WHY do liberals and conservatives assess the same social facts so differently? The answer, Thomas Sowell suggests, is that liberals and conservatives differ in their perception of the facts. The difference, in other words, is one of vision.
“The crucial role of vision,” Sowell argues, “is that it enables a vast range of beliefs to be regarded as presumptively true until definitively disproved by unchallengeable evidence.” Liberals—or, to use Sowell’s disparaging label, “the anointed”-view the world as “a very tidy place,” where “prescient politicians can ‘invest’ tax dollars in ‘the industries of the future.’ where criminals can be rehabilitated,’ irresponsible mothers taught ‘parenting skills,’ and where all sorts of other social problems can be ‘solved.'” All this is possible, as liberals see things, because human nature, as a “social construct,” is far more malleable than most people imagine. Thus, in the vision of the anointed, “there is obviously a very expansive role for government and for the anointed in prescribing what government should do.”
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