Subtitled Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. Published in 1995 - not much has changed. I came across the reference in an online discussion of the London riots. Many saw the riots, of course, as confirmation that the social experiments of the last 50 years have failed – in education, penal policy, open borders, social policy, etc. This book is an analysis of the mindset that pushed these disastrous policies through with quasi-religious fervour.
The general thesis is that the idealists have neglected to operate checks and balances, and have disdained the grubby trade-offs needed to govern in an imperfect world. Sowell calls the idealist mindset the vision of the anointed and contrasts it with what he calls the tragic vision.
For instance, “both crime and war have been seen, by those with the vision of the anointed, as things to be deterred by changing people’s dispositions rather than by confronting them with retaliatory capabilities that provide incentives against crime or war” (p.107). Sowell shares the tragic vision. In relation to crime, he quotes Adam Smith, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” And when it comes to war, he agrees that “nations in general make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it” (John Jay).
Sowell points to the tendency of enthusiasts to choose ideal policy A over less than ideal policy B, even though they don’t possess (and possibly nobody could possess) the knowledge and competencies needed to realise policy A. I was eerily reminded of actual conversations that I’ve had with such people – their sense of urgency is wonderful, their demands for taxpayers’ money unbounded, their remorse for past mistakes entirely lacking.
And I say that with humility, having come to realise late in life that I’ve made my own small contribution to the trashing of Western civilisation.
Edmund Burke is a well-known exponent of the tragic vision. Will and Ariel Durant also sound well worth following up (The Lessons of History, 1968):
Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant and well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
One of specific trends Sowell discusses is judicial activism – which has only increased in the period since his book was written. In pursuit of their own socio-political agendas, judges are willing “to derange a whole process, evolved from the experiences of millions of people over centuries of legal development” (p.130). The outcome for individuals, as Mark Steyn also demonstrates very tellingly in After America, is that it becomes impossible to know what the law actually is in some areas, since it depends not on legislation, but on judicial whim. The outcome for society is that the whole process of the law becomes ineffective (and falls into disrepute, as we see in the UK now with the Human Rights Act). Sowell is very keen on conserving processes and institutions, since he doesn’t believe that there are once-and-for-all solutions (e.g. to poverty) that will do away with the need for well-balanced processes.
In this respect, I feel very much the guilt of my generation. We did indeed, as Sowell accuses, see the constraints of civilisation as “arbitrary impositions” from which we desired to be “liberated” (p.247).
In the world of the anointed, human nature is readily changeable. To say that a particular policy requires the changing of other people’s dispositions and values may to others suggest a daunting prospect but, to the anointed, it is a golden opportunity. Making other people “aware”, raising their consciousness ... are all very attractive ideas ... Similarly, while polarization is to others something to fear, to those with the vision of the anointed it is a confirmation of their own superiority to the benighted. ... Whether it is the mandatory busing of schoolchildren for racial balance or the imposition of new policies on gays in the military, these are not thought of ... as polarization. It is only those who object who are said to be creating polarization.
One of the ominous consequences of such attitudes is that there is no logical stopping place in creating polarizations that may tear a society apart or lead to a backlash that can sweep aside not only such policies but also the basic institutions of a free society. ... There is nothing in the prevailing vision to make the anointed stop before things reach that point. On the contrary, the warning signs of such an impending catastrophe may be seen by the anointed ass only welcome indications of their own moral superiority ... (pp.246-7).
Chapter 1 sets out the idea that the anointed see themselves not merely as factually correct but on a higher moral plane, their opponents as benighted. Furthermore, theirs is the prevailing vision, and its assumptions are widely accepted without scrutiny.
Chapter 2 identifies the typical pattern whereby a crisis is identified; the anointed propose solutions; their critics say there will be unintended detrimental effects; the policies are instituted and the predicted detrimental effects follow; the anointed refuse to accept that the detrimental effects flow from their policy.
Chapter 3 gives examples of the misunderstanding and misuse of statistics.
Chapter 4 gives examples of the immunity of the anointed to evidence, and of their rhetorical techniques.
Chapter 5 contrasts the vision of the anointed and the tragic vision in detail. They differ in their understanding of:
• human capability;
• social possibilities;
• social causation (with the tragic vision seeing negative outcomes as systemic, the anointed vision seeing them as deliberate);
• freedom (tragic vision: freedom from; anointed vision: ability to);
• justice (tragic: equality before the law; anointed: equality of outcomes);
• knowledge (tragic: inherent in institutions etc.; anointed: property of the elite);
• the desirability of specialization (desirable in the tragic vision; jettisoned by the anointed in favour of the interdisciplinary and holistic);
• motivation (provided by incentives in the tragic vision; a matter of inherent dispositions to the anointed);
• attitude towards costs;
• preferred method of decision making (top down planning in the anointed vision);
• type of decisions preferred (tragic: incremental; anointed: categorical).
The remaining chapters elaborate on these distinctions and look in more detail at the vision of the anointed in operation.
Chapter 6 looks at some recent ‘crusades’ of the anointed, and identifies some of their ‘mascots’ (e.g. the homeless, criminals, AIDS carriers) and targets (business, the professions, the family).
Chapter 7 discusses the language of the anointed, which often implies a cosmic, god-like viewpoint. Examples are also given of verbal inflation, e.g. the over-use of ‘-phobia’, ‘violence’ and ‘hopelessness’. The anointed are given to denigrating not only their opponents but also the general public as benighted, insane, etc.
Chapter 8 looks at the impact of ideology on the legal system.
Chapter 9 articulates Sowell’s view of the ideology of the anointed (picking out the most salient features of the contrasts listed in Chapter 5):
• problems exist only because people lack wisdom or virtue (which the anointed will supply);
• evolved traditions or systemic processes are merely social constructs, and are to be replaced with rational solutions provided by the anointed;
• social causation is intentional and condemnation is the appropriate response to negative situations;
• the government should impose the vision of the anointed on the people;
• opponents are intellectually or morally deficient.
Sowell concludes that:
After the vision of the anointed was given increasing scope in the education and public policy of the United States and other Western societies ... the social degeneration became palpable ... – declining educational standards, rising crime rates, broken homes, soaring rates of teenage pregnancy, growing drug usage, and unprecedented levels of suicide among adolescents. This social devastation was not due to poverty, for the material standard of living was rising substantially ... It was not due to repression, for an unprecedented variety of new “rights” emerged ... to liberate people from the constraints of the law while they were being liberated from social constraints by the spread of “nonjudgmental” attitudes. Neither was this social degeneration due to the disruption of war of natural catastrophes ... It was instead an era of self-inflicted wounds. (p.260)
Similar viewpoint in this article in City Journal by Howard Hussock, "Nathan Glazer’s Warning:Social policy often does more harm than good, says one of the last of the original neocons". It references Jane Jacobs, and makes specific mention of urban architecture and the life of cities.
Any social policy, he writes in Limits, must be judged against “the simple reality that every piece of social policy substitutes for some traditional arrangement, whether good or bad, a new arrangement in which public authorities take over, at least in part, the role of the family, of the ethnic and neighborhood group, of voluntary associations.” In doing so, Glazer continues, “social policy weakens the position of these traditional agents and further encourages needy people to depend on the government for help rather than on the traditional structures. This is the basic force behind the ever growing demand for more social programs and their frequent failure to satisfy our hopes.”
Glazer goes further still, asserting that “the breakdown of traditional modes of behavior is the chief cause of our social problems.” This means that it might often be better for government not to get involved in social policy at all. “I am increasingly convinced,” he writes, “that some important part of the solution to our social problems lies in traditional practices and traditional restraints. Since the past is not recoverable, what guidance can this possibly give? It gives two forms of guidance: first, it counsels hesitation in the development of social policies that sanction the abandonment of traditional practices.” Such a view recalls Moynihan’s much-maligned observation that “benign neglect” might help poor blacks more than the War on Poverty did. But Glazer also offers an alternative: “Second, and perhaps more helpful, it suggests that the creation and building of new traditions, or new versions of old traditions, must be taken more seriously as a requirement of social policy itself.”
The Glazerian status quo ante—the sometimes informal institutions that we replace at our peril—includes the unplanned city and the architecture that it spawns.Nevertheless, Glazer supports free healthcare - the lack of it in the USA is a disincentive to take up employment.
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