Posted on 11/22/2025 5:29:00 AM PST by Fester Chugabrew
November 22, 2025
I will start with a long quote from Students for Liberty as published November 10, 2025.
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In 1987, [Thomas] Sowell published A Conflict of Visions, and it explained something everyone experiences but nobody can articulate: why political arguments feel like talking to aliens.
The book isn't about left versus right. It's about something deeper. Two different ways of seeing what humans are capable of, what knowledge actually is, and how society should be organized.
The core friction point that makes campus debates impossible:
One vision sees social problems as emerging from basic human constraints. Scarcity is real. People are naturally selfish. Knowledge is limited and dispersed. We can't change these facts, only build institutions that work with them.
The other vision sees problems as failures of will or wisdom. With the right leaders, the right education, the right system, we could solve these problems. Human nature isn't fixed. It's waiting to be improved.
Sowell calls these the "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions of human nature.
The constrained vision accepts that humans are flawed, selfish, and limited in knowledge and virtue. We can't perfect people. We can only design systems that channel self-interest toward social benefit.
This is Adam Smith watching the butcher, the brewer, and the baker. This is Burke warning against tearing down institutions we don't fully understand.
The unconstrained vision believes human nature is malleable, even perfectible.
Give us enlightened leadership, proper education, rational planning, and we can transcend our limitations. This is Rousseau's noble savage corrupted by bad institutions. This is the modern progressive seeing every social problem as solvable with enough political will.
Neither vision is stupid. They're both internally coherent. But they're running completely different operating systems.
Watch how this single difference cascades into every political position:
On healthcare, the constrained vision asks: Who decides? Who pays? What are the trade-offs? The unconstrained vision says healthcare is a human right, and the only obstacle is political will.
On crime, one sees human nature plus bad incentives. The other sees systemic injustice creating criminals who wouldn't exist in a just society.
On education, one trusts evolved competition between schools. The other trusts expert planners to design the optimal system.
The deepest divide is about knowledge itself.
The constrained vision believes knowledge is embedded in evolved systems: market prices, cultural traditions, common law. No expert or committee can possibly know enough to redesign society from scratch. This is Hayek's fatal conceit.
The unconstrained vision believes articulated reason trumps tradition. Enlightened minds can see what the masses cannot. Progress requires trusting experts to override outdated customs and redesign institutions rationally.
This is why your debates with colleagues go nowhere.
The constrained vision asks: "Compared to what alternative?" It deals in trade-offs, second-order effects, unintended consequences.
The unconstrained vision asks: "Compared to what's possible?" It seeks solutions, not compromises. It judges systems by their ideals, not their alternatives.
You're not even playing the same game.
Once you see this framework, everything clicks into place.
This isn't about intelligence or compassion. It's not really about left versus right. It's about whether you believe human limitations are binding constraints we must accommodate, or temporary obstacles we can overcome through reason and will.
Every other political position flows downstream from this foundational assumption.
Understanding this changes how you engage with the world.
You stop wasting energy arguing surface-level facts with people who have incompatible premises. You start recognizing the deeper vision driving their positions. You can predict where people will land on new issues before they even speak.
You gain the ability to address root assumptions instead of spinning your wheels on symptoms. You become someone who actually understands the structure of political conflict, not just another person shouting into the void.
I was just listening to the book again today on a long drive, and did not hear any reference to the unconstrained vision to be neither "incoherent" nor "stupid", so I checked when I read your post when I got back home.
"A Conflict of Visions" is such an impressive book to me that I have the hard copy, the Kindle version, and the audiobook. (I am unable to find the hardcopy, I think I lent it to someone, darn it)
However, the Kindle version is perfect because it is searchable, and in searching for either "coherent" or "stupid" I got no hits back on "coherent" and only four hits on "stupid", none of which contained any characterizations of the unconstrained version being incoherent or stupid.
I will say that since this is probably considered to be a scholarly book (not an ideological one as if it were written by someone like Ann Coulter...not that there is anything wrong with that, BTW) and as such, I would have been surprised to hear that characterization.
He discusses these two views in a scholarly fashion, as expected in a book of this type, in my opinion.
In logic, there is a term I have heard called a "cleavage point" used to describe an area in which a clear differentiation between two viewpoints may be found. I believe it refers to the concept of Gemology (such as diamond cutting) in which a diamond, if the right area and angle is found, can be struck, splitting the diamond cleanly along that plane.
To me, I find this concept so interesting, because I view the "constrained" and the "unconstrained" ideological plane to be the area that can cleanly separate Leftists and Conservatives, at least on a macro scale. As I said in the other post, nothing is 100% but I view this differentiation as being as close as we can get.
In his opening chapter, the first few paragraphs, Sowell says this:
"One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works."
He apparently feels the same way I do, seeing this as a "cleavage point" with his comment "...Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again..."
I think that is why it resonates with me...his "Conflict of Visions" seems to be a logical explanation to me.
There is no need to coin new terms, (unconstrained and constrained) when well understood and better terms for the same thing already exist. It’s radicalism vs conservatism.
Introducing new vague terms only confuses the situation.
“The “equality” expressed by the Declaration pertains to the intangible ideal of what it is to be human. “
That’s vague as hell - nobody knows what that means and everyone can put their own interpretation to it.
It would have been much better to have said:
“We’re all humans and are all endowed with certain traits such as the desire for living and the yearning to be free to pursue our individual happiness.”
Which is really what they meant!
Maybe less grandious and poetic, but so much more accurate and clearer. And best of all it gets rid of that most abused and least understood word - “rights” and also the troublesome word “equal”.
I wish I had been there at the founding. I would have straightened them out! 😁
And that would have been a great leadin to...
“And that to advance those human longings governments are instituted to protect the life and liberty of each individual in
ways that promotes domestic tranquility.”
What this part basically says is that you can pursue your happiness but you better not do it in a way that pisses off a lot of other people, or else.
Yes! I like this wording so much better. Don’t you? 😊
Think how many fewer problems we’d be having today if the words “rights” and “equal” had not been used. All these “rights” to health care, housing, education etc, etc,” and all the equality and equity BS would most likely not exist.
No offense, but I think I will stick with Thomas Sowell’s characterization.
“Neither vision is stupid. They’re both internally coherent.
These words are not Sowell’s, but Students for Liberty’s. I may have suggested or stated otherwise.
There are a lot of things in this world I find "stupid", but...if you immerse yourself in that hermitically sealed intellectual bubble that people like Godwin or Condorcet (the two 18th century advocates of the "unconstrained" view that Sowell often references) did, and that current day advocates of that view do, then I they would probably be internally coherent" inside that hermitically sealed intellectual bubble.
That said, it only buttresses for me the validity of the "constrained" view, because I believe it is both internally and externally coherent. The "other side" may not agree, but I believe history is on my side...)
“No offense, but I think I will stick with Thomas Sowell’s characterization.”
Your choice, but he’s not saying anything new. Radicalism and conservatism have existed forever and they will continue to exist because it’s, I believe, a genetic trait and of age. Younger people are naturally more impatient for change.
Whereas older radicals look at all the injustices in the world and are moved to want to blow up the status quo and replace it with their wet dreams. Conservatives look at the same imperfect world and want to keep the rules for living that have proven to work for millennia and fix the ones that haven’t in a more gradual and thoughtful way.
There is a great poem by Kipling that brilliantly captures this reality about human nature - it’s called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”. If you’re not familiar with it, I highly recommend it.
It should be the anthem of conservatism.
I will disagree with you on your viewpoints on “constrained“ or “unconstrained”, but I will absolutely check out your recommendation on the Rudyard Kipling poem.
Thank you.
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