Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left.
Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.
Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.
It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political left. The only reason for rejecting the left's vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.
Most of us learn that from experience-- but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.
"Experience" is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.
Those who are insulated from that pain -- whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary -- can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity.
Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded people.
Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to grow up or not.
Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world of childhood.
No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions.
Should we be surprised that the strongest supporters of the political left are found among the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities and federal judges?
These are hardly Karl Marx's proletarians, who were supposed to bring on the revolution. The working class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the left.
Ordinary working class people did not lead the stampede to Barack Obama, even before his disdain for them slipped out in unguarded moments.
The agenda of the left is fine for the world that they envision as existing today and the world they want to create tomorrow.
That is a world not hemmed in on all sides by inherent constraints and the painful trade-offs that these constraints imply. Theirs is a world where there are attractive, win-win "solutions" in place of those ugly trade-offs in the world that the rest of us live in.
Theirs is a world where we can just talk to opposing nations and work things out, instead of having to pour tons of money into military equipment to keep them at bay. The left calls this "change" but in fact it is a set of notions that were tried out by the Western democracies in the 1930s -- and which led to the most catastrophic war in history.
For those who bother to study history, it was precisely the opposite policies in the 1980s -- pouring tons of money into military equipment -- which brought the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation to an end.
The left fought bitterly against that "arms race" which in fact lifted the burden of the Soviet threat, instead of leading to war as the elites claimed.
Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that "kinder and gentler" approach and the vision behind it.
One key point that Sowell makes is that experience is what teaches people the reality of the world, and that experience generally comes with living, doing, and growing older. Barack Obama is young and hasn't done much. His relatively blank sheet of accomplishments and actions are borne out by his consistent gaffes, errors, and mistakes. He is a rookie Senator, and he's acting like it. If he had more experience, he may or may not change his policies, but he would certainly be running a better campaign. Experience matters in all things.The main thing to take away from this (in my opinion) is that liberals don't make sense to us conservatives (and vice versa, I'm sure) because they start out with an entirely different world view. They believe that most of the problems in the world would just go away if everyone would think like them. The problem is, as Sowell so eloquently points out, the world is just too complex and dangerous for that to ever realistically happen. There will always be evil in the world, whether in the form of violent crime, murderous dictators, or religious suicidal zealots. The liberal Left, however, doesn't acknowledge that fact, instead seeking to achieve peace through compromise and cooperation. What do those intent on evil do in the face of requests to compromise and cooperate? They mow a path of destruction, taking what they want by force and laughing at the naivete of their victims. History shows this over and over again.
Of course we'd all prefer to live in a world without strife or conflict...but that is simply not realistic. It will never happen. Conservatives live in the real world; we acknowledge that fact, and seek to maximize the goodness in people while minimizing the ability of those who do evil to accomplish their aims. We use our experience to predict what policies and people are dangerous, and work to prevent that danger from coming to fruition. Liberals work to prevent what they see as dangerous, too, but using a totally different tactic which allows that evil to fester and grow. Their reliance on idealistic platitudes as their main weapon persists right up until the point when they get destroyed by the very evil with which they seek to compromise. For example, does anyone really believe that giving terrorists -- caught on the battlefield or in the streets trying to kill Americans -- the same rights as you and me in a civilian court will prevent that terrorist from slitting American throats in the name of Allah after their release?
Liberals do, apparently.
That's why they can't be trusted with defending our Constitution and protecting our country - ultimately, they lack the proper foundational world view to adequately accomplish those essential tasks.
There's my two cents.
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