A broadly sweeping philosophical analysis, Sowell's new book performs a useful service for people interested in contemporary politics: it attempts to lay out objectively the basic differences between the liberal and conservative visions. Sometimes cogent, the book falls short, however, of objectivity; its conservative biases and obfuscations are readily apparent from the start. According to Sowell, conservatives hold a "constrained" vision. They believe that evolved systemic processes—traditions, free competitive markets, languages, and laws—are essentially sound and that, if left alone, function in unintended and overlapping ways for the best; that self-interest and evil are inherent in the human condition and can only be contained, not removed; that injustices are acceptable trade-offs for the good flowing from the system; and that inarticulate human experience is superior to articulated rationality. Basically democratic, constrainers argue that power must be decentralized and that intellectuals are dangerous. The liberal perspective, or the "unconstrained" vision, presents the opposite picture: the system is flawed; intellectuals must intervene in behalf of the people, who are basically good but not as "good" as the elite; justice and equality can be artifically determined; and articulated rationality is superior to inarticulate human experience. Unconstrainers, therefore, are undemocratic, contemptuous of the people, and power centralizers. Sowell's analysis of liberalism is often persuasive, but his depiction of the "systemic processes" is sometimes vague and abstract. It is not always clear what is or has been systematic. Slavery? Racism? Consumer values, which have become systemic but undermine older traditions? More important, like most conservatives, Sowell lets corporate capitalism off the hook, a capitalism that has had great discretionary power, determining prices and wages in centralized ways, undermining what Sowell calls the "free competitive market." Moreover, this capitalism has probably done more than anything else to destroy other features of the systemic process—family traditions and cultural values—a contention democratic leftists make today but which Sowell ignores.
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1986
ISBN: 0465002056
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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