of the anointed, including Sowell himself, so this requires no more elaboration. More than anything else, Sowell's attempt to draw a broader picture and place libertarian ideals under the rubric of the "anointed" highlights fundamental differences between conservatism and libertarianism.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding interpretation of a discredited agenda
Review: In his book, Mr. Sowell pierces many of the myths that surround the liberal agenda. His conclusion is that activists, who wield a wisdom grounded in theory but not real-life experience, claim that America is in various "crises" that demand government action. The state-sponsored response to these so-called crises - whether it be poverty, homelessness, or infant mortality - only make the situation worse. To the perpetrators, the actual results of these programs is irrelevant. Indeed, criticism of the activist agenda is a sign of unenlightenment at best; bigotry and coldness at worst. The logic behind this movement is, as Mr. Sowell puts it, solely to ease the conscience of the purportrators. The liberal agenda often sounds swell to voting Americans. Who can be against federal rules that protect the penniless and oppressed? The problem, as Mr. Sowell articulates and proves, is that these same rules inevitably exploit those intended to benefit from them. One word: Welfare. In the last two decades it's become increasingly difficult to fool Americans about the failed results of activist liberalism. The guilt of common Americans - that liberals used to exploit - is turning into bitterness. People are starting to see that being "compassionate" doesn't mean giving people a handout or "protecting" them from vices like strip malls. Compassion means protecting the freedom that people are born with, ensuring equal opportunity, and of course demanding accountability. In casting their ballots, Americans are articulating a new political and social philosophy: compassion doesn't mean lowering our standards, it means raising them. The next generation of leaders, who grew up seeing many of these failed experiments, will take the issue of compassion right to those who use its name to inadvertently oppress others. America will better off from their efforts.
Rating:
Summary: It's very nice to read such a logical book.
Review: Thomas Sowell is part conservative, and part libertarian. Being that I am fully libertarian, I tend to agree with most of his ideas, expecially those regarding economic issues. And even in those cases where I don't agree with him, I still credit him with having good arguments and sound logic. The title of this book refers to the fact that there are certain people who think that they know exactly how everyone else should live. In this book Sowell talks about how these people tend to use the government to force their values and ideas onto everybody else. Being that Sowell is part conservative, he himself is actually somewhat guilty of this to some degree. For example, he often favors using the U.S. military to interfere in the affairs of other countries. Despite this, Sowell's busy-body attitude pales in comparison with those of the people whom he targets in this book. Specifically, the people that he targets are those on the left-wong of the political spectrum. The typical attitude of liberals is that whenever there's any kind of a problem, there's always a government solution. Liberals hold this idea even when it was the government that caused the problem in the first place. For example liberals are big supporters of government farm subsides. The government pays farmers not to grow food. This reduces the supply of food, and this causes the price of food to go up. Then these very same liberals complain about the millions of hungry women and children, and the liberals claim that in order to solve this problem, we need to spend more money on welfare and food stamps. Thus, the real purpose of farm subsidies is to increase the price of food, so that poor people will become dependent on welfare and food stamps, so that the poor people will vote for the Democrats. The Democrats pretend to care about poor people, but if this was really the case, then why do the Democrats support these farm programs which make food more expensive? And it's the exact same thing with low income housing. Liberals favor all sorts of laws that make it illegal for the private secotr to build decent, affordable housing. Zoning laws, density restrictions, anti-development laws, and all sorts of other laws make it illegal for the private sector to build low cost housing. Liberals are big supporters of these laws. And of course liberals are also the same poeple who complain the loudest about the lack of decent, affordable housing, and then they say that we need to spend more money on HUD and public housing and other such things. Sowell loves to point out the hypocrisy of liberals with regard to this kind of thing. Forty years of the War on Poverty has resulted in massive increases in illegitimacy rates, irresponsibility, and fatherless homes, and has taguht millions of people that there is no need to work or to plan for the future. And of course the liberals' solution to all of these problems is to spend even more money on government programs. Adjusted for inflation, spending on the public schools, per student, has quadrupled since the 1950s. Despite this, the liberals keep claiming that we need to spend more money on the public schools. Of course many of these same liberals send their own children to private schools. Sowell views liberals as being stuck up snobs who think that the government should control people's lives. Liberals feel that they know exactly how people should live, and they want to use the government to force their values on everybody else. Also it's interesting about Sowell's attitudes on affirmative action. Sowell is black and he is against afffirmative action. Sowell knows that affirmative action teaches blacks to be lazy and to avoid working hard. Liberals love affirmative action. Liberals think that blacks are inferior and can't make it on their own. Sowell calls liberals for the condescending bigots that they are. I have been reading Sowell's newspaper column for many years, and I have been a big fan of his writing for a long time. This book is a very valuable addition to my collection. I have read several other books by Sowell, and they were all very good too.
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