Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose — 9 Comments
Very interesting video, thanks for posting! Sowell’s comments on lifestyle and choice are fascinating in the context of the debate over free will and determinism, since many leftists deny the possibility of human agency (along with individual accountability and personal responsibility), the result being that no-one can be blamed for having chosen badly since there was never any choice (with ensuing consequences) to begin with; the worldview of these “anointed” is of those who are victimized by forces (cultural, environmental, historical, political and social) completely beyond their powers of altering.. Even the ancient Stoics recognized that there was much over which we had no control, but still believed that man (the rational animal, according to Aristotle) was not entirely the plaything of impersonal forces.
This last year, I’ve watched more YouTube videos than network television. I’ve subscribed to Sowell. I imagine in a year or two; I’ll leave YouTube for a platform that makes it as easy to find new content as YouTube, but pays “content providers” (that’s what they are, not “influencers” that can be turned off if influencing the wrong thing) for their content at the rate of consumption or allows direct pay subscriptions without arbitrary reasons for holding money (looking at you GoFundMe).
To put it simply, I’ll leave YouTube for an unanointed platform.
In just his first 26 seconds, Thomas Sowell precisely encapsulates the left’s mind set. Remarkable doesn’t begin to adequately describe the genius evidenced.
Sowell is a close student of public controversies. The Vision of the Anointed is a diagnosis for general audiences of what ails the public square, mostly through the medium of quoting what members of our chatterati say and divining common features. A quarter century later, it’s still current.
We can expect to lose Sowell in 4 or 5 years. His longevity has been such, that his earliest writing for general audiences will be seeing its 50 year anniversary ‘ere long. It’s at that point that you can take stock of a man’s contributions. I don’t think anyone who addressed questions of public affairs for general audiences has produced anything so durable. (Walter Lippman was still read approaching his centenary. Anyone know about now?).
Art Deco; Geoffrey Britain:
Sowell is one of the most brilliant people around. He also has a gift for compressing the maximum amount of thought into the minimum amount of words. He has no fear, and he pursues truth.
I could go on and on and on.
And yet, because he’s not on their side, the left mostly acts like he doesn’t exist, instead of lauding him to the skies.
Art Deco:
James Madison?
Here’s my take-away (the entire interview is excellent, of course):
[Speaking of the liberals, the anointed ones, at 13:09]
“The policies that I mentioned there [in the book], twenty years from now, those policies may not be the policies we’re concerned about, but that mind-set will still be there; and what makes them tremendously dangerous is that facts that contradict what they believe are simply ignored or evaded.”
Ain’t it the truth.
Well, yes, the Anointed Mindset has NOT changed at all.
Picked this up from a commenter at Sarah Hoyt’s blogpost “Alarm Bells” which huxley linked.
People don’t want outsiders reading their private messages —not their physical mail, not their texts, not their DMs, nothing. It’s a clear and obvious point, but one place it doesn’t seem to have reached is the U.S. Senate.
A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that was dropped in the face of overwhelming opposition. Let’s be clear: the new EARN IT Act would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features in technology used by people around the globe. It’s a framework for private actors to scan every message sent online and report violations to law enforcement. And it might not stop there. The EARN IT Act could ensure that anything hosted online—backups, websites, cloud photos, and more—is scanned.
…
The EARN IT Act doesn’t target Big Tech. It targets every individual internet user, treating us all as potential criminals who deserve to have every single message, photograph, and document scanned and checked against a government database. Since direct government surveillance would be blatantly unconstitutional and provoke public outrage, EARN IT uses tech companies—from the largest ones to the very smallest ones—as its tools.
The strategy is to get private companies to do the dirty work of mass surveillance. This is the same tactic that the U.S. government used last year, when law enforcement agencies tried to convince Apple to subvert its own encryption and scan users’ photos for them. (That plan has stalled out after overwhelming opposition.)
RTWT for all of the technical details, the problems with the bill, the problem that it purports to solve and won’t (child abuse), and why it’s a really really bad encroachment on everyone who isn’t anywhere close to being involved in the said problem.
All your pixels are belong to us.
It’s called fascism.
Thomas Sowell is an absolute treasure.
And I doubt that even 1 in 100 Americans have ever heard of him, let alone read or listened to any of his work.
“The elites have never figured out that other people are not blocks of wood.”
The boxing match in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day analogy.
Wonderful stuff.
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Very interesting video, thanks for posting! Sowell’s comments on lifestyle and choice are fascinating in the context of the debate over free will and determinism, since many leftists deny the possibility of human agency (along with individual accountability and personal responsibility), the result being that no-one can be blamed for having chosen badly since there was never any choice (with ensuing consequences) to begin with; the worldview of these “anointed” is of those who are victimized by forces (cultural, environmental, historical, political and social) completely beyond their powers of altering.. Even the ancient Stoics recognized that there was much over which we had no control, but still believed that man (the rational animal, according to Aristotle) was not entirely the plaything of impersonal forces.
This last year, I’ve watched more YouTube videos than network television. I’ve subscribed to Sowell. I imagine in a year or two; I’ll leave YouTube for a platform that makes it as easy to find new content as YouTube, but pays “content providers” (that’s what they are, not “influencers” that can be turned off if influencing the wrong thing) for their content at the rate of consumption or allows direct pay subscriptions without arbitrary reasons for holding money (looking at you GoFundMe).
To put it simply, I’ll leave YouTube for an unanointed platform.
In just his first 26 seconds, Thomas Sowell precisely encapsulates the left’s mind set. Remarkable doesn’t begin to adequately describe the genius evidenced.
Sowell is a close student of public controversies. The Vision of the Anointed is a diagnosis for general audiences of what ails the public square, mostly through the medium of quoting what members of our chatterati say and divining common features. A quarter century later, it’s still current.
We can expect to lose Sowell in 4 or 5 years. His longevity has been such, that his earliest writing for general audiences will be seeing its 50 year anniversary ‘ere long. It’s at that point that you can take stock of a man’s contributions. I don’t think anyone who addressed questions of public affairs for general audiences has produced anything so durable. (Walter Lippman was still read approaching his centenary. Anyone know about now?).
Art Deco; Geoffrey Britain:
Sowell is one of the most brilliant people around. He also has a gift for compressing the maximum amount of thought into the minimum amount of words. He has no fear, and he pursues truth.
I could go on and on and on.
And yet, because he’s not on their side, the left mostly acts like he doesn’t exist, instead of lauding him to the skies.
Art Deco:
James Madison?
Here’s my take-away (the entire interview is excellent, of course):
[Speaking of the liberals, the anointed ones, at 13:09]
“The policies that I mentioned there [in the book], twenty years from now, those policies may not be the policies we’re concerned about, but that mind-set will still be there; and what makes them tremendously dangerous is that facts that contradict what they believe are simply ignored or evaded.”
Ain’t it the truth.
Well, yes, the Anointed Mindset has NOT changed at all.
Picked this up from a commenter at Sarah Hoyt’s blogpost “Alarm Bells” which huxley linked.
https://www.eff.org/es/deeplinks/2022/02/its-back-senators-want-earn-it-bill-scan-all-online-messages
RTWT for all of the technical details, the problems with the bill, the problem that it purports to solve and won’t (child abuse), and why it’s a really really bad encroachment on everyone who isn’t anywhere close to being involved in the said problem.
All your pixels are belong to us.
It’s called fascism.
Thomas Sowell is an absolute treasure.
And I doubt that even 1 in 100 Americans have ever heard of him, let alone read or listened to any of his work.
“The elites have never figured out that other people are not blocks of wood.”
The boxing match in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day analogy.
Wonderful stuff.