“Dangers To A Society May Be Mortal Without Being Immediate”

Thomas Sowell
Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy

“Dangers to a society may be mortal without being immediate. One such danger is the prevailing social vision of our time – and the dogmatism with which the ideas, assumptions, and attitudes behind that vision are held.”

Those two poignant sentences were published over 14 years ago in, “The Vision of the Anointed,” written by Thomas Sowell. As I read these words tonight, I felt the weight of their meaning as we watch a political party, which holds power both in the congress and the presidency, begin a systematic attack on the voices of opposition to their drive to remake America. This attack, on free speech and opposing political views, is wrong regardless of which political party holds power, which is why it is a Constitutionally protected right.

Now the holders of power, “the anointed,” as described by Sowell, are moving to swiftly silence those who would oppose their “vision” of a new America. The dangers inherent in shutting down the political process and debate is real and “mortal.” Sowell describes the reality of these dangers as they have played out in history when he writes:

It is not that these views are especially evil or especially erroneous. Human beings have been making mistakes and committing sins as long as there have been human beings. The great catastrophes of history have usually involved much more than that. Typically, there has been an additional and crucial ingredient – some method by which feedback from reality has been prevented, so that a dangerous course of action could be blindly continued to at fatal conclusion. Much of the continent of Europe was devastated in World War II because the totalitarian regime of the Nazis did not permit those who foresaw the self-destructive consequences of Hitler’s policies to alter, or even to influence, those policies. In earlier eras as well, many individuals foresaw the self-destruction of their own civilizations, from the days of the Roman Empire to the eras of the Spanish, Ottoman, and other empires. Yet that alone was not enough to change the course that was leading to ruin. Today, despite free speech, and the mass media, the prevailing social vision is dangerously close to sealing itself off from any discordant feedback from reality. [Emphasis Added]

I am more aware of the uncertainty of the prospects for human liberty that I thought I could ever imagine. Blogging, on these matters, is not a form of entertainment or something to fill my free-time. No, the urgency of our cause, to protect human liberty, is an obligation for those of us who have benefited from the spilt blood and sacrifices of our Founders. BTW, please watch the John Adams (HBO Miniseries) DVD if you want to see just how much these great men and women sacrificed. We must all do our part and we must all labor together For Freedom’s Sake.

Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

Over the past three decades, Sowell has taught economics at various colleges and universities, including Cornell, Amherst, and the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as the history of ideas at Brandeis University. He has also been associated with three other research centers, in addition to the Hoover Institution. He was project director at the Urban Institute from 1972 to 1974, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 1976–77, and was an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute in 1975-76.

Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. In 2003, Sowell received the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. Sowell received his bachelor’s degree in economics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1958, his master’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1959, and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.