Here’s another example of the kind of thing I study in media bias. Not the open, conscious type of gatekeeping (a la the New York Times, which decides what you ought to know) but the unconscious, off-the-cuff turn of phrase that reveals the mindset of the speaker.

Last Sunday (Sunday before Easter) I caught Geraldo at Large on FOX. The subject was, men who go off their heads and kill or rob after losing jobs etc.

Now note one thing. FOX is widely known, and widely despised in some circles, as a “conservative” network. And in fact, you can see the opinions of some of the newsreaders on FOX displayed quite openly.

To my mind, that’s the good thing about FOX. The positions of their talking heads is out in the open. On the other networks, they’re “objective” you know.

Of course, they’re nothing of the kind, and it shows to anyone paying attention.

And in point of fact, FOX employs more self-identified liberals than the other networks combined have open conservatives.*

One of them is of course, Geraldo Rivera.

At any rate, on the program, Geraldo asked two guests, “After all things were worse during the Reagan administration, unemployment was higher, my God… And in the 70s with those gas lines…” (Quoted from memory, I don’t have recording devices ready at all times for this kind of thing. I have to get it on the fly.)

Notice what is missing, “in the 70s” NOT “during the Carter administration.” He specifically mentioned the Reagan administration, then identified the Carter years only by decade.

That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for – and I’d appreciate help. Examples from any point of view.

Happy Easter to all.

* There remains the question of whether FOX deliberately, or unconsciously chooses liberals to represent that point of view, who are kind of creepy, or macho-flash a$$es – or whether they just have to scrape the bottom of the barrel because liberals who are articulate and attractive are all welcome at the other broadcast outlets.

It is also worth noting that an analysis of campaign contributions by FOX employees a few years back, tilted slightly to the Democrats.

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Following a lead from Mark Steyn here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjkwNjVlNmE5MWUyOTVhMWIyODkzNWNlZGM1YjU2Zjc=

“The Oldest Hatred,” I found in the online site of the Indian daily newspaper The Hindu here: http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-new-administration.html

the scanned 69 pages of the dossier of evidence from the ongoing investigation by the Indian authorities of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

There’s a lot here, the names, ages and nationalities of the victims, the names of the terrorists from the interrogation of the lone survivor, pictures of the equipment (cell phones, GPS, guns, etc), excerpts from translated transcripts of the terrorists communications, and a fair amount of technical data.

The documents all together constitute a blueprint for such attacks, including mistakes to be avoided in the future. (The group failed to sink the hijacked ship after arriving at the point from which they launced their rubber assault craft and murdering the captain.)

There are some interesting things I wouldn’t have thought of: the group split up after landing ashore, and took taxis to the area of their targets. They left bombs in two of the taxis that exploded later, killing the drivers.

There are puzzlers too. The lone survivor seems to be a font of information. What gives?

They did some fairly extensive training beforehand, that evidently didn’t include interrogation resistance.

Did they count on all the group getting killed? Or didn’t they care what the world knew after the fact?

The investigation also reveals what is becomming a serious problem in this kind of warfare. The handlers monitored on-the-spot news coverage and tipped the terrorists off to special forces rappeling onto the building roofs from helicopters.

And, the transcripts give a picture of their motivation:

From The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2009010760571200.htm&date=2009/01/07/&prd=th&

The transcripts in the dossier make it apparent that the six handlers were closely monitoring events in Mumbai through the live TV coverage which went on non-stop for 60 hours. “There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don’t know in which room,” a Pakistan-based caller tells a terrorist at the Taj at 0310 hrs on November 27. “Oh! That is good news” It is the icing on the cake!,” he replies. “Find those 3-4 persons and then get whatever you want from India,” he is instructed. “Pray that we find them,” he answers.

At the Oberoi at 0353 hrs on November 27, a handler phones and says:

“Brother Abdul. The media is comparing your action to 9/11. One senior police official has been killed.”

Abdul Rehman: “We are on the 10th/11th floor. We have five hostages.”

Caller 2 (Kafa): Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive.

Caller: Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.

Fahadullah: We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.

Caller: Kill them. The dossier then notes that the telephone intercept records the “voices of Fahadullah and Abdul Rehman directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Cheering voices in background. Kafa hands telephone to Zarar,” who says, “Fahad, find the way to go downstairs.”

In another call, to the Taj this time, a handler says, “The ATS chief has been killed. Your work is very important. Allah is helping you. The Vazir (minister) should not escape. Try and set the place on fire.”

At Nariman House at 1945 hrs on November 27, the handler ‘Wassi’ tells a terrorist: “Keep in mind that hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire because of their safety. If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.” He then adds, “The Army claims to have done the work without any hostage being harmed. Another thing: Israel has made a request through diplomatic channels to save the hostages. If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel.”

“So be it, God willing,” the terrorist replies.

I’m going to download these documents to my computer for more detailed study.

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“Cet animal est tres mechant; Quand on l’attaque il se defend.”

(“This animal is very malicious; when attacked it defends itself.”)
-La Menagerie (Traditional French song.)

If you go over here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Io4_vjiyM

you’ll find something you don’t want to miss, a video with voiceover by the incomparable Oriana Fallaci. (Found at Atlas Shrugs: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/ )

If you go here: http://www.hsje.org/oriana_fallaci_on_antisemitism.htm
you’ll find an English transcript of the article “Sull’antisemitismo,” published in April, 2002.

But watch and listen to the video by all means, you don’t want to miss that passionate woman speaking in the language of passion.

My God, I wish I’d known her! When I hear Fallaci, I think, “the last Roman.”

The term “Ultimus Romanorum” was historically given to any man whose life embodied the values and virtues of an idealized vision of a Roman citizen. Which virtues became extinct on his death.

People who’ve been honored as “the last Roman” include Julius Caesar, the first so called. And ironically, to the leader of his assassins Marcus Junius Brutus, “the noblest Roman of them all.”*

Others who have earned the accolade include: the 5th century Romano-British Dux bellorum Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius, the philosopher Boethius, and the last de facto Roman Emperor of the West, the otherwise undistinguished Romulus Augustus.

Now we can say Orianna Fallaci was “the last Roman,” there may be no other. Future generations may date the death of Europe – from hers, the last, most courageous defender of European civilization.

The occasion of the post is of course, the Israeli attack on the Hamas strongholds in Gaza. After enduring daily rocket attacks for months, the Israelis are striking back.

In part it’s a cynical political ploy by an Israeli government about to lose power, because of a widespread realization that a policy of appeasement is just flat not working.

The Israelis are responding to deliberate, albeit clumsy, attempts to maximize civilian casualties, with surgical strikes designed to minimize civilian casualties.

Which is made difficult by the Hamas practice of basing their attacks among civilians, precisely because any retaliation inevitably results in the maiming and death of non-combatants. Which plays well in the western and Islamic media.

One wonders why the Israelis bother anymore? No matter what they do, no matter how much they try to limit their response to actual combatants, they are going to get blamed for any deaths.

Those who care about the survival of Israel, America and the West, point indignantly to the double standard in judging Israel and the terrorists.

They miss the point entirely. It’s perfectly logical if you consider the ultimate goal, the extermination of the Jews. Not the end of Israel as a nation – but the death of all Jews. Everywhere.

We don’t need to guess in the case of the jihadists, because they tell us that’s what they want. It’s we who aren’t listening.

The west Europeans and appeasing Americans are not quite as candid, at least not in public. But the fact is, more and more it is becoming apparent that a lot of people in Europe and America would breath a sigh of relief to see the last Jew buried, or burned as the case may be.

And if you’ll look at the pictures of anti-Israel demonstrators in America and Europe, these are not redneck Southerners, or Slavic peasants, but the products of university educations in New York, Paris, London, Brussels, etc.

So as the old joke goes**, why the Jews?

What I’m guessing is, it’s the classic trinity of greed, shame and cowardice.

Greed: The Islamic states have the oil Europe can’t do without. Israel does not.

I’m often reminded these days of meeting a middle-aged Dutch couple about 20-odd years back. It was during another oil crisis, when U.S. Navy ships were escorting oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz, past the warring Iraqis and Iranians.

We were talking about the then-current mess in the Middle East, and I expressed my sentiments, which at the time were pretty isolationist.

The woman interrupted passionately, “You’ve got to protect those ships, that’s OUR oil!”

Shame: Eric Hoffer observed, we hate most strongly those we are most conscious of having wronged.

The Holocaust happened in Europe. Though perpetrated by the German/Austrian Reich, France voluntarily passed “racial purity” laws that were actually stricter than the Nazi occupation authorities demanded.

Now they are trying to promote a cosmopolitan pan-European identity, centered around a Franco-German alliance. But the existence of living Jews is a constant reminder of how fragile that pan-European civilization is.

When the Jews are gone, they can forget their history.

Cowardice in several forms:

1) Islamists will kill you for offending them. Americans and Isrealis do not. So who is it safer to offend?

And while cowards through and through, they can posture as brave, “Look at me, I’m shaking my fist at the mightiest power on earth!”

2) Victim-blaming; the desire to believe the victim “had it coming,” to distance yourself from the idea that it could happen to you.

3) Appeasement, what Winston Churchill called, “feeding the crocodile in the hopes it will eat you last.”

In this case, “Give them the Jews, and they’ll leave us alone.”

And, shame + cowardice: After the war, the west Europeans cowered behind a ring of American steel while “communism wrung the necks”*** of their fellow-Europeans in the east, and they pretended not to notice.

Rather like a man who locks himself in the bathroom and runs the shower so he doesn’t have to notice the burglar is raping his wife.

The European Jews who became Israelis, learned to fight back.

There is something that every person who has ever successfully defended themselves against an aggressor learns. A certain kind of people are going to think you are a bad person for doing so.

The very existence of someone who dares to defend himself, is a reproach to everyone who dares not.

Update: See here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Xl68kP4wo&eurl=http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2009/01/gaza-war-brings-out-moral-bankruptcy-of.html

for a video of a Dec. 30 demonstration in Ft. Lauderdale, during which the Palestinian demonstrators made their sentiments known.

*
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world ‘This was a man!’

-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V Scene V

** An SS officer in Europe stops an old Jew in a concentration camp and demands, “Who is responsible for all of Germany’s problems today?”

“The Jews and the bicycle riders,” the old man responds.

“Why the bicycle riders?”

“Why the Jews?”

*** “Communism wrung our neck while the honorable democracies issued communiqués.” Romanian newspaper retort to Jacque Chirac’s remark that the Eastern Europeans “…missed a good opportunity to shut up,” during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

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Over here http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTJhMjA1MDZiNDkzYTE0MzI0NmI2MjdiMTNiMDBhYTg=

at National Review Online, Tom Gross asks the following questions:

So why are so many prominent Western media reluctant to call the perpetrators terrorists? Why did Jon Snow, one of Britain’s most respected TV journalists, use the word practitioners when referring to the Mumbai terrorists? Was he perhaps confusing them with doctors?

Why did Reuters describe the motivation of the terrorists, which it preferred to call gunmen, as unknown? Were we meant to suppose that it might have been just anything — that to paraphrase Mark Steyn, they were perhaps disgruntled former employees of Lehman Bros embarking on an exciting midlife career change?

Again, why did Britain’s highly regarded Channel 4 News state that the militants showed a wanton disregard for race or creed when exactly the opposite was true: Targets and victims were very carefully selected.

Why did the “experts” invited to discuss the Mumbai attacks in one show on the state-funded Radio France Internationale, the voice of France around the world, harp on about Baruch Goldstein (who carried out the Hebron shootings in 1994), virtually the sole case of a Jewish terrorist in living memory?

But what are we to think when even such a renowned publication as the Times of London feels the need to refer to terrorists as “militants”, rather than calling them by their right name?

What is the motivation of journalists in trying to mangle language?

Dear Mr. Gross, the answer to all of the above questions is, because they are cowards.

Do they somehow wish to express sympathy for these murderers, or perhaps make their crimes seem almost acceptable?

The answer to this question is twofold. 1) they wish to assure the murderers that they are not their enemy, in effect saying, “Please don’t hurt me, I’m not a threat to you.”

And 2) It’s even more unspeakable than that, they admire them. A coward doesn’t like living in a state of fear, no one does. “Ah, but if only I could make people fear me like they do…”

Eric Hoffer said, a strategy of the weak is to hint at their capacity for evil.

How are we going to effectively confront terrorists when we can’t even identify them as such?

Answer: We aren’t.

Does the New York Times think that the seeking out and murder by Muslim terrorists of the only New York rabbi in Mumbai and his wife was an accidental target?

Answer: No, they’re lying. But it’s the lie of cowards, the comforting lie they first tell themselves, over and over, until they believe it.

Happy to be of service Mr. Gross. Please feel free to ask my help with these conundrums anytime.

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Here: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2008/10/obama-campaign.html

you can find an interesting article from the Orlando Sentinel. I’m going to cut-and-past it here for reasons that will become apparrant.

Obama campaign cuts off WFTV after interview with Joe Biden

WFTV-Channel 9′s Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. A friend says it’s some of the best entertainment he’s seen recently. What do you think?

West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama’s comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn’t being a Marxist with the “spreading the wealth” comment.

“Are you joking?” said Biden, who is Obama’s running mate. “No,” West said.

West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America’s days as the world’s leading power were over.

“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden shot back.

Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

McGinnis said the Biden cancellation was “a result of her husband’s experience yesterday during the satellite interview with Barbara West.”

Here’s a link to the interview: http://www.wftv.com/video/17790025/index.html.

WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, “When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes.”

Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews.

“Mr. Biden didn’t like the questions,” Jordan said. “We choose not to ask softball questions.”

Jordan added, “I’m crying foul on this one.”

What did you think of the interview?

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Again, here’s the link for the interview: http://www.wftv.com/video/17790025/index.html

However, all I get is “The stream for this video is currently unavailable.”

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Dr. Thomas Sowell is one of those authors whose laundry lists I’d read. Reading A Conflict of Visions was one of the “Ah-ha!” moments of my life.

Sowell is an economist, newspaper columnist and Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a prolific writer on economics, public policy, history, culture and the politics of race. His opinions are often controversial and he has strong detractors and supporters. Agree or disagree, he is an opinion leader of considerable influence in our society today.

In observing arguments for and against a wide variety of positions, Dr. Sowell reports that he noticed that in many cases participants seemed to be arguing not so much against each other, but past each other. In other words, each person was arguing not against the others’ position but what they perceived those positions to be, which was often far different from the actual positions held.

Over time he refined his observations into the theory expressed in, A Conflict of Visions – Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (Basic Books, 2002). I believe this book has critical insights important for understanding the major ideological conflicts within Western civilization and has specific application to understanding the controversies concerning academic and journalistic bias.

His thesis is that prior to paradigms, world-views, theories or any rationally articulated models there is an underlying vision, defined (quoting Joseph Schumpeter) as a “pre-analytic cognitive act”. Sowell further defines a vision, “It is what we sense or feel before we have constructed any systematic reasoning that could be called a theory, much less deduced any specific consequences as hypotheses to be tested against evidence. A vision is our sense of how the world works.”

Visions are a sense of the possibilities of human reason and power to act purposefully to achieve desired ends and are broadly defined as Constrained and Unconstrained. An unconstrained vision sees articulated reason as powerful and potent to shape human society, a constrained vision sees human beings as more limited by human nature and natural law.

Dr. Sowell concedes that visions are rarely pure but range from strongly to weakly constrained or unconstrained. People may hold one sort of vision in a certain sphere of opinion and another in a different sphere, there are hybrid visions (Marx and John Stuart Mill are given examples) and people sometimes change predominant visions over their lifetimes.

It is important to note that he does not equate constrained and unconstrained visions with the Left/ Right model of the political spectrum, nor do they strongly reflect the Libertarian/ Authoritarian dichotomy. An unconstrained vision characterizes the Utopian Socialists of the early nineteenth century (such as Fourier) but is also strongly expressed by William Godwin, considered by many to be the founder of modern Anarchism, in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

The unconstrained vision is more often characteristic of those who would use the coercive power of the state to affect great changes in the structure of society and human nature, but it cannot be assumed that a constrained vision leads to a blind defense of the status quo. He gives the example of Adam Smith, an exemplar of a strongly constrained vision, was an advocate of sweeping social changes such as the abolition of slavery and an end to mercantilist policies.

Once grasped, Dr. Sowell’s theory makes sense of some seeming inconsistencies and contradictions in both Left and Right positions.

For example, though there is a tendency for the constrained vision to predominate among the politically Conservative and free market advocates, it is not absolute or consistent. A Conservative may argue for the superior efficacy of market processes to serve the social good (as opposed to purposeful direction of the economy) but fail to see the market for illegal drugs as subject to the same laws of supply and demand as other commodities or consider the argument that the process costs of drug prohibition may be higher than the social costs of drug addiction. In fact, the phrase “consider the argument” is misleading. It is possible that the argument simply does not exist in his perceptual universe and is interpreted as advocacy for drug use.

On the other end of the political spectrum, a thinker such as Paul Ehrlich (in The Population Bomb) may argue from the highly constrained view of Thomas Malthus on population and food resources, combined with an unconstrained view of the ability of the state to effectively control population and allocation of resources for the general good of mankind.

And we see on both the Left and Right, visionaries holding strong beliefs about the ability of humans to deliberately shape culture to reflect whichever set of values held by their respective advocates. Though much experience in the twentieth century has shown how limited the ability of men is to design culture as if it were an engineering project, and how disastrous the attempts often are, men and women of unconstrained vision persist in their advocacy of policies intended to rid society of gender defined roles on the one hand or of behavior considered “vice” on the other.

So the question arises, if the concept of the contrasting visions is hedged about with so many qualifications, is it at all useful in categorizing belief systems or explaining behavior?

I believe it is highly useful. In Western civilization there exists no serious argument about the desirability of that condition expressed by the words “freedom” and “equality”. Yet in the West we find that whenever advocates of various causes argue for their sides, their definitions do not coincide, i.e. they argue past each other.

Advocates of redistributionist policies, affirmative action to achieve more socioeconomic equality and a high degree of taxation and market regulation are seen as tending towards totalitarianism by advocates of a less intrusive government.

Contrariwise, advocates of leaving the pursuit of the social good to voluntary and market processes are seen by political opponents as apologists for powerful and rapacious economic elites in their drive to impose a quasi-royal authority on society via economic coercion.

For those who see government as a powerful engine for social engineering, it is desired results that matter. If it is possible for the state to eliminate poverty and insure socio-economic success for historically disadvantaged groups then it follows that it is immoral not to do so. Arguments that the goals lie outside the state’s competence or that process costs are too high or that the attempt itself is counterproductive will simply not register and almost inevitably must be interpreted in terms of ulterior motive.

Thus a TV journalist can make a parenthetical remark on a broadcast about how African-Americans are still not as “free” as Whites in the US. One who considers freedom to be the absence of legal coercion might ask how are they not free today when all forms of legal discrimination have been abolished by Supreme Court decisions and federal law? The answer would reflect the definition of “freedom” as opportunity, a definition that will conflate “poor and disadvantaged” with “unfree”.

The definition that limits freedom to a relationship of men in society where physical force or fraud in human relationships is made illegal with no further attempt to redress inequalities of wealth, education, opportunity etc, is sometimes derided as “freedom to starve”.

Likewise the condition called “equality” is seen by those with opposing visions as either a process or a result, leading them to almost diametrically opposite interpretations of the term. To someone of unconstrained vision who views equality as a result, the socioeconomic lagging of certain groups behind others is prima facie evidence of externally imposed inequality (such as persistent discrimination) in society. To someone who views equality as the absence of legally imposed barriers to opportunity, the outcome is the result of values and choices and irrelevant to questions of justice as seen by people of unconstrained vision.

Those with a constrained vision tend to regard socioeconomic inequalities between individuals and groups as the inevitable result of inborn human variations in ability, different cultural indoctrination in values that promote or retard economic success and individual choices. Those of unconstrained vision tend to regard them as the result of artificially imposed constraints and when inequalities persist beyond the removal of obvious constraints will keep looking for them rather than change their model of causation.

Dr. Sowell has elaborated this theory far more than can be covered in a short review. He examines in detail visions of justice, power and equality and the difference between visions and paradigms, values and theories.

What is important to the problem of both academic and journalistic bias is how contrasting visions lead to unconscious assumptions about how the world works, and how that affects their interpretation of events. For those of unconstrained vision, though socioeconomic equality may be a strongly held value, they are nonetheless going to tend strongly towards intellectual elitism. If articulated reason is held to be the most powerful force for the social good then it must follow that society should be lead by the most advanced and progressive thinkers. Those who view the collective wisdom of individuals operating within their own spheres of experience to be superior to the ability of others to direct their destinies will be seen as self-interested, reactionary and apologists for injustice.

Those who see themselves as being in the intellectual vanguard of progress will tend to be strongly attracted to the fields of teaching, liberal arts, humanities, and journalism, and moreover, will tend to regard journalism as an extension of the teaching profession.

Unconstrained visions flourish in the absence of deep experience. In business, the natural sciences and engineering, theories about the way things ought to work (within their sphere of activity) are constantly tested against the way they do in fact work: profitability, repeatable experiments and bridges that don’t fall down all serve as reality checks against extending theory further than is warranted by the facts.

An academic environment tends to insulate against experience and journalism, by the nature of the news cycle, tends to expose practitioners to a superficial kind of experience, most especially among the newsreader “talking heads” who are basically presenters rather than researchers.

The consequences of the predominance of this vision among many academics and journalists are subtle and powerful and may include:

*Dismissal of other points of view as unworthy of reporting rather than attempting to refute them, not from motives of conscious fraud but simply from failure to take them seriously, often because of…

*Attribution of motive. It noteworthy how often arguments give the “real” motive of the opposing point of view – the one thing that cannot be known for certain. Motives can be strongly inferred only by a ruthlessly honest appraisal of one’s own nature – but it is seldom the case that a partisan for a particular point of view argues that “His motive is probably thus because that is what I experience in myself.”

*Unsupported parenthetical remarks among university lecturers and telejournalists. A broadcast from location often cannot be edited due to time constraints. It is interesting to note how often among the narrative of events a sentence that is unsupported comment can be slipped in.

*The use of ad hominem attacks (both Direct and Circumstantial) on someone’s credibility, probably coming from the unconscious assumption that since articulated reason can show the way to the social good, then conclusions about how to achieve it must be consistent among reasonable people. Disagreement about means and ends are seen as coming from ulterior motives, villainy or stupidity.

Dr. Sowell sees the theory as explaining a lot about the ideological struggles of the past two centuries – and sees no end in sight for the conflict of visions. However an appreciation of the role of visions in shaping worldviews can help make sense of opposing views for those who disagree and shows us that opposing views are not capriciously chosen or necessarily stemming from ulterior motives, but are internally self-consistent within the framework of the underlying vision. One may even hope that this appreciation may lead at least to genuine argument of the points at issue rather than character assassination and attribution of rapaciously self-interested motive.

It is fairly obvious that the constrained vision is behind much economic thinking. Economics is after all fundamentally about the way that human beings allocate finite resources. It is not clear that Dr. Sowell is making a blanket condemnation of the unconstrained vision though. He has noted that in the years since he first published, Malthus (on the constrained side) has been proven consistently wrong and he has credited both William Godwin and Ayn Rand (both exponents of the doctrine of the godlike power of human reason) as contributing to the evolution of modern libertarian thought. Possibly a certain element of the unconstrained vision serves to fire the imagination and may be necessary for motivating the spirit of social reform. Only when carried to extremes does it become a demand that society be everywhere remade to conform to a vision of perfection.

It also seems evident that though America was founded by men of largely constrained vision, there have been elements of both visions in our national culture from the beginning. The Founding Fathers did in fact design our federal institutions and were quite aware that they were creating a new social order by an act of will. However, they did so with a realistic appraisal of human nature, careful research of historical confederations and built upon local institutions that had been in operation for nearly two centuries. Since our beginnings American culture has reflected both utopian and pragmatic visions, a pattern that shapes our political discourse to this day.

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The following chart is drawn from some of the major points of Dr. Sowell’s theory of visions. Since it is a collection of very short abstractions, responsibility for how well it represents the author’s thought rests with me.

Constrained Vision:
Sees human nature as fixed, unchanging, selfish and ambitious, which must be subordinated to society to some extent.

Unconstrained Vision:
Sees human nature as malleable, perfectible whose uncorrupted form will be expressed in the good society.
—–
CV: Freedom is defined as the absence of coercion by other human beings.

UV: Unfreedom seen as the absence of opportunity.
—–
CV: Emphasis on process costs. Seeks optimum trade-offs.

UV: Emphasis on motives and the desired results. Seeks solutions.
—–
CV: Sees tradition as expressing the accumulated experience of the culture.

UV: Sees tradition largely as outmoded superstition.
—-
CV: Sees articulated reason as less important than “distributed knowledge” expressed in market processes. Emphasis on experience.

UV: Sees articulated reason as powerful and effective. Emphasis on logic.
—–
CV: Seeks the social good in making allowances for human nature, such as checks and balances in government, using mutual jealousy as a counterbalance against ambition and greed on the part of the powerful.

UV: Seeks the social good in the elevation of an enlightened and progressive leadership.
—–
CV: Preference for evolved systems.

UV: Preference for designed systems.
—–
CV: Characterized by the belief that the evils of the world can be explained by inherent characteristics of human nature. War and crime may be rational, if immoral, choices.

UV: Characterized by the conviction that foolish or immoral choices explain the evils of the world. War and crime seen as aberrations.
—–
CV: Tends to compare the status quo with worse alternatives.

UV: Tends to compare the status quo with hypothetical perfection.
—–
CV: Exemplary thinkers: Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, The Federalist, Thomas Malthus, de Tocqueville, Oliver Wendell Holmes, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman…

UV: Exemplary thinkers: William Godwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Condorcet, Fourier, Harold Laski, Thorstein Veblen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ronald Dworkin…

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