Thomas Sowell agrees that Everything The Woke Believe Is Wrong. And the reason they are wrong is that they rely on fallacies to justify themselves.
Lots and lots of fallacies. Some are based on bad data, some on lazy thinking, but most are because the woke hold false premises which they cherish but refuse, under all circumstances, to reconsider.
Sowell does his energetic best to get them too, though. He hacks and saws and pummels, and loads fifty eight—58!—pages of footnotes and citations onto a slim 130 pages of text. He documents everything.
Speaking as somebody who has written a similar book (and with the second edition getting there), Sowell won’t do a bit of good with his book. Not among the woke, not in our corrupt rulers, not with Experts. Here’s proof:
[M]any social justice advocates have shown little or no interesting remarkable examples of progress by the poor—when that progress was not based on the kinds of policies not promoted in the name of social justice. The striking progress made by black Americans in the decades before the 1960s has been widely ignored. So has the demonstrable harm suffered by black Americans after the social justice policies of the 1960s.
He says why: woke social-justice (WSJ) theory. He proves why, for this and for every other colossal social failure, with so many stats, points of logic, known harms, and rational arguments that it’s dizzying.
We do not, therefore, lack for evidence for WSJ failures—repeated continuous serial gigantic failures. Evidence is not our problem, nor is logic, which is also on our side. So why are we losing? We have lost the emotional war.
In the social justice literature, unmerited advantages [i.e. Reality] tend to be treated as if they are deductions from the well-being of the rest of the population.
Egalitarianism is an unshakable premise in WSJs. Yet even they are not so stupid as to believe Equity is found in practice. Equity must be “restored” by force, to reveal the Equality they believe is there, but is now hidden.
We cannot win until people cherish Reality over their egalitarian Fantasies. With egalitarianism purged, the irrational desire for Equity will diminish—though envy will ever be with us. And with the fading of Equity, the need to search for “disparities” that can be blamed on “racism” et cetera will sink into the mud.
Sowell does his best. He explains climatic, geographic, temporal (age), and, yes, genetic differences account nicely for observed differences. And that charges like “racism” are now ridiculous. And he has done so not only in this book, but across many books. He has proved his point. His point is still disbelieved.
Genetic differences? Dare he? Well, yes, sort of.
In twenty three—-23!— school districts in Baltimore, not one— 0!-1 —student is proficient in math. Not one. Zero.
If these same kids were to be given an IQ test, they would surely score dismally. And the persistent Asian-Black “IQ gap” we’ve all seen, we’d see here again, but magnified. It is logically possible these largely black students are retarded, or worse. But I don’t believe it, and neither would Sowell, who documents many other similar situations (though not this one).
These poor kids suffer from WSJ pandering. Bad news for them, and worse news for us. As the current crime wave proves. Crime is now so bad even WSJ propagandists cannot hide it.
The larger point is this: do not be too enamored of IQ scores—not without knowing their limitations (such as this, and this).
That being said, and Sowell puts it all well, there are still consistent and sustaining differences in intellectual achievement across races. Putting these differences all down to “racism” is ignorant—are Asians “racist” against blacks? Putting all differences down to genes is likewise false. But some of it surely is due to biology, which is an inescapable conclusion. Refusing to believe it is yet another mind-ravage caused by egalitarianism.
How about Experts and their mandated theories?
The exaltation of desirability and the neglect of feasibility…is today still a major ingredient in the fundamental fallacies of the social justice vision.
Experts, though Sowell doesn’t call them that, are “impervious to factual evidence”. They see people as static “chess pieces” which can be moved in accord with their cherished theories. This explains their heartlessness.
And their monumental self regard. Good joke: “John Stuart Mill’s vision of the indispensable role of intellectuals in human progress has been one shared by many intellectuals over the centuries.” Which leads to Experts like—a now ancient example, but with a contemporary analogs—Ralph Nader saying people “must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity.” Protected by Experts.
Experts, a.k.a. “surrogate decisions-makers simply assumed that their own knowledge and understanding were [and are] superior to those” over whom they rule. Their refusal to learn from their subjects, or from experience, is what makes them Experts.
There are many examples of the dismal influence of Expert theory and Enlightenment values on society, most of which you know. The worst has to be sacrificing merit, quality, and Reality to Fantasy.
A country fighting for its life, on the battlefield, cannot afford the luxury of choosing its generals on the basis of demographic representation—“looking like America”—rather than on the basis of military skills, regardless of how those skills were acquired. Not if it wants to survive.
We do not want to survive.
Even though his book won’t convince a single woke to change her mind, it might do some good among the normies. That is who needs this book. Especially younger ones. See that they read it.
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In real life things often don't work out as expected/planned.
I was a consultant for many years and my prime utility (apart from my expertise and experience) was that owners and managers had someone they could blame and move out. Especially when they were the one's who caused the failure.
The Covid response was a perfect example of this. The government did what it wanted [practise repression] and Fauci will carry all the blame.
Let us suppose that like Thatcher you wanted to pour an enormous amount of money into your friends and donors, how to do it without getting caught is the problem. Legislate that CO2 must decrease and there fore wind turbines (check the shareholders in the manufacturing companies] and horrifically expensive wind farms must be established. Wind farms on land that is owned by one's friends and which are paid from the tax pocket into the land owners. The fact that climate is not changing, that CO2 cannot cause the climate to change is ignored because "Experts" can be bought to say anything you wan't. Spend a few million on experts, a few billion on propaganda and everyone in the 'insider's club' is rich.
Ihave mentioned this before, but :
"Presenting the patient with truth and facts is a threat to their identity eliciting anger and resentment" -- Sigmund Freud
You can't change beliefs or perceptions via logic or facts.
Climate, Pandemics/ "economic systems" are forms of religious cults :
"If you want to expel religion [aka cults] from our European civilisation, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion—the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought—for its own defence.”
Psychoanalyst DR SIGMUND FREUD,
Reading a bit more about the current troubles in Baltimore schools, I see it was preceded by a scandal in which thousands of high school students had failing grades changed to passing grades in 2016-2020. Before covid. Presumably to graduate them out of the system on time with a diploma regardless of ability or effort. There are huge financial and administrative incentives for the adults to do this. Also, ideology... We long ago left behind the idea that it was fine for adults to function in society with only an 8th grade education. For many people, passing 8th grade tests on reading, writing, and arithmetic would be sufficient "academic" skills to lead a good, in fact excellent, life. But as a society we decided that everyone should go to college and get a white-collar job as a basic guarantee of human dignity. That's the ideal.
This was concurrent with the rise of the welfare state in which the state freed women from the consequences of bad partnering, and the state freed children from the consequences of bad parenting. There is no feedback loop now, it's been cut.
Sowell and others explain this over and over again, and nobody wants to hear it: how the black family lost its grip on the ideal of building up its own human capital separately from government handouts. That ideal, still held by white and brown and asian families, by natural families everywhere: a father might sacrifice the material quality of his life in order for his child to live a better life. The father might not get a high school diploma and work a desk job... but if he worked hard and lived soberly and saved money, his child might get a high school diploma and a college diploma and work a desk job if a desk job is what the family values.
So. Nowadays, everyone gets a diploma: Feynmann's cargo cult in action. By hook or by crook, you can then more easily get a degree from some college somewhere, and then go to work for Baltimore Public Schools and be unfire-able, with a public pension, and change kids grades to do the work of social justice.