Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals

The sound and the fury

Thomas Sowell is one of a handful of esteemed economists who are also globally renowned public intellectuals. Sowell is a National Humanities Medal winner. On Twitter alone, he has a fan profile that regurgitates quotes from his books totaling nearly 700,000 followers.

Less impressively, Sowell’s critical book on intellectuals is so tedious that savvy entrepreneurs could recommend it as an effective, all-natural sedative. Intellectuals and Society runs well over 600 pages, though if you took out the tantric repetition of statements and insults you might have a longform essay left over.

That’s not to say there aren’t genuinely important insights buried in the book. They would resonate a whole lot more, however, if Sowell applied them with consistency.

“At the heart of the social vision prevalent among contemporary intellectuals is the belief that there are ‘problems’ created by existing institutions and that ‘solutions’ to these problems can be excogitated by intellectuals. This vision is both a vision of society and a vision of the role of intellectuals within society. In…