Thomas Sowell, economist, churns out a half-blind political polemic.
The professed thesis of the book is that “The Anointed,” persons only ever identified on the political left, substitute zeal and moral superiority for reasoning and evidence.
As proof of this thesis, Sowell lambasts about thirty people throughout history, going as far back as Aristotle.
If his thesis was “some people substitute zeal and moral superiority for reasoning and evidence, and here are a handful of examples,” his book would have more credibility. Unfortunately, like the very people he attacks, he uses a handful of isolated examples to make sweeping judgments about centuries of history or a wide swath of the US population. This appears throughout the book. He constantly does the same things he accuses “The Anointed” of doing: moving goalposts when arguing, using the All Or Nothing false dichotomy fallacy, arguing correlation is causation, etc. By his own definition, Sowell is himself one of The Anointed.
The worst part of the book is the legal section, which is particularly glaring to a lawyer. It read less like a book by an academic and more like a book-long Facebook screed.
He is not just uninformed but blatantly wrong sometimes. For example, he cites the Kreimer case (the library trespassing) as an example of the Court failing to limit outrageous behavior of media darlings, when in fact the very plaintiff he attacks for winning actually lost the case. If a lawyer cited the Kreimer case the way he did, that lawyer might be disciplined by his state bar association. Luckily, Sowell is writing from the protection of ignorance.
There are definitely valid critiques of the political left, and good books by economists, and quality books about legal topics across the political spectrum. This is not one of them.