There Are No Solutions

At 96 years of age, Thomas Sowell is one of the most formidable minds in contemporary American thought. Without any desire to bask in the media spotlight, he personifies integrity as a scholar, a luminary whose body of work combines empirical rigor, historical breadth, and an unyielding commitment to human dignity irrespective of race. His insistence on true meritocracy—judging individuals by their capacities and achievements rather than by collective grievances or engineered outcomes—marks him as a rational defender of the individual against the sentimental collectivism that has come to dominate elite discourse.

Sowell’s philosophy rests on what he terms the Tragic (or “constrained”) Vision of human nature, a perspective that confronts the permanent limitations of mankind and rejects the utopian—and revolutionary—fantasy of perfectibility. This vision, elaborated most systematically in A Conflict of Visions (1987), supplies the intellectual architecture for his entire oeuvre and explains both his enduring influence among serious readers and the studied neglect he has received from much of the academic left.

This is one of the finest articles that frames Sowell's philosophic views on human behavior that he outlined in his superb book "A Conflict of Visions" published in 1987.

In gem cutting, a "cleavage point" is the point on a stone at which a single blow can split the stone cleanly into separate sections.

Thomas Sowell describes the two main schools of thought regarding human behavior and governance as the "Constrained" ("Tragic") view and the "Unconstrained" ("Utopian") view.

I will let the article explain it in detail since the author does a far better job of explaining this than I ever will. Suffice to say, I regard this point of description (Constrained versus Unconstrained) as the fundamental cleavage point at which Leftists may be cleanly separated from Conservatives.

Sowell's book "A Conflict of Visions" is, hands down, the best book at describing this dynamic I have ever read.

I am interested in how others view this distinction as described in the American Thinker article.

The practical corollary is Sowell’s most frequently cited observation: there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Every policy choice exacts a cost. In criminal justice, the utopian seeks to eradicate crime by curing its supposed root causes—poverty, trauma, social exclusion—while the tragic realist accepts that some measure of predation is endemic and therefore concentrates on deterrence, knowing that deterrence itself restricts freedom and consumes resources.

So true. God-given rights like free speech and the private ownership of firearms - or knives, or pea shooters etc. - come with risks. It’s how a nation addresses those risks that tells you about the end-game of the governors.

First, a primer on risks. In the world of investing, there is a concept of risk-minimization whereby you lower your risk of loss or volatility by spreading your eggs across several baskets. However, one risk you cannot diversity away is the "systematic risk" or the risk inherent in the system...call it market risk or whatever, the basic reality is some baseline level of risk will ALWAYS exist, and you can't avoid it.

This is Sowell, encapsulated.

Now, with that foundation, let’s consider how a nation manages the risks that come with rights.

Laws that support, life, liberty, and property are right and proper. Some laws act as a deterrent and will stop people on the margin from doing bad things...this is akin to diversifying away the non-systematic risk.

However, at some baseline level, in a relatively free society of 340MM people, you'll always have a few pathological maniacs who will kill. Thus, random acts of violence are the systematic risk of a free society.

Sure, maybe some laws can help, but in large measure unless you weld a GoPro to the heads of 340MM people with central monitoring in DC (and even that wouldn't be perfect...after all people in jail still get drugs and weapons), psychos gonna psycho.

It is therefore quite telling, when pathological politicians propose legislation in the midst of a crisis/crystalized systematic risk, that is in truth aimed at the systematic risk. By definition, a nation can't evade/will always have systematic risk.

What does that’s tell us? That the legislators and supporters of these systematic risk “elimination” proposals want to erode the freedoms of law-abiding citizens.

"...psychos gonna psycho..."

Wow. Indeed.

That is so true. But this risk is the price to accept a free society. The alternative is a government that will willingly choke the life out of you in order to protect you.

That Leftists (especially the "Useful Idiot" Leftist variety) seem so willing to accept that humans can be "re-engineered" to get rid of undesirables without considering what the cost of that "re-engineering" will do to every other person, good and bad.

That is their "collective" mindset that makes them so vulnerable to control, yet at the same time, so dangerous to everyone.

Yes. "Up from Slavery" is one of the most consequential books ever written. Or rather, should be. The fact that the black community had the choice between the competing philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the black elites chose W.E.B. Du Bois as their standard bearer of "grievance philosophy" over Booker T. Washington's "self-reliance philosophy" has done untold damage over the years to the black community.

Du Bois was a racist at heart, where I believe someone like Booker T. Washington (who if anyone had reasons to be racist it would be him after growing up as a slave) was clearly not. That speaks volumes to the character of Booker T. Washington, whom I greatly admire, and also speaks volumes to the character of W.E.B. Du Bois. I always viewed W.E.B. Dubois as a Marxist stooge. Du Bois's philosophical descendants live on in their Critical Race Theory bubbles, and why he is worshiped by the Left.

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