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Summary: Single best book about political ideas
Review: Every college and graduate student should be required to read this book because it so clearly explains the reasons why people hold certain opinions about matters of policy, justice, law, and government. Prof. Sowell does not preach in this book, he shows the relationships between sets of ideas, e.g. why liberals are liberals and why conservatives are conservatives, and why both sides are quite predictable. Other reviewers have said this book is difficult to read; I did not find it difficult, but having some previous knowledge of political ideas, such as found in political science or law or history, certainly helps. Just take your time reading it. For over 10 years I have recommended this book to everyone who showed any interest in what people think and why, because this book gives an education that you don't get in college or law school. What is more, after reading this book you can predict the positions that politicians and activist groups will take on just about any issue. Wonderful reading!
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Summary: Lucid explanation why people consistently differ
Review: Have you ever noticed that people who are conservative differ with peope who are liberal in just about every issue? For example, someone who favors a strong national defense will often be against affirmative action and for cuts in social spending. Sowell attributes this to different visions. The "constrained vision" sees humankind operating under certain constrainst such as Adam Smith's invisible hand. Thus, someone with a constrained vision will be against governmental intervention in economic affairs. Additionally, there are constraints of human nature and therefore, a strong national defense is the best way to prevent war. As to the justice system, the constrained vision sees clear rules, consistently enforced, to be the surest way to justice. In short, the constrained vision seeks just procedures and laws, and does not concern itself with results. The constrained vision seeks a "strict constructionist" interpretation of the Constitution.The "unconstrained vision" sees, in humankind, unlimited possibilities. Usually, the faith in these possibilities is placed in a ruling elite. Therefore, a liberal will support a government deciding what is best for us and seeking just results at the expense of just procedures. If everyone receives equal treatment but the results favor one class over another, the unconstrained vision seeks to substitute the judgment of the ruling elite over the collective wisdom of those who framed our Constitution and other procedures. As to national defense, the unconstrained vision has confidence that reason and good will can prevail and that strong military dterrence is, therefore, unnecessary. Of course, the unconstrained vision is not necessarily restricted to liberalism. Indeed under Nazism there was certainly a strong element of an unconstrained vision. True, there were contstraints of extreme nationalism and rascism but, the dictators under Nazism & fascism had the discretion to ssek the ends they determined to be right and certainly, they had the discretion to control and dictate the means to these ends. Visions can, and sometimes do change. For example, former Communists have recanted and adopted a very different vision. Also, the two visions are not 100 percent pure. There is a degree of hybridism. However,, social theories are not as readily able to be proven scientifically by experiment as are theories in the applied sciences. Therefore, evidence is interpreted and often made to support our own visions. All in all, Sowell's analysis explains why people hold the views they do.
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Summary: Informative, Insightful, Useful, and Practical
Review: I must admit I found Thomas Sowell somewhat difficult to understand. However, given the abstract nature of the book, I'm not sure many writers could have written much better. But once you get into the frame of mind and synchronize with Sowell's presentation flow, it becomes readily apparent that this man is a deep thinker with useful insights into the basis for political ideologies. The book is not especially historical with regards to shifts in political attitudes. However, he does present political ideologies in such a way that allows the reader to compare and contrast and to understand the essential basis for the differences in those ideologies. A definite must-read for the political junkie and certainly for any political science student. Just be prepared to concentrate like you never have before and I think you too will appreciate the insights of Thomas Sowell.
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Summary: A brilliant and invaluable book.
Review: In "A Conflict of Visions," Thomas Sowell compiles a study of the two dominant socio-political ideologies of the day via the idea of "visions"--that is, a received, almost precognitive set of assumptions about human nature and humanity's place in the world. Sowell calls these the "constrained" (i.e. "conservative") and "unconstrained" (i.e. "liberal") visions. The two visions are fundamentally different and, therefore, produce conflicting ideas about such basic concepts as knowledge and reason and conflicting attitudes toward such values as equality, power, and justice. Sowell substantiates his observations of the conflict by quoting often from those authors over the past 250 years who wrote most insightfully and prolifically from the vantage of one or the other of these visions--such writers as Edmund Burke, William Godwin, John Locke, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet, Ronald Dworkin and Milton Friedman.
In the conservative vision, human nature is viewed as essentially selfish, and society protects individuals from each other through the various institutions, traditions, religions, and laws that have evolved over the course of history. However, the liberal vision considers human nature as essentially good and hampered only by various power structures and social restrictions (thus progress is made by subverting those institutions and traditions that conservatives prize). As one example of the effect this conflict of visions has on society, Sowell shows that the conservative vision has this view of knowledge: knowledge is as vast as the number of human beings in the world, and thus some form of democracy is the best method of ensuring that that knowledge is well represented in society. The conservative vision sees knowledge as one facet of the human experience, but it does not elevate reason to the highest value in that experience. The liberal vision sees knowledge as the key to solving the world's problems (whereas conservatives believe there are no solutions--rather, there are only "better" and "worse" options). In the liberal vision, the lack of knowledge (that is, rational enlightenment) is the cause of the world's problems. The mass of people are not bad, they are just unenlightened and thus subject to the common errors of the ignorant. Therefore, in this vision, what society most needs are enlightened individuals willing to remake the world on behalf of their brothers and sisters who lack their education and their special knowledge.
Sowell has produced a brilliant and invaluable book. In this age when comedians masquerade as valid pundits and when the talking heads in the media do not know their history--cannot remember even the details of foreign policy in the previous presidential administration--Thomas Sowell shines through as the rare sort of thinker with the potential to clarify the murky political debate in the United States.
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Summary: A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Stru
Review: In this clearly written book, Sowell divides world visions or ideologies into two basic types: constrained and unconstrained. The constrained view accepts human nature and historical experience roughly as they are. The other philosophical perspective highlights the perfectability of humanity, widening the range of individual choices without saying when or how far. Various hybrid positions are sketched. Sowell shows Marxism, for example, to embody a constrained past under slavery and bourgeois capitalism, but foresees an unconstrained future under socialism. Fascism imposes constraints upon followers but not on its leaders. The author relies mainly on the great theorists for his illustrations. Hobbes, Adam Smith, Malthus, Burke, F. Hayek, and M. Friedman, among others, convey a constrained philosophy. Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Veblen, and Galbraith tilt toward unconstraint. The dividing lines, however, are rarely sharp. This book is not anchored as it should be in history or in systematic comparisons of societies. Nothing is said about the civilizations of India, China, Africa, or Latin America; the focus is upon Western societies and their ideologies. For this reason, the work is somewhat limited
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Summary: My Favorite Book
Review: It's easy to hate people who have a different political view, but this book helps you understand them instead.
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Summary: Sowell's Best
Review: Mr. Sowell seems convinced that a typical person's positions on various political topics are in fact dictated by relatively few basic assumptions which the person holds. That is, three or four basic "truths" which you hold will in turn govern your views on dozens of other policy issures. He makes a very readable and very convincing case, illustrating how this plays out in many of today's "hot" political issues. This concept - that a few basic assumptions, or one's "vision," drives political views - is one he returns to again and again in his books. In fact, though I enjoyed Vision of the Anointed and Cosmic Justice, I found them somewhat redundant. This book seems to be a more fundamental treatment of the topic; I'm glad I read it first.
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Summary: The Root of the Divergence
Review: One would imagine that, after three or four decades of debate on social/cultural issues, we know enough about the perspectives of the various views that we ought to be able to reach a mutually agreeable decision. So, why haven't we?
At the time I am writing this review (Summer 2004), the Democrat party's candidate for US president says that he agrees that life begins at conception and that he doesn't like abortion, but that he cannot impose his religiously-informed beliefs on others. Well, pardon me, but the knowledge that "life begins at conception" is not a "religiously-informed belief", but a fact, supported by science and reason.
The issue has never been when life begins, but at what point a life qualifies for protection under the law as a person. That is, when does the life in the human mother's womb become human? The courts, from the beginning of this debate 3 decades ago, could not make such a determination separate from the question of "when life begins" because it was politically untenable to do so. We know, as a fact of biology, that life begins at conception. We know, as a fact of biology, that a human female who is pregnant is not going to deliver puppies - she is going to deliver a human baby. It is not a religiously-informed belief at all, nor is it a question of science any longer, either.
So, the question can only be expressed in legal terms - when does the human baby qualify as human within the context of the law?
Once the question is formulated in this manner, it becomes possible to debate clearly and cleanly, with logical terms that are not ambiguous, terms that can be understood and agreed to by all participants.
If all public policy issues could be resolved into the essential question like this, then they should be able to be more easily decided upon. What prevents such a resolution?
Dr. Sowell argues that the terms that a person uses in political discussions (and indeed just about anywhere else!) are definitionally based on that person's orientation in an over-arching vision. Further, he says, our society and culture is driven by two competing visions that each have established ideologies on what "human" means and the conditions under which man operates within the polity.
In short, we cannot discuss and debate the issues with each other across the divergence of these competing visions because we don't even start from the same dictionary. Our terms are completely devoid of meaning to people in the other vision, and vice versa.
Dr. Sowell is a fine writer; this work is, however, a bit repetitive and could be tightened up.
By giving us a road-map of those competing visions, Dr. Sowell has done a great service. The only absence, unfortunately, is that of a solution - how to bridge the competing visions and re-enter proper political action (debate, persuade, and vote). Having a recommended course of action added to this work would make it possible to reverse the usurpation of the political decision process of "we, the people" by the unelected judiciary.
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Summary: To understand the nature of political arguments, read this
Review: Probably the book that best captures the core of Sowell's thought, this will help crystallize the understanding of anyone who has invested a lot of time in observing the back-and-forth, Crossfire-style, argumentation that usually passes for rational political discussion. The underlying assumptions that promulgate the world-views of our pundits and politicians can be seen here, making for a clearer understanding of how political figures, past and present, have arrived at the choices they have made. While reading on the affirmative action debate, say, or the history of Europe between the World Wars, one can see the opposing visions at work. Sowell is careful - as always, but here more than usual - not to take sides, but merely to present the characteristic behaviors and thought processes of the two "visions." As someone who agrees with Sowell most, but not all of the time, I was pleased with the way he stayed on message. A more opinionated book of his is "The Vision of the Anointed" which I also recommend.
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Summary: social scientists, take your medecine!
Review: Sowell is a true intellectual. He is not afraid to go where his mind takes him. In this work he takes on his common peeve: social engineering. For Sowell nothing is worse than utopian minded do-gooders armed with inadequate knowledge of the subjects they pontificate on. To be frank, I think Sowell's arguments are sometimes thin (much social engineering is done well and is necessary), but it is always good to read someone who will challenge convention, especially when that person is as bright as Sowell is.
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