The Vision of the Anointed

Economist and columnist Thomas Sowell argues that the failed social policies of the previous three decades were not a string of separate mistakes but the logical result of a flawed worldview held by an elite he calls the anointed. In his account that vision produced crises in schooling, crime and family life, and it shuts out any evidence that contradicts it. Sowell contends that its thinkers, writers and activists stay revered even when the record disproves them, and that rhetoric has displaced facts in policy. He also targets what he calls Teflon prophets, who forecast social, economic or environmental trouble unless government steps in, with Ralph Nader as a leading example. Basic Books first published it in 1995.

Marc Andreessen named it as one of two books by Thomas Sowell that explain how today's politics and culture took shape, and he praised Sowell's work as a whole.