A Conflict of Visions

The question behind Thomas Sowell's study is why political opponents line up the same way across very different issues, from criminal justice and income distribution to war and peace. He traces lasting conflict to two opposed visions of human nature. The constrained vision sees people as unchanging and self-interested, so it prefers the rule of law, tradition and trade-offs to ideal solutions. The unconstrained vision treats human nature as malleable and perfectible. Sowell places Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Milton Friedman in one tradition and Thomas Paine, Condorcet and John Rawls in the other, aiming to show the logic of each rather than choose between them. First published in 1987, it later appeared in a revised edition.

Marc Andreessen picked it as one of two Thomas Sowell books on how present-day politics and culture came to be, and he spoke highly of Sowell's many books.