Posted on 01/06/2010 9:22:06 AM PST by neverdem
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New Thomas Sowell book. Sounds like “The Vision of the Anointed,” with examples. I just got on the waitlist at Matthews Library; I’m #6.
Sowell embarasses me, the way he can express in such clear, simple ways, things that I find difficult to express at all.
ping
That is a great book
Yes, it was.
Sowell is brilliant.
I would say all of Sowell’s books are “must read”,
but I recommend “Conflict of Visions” before I recommend “Vision”. CoV presented the worldview dichotomy, amazingly without “bias” - then he laid into them in VotA.
Agreed.
French had a good idea once.
Sowell defines intellectuals as an occupation, as people whose work begins and ends with ideas. This includes academics, especially those in the humanities and social sciences, policy wonks, and, to a certain extent, journalists.The thing is, journalists are uniquely situated to function as the moderator of the political discourse. Note the apparent inconsistency of number between the noun "journalists" and the noun "moderator." That is intentional, because although journalists are plural in number, they all belong the the Associated Press and for that reason there isn't a dime's worth of difference among them.All are at pains, like any other celebrity, to stay on the reservation which is political correctness - lest the fate of Carrie Prejean befall them.
There are a number of intellectual conservatives and in fact most of the REAL brain power is on our side.
On another note, there ARE ways of determining whether solutions to social problems actually work and it isn't clear from the article whether or not they are explored in Sowell's book.
One of the many failings of leftist intellectuals is, they won't employ barometers measuring the success of their ideas. Their Socialist/Marxist view of the world encourages them to believe their solutions work, whether or not it is reality, rather than risk the collapse of their entire belief system. God forbid if, after all that believing, they should discover they are wrong.: )
Further, it is quite ironic some leftists mock belief in God's existence without empirical evidence proving it, when belief in Socialism/Marxism/Communism requires an even greater faith, due to the countless empirical evidence disproving it.
There are a number of intellectual conservatives and in fact most of the REAL brain power is on our side.
On another note, there ARE ways of determining whether solutions to social problems actually work and it isn't clear from the article whether or not they are explored in Sowell's book.
One of the many failings of leftist intellectuals is, they won't employ barometers measuring the success of their ideas. Their Socialist/Marxist view of the world encourages them to believe their solutions work, whether or not it is reality, rather than risk the collapse of their entire belief system. God forbid if, after all that believing, they should discover they are wrong.: )
Further, it is quite ironic some leftists mock belief in God's existence without empirical evidence proving it, when belief in Socialism/Marxism/Communism requires an even greater faith, due to the countless empirical evidence disproving it.
Do you have a source that journalists: "all belong the the Associated Press"?
“Their Socialist/Marxist view of the world encourages them to believe their solutions work, whether or not it is reality, rather than risk the collapse of their entire belief system. God forbid if, after all that believing, they should discover they are wrong.: )”
The mark of arrested development....a spoiled brat. Just as Obama is a middle aged Marxist college student.
“Further, it is quite ironic some leftists mock belief in God’s existence without empirical evidence proving it, when belief in Socialism/Marxism/Communism requires an even greater faith, due to the countless empirical evidence disproving it. “
Communism is necessarily brutal, and is incompatible with a belief in God.
LOL! The title alone makes it worthwhile! It would be fun to read this in the University coffee shop and read it with the title prominently displayed......just to watch the wake up calls.
Do you have a source that journalists: "all belong the the Associated Press"?The thing is, journalists are uniquely situated to function as the moderator of the political discourse. Note the apparent inconsistency of number between the noun "journalists" and the noun "moderator." That is intentional, because although journalists are plural in number, they all belong the the Associated Press and for that reason there isn't a dime's worth of difference among them.
In the sense of card-carrying membership, no. When I say that, I mean it in the sense that:
- the AP from its foundation was a "conspiracy in restraint of trade" in the telegraphy of journalism. It aggressively sought to, and it succeeded in, preventing any telegraph companies from carrying competing journalism. It did that by demanding exclusive contracts with the telegraph lines. According to Steve Boriss, "The U.S. Supreme Court in 1945 . . . found the AP in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act a decision that allowed the Chicago Sun to remain in business."
- The fundamental fact is that although Reuters and other news services exist, the AP is the institution which defined journalism as we know it. "The press" existed before the AP, but it was a different animal than what calls itself "the press" today, and what has called itself "the press" ever since, let us say, 1880. The antebellum newspaper, lacking any news source not (at least in principle) available to the people generally, was about the opinions of the printer. And it typically was not daily but weekly (I believe that FReeper LS, a historian, says he has read all of the antebellum newspapers still extant).
- Before the AP, newspapers were actually in competition with each other; after the AP the newspapers have been "associated" - and that association implies that they compete, at most, like major league baseball teams. Which is to say, they try to defeat each other within the white lines - but are in cahoots to hire umpires, promote the idea that the results of their contests matter, and so forth. Before the AP, there would be no scandal to learn that a particular printing press was run by a bunch of Democrats; printers wore their politics on their sleeves.
- The difference now is that there is no competition among ideological competition among journalists. The AP was the catalyst which produced that change; even if there are news organizations which do not belong to the AP in the card carrying sense, they all are in the club as the AP defined it. As members of that club they are in a real sense celebrities - people who are famous but who would "cease to exist" without the status they get as members of the club - and who therefore "exist" at the sufferance of the club. Membership in the club means that the other members of the club have your back - as long as you have everyone else's back. If you go off the reservation by questioning the objectivity of another member in good standing, the collective will have the back of your target - and you will lose your status and your celebrity in an instant. In terms of the PR world, you cease to exist. That's why Dan Rather not only "went to press" with the 60 Minutes hit piece on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service but - when the anachronisms in the "TANG Memos" were pointed out which proved that the "memos" were not what they purported to be - stonewalled, and was able to get CBS to back him up in stonewalling, the obvious fact that Rather's airing of the "memos" was a partisan hit job. Had any nonjournalist/non"liberal" attempted any such stonewall, journalists would have ripped them to shreds - but Rather and CBS knew that they were inside the club and would not get any such scrutiny. And they were right. Here was a perfectly naked emperor parading outside in broad daylight - and hardly any comment was published.
- The conceit that journalists should be - let alone that they actually are - objective traces to the Associated Press and its defense against the charges that it was what it actually was and is - a monopoly of information which has led to a monopoly of political perspective in "the press."
BTTT
New for the reading list. Bump.
Perfect assessment of Obama!
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