Posted on 10/20/2001 1:22:23 PM PDT by porgygirl
I am sure many Freepers have already read or even studied under Dr. Sowell. I decided to post this information in hopes those who may have not would come to know and read him.
Dr. Sowell's work can be a solid source for retort to liberals, he frames that argument better than anyone else.
Dr. Sowell is the embodiment of conservative thought.All conservatives should read him, his past work and his ongoing editorials.
Whenever I read a piece by him, I think, I wish I had said that.
Maybe we can have him at future Freep events, maybe the next Cruise!
Vision of the Annointed-Speech
SHRINKING THE ISSUES-Pop Psychology
Thomas Sowell August 28, 1996
One of the signs of the times was a recent op-ed page of the "New York Times." Of the four columns there, three attributed psychological defects to those whose opinions differed from the authors'.
Those with different views on bilingual education were said to have an "irrational fear of Spanish." Those with different views on the recent welfare reform bill were said to be "callous" in one column and to have "hysteria" in another.
There are apparently no rational grounds for disagreeing with people who write for the "New York Times." There are only what used to be called "character defects," before we learned to say the same thing in more high-falutin' words.
Remarkable as it is that educated adults should have such a childishly self-flattering view of the world, this view is by no means confined to the "New York Times." It is in fact common in the liberal media -- which is to say, the vast majority of the media.
The psychological explanation of why others disagree with you is not only a great labor-saving device, making a real confrontation on substance unnecessary, the Freudian substitute for evidence and logic is also adaptable to virtually all circumstances. For example, if I had an unhappy childhood, then that would explain my warped views on all sorts of issues. On the other hand, if I had a happy childhood, then that would explain my lack of comprehension of those who were not so fortunate and/or my indifference to their plight.
This kind of popular psychology is a heads-I-win-and-tails-you-lose game. My literary agent has urged me to postpone publication of my memoirs until after I have finished writing on issues of the day, precisely because he is convinced that psychological "explanations" of my positions would follow an autobiography and thereby enable people to evade the evidence and analysis in my other books.
What makes the psychological approach to public policy issues so convenient is not only that it enables arguments and evidence to be evaded, but also that it is subjected to no test that could disprove its own conclusions. There is no compassion meter to show whether those who use this word endlessly have any more of it than those who are called "mean-spirited." Nor has anyone bothered to measure the pulse or the blood pressure of those said to be suffering from "hysteria," as compared to the pulse and blood pressure of the people making the accusation.
Anyone who criticizes either the proposals or the tactics of the organized gay lobby is certain to be called "homophobic," even if no evidence is offered, other than disagreeing with the policies or tactics of the gay lobby. Circular reasoning has become the norm. Criticize Jesse Jackson and you are a racist. Don't buy feminism and you are sexist.
With so many people becoming amateur shrinks, what is really shrinking is consideration of the issues themselves. Together with the media practice of focussing their attention on the "horse race" of partisan politics, including who is winning the battle of the polls at the moment, this makes issues become little more than the chips used to keep score in the great game of politics.
In this atmosphere, the most gross misstatements of issues can live on, despite readily available facts to the contrary.
It has, for example, become part of the folklore of liberal politics and the liberal media that Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were responsible for the deficits of the 1980s. Rather than explain for the zillionth time the fallacy in all this, let me simply suggest that you look up the statistics on government revenue during the 1980s in "The Economic Report of the President" for 1996, page 367. It should be available in any good library, at Government Bookstores, or by mail from Government Printing Office in Washington.
After you discover that the Reagan administration took in more annual tax revenue than any previous administration in history, you may be amazed that media journalists, who have been spouting off about this all these years, have not bothered to check out such easily obtainable facts. You may even wonder what other facts they have gotten all screwed up.
But, if you say that, it could be taken as showing that you have a lot of hang-ups from your childhood or a lot of hysteria and phobias.
Other gems include Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Wes Pruden and David Horowitz. IMHO
Harrison, I don't see in Mr. Sowell's piece many of the things that you know drive me crazy about other conservative writing. It's very straightforward in its argument, not at all sensational, and he even offers his evidence up front! - "page 367."
I can certainly see evidence of the language he cites in liberal writing. I see it here sometimes too. For example, many people who would critize Israel are labeled "anti-Semitic," most often without evidence of such (though some do take it too far).
I do have one question for Mr. Sowell though. Does he see any bad habits among conservative writers? In many cases conservative pundits claim that people with other opinions have "cognitive defects." As in, "if you don't get this you are stupid." Or "Al Gore made the moronic suggestion that.." (They used to use that one alot.) This seem to stifle discussion as well - the other person will forever "just not get it." (Someone's gonna use these words against me someday, I can just tell.)
I still think the "tyranny of liberal media" is a mirage. Don't you think conservatives have shored it up a bit?
Conservative writer say: "you can look it up". Liberal writer say: "everyone knows that".
Take a look at the dialogue on this board. Many posters automatically add links to shore up their arguments. Sure there are a few here who are less able than others to express themselves but the very nature of this board is to argue and show proof. Why do you think it is so unpopular with left wing fools?
I appreciate the link and plan to read parts of the report, but you'll want to rethink that Reagan 1996 thing. The report is signed, as expected, William Jefferson Clinton.
He is indeed.
The very nature of any discussion board would be to debate. A visit to a liberal site reveals a mix similar to FR - cheerleading for the home team, rants, and some reasoned argument. Pundits of either stripe ALWAYS "play to emotions they know are of the moment." They adapt their spiels to suit the news stories of the day.
I think Mr. Sowell makes good arguments, I just wish he'd widen his spectrum, lest we accuse conservatives as well of seeing only "characters defects," i.e. self-congratulation, in those of opposite opinion.
As I reread the article, though, I think Mr. Sowell makes a mistake, one I find in Horowitz all the time. His piece contains two threads of argument that have only a tenuous connection. The language used in the cited NYT Op-Ed page is one part, the liberal misreading of economic statistics is the other part. One, the use of moral language, is an argument about rhetoric, the other is an argument about statistical fact. But the Op-Ed page does not necessarily contain false information about the economic legacy of Reagan. The moralist language cited in the article may not have been used to cover up that unresearched fact. The poor rhetoric is not shown to have covered up the poor facts. Certainly he could have made a better connection?
There is very simple logic behind the terse statements of many conservatives. When we say that liberals are liars we mean most prominent liberals and that they frequently and purposely misrepresent the truth when the facts are easy to check. The media rarely checks the facts, as was said in post #9, so their lies are often accepted as truth. I repeat. They do this often and on purpose. If not on purpose then they are fools rather than liars as they are still misreresenting the facts.
If I say that Bill Clinton is a lying, self-serving, traitorous crook, you might say that I am using an emotional hasty generalization. I would say, "Look it up! The evidence surrounds you."
The focus here will be on one particular vision—the vision prevailing among the intellectual and political elite of our time. What is important about that vision are not only its particular assumptions and their corollaries, but also the fact that it is a prevailing vision—which means that its assumptions are so much taken for granted by so many people, including so-called "thinking people," that neither those assumptions nor their corollaries are generally confronted with demands for empirical evidence. Indeed, empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with that vision....What a vision may offer [that reality does not], and what the prevailing vision of our time emphatically does offer, is a special state of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this vision are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane. Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin. For those who have this vision of the world, the anointed and the benighted do not argue on the same moral plane or play by the same cold rules of logic and evidence. The benighted are to be made "aware," to have their "consciousness raised," and the wistful hope is held out that they will "grow." Should the benighted prove recalcitrant, however, then their "mean-spiritedness" must be fought and the "real reasons" behind their arguments and actions exposed. While verbal fashions change, this basic picture of the differential rectitude of the anointed and the benighted has not changed fundamentally in at least two hundred years.
These are not mere debating tactics. People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority....
One reason for the preservation and insulation of a vision is that it has become inextricably intertwined with the egos of those who believe it. Despite Hamlet's warning against self-flattery ["Lay not that flattering unction to your soul"], the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in a causal sense, but is also a vision of themselves and of their moral role in that world. It is a vision of differential rectitude. It is not a vision of the tragedy of the human condition: Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed.
The great ideological crusades of twentieth-century intellectuals have ranged across the most disparate fields—from the eugenics movement of the early decades of the century to the environmentalism of the later decades, not to mention the welfare state, socialism, communism, Keynesian economics, and medical, nuclear, and automotive safety. What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government. Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:
- Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
- An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
- A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
- A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes....
In short, few have spent their entire lives outside the vision of the anointed, and virtually no one has been unaffected by it. Understanding that vision, its current impact and its future dangers, is the purpose of this book.
—Thomas Sowell
The Vision of the Anointed
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