The incomparable Thomas Sowell has written a truth-telling book about one of the leading movements championed by liberals today, that of “social justice.” In a similar vein as Professor Wilfred Reilly’s Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me, Sowell strips away the rhetoric and heart-tugging theatrics, and explains in a factual but interesting way why social justice is a political agenda and does little for the very people it is intended to help.

Social justice is a crusade that seeks to put all people on an equal playing field by manipulating and changing institutions. But as Sowell writes: “Even in a society with equal opportunity — in the sense of judging each individual by the same standards — people from different backgrounds do not necessarily even want to do the same things, much less invest their time and energies into developing the same kinds of skills and talents.”

The author gets to the heart of the movement by explaining that its intent is to create the assumption that, “because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any differences in their innate capacities,” these disparities prove that the root causes are exploitation and discrimination. The bulk of the book debunks this “proof” and instead shows exactly the opposite, that while discrimination does exist, the real damage has been done by do-gooders and reformers who believe they have greater knowledge than everyone else and therefore should decide how others are to conduct their lives.

Throughout the book, Sowell uses examples to show how social justice manipulators have actually done more harm than good. He first provides interesting historical facts that explain why certain groups of people are better at certain things; the Scots in producing quality whiskey, for example, noting that they cannot match the French in wine making because “the grapes that grow in France do not thrive in Scotland’s colder climate.” He cites the historical skills of Germans in producing beer, emphasizing that in each case, “neither race nor racism, or any other form of discrimination is necessary to account for such reciprocal inequalities.”

Sowell further provides examples of groups that, lacking in their educational backgrounds, nonetheless often succeed in other endeavors where personal talent and dedication are key factors. “Sports and entertainment,” he writes, “have long been among such endeavors with high achievements for such American groups rising out of poverty as the Irish, blacks, and Southern whites.”

From these “equal chances” fallacies, the author moves on to dissect “racial fallacies,” and he skillfully disproves the social justice warrior contention that “racism” is the primary explanation for group differences. He finds particularly disturbing “the extent to which people who present empirical evidence counter to prevailing beliefs are met with ad hominem denunciations and with efforts to suppress their evidence, by means ranging from censorship to violence, especially on academic campuses.” His presentation of historical and empirical evidence on this topic is one of the most absorbing sections of the book.

Social Justice Fallacies also considers the role of government in the social justice warriors’ quest. He cautions: “The confiscation and redistribution of wealth — whether on a moderate or comprehensive scale — is at the heart of the social justice agenda.” This should be of concern to every American, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, who has worked hard for the material wealth they have accumulated.

The author then discusses in depth the issue of taxation and its various implications for all economic groups. “Raising the tax rate X percent does not guarantee that the tax revenue will also rise X percent,” he writes, “or that it will even rise at all. When we turn from theories and rhetoric to the facts of history, we can put both the explicit and the implicit assumptions of the social justice vision to the test.”

He summarizes the tax issue by warning that measuring the growth or inequality of incomes “is a little like Olympic figure skating — full of dangerous leaps and twirls and not nearly as easy as it looks. Yet the growth and inequality of incomes are topics that seem to inspire many people to form very strong opinions about very weak statistics.”

In his chapter on “knowledge fallacies,” Sowell gets to the central point of the book, that throughout history, some people have considered themselves “intellectuals,” believing that their role was “indispensable” and that they should govern the masses based on assumptions of their own superiority.

Providing the historical perspective as he does so effectively throughout the book, Sowell writes: “[Jean-Jacques] Rousseau said in the 18th century that he considered it ‘the best and most natural arrangement for the wisest to govern the multitude. Variations of this theme have marked such movements against economic inequality as Marxism, Fabian socialism, Progressivism, and social justice activism.‘”

He points out that in the 19th century, Karl Marx said: “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing,” which Sowell interprets as meaning that “millions of human beings mattered only if they carried out the Marxian vision.” He adds that Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw took it a step farther, noting that Shaw “regarded the working class as being among the ‘detestable’ people who ‘have no right to live.’”

Finally, Sowell’s “facts and myths” subsection is alone worth the price of the book. He discusses in depth why raising the minimum wage is a terrible injustice for the people who need entry-level jobs most, and why such social justice efforts as putting the payday loan small businesses out of business benefit no one, and least of all those they are intended to save from exploitation.

“Fact-free moralizing is a common pattern among social justice advocates,” the author writes. “But the fundamental problem is an institutional problem, when laws allow third-party surrogates to pre-empt other people’s decisions and pay no price for being wrong, no matter how high the price paid by others, whom they are supposedly helping.”

Similar to Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me, Thomas Sowell’s Social Justice Fallacies should be required reading, at least at the college level, as well as for any American concerned with the current division in our country. As Sowell so correctly observes: “In politics — whether electoral politics or ideological politics — the word ‘crisis’ often means whatever situation someone wants to change. Far from automatically indicating some dire condition threatening the public, it often means simply a golden opportunity for surrogates to use taxpayers’ money and the government’s power to advance the surrogates’ interests, whether these interests are political, ideological, or financial.”

To read the entire book, go to Amazon.com OR Barnes & Noble to order!

The Education Reporter Book Review is a project of America’s Future, Inc. To find out more about America’s Future, visit AmericasFuture.net.

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