Vision of the Anointed

In Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell tends to paint with too broad a brush in the way he criticizes his liberal opponents for their sense of moral superiority. He also sometimes cherry-picks evidence in support of his conservative policy claims. However, some of his criticisms hit the mark, and arguably have even greater applicability to 2020s woke culture than Sowell could have ever imagined in 1995:

Many differences between races are often automatically attributed to race or to racism. In the past, those who believed in the genetic inferiority of some races were prone to see differential outcomes as evidences of differential natural endowments of ability. Today, the more common non sequitur is that such differences reflect biased perceptions and discriminatory treatment by others. A third possibility -- that there are different proportions of people with certain attitudes and attributes in different groups -- has received far less attention, though this is consistent with a substantial amount of data from countries around the world.

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The family is an obstacle to schemes for central control of social processes. Therefore the anointed necessarily find themselves repeatedly on a collision course with the family. It is not a matter of any subjective animus on their part against families. The anointed may in fact be willing to shower government largess upon families, as they do on other social entities. But the preservation of the family as an autonomous decision-making unit in incompatible with the third-person decision making that is at the heart of the vision of the anointed.

This is not a peculiarity of our times or of American society. Friedrich Engels' first draft of the Communist Manifesto included a deliberate undermining of family bonds as part of the Marxian political agenda.

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The vision of the anointed is one in which such ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from “society,” rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society.” Since no society has ever treated everyone fairly, there will always be real examples of what the anointed envision.

Recommended, especially if you think you may not share his viewpoint.