" My hunch is that Sowell's "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions will someday be shown to be inherent, and like sex, distributed roughly 50-50 in the population. "
In the chromosomes?
I have no idea what the mechanism might be. Have you ever seen one of those studies of identical twins who, because of adoptions, were literally "separated at birth?" I read one where these two guys (identical twins) grew up in very different families, but as adults they bought the same kind of house, married women with the same name, both had the habit of flushing a toilet before they used it, and both had made swings in their front yards from old tires for their kids. There was more stuff like that, I don't remember it all, but it was just amazing how many "coincidences" these two men fell into.
I don't think we understand enough about how the brain works to say for sure one way or the other. But I think the empirical evidence points to a predisposition toward constrained or unconstrained vision in a 50-50 ratio. Despite the best efforts of our "educators" to turn out 100% good little leftists, that's not what happens. What happens is reasonably close elections, most of the time, with the occasional blowout when one side or the other picks an especially good or bad candidate.
BTW, I don't think Bush is an especially good "candidate," but Kerry is an especially bad one, so we might get a blowout this time. Let's hope so.
Ten on a scale of ten!