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Solange du noch lebst, solange du noch kannst, sei ein rechtschaffener Mensch.
Selbstbetrachtungen
Marcus Aurelius Antonius
The French revolution operated on assumptions much closer to those of the vision of the anointed. Where the American revolution deliberately created a government of elaborate checks and balances, to constrain the evils inherent in human beings, the French revolution concentrated vast powers in its leadership, so as to allow those who were presumably wise and benevolent to effect sweeping changes with little hindrance. Condorcet, as an intellectual supporter of the French revolution, could see no reason for the American system of checks and balances, in which society was to be “jostled between opposing powers” or to be held back by the “inertia” of its constitution. Indeed, even after the revolutionaries turned against him and threw him into prison, Condorcet still seemed not to understand the reason for limitations on government power.
The Vision of the Anointed
Thomas Sowell
Since specialization is a way of coping with the inadequacies of the human mind, it should hardly be surprising that those with the vision of the anointed often view specialization negatively, or that their vocabulary often reflects that. Cosmic decisions require minds with cosmic scope—and to say that there are no such minds, that the human experience must be broken down into manageable-sized pieces, is to deny the vision of the anointed. Meanwhile, those with the tragic vision have often proclaimed the virtues of specialization. Adam Smith attributed much of economic progress to the “division of labor,” Edmund Burke said that he “revered” the specialist within his specialty, and Oliver Wendell Holmes said that specialists were more needed than generalists, whose presumptions he derided. But such views are the opposite of the views among the anointed.
The Vision of the Anointed
Thomas Sowell
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