The Vision of the Anointed
Sowell on the book that named a type: the anointed elite whose bright ideas never have to survive contact with results. The clearest short introduction to the way he sees the world.
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- Ben Wattenberg
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- Think Tank
- Topics
- Ideas, Politics
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Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. On this edition of Think Tank, we will talk one-on-one with social critic and economist Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution. Tom Sowell's new book, The Vision of the Anointed, argues that the assumptions and beliefs of America's liberal elites have created 30 years of disaster in education, crime, and welfare policy. What are these assumptions? Are they wrong? Where are they leading us? A conversation with Thomas Sowell this week on Think Tank. Joining us today is Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of many books that have cast a critical eye at American society, including Inside American Education and Race and Culture. His latest book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as the Basis for Social Policy, has been called a broadside against the received wisdom of America's elite liberal intelligentsia Tom Sowell, why don't you start out and tell us what The Vision of the Anointed is about? What is it?
Well, it's, one, a vision that the problems that we see in the world are due to the fact that other people are just not as bright or as compassionate as they are, and that there are all these solutions out there waiting to be discovered, and that they have them. And that these solutions are to be imposed upon the rest of us, by the power of government through taxation or in other ways. and what's really crucial about it is that their passion is so much greater than the passion on the other side, largely because what they have involved is more.
Who is they?
Oh, the, the m- the media elite, the, academic elite, political elites. And I, and the reason we can talk about their vision, even though they obviously vary in their opinions, is that the basic set of underlying assumptions about the world are very similar. and because these assumptions are the prevailing assumptions, the need to find evidence for them or to offer proof is much less. I- If something ha- if something happens, they'll explain it in a way which will fit that vision. For example, when they find that, prenatal care is less among Blacks than among whites and that, infant mortality rates are higher, they immediately assume this is because of society's neglect, and therefore, if only the government will step in, provide more prenatal care, that problem solves itself. But in reality, other groups have even less prenatal care than Blacks and don't have any more infant mortality than whites. but they don't ever get to that second stage because once they've seen something that fits their conception of how the world works, that's sort of the end of it.
let me go back to that idea of who the they is.. I mean, i- in your- Yeah... cosmology, are these liberals? Is that what they are?
Yes. you got The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harvard, Stanford, you know, the Edward Kennedys, the, all the usual suspects.
hmm. l- let me, -
But it's more than those particular people because- No, I-... this mindset goes back at least 200 years.
Who, who does it start with? What is the-
I don't know where it starts- Okay... but you can find it in the 18th century. You, if you read G- William Godwin, Inquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793, you have the whole vision laid out just as it was in the 1960s. But the 1960s were a crucial point because that's when this vision became dominant.
th- this sort of arrogant vision that we know best. Oh, yes. And don't even have to subject it to normal forms of proof.
Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Now, let me read you something that, Speaker Gingrich wrote, in his book, To Renew America. He said, "Since 1965, there has been a calculated effort" by cultural elites to discredit this civilization and replace it with a culture of irresponsibility that is incompatible with American freedoms as we have known them. do you buy that? Is that basically what you said?
Yes, although I would, I would limit that to those who are sort of at the top of this kind of thing. Because further down, the people believe things because so many others believe them-... because they're in the air, and so on.
But, you know, I was particularly interested in what he said, was that it is a calculated effort. This, now, do you believe that the people, the anointed as you call them, are sitting around in a conspiratorial mode, eh, calculating as Newt Gingrich says-... and saying, "Here's what we're gonna do"? Or do you just think they're wrong, and this is what they believe, and they have this certain arrogance about it? Because it's two very different ideas, you know?
Well, well, th- this is why I made the distinction- Okay... between the leaders and the others. I mean, I think that when people say things like, "More American wives are battered on Super Bowl Sunday," you see, "than any other time of the year," and there's not a speck of evidence for that is calculated. Because there can, there can- Do you think- Oh, I mean, you, there is- Somebody-... there is no data that could even be misinterpreted that way. In other words, because there is no data, period And so, yes, but I think that 99% of the people who believe it are not calculating.
hmm.
So- And I think, and I think one of the reasons that it flies without even being challenged for evidence is that there is a certain vision of how the world is, and in that world, men are oppressing women. And therefore, when you say something like this, it fits the vision, and that's the end of it. There's no, there's no d- demand for evidence.
Y- you have in, i- in your book sort of a, a series toward the beginning of how the actual process works of forming one of these ideas- Yes... and selling it and rejecting the proof. Maybe you could just kind of- Yes... march us through this as a- as a model of it.
Th- there's a four-stage, pattern, and in the first phase is what's what I call the crisis. And so we're hyped to believe that something is a terrible crisis for which something must be done. and, what was, what was fascinating to me in doing the research for the book is that very often the thing that's said to be in crisis has often been getting better for years on end, but that gets ignored. Then the second stage, -
For example, infant mortality, to use one of the examples-
Well, - you were talking about before... I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about, preg- teenage pregnancy and v- and venereal disease. those things were getting better. Teenage pregnancy was going down for more than a decade before sex education was introduced. Venereal disease, syphilis in 1960s, was only ha- had only half the incidents that it had in 1950. So all these things are going down, yet we're said to need sex education to deal with this crisis, which is then manufactured, and again, this is where the calculated part comes in. Now, 99% of the people who hear this don't un- don't know that. And s- but the reason they accept it is because they also share the same vision, and because this is consonant with that vision, they don't have to ask for evidence.
All right, so what's, what's stage two?
that stage two is the-
The first one is there's a crisis. Yes. Establish a crisis, usually an artificial one.
Yes. Okay. and then, and then stage two is the solution. You have a solution for this crisis. In this case, you have sex education in the schools. And then, at that point, pe- you say, "If we do this will lead to beneficial result A." The critics say, "No, it'll lead to detrimental result Z." Stage three, you put it in, the results. You put it in and directly you find detrimental results Z, namely venereal disease and teenage pregnancy take off into the stratosphere. And then stage four is the fascinating part, in which they simply say, "No, that doesn't prove that this was a bad policy, because there are many factors. There's complexity. It's simplistic to blame it on this." But they run through this routine on so many different things, including crime. Similarly, they said, you know, in 1960, Judge Bazelon said, we just desperately need to have some kind of change in the criminal justice system. Now, in 1960, there were fewer murders than there had been in 1950, 1940, or 1930. but again, that was completely ignored. And so now we have the revolution in the criminal justice system. People say, no, if you have to put these new things in, there'll be more crime than before. They put them in. almost instantly, the declining crime rate turns around and heads up again. And they say, no, it's simplistic to blame this on, on this. The, there are the root causes and the neglect of society and all the rest of it. So it's heads I win, tails you lose
so to go to that earliest example that you gave, you think the increase in, venereal disease was caused by s- by sex education?
I don't have even to say that. I don't even have to, have to believe that.
But do you? But do you?
Oh, I think, I think it's, it's hard to explain otherwise. I mean, you know, you don't get social changes that drastic in a c- in a few years without some particular cause. But I... The, the argument doesn't depend on that at all. The point is they created the crisis artificially. The evidence shows there was no crisis. and when... But they would not sub- even subject it to any empirical test. If they wanna show so- some other factor came in and really caused this, I'm happy to hear that.
Now, w- why would a group of liberal intellectuals or politicians or media stars or whatever, why would they sit around and decide to, dismember or dilute the criminal justice system if they thought in advance that it would raise the amount of criminality?
Oh, th- they didn't, they didn't think that. But the point is-
They just thought wrongly that it would be, that it would help.
Yes, but it would also give them an enormously larger role than they had before. I mean, a judge who just sits there and applies the laws that have been passed by the legislature has a very minor role. But if he takes the expansive, judicial activist role, then of course, he's on the leading edge, and he can look for the hosannas and all the rest of it from the sideline.
How does this play out in the realm of something else you have written about, which is, affirmative action?
exactly the same thing.
What, how does that process... What's the one, two, three, four on that?
I, I haven't, I haven't worked it out, like that. But, certainly there is no interest whatever in finding out empirically whether things have been made better or worse for minorities as a result o- of this program. a- and in fact, if you bring them up evidence, they'll say, "Ah, but things would've been even worse had we not done this." Similarly with the war on poverty. We, you can show how dependency on government was going down, poverty was going down before this program was ever put in. And within a few years, dependence on government was going up, and after a few more years, the absolute number of people in poverty was going up.
Yeah, I read that in your book, but the absolute number of poverty is not the relevant, the data. The relevant data would be the rate of poverty. Oh, but the rate- And the rate of poverty- And-... in fact, in the 19th, I worked for President Johnson- Okay... so we have to establish that. Yes. You know, so, I mean, the, the line we took was that during the 1960s, during the Kennedy Johnson ad- Administration, poverty did in fact go down sharply. Yes. and then the rate since then, not the absolute number, 'cause the country has grown larger-... the rate has sort of bounced around at about flat somewhere between 12 and 15%.
Yes, but don't forget- Yeah... don't forget, this was sold to the country not on the grounds that if you transferred money from A to B, that B would have more money. That was not the argument. The argument was that dependency would be reduced, that you would, quote, "Invest in people," as Bill Clinton is now saying now that people have forgotten what was said in the '60s. This will then, you give them job training and all those kinds of things, parenting skills, the whole bit, and this will then be an investment that will pay off in the future because there'll be fewer people dependent upon the government than there were before. And I go through a great number of people from John F. Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson, The New York Times, again, all the usual suspects Said all these things
Lyndon Johnson was not a usual suspect, Tom.
Well, I, he, he w- he was the primary suspect. All right. All right. but the fact is that was never tested. And when you, when there were all these wonderful retrospectives held down in Texas- -hmm... and other places about this, the first order of business is to evade the criterion that they themselves set up when they set this out. And so no matter what happens, if the origi- if it's, if it's a failure by the original criterion, then we just find another criterion by which it will be a success.
Well, l- let's just examine that for a minute. I have, a friend of mine from those old White House days was listening to, again, Gingrich, shortly after the, we had this great Republican revolution in, in 19, 94. A great meaning huge, not necessarily wonderful. We shall see about that. And, he kept hearing Newt Gingrich use the word opportunity, this conservative opportunity, S- society, we have to provide opportunity. And I was talking to him and he said, "You know, Gingrich uses that word opportunity almost as much as Johnson did.". Which is what you're saying, that was the rhetoric. it was called the, equal, OEO was the Office of Economic Opportunity. Yes. That's what it was. Now, so if liberals were talking about opportunity and now conservatives are talking about opportunity, and I'm sure you're for opportunity, w-
All God's children got opportunity all God's children got opportunity. So what is your problem that liberals said we ought to create programs for opportunity? And in point of fact, I mean, just to, I won't say play devil's advocate, bec- I mean, a lot of the things that came out of the Great Society, I mean, building all those junior colleges and community colleges-
Oh, I would disagree with Tyler. I think it was a tragedy of the first magnitude... that was
a tragedy?
Yes.
Why is that a tragedy?
You have millions of people who have absolutely no desire for an education using up billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money, and not only not getting an education themselves, making it more difficult to give an education to those people who came to college with an idea of getting one.
Now, you say they have no desire for education. I mean, nobody is herding them into these community colleges and into the junior colleges- Oh... and into the state universities. Oh,
oh.
I mean, they have a desire- Those-... obviously...
no, they do not, obviously, because lots of things go on in those places that are not education. I mean, where else can you find so many, young people of the s- same age and an opposite sex in one place? a nice convenient place to be. But anyone who has taught in these, in, in a lot of these places, this ferocious desire for education as such is not terribly visible. And I taught at places where we've gotten, you know, the upper 10, 15% of students, I mean, UCLA and whatnot. and, n- neither I nor my colleagues found this great desire for education as such. They wanted to be in ivy-covered buildings for four years in order to get more money when they graduate and have a good time while they're there
So you think the great American ideal, which has really been shared by both parties and both ideologies over recent decades to allow more people to get into higher education, that is a bankrupt idea?
Oh, to allow is one thing, but to subsidize people at enormous cost with no real sign, that this is producing what, what we intend it to produce.
Well, I mean, when you say, when you say subsidize, I mean, you talk about a junior college, a community college. I guess that's subsidized. It, it's, it's, it's below cost, - Sure tuition, but it does allow, kids, who do not have the money to go to Amherst or wherever, to, to start a college education. People- I mean, it didn't really-
People did that before the Great Society. I did it before the Great Society. My whole generation did it before the Great Society.
You are saying that the great humanitarian political impulses of the 1960s have been almost without exception bad?
Well, there have been some good ones, but I'm saying that the assumption that, on the education front, I mean, I would defy you to find a large number of people who've actually taught these students who really think that they're out there thirsting for knowledge
I mean,
if you,
if you think- Suppose they are thirsting for a better job, and we've set up a society where you have to be credentialed with a certain amount- Oh, but what- of college, so can't, aren't they able to get a better job- No... b- because of their credentials?
This is, this is the fallacy of composition. you know, s- if one person stands up in the stadium, he sees the game better, but if they all stand up, they don't all see the game better. as long as, you know, i- if you have, if you have a degree and the other guy doesn't, then you get ahead of him in the employment line. But we're not gonna all get ahead of each other in the employment line by all getting degrees.
So this whole idea that, I guess, again, both, liberals and conservatives are saying is that a- at this particular moment, 1995, we have to get more people into the education system because that's the way to compete, and we look at the data and we see that, the people with more education are earning more money than ever before relative to the people with less education.
People who-
That's all a fallacy of everybody- People-... standing up in the stadium, i- if
I knew that... people who fly on the Concorde, kids who've flown on the Concorde undoubtedly will make more money than people who, kids who've only gone on buses. That does not mean if we put a lot of people on the Concorde we're gonna raise the national income.
hmm. But we would increase the revenues of the Concorde.
Yes, and which they desperately need, of course. Right. But that's another story.
All right, now, a- and just to review the bidding, you, date, the, the full-blown nature of this situation sort of in the 1960s. Is that right? Yes. I mean, that's e- everyone on the conservative side start... I mean, Genesis is mid-1960s. That's when the world started. I mean, I, and I'm not arguing with that necessarily.
Well, not necessarily Genesis.
I, I would say the fall in the Garden.
Right. Okay. All right. Now, since the 1960s- the United States of America has, won the Cold War, remained a, while a lot of people, including a lot of mostly conservatives, were saying, "Oh, America's lost its nerve, and we c- we..."
Because we're big- I don't think, I don't think that was the conservatives.
Well, the, I recall a, an issue of the public interest-... i- in the mid-1970s saying, "Has America lost its nerve?". A whole bunch of conservatives saying, "Oh, my God, it's terrible. We're gone."
Well, this is Jimmy Carter's, era.
Well, maybe that's right. but s- so i- since this terrible event, 30 years ago, whe- the, when the '60s dropped upon us, we've won the Cold War, we've continued to grow, in affluence, in professional skills. w- we have absorbed about, 20 million immigrants. we are the wealthiest, freest country, in the history of the world. You would agree with all of that, I, roughly.
Well, I, I disagree entirely with your base period. None of this-
Well, it's, it's your base period.
No, no, none of- No, it's your- No. None of these things- You
established the 1960s,
I didn't. No. No, I'm s- I'm saying- I tracked it... from all those things that you talk about began long before the 1960s. They faltered a, to a, to a great extent under Jimmy Carter. They were re- they were, they were resumed with a renewed vigor in the 1980s under an entirely different kind of, kind of, kind of vision. But I'm talking about the social decline of the country, because the social decline is all the more striking because here is a country that is prosperous. You can't blame the r- the crime rate on the fact that there's more poverty, there's less poverty, there's more affluence. It's not due to foreigners because, as you say, we've won the Cold War. all the normal things that you might blame all this on, aren't there. It's not because of diseases, because science has conquered more diseases. It's all because of self-inflicted wounds, and I'm saying these are the people who inflicted those wounds, and this is why we shouldn't listen to them anymore.
W- what are the nature of those wounds?
Crime.
No, no, I, that-
The disintegration of the family, the disintegration of the educational system. -huh. And those, and i- it's not gonna matter. We'll be like the man who gained the whole world and lost his soul.
I- is there a common root to all of those, all of those problems, oth- other than you heard them from the anointed class? I mean, is there something, i- is it the- Yes, yes... is it, is it big government? Is it big government? Is that what the-
No, no. It, it's the notion that- Ordinary people cannot be trusted to make the decisions that they've been making, but these must be preempted either by judges in the case of crime, or by the schools taking over the indoctrination of other people's children behind their back and in, and against their, protests. or what's, what was the other one? the family. Yeah. putting, taking money from the taxpayers and subsidizing behavior, as well as encouraging it and legitimizing behavior that has turned out to be enormously self-destructive, undermining the family in a thousand different ways.
Tom, you write in your new book, The Vision of the Anointed, available at all bookstores, about the Teflon prophets.
Yes.
Who, what are, what is, -
Well, I think my favorite is Paul Ehrlich, who, because he's been so consistently wrong on so many things. one, predicting mass starvation, I think it was the '70s or the '80s, but, predicting that we're running out of, running low on, on resources. And, Julian Simon made this famous bet with him, and he would bet, offered to bet anybody $1,000 that they could name a set of resources and name a period of time, and at the end of that period of time, those resources would not be more expensive as they would be if they were really running low, but would be, either stationary or, or falling in real terms. And, Ehrlich rushed in with his list of 10 resources, and he decided we'd come back at the end of 10 years. At the end of 10 years, not only was the bundle of 10 resources, cheaper in real terms than it was before, every single resource he named was cheaper.
Let me raise a final point here. You make this, vigorous attack in The Vision of the Anointed that we should no longer listen to these people. That's sort of the ba- they've been wrong. It's, they don't prove their points. it's hurt us. Who should we listen to?
We should listen first and foremost to our own experience. You seem to act as if there must be alternative saviors. We should stop looking for saviors. I mean, the society has not existed for thousands of years because it had a succession of saviors. It's existed because it has institutions and processes through which people can realize their own goals.
No, I understand that. But y- but you are attacking people who would like to lead us and tell us how the world works.
No. They- W- No. They don't wanna tell us how the world works.
They
wanna te- They want to take over the decision for us. They don't tell the f- parents how they ought to teach sex education to their children. They put this material in the schools behind the backs of the parents with instructions not to let the parents see it.
Okay, but w-
That's the problem...
but we live in a, in an open and democratic society. Now, Mr. And Mrs. John Q Public are listening to this pro- program, I hope, and they're saying, "Boy, that guy really makes a lot of sense in term..." But basically, it's been a negative proposition. Don't listen to these people. Don't do this. Don't do that. No,
no.
What, w- who should- Don't
let those people run your life.
Okay, but how do you, how do you practically-
I don't, I... It's a non-problem, Ben. But, no, but how do you- It's a non-problem. Those people are adults just like you and me.
Okay, who-
They have been running their lives for thousands of years. Who should a- They don't need me to tell them what to do.
Wait, but this is a s-
It's not a question I wanna take over from, people on the left.
No, but this-
I want them to continue to make their decisions as they see fit.
Right. But, but this is a democracy. They have to, they have to vote.
Even in a democracy- Okay they can l- live their lives as they see fit.
Who should they vote for?
Oh, good heaven. They've been voting for whoever they wanted to without my help
for- Well, but s- but some of the-... 200 years... but some of these people are voting for the people who are listening to these anointed people. I mean, y- you, y- I g- give my audience-
Well, and I, and I, and I-
Give my audience some advice. Tell them what to do...
la- last year, in 1994, without any help from me whatsoever, they changed who they voted for. A-
and so
it's a non-problem.
You say without any help to you, but you and your confreres in the conservative movement, I think, have had an influence on- But,
but, that, but it wasn't because of this book, obviously.
I mean, not because of this book, but because of your earlier wonderful books. -... Tom Sowell, thank you very much. And thank you. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1150 17th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, 20036. We can also be reached via email at thinktv@aol.com, or on the World Wide Web at www.thinktank.com. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg
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