Thomas Sowell taught economics at Cornell, UCLA, and Amherst and is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University (from back flap jacket). His economic and social writings appeared daily in the WSJ and Fortune.

He makes the distinction between intellectuals and The Intelligentsia which are power holders and journalists in government favoring policies by intellectuals. JFK and his 1960 Presidential Advisors were an example as well as Herbert Hoover, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt who attempted to elevate their progressive policies to cover the impoverished and disenfranchised at the expense of the middle class. Our current healthcare debate is but another example of progressive policies pushed by the Intelligentsia. Sowell’s thesis is that intellectuals have been proved wrong in their diagnosis and prescription for societal ills. A few examples follow.

Economics: Statistics are used to imply that the gap between rich and poor is widening. Sowell argues that “even if every person received exactly the same income, there would still be significant disparity if households of working adults were counted because there are more adult heads of household working full - time and year - around in the top five percent than in the bottom twenty percent. This also does not count governmental aid in terms of Medicare disability, food stamps, and Medicaid payments to the lower twenty percent. Moral arguments are used by progressives to indicate that one person’s productivity should not be a thousand times more than another’s. People who argue for income redistribution argue on merit which is different than productivity according to Sowell because biological, social, and economic advantages exist and cannot be ignored. Headstart was an attempt in the 1960s to make up for the social and educational disparity at birth that might lead to more educational achievement by the fifth grade that proved false. Despite fifty years of early childhood education, results remain inconclusive that earlier advances are maintained by education alone.

Social Visions: Intellectuals have a conception of the world that they are like other people but their self - view of intellectual superiority biases their moral judgment that they know what’s best for the masses. Taken to an extreme, Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s that the intellectual superiority of the Aryan race gave them the moral authority to dispose of over six million Jews. Infanticides have existed since the days of the Romans and more recent events in Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Middle East, and Indonesia continue the fallacy that intellectual superiority trumps mediocrity. Totalitarian governments as espoused by Mussolini has led to government knowing what’s best for the people rather than a democratic government run by and for the people. Political intervention in economic markets such as the recent “cap and trade, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, stimulus money, and pork barrel politics” are nothing new, but the view that “government knows best” dates back to the progressive days of Thomas Jefferson.

Reality vs. the Media: Fantasy and reality have blurred over the years as societal morals have shifted to more laissez - faire “anything goes.” Judges defend letting child predators out on bail, banks defend subprime mortgages, insurance companies defend rising healthcare costs, government defends increased spending, companies defend profits at the expense of laying off American workers for outsourcing to foreign countries, and the list goes on. Now we have a plethora of “reality shows” where people lose weight, dance, sing, survive, and compete for dominance and fame. Many of the Intelligentsia defend their view of reality by filtering out information contrary to their view. Filtering can take many forms such as: censorship, homelessness, racial profiling, hunger, violence, and a myriad social ills by what the media decides to report. Everyone knows that man bites dog sells more newspapers and blogs than the reverse. Tabloid gossip was founded on the fantasy is reality principle. Not only fictitious results, but fictitious people suddenly appear such as the ugly American, the silent majority, the progressive left, the conservative right, the moral majority.

The Law: The Intelligentsia or “anointed” have argued that social ills can be legislatively and judicially eradicated by Supreme Court rulings and more equal enforcement of The Law. Despite gun control laws, the murder rate has declined since 1933 as espoused by the “anointed” ones, but murder rates have doubled since 1974. The root causes of crime have been argued ad nauseum, but the fact remains violence mirrors society. We have become anesthetized to violence by daily reports of bombings, murders, assaults, rape, as if we were all in this gigantic video game.

In summary, intellectuals and the intelligentsia are wrong in their predictions based on academia, logic, and reason, dating back to the French philosopher Marquis Cordorcet in 1765 and espoused more recently by Bertrand Russell and J.B. Priestley (1930s) which argued that “a perfect society is best run by intellectuals who preach a liberal economy, free and equal public education, constitutionalism, and equal rights for all races.”

Helpful Hints:

1. Argue the opposite view of Cordorcet which espouses that competition in a free economy promotes equality and the public good.

2. Our Health Reform bill will pass today which is the most definitive piece of social legislation since the Medicare Bill in 1965; argue for or against this bill.

3. Do you think intellectuals have an undue influence on society? Why?