Sowell Reaches Beyond Rhetoric; Economist and writer Thomas Sowell is on a crusade to make politicians move beyond stage-one thinking and consider the consequences of the policies they advocate

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 15, 2004

Byline: Stephen Goode, INSIGHT

There is no contemporary writer of greater importance to American conservatism than Thomas Sowell. In book after book, and in his regular newspaper columns, Sowell writes eloquently about how policymakers should gather convincing empirical data, analyze experience with care, and possess a knowledge of what's possible given the imperfect nature of the world before making social programs of any kind. And these virtues, he knows, are all too scarce among the officials and technocrats who govern us.

But perhaps Sowell's most characteristic trait is the clarity of word and thought that he invariably brings to his many books and columns. No one punctures with greater precision or so totally the illusion at the core of leftist thought that society can (or should) be changed to fit someone's abstract notions of "social justice," whether it be a Karl Marx or a Pol Pot or a Noam Chomsky.

The titles of Sowell's books describe his themes: The Quest for Cosmic Justice, for example, showed how left-wing utopian thinking or abstract thinking of any sort is fraught with enormous dangers to liberty, while the subject of The Vision of the Anointed was underlined by its subtitle, Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. That book is a superb attack on the smug arrogance that prevents the left from allowing any challenge to its notion of the good society, however valid those challenges might be.

Insight spoke with Sowell at lunch at the California Cafe in Stanford, Calif., and then later at the Hoover Institution. Conversation ranged from the great Hindu mathematician Ramanujan (a late-talker: Late-Talking Children is the title of one of Sowell's most widely read books) to Booker T. Washington, from affirmative action to black education.

Sowell has a new book scheduled for publication in May, Affirmative Action Around the World, in which he examines affirmative action in such places as India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and the United States. And he's currently at work on a book that will look at black education. That one will address the question of how there could be successful black institutions of secondary education he cited the legendary Dunbar High School in Washington of the first half of the 20th century while there were no black colleges of comparable status.

In his recent Applied Economics (December 2003), Sowell urges readers to "think beyond stage one." It's a theme he's stressed in other books. Politicians, technocrats and others simply don't think through the policies they advocate. If they sound good, then they're for 'em. But as Sowell shows in telling detail, "solutions" to social problems come with trade-offs that should be considered before any policy is adopted.

Q: Have we seen more than usual stage-one thinking this year among the Democrats running for president, or is stage-one thinking always in great supply during election time?

A: There's always been a lot of it out there. I'm afraid I suspect there's a lot more of it now than before. I was really amazed that [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman, for example, came in so poorly compared to characters out there who really are not in his league.

I find it hard even to imagine people like [Sens. John] Kerry or [John] Edwards as president of the United States. It truly would be a horrifying thought, because if they get into office and carry out the kind of silliness they're talking about, this country is going to be in deadly peril.

The ones who survived, survived by being [Howard] Dean without the immaturity. It was quite clear in the early stages that Kerry was pulling as close to Dean as he could in terms of what he was saying and trying to say it better. But they're feeding people the raw meat they're looking for, while Lieberman tried to talk sense. Sense just doesn't hack it in that kind of context.

Q: What about the Bush administration? With its big budget and what critics have called spendthrift ways can't it be accused of not getting beyond stage-one thinking, of not planning seriously for the future?

A: I think the big thinking is stage-one thinking. Although, if one wanted to be charitable, one could say that what they're trying to do is set the stage for a second administration in which they will have authentic control of Congress and can do something worthwhile.

I think if Bush is re-elected, and gets the kind of Congress that gives him a working majority so the Democrats can't sabotage everything, then we'll see whether he's serious. But there is no question that they are thinking strictly about the coming election.

Q: Most Americans have access to information on TV, on the Internet to a greater extent, maybe, than ever before, and many Americans have common sense. Why then the great power of rhetoric and stage-one thinking in such circumstances?

A: When I look back at the history of the 20th century and the horrors in that century that grew out of people whose main talent was an ability to inspire followers with their rhetoric, I'm always amazed that we don't do everything we can to get our students to think beyond rhetoric, to analyze logically, to have a background of knowledge and facts with which they can test things.