Thomas Sowell in his book  A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle identifies two approaches to the world: constrained and unconstrained. The liberal, Sowell argues, tends towards the later while the conservative tends towards the former.

The unconstrained vision argues that reality is malleable and that “experts” can “fix” social, political, and economic problems through policy. Human nature is perfectible provided the environment he lives in his properly constructed. The constrained vision argues that reality is fixed and that man by nature is flawed. There are no permanent solutions only prudent trade-offs to mitigate conflict in the evolved system we live.

Which brings us to this election.

It’s gotten around my place of work that I was at the very least sympathetic to Trump and his supporters. I defended the reasons why people supported him on a number of occasions. Now, of course, I supported him, but for rhetorical purposes I removed myself as much as possible from the conversation and approached the Trump phenomenon clinically. Perhaps it was cowardly, but the Left was throwing around terms like “misogynist” and “racist” so it was best to keep them off with a nine-foot pole. Sometimes they got too close (“You’re not going to vote Trump ARE YOU?!) and I would just remind them that my vote doesn’t matter anyway (“New York is going for Hillary. Darned electoral college.”) and then they would grin and agree. A little obfuscation buys you an audience. Continue reading →