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Thomas Sowell

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy Paperback – June 28, 1996

by Thomas Sowell (Author)

622 ratings

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Thomas Sowell's provocative critique of liberalism's failures

The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts -- and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites. These elites -- the anointed -- often consider themselves "thinking people," but much of what they call thinking turns out, on examination, to be rhetorical assertion, followed by evasions of mounting evidence against those assertions.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is as compelling an explanation as any for the seemingly disproportionate amount of condescension and politically correct invective that emanates from the liberal side of the political spectrum toward the conservative opposition."

―Scott McConnell, Wall Street Journal

"As always, Sowell's analysis is well informed and displays a great deal of that increasingly uncommon quality, common sense ... In the largest sense, The Vision of the Anointed is a book about the perils of ideology -- those dazzling intellectual-moral constructions that seduce the unwary into ignoring the way the world works for the sake of dreams about the way it must."―Roger Kimball, The American Spectator

"Mr. Sowell's eye is sharp, and everyone who has been up against progressive orthodoxy will find his or her own candidate for Most Annoying Liberal Kiss-Off Award."

―Suzanne Garment, Washington Times

About the Author

Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of dozens of books and the recipient of various awards, including the National Humanities Medal, presented by the President of the United States in 2003.

Product details

Publisher : Basic Books (June 28, 1996)
Language: : English
Paperback : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 046508995X
ISBN-13 : 978-0465089956
Lexile measure : 1710L
Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
Dimensions : 5.38 x 1 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #20,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Public Affairs & Administration (Books)
- #38 in Government Social Policy
- #38 in Sociology of Social Theory

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622 ratings

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TheBanshee

Sowell the Social Scientist

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2017

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The 1-star reviewers seem piqued by the fact that as a young economics student, Sowell was a Marxist. But as time went on, the evidence led him elsewhere. He began to differentiate between the stated intentions behind government programs and their actual results. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Sowell's emphasis seems to be on what works as opposed to what doesn't. And as an economist, he knows that there are no "solutions" to social ills; there are only tradeoffs. He's not a "conservative" (he's never endorsed a political philosophy that I'm aware of) as much as a scientist with an extraordinary gift for clear writing.

140 people found this helpful

Helpful

Fidel L.

A difficult read if you are easily angered by injustices perpetrated by "elites" who "know" better than you.

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2018

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It was very difficult to read this book.

Not because of the language (Sowell uses sophisticated yet plain language and provides clear examples).

Not because of his message (That there are certain people - the anointed - with "self-evident" visions for how the world should be; however, not only are these visions divorced from reality, but these anointed cannot or will not adjust their visions to any proof reality provides them).

It was hard to read because after every example I had to put the book down, take a few breaths, and wonder who in the world could cause such a thing to happen, before reading again. Sowell covers the "legacy of slavery" (higher poverty and single family household rates for blacks were not caused by such a thing), the need for sex education in schools (which actually encouraged more teens to "experiment"), and how certain people are used as mascots by the anointed (such as violent criminals and the homeless, who need to be coddled by society because "we" somehow "failed them"), among many, many other examples ranging from economic to medical to the social.

Unfortunately there are no action items provided by Sowell, though I hope the book causes you to think differently about how we go about "solving" our "problems". I know that was the case for me.

And as for the numerous quotation marks, let's just say even our use of vocabulary is just another tool in the hands of the anointed.

72 people found this helpful

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T. Smith

Excellent book -- but be prepared for poor quality control in Kindle version

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2017

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$13 is a not a bargain price for a Kindle book. I love Kindle, but I'm very unhappy with my reading experience through the first 50 pages or so. The conversion of the text from paper to Kindle has resulted in a volume that has enough typos -- primarily commas that are now periods, but also words (e.g., "mute" instead of "route") -- that it really has diminished my enjoyment of an otherwise superb book by a favorite octogenarian author.

Someone at Amazon or at Hachette needs to address how this could have happened and should do so promptly. My Kindle quality control experience to date, with very few exceptions, has been excellent. So far in this volume: content: A+ ; production quality control: Fail

60 people found this helpful

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Eric Mayforth

The Fallout from Misrule by "Experts"

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2015

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In "The Vision of the Anointed," conservative author Thomas Sowell connects many of the social pathologies of recent decades with the failed vision that led to them. This vision of the anointed, as Sowell defines it, is the prevailing vision in society today, even though it disallows feedback from reality and is not based on logic or evidence, but on emotion and self-congratulation.

Sowell contrasts the vision of the anointed, which always searches for sweeping solutions, with the tragic vision espoused by conservatives today, which realizes that there are always trade-offs in the real world. Liberals seek to build utopias, but conservatives realize that implementing one policy can have serious side effects elsewhere in society and that wisdom involves knowing that a catch-all solution is not available for virtually any serious social problem. The author describes typical scenarios that ensue when the vision of the anointed is implemented and the real world responds by not cooperating.

Liberals, though, almost never admit their failures, and Sowell details how the Left misuses statistics to invite false inferences as to the results of liberal programs. The author dissects fallacies the anointed use to dismiss evidence of the failure of their vision, and notes that the Left commonly substitutes ridicule and attacks on motives instead of real, logical arguments.

Sowell also describes some of what he calls the "crusades" of the anointed and the effect that the vision of the anointed on the American judicial system and the all-important rule of law, as well as offering his opinion as to why the anointed are so invested in their vision. Even though "The Vision of the Anointed" was written two decades ago, it is even more timely today than it was in the mid-Nineties and is an indispensable book for conservatives, especially young conservatives.

66 people found this helpful

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DBR

Gave it to a liberal.

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2017

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Read it long ago, loved it. This one I gave to my son, a liberal. He hasn't said anything so he probably never read it. This points out the foolishness of the liberals who are pretending to do good things, and uses examples that I remember while they were occurring. The most annoying is '{whatever} would have been worse if we hadn't done {whatever}' when in fact either there wasn't a problem or the problem would have corrected itself. Excellent documentation and proof.

32 people found this helpful

Helpful

ChemProf

Essential insights from a truly wise man.

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2016

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Essential reading for anyone interested in getting a perspective of past and present political and government policy. Born in Jim Crow North Carolina, and raised in Harlem, octogenarian, black-American Thomas Sowell, has a valuable personal perspective of American social and political culture. He combines his personal experiences with a lifetime of thorough scholarship as an economist. He has written many books and columns. Any of them is worth a read. This one is particularly insightful.

30 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Yeats

Prophetic and disturbing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2019

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This is one amazing book. Published in 1996 it predicts with remarkable accuracy the growing destructive power the Liberal-Left in American society and by extension, Western society in general.

What Sowell calls "the annointed" we now commonly refer to as the metropolitan liberal elite or the intelligentsia. This elite have an unshakable belief in their moral and intellectual superiority over the masses. His analysis of their baleful influence on the lives of ordinary citizens (or "the benighted" as Sowell calls them) is remarkably clear. The annointed are unwilling to face up to the damaging social and economic consequences of their very many failures.

Unfortunately, in the years since this book was written the annointed have reached unprecedented levels of power and influence in all the most important areas of public life – politics, criminal justice, education, healthcare, social services, mass media (even the military to some extent). If this progression continues we find ourselves living under an all pervasive system of social/moral control of enforced "politcal correctness".

When politicians or the media speak of "a crisis which must be addressed" you know the annointed have spotted an opportunity to take the moral high ground with all the self-congratulation that will involve.

18 people found this helpful

Mr B

Explains the morally rightious group think of todays elites.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2018

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Thomas Sowell is one of the most clever and insightful people alive. Very informative if you want to understand how pc culture has become so pervasive and why those who push it on the rest of us fail to see it's shortcomings.

9 people found this helpful

Paul

Required reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2010

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Empirical evidence suggests that despite many good intentions Socialism fails. When crime, welfare dependency, family break up, rates of teenage pregnancy, unemployment and income inequality increase rapidly under a Socialist Government, despite massive improvements in technology and wealth, many people wonder why. Professor Thomas Sowell examines and exposes the deceptions of Socialists and explains why state intervention usually makes the situation worse.

Everybody with a social conscience should read and understand the message in this book. Literacy and numeracy aren't enough, you must understand how Political systems work too. Sowell provides answers that educated people should know, understand and act upon.

13 people found this helpful

mickey

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2015

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Strongly recommended and eerily predicts much of modern politics.

7 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Genius.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

One of the very few people writing on society not through ideological lenses, just logical lenses...

One person found this helpful

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