The Vision of the Anointed

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 1995. 

Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

The subtitle of this book is awesome. It implies that liberals, progressives and socialists are motivated by ego, not by compassion for the poor. For liberals, self-respect depends primarily on their political philosophy. They see themselves as a moral elite, surrounded by ignoramuses. They will resist any evidence that their methods for helping the poor do more harm than good, because to accept the truth will have the consequence of loss of self-respect.

Residual Fallacy

Sowell talks about the residual fallacy. By this term, he means that if we find that there is still a racial disparity after holding some non-racial factors constant, we then attribute all of the remaining discrepancy to racism. But this would be true only if we held all factors other than racism constant, which is impossible to do. 

Dismissing the Arguments of Your Opponents

The words dismiss, dismissed, and dismissal occur seventeen times in this book. Usually, Sowell is complaining that an assertion by the political right is being dismissed by the political left, without the political left providing reasoning or evidence against the right-wing position. On one occasion, however, Sowell complains that the political right is sometimes unfairly accused of dismissing an assertion of the political left, when actually the political right did provide evidence and reasoning against the assertion. The political left believes it is above the requirement to take opposing views seriously.