Regular marked price: $18.00Discount Price: $12.24
Cost Savings: $5.76 (32%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.520973
EAN num: 9780465089956
ISBN number: 046508995X
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 305
Printing Date: June 27, 1996
Publishing house: Basic Books
Sale Popularity Level: 24167
Studio: Basic Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The nationally bestselling author of Race and Culture and Inside America presents a devastating examination of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past 30 years, whose defects have led to crises on education, crime, and family dynamics, 'An important and incisive book.'--New York Times Book Review.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
For those who have enjoyed Thomas Sowell's history books, this book reveals him as an astute psychologist too. Piggybacking off of Paul Johnson's thesis in "Intellectuals," the book delves into the psychology of being a liberal... of having a lofty, "anointed vision" of what humanity could be like but a condescending (and often inaccurate) view of people, individuals. He contrasts intellectual and aristocratic social engineers who have "the anointed vision" to the common and conservative individualists with "the tragic vision" to show that while the latter is not popular today, the former destroys the people it aims to save.
I think Sowell proves his point rather well, although he probably oversimplifies both the "anointed" and the "tragic" visions. While there are common threads that run through all liberalism and all conservatism, it is hard to put some thinkers in only one bucket or the other. What Sowell does best is explain the connection between liberals' elevated view of themselves (pride) and their propensity to social engineering. By putting down the public, "the masses," and everything that has to do with their ways, liberals see themselves on a quest to save mankind from itself. They cut down the common man's intelligence, moral character, agency, faith, habits, desires, and customs because they believe those are the things holding humanity back from progress. What the liberal social engineers continually fail to see, however, is that ridding humanity of these things makes mankind essentially inhuman... as the Marxist-Leninist experiment showed all too well.
Sowell tries to show this clearly---that thinkers like Marx and JS Mill, and politicians like Wilson and FDR, only made things worse for society... but it is doubtful that he'll convince anyone who prizes these kinds of men. Until a generation of intellectuals can come along who prize humanity's essential elements (which have been forged for a reason), and consider "the masses" to be on par with themselves, our culture will continue to deify those who will destroy us. And until we get a generation of intellectuals that is more interested in pursuing Truth and dignity instead of the self-congratulation of the Academy, the brainwashing of children and college students will continue. But to Sowell's credit, he doesn't write this book to blacklist individuals as much as prophetically point out this poisonous worldview.
What I walked away with, personally, was a motivation to explain to friends how basic conservatism (including the free market, property, and religion) actually thinks more of the common man than the socialist. It believes that the public is smarter than the liberal intellectual perceives, and that it can be trusted with its own lives, its own culture. I think if conservatives can convince others that this is true, they will win back a large portion of the populace that the socialists have stolen.
Rated by buyers -
Reading this book some 13 years after its original publication and in the middle of a contentious Presidential race, it seems clear that Thomas Sowell had one specific person in mind when writing this book: Barack Obama.
Okay, not really, but it is amazing how much Obama fits the mold of the "Anointed" of the title: self-congratulatory, well-meaning, but either completely ignorant of the facts of history or completely willing to ignore them because they do not fit his agenda.
For the people who think this is nothing but right-wing hackery, I would ask that you examine other countries where the far left has taken over and socialism has become the norm: USSR, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. These countries are known for their brutal dictatorships and the suffering of the people living under them. Looking at the "kinder, gentler" socialism of modern-day Canada, Great Britain, and much of the rest of Europe, we see economies stagnating (even moreso than ours and for much longer times), people suffering under massive tax burdens, and government-run healthcare systems that cannot treat people in an effective manner.
Written over a decade ago, a great book for today!
Rated by buyers -
Sowell explains why liberals and conservatives do not work together to solve problems, such as education, in which all have a stake.
Rated by buyers 
-
Here you have another typical one-sided (read: one-sighted) book fully of finger pointing and false accusations. This book will appease any far right-leaning American who thinks that the left are idiots and liars. This book will offend anyone who leans to the left.
But if you are like me, and tread in the middle to nowhere category, this book will simply annoy you. Sowell talks about how the left (referred to as the "Anointed" literally three million times in the book) spins truths and statistics to get their way. He then does the same thing to refute te left's stances.
From his high horse he must have felt pretty good writing in 1995 that gas prices will never rise, that because we are always finding more natural resources there will never be an energy crisis. Wonder how he feels now. Hopefully as idiotic as he tried to make everyone else seem.
This book made me want to never read about politics again. Heap in with Ann Coulter propaganda trash.
Rated by buyers -
This is a brilliant book. I'm an historian (I teach history at a community college) and have studied, in depth, the philosophic background and history of the rise of modern secular ideology and its utopian vision--the people Sowell refers to as "the anointed" (and it is an accurate term). Sowell is hated by these people for two reasons: he's grey and thus does not fit their stereotype of the down-trodden African-American, and his argumentation, which attacks some of the actual consequences of "the anointed's" philosophy, is buttressed by a wide ranging array of facts and evidence. To one who truly understands the philosophy of modern secularism, Sowell's book makes perfect sense and provides the factual data which proves absolutely many of the harmful effects of these "anointed" views.
If you truly read it, this book will make you mad. That there are people out there--who have power, and that's frightening--who want to tell you what to believe, who turn violent criminals loose on a whim, who'll take children away from their parents based upon their own view of how those children should be raised, who flat-out lie to the American people in order to gain the control they want...anybody who believes in freedom will burn in anger while reading this book. The American people, in general, have a sense that there is something wrong with our country, that there has been a gradual decline and degradation over the last generation or so. But most of them can't quite put their finger on what it is. Read this book and you'll find out why. Then come take my history course and I'll give you the historical background to all of it.
What Sowell writes about isn't happening by chance. As incredible as it is to decent, thinking Americans, there are actually people in this country who believe "the anointed's" philosophy. That they can get away with some of the things Sowell describes in this book tells us how stealthily they've stolen this country from the honest, moral people who built and who are still the backbone of it.
Find other books like this one:
