Written by Daniel J. Samet |
Monday, November 13, 2023
Sowell makes it clear that the state should reject the social justice vision and its agenda. The natural end point, he states, is “having government empower surrogate decision-makers to rescue victims of various forms of mistreatment by taking many decisions out of other people’s hands” (82). Our ever-growing administrative state is full of people convinced that others cannot be trusted to do what is best for themselves. We’re left with policies putting the lie to the world envisioned by social justice advocates. Sowell points out “the painful reality . . . that no human being has either the vast range of consequential knowledge, or the overwhelming power, required to make the social justice ideal become a reality” (127). 
         
Another year, another book by Thomas Sowell. It is astonishing that Sowell, 93 years young, scarcely appears to be slowing down. No public intellectual of his generation has been this prolific for this long, save perhaps Henry Kissinger. He’s a veritable national treasure.        
Social Justice Fallacies is classic Sowell. There are no graphs or tables, nor even any cover art. The one and only attraction of the book is Sowell’s air-tight reasoning. It alone justifies the price tag.  
Within its pages is his salvo in our culture war du jour. At a time when activists, scholars, and politicians trot out slogans like “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “systemic bias,” Sowell has a biting retort. He argues that the social justice agenda they champion is mistaken. It is based on flawed premises and conclusions, inevitably leading to social policies that harm the people they’re supposed to help.        
“You’re entitled to your own opinion,” reads the book’s epigraph, a quote from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” That’s one way to describe the essence of Sowell’s writing. He does not assert anything without evidence in its defense. If only peddlers of social justice pieties could do the same. To rebut Sowell’s arguments, they will need many facts: facts that do not seem to be in abundance, to put it mildly.   
Take their view that there would be equal outcomes in a world of equal chances, which is the subject of the book’s first chapter. “At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any differences in their innate capacities, these disparities are evidence or proof of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination,” Sowell writes (2).
Do human vices explain why NHL players from Canada outnumber those from the United States, despite the fact that Canada has under 1/8th the population of the United States? Why Germans have for centuries been world leaders in beer production? Why Asian Americans have more PhDs in engineering than blacks and Hispanics combined? Why first-born and only children are more likely than other children to reach the highest rungs of the professional ladder as adults? Sowell shows that much else besides exploitation and discrimination accounts for inequality of outcome.
Advocates of social justice deploy flashy terms to justify their agenda, but not hard evidence. “We can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of the proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition— in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history,” observes Sowell (2–3). He, however, deploys many past and present examples of the reverse from places as varied as Italy, Malaysia, and South Africa.
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We will be a blessing to the world around us if instead of obsessing about people we fix our hearts on Christ. So take this as my call to you and to me and to all of us: Let’s stop the gossip. Let’s stop the gossip and instead make it our delight to speak about who our God is and about what our God has done.

I have said it before: gossip is a “respectable sin” among Reformed Christians. The Christian world, and perhaps especially the Reformed Christian world, is absolutely chockablock with gossip. From the pulpit to the pew, from the conference green room to the conference hallways, gossip is rampant. It is whispered in the name of important information and blogged in the name of discernment—both ways of dressing it up in respectable apparel. But if it isn’t true and it isn’t edifying and it isn’t necessary, it is gossip. Truly, gossip may be the besetting sin of this movement and a major contributor to her current or coming collapse.(1)
I don’t want to make it sound as if I am immune to this sin or that I’ve never participated in it. In fact, recent experiences in my life have shown how quick I am to initiate conversations that soon tip into gossip and how slow I am to redirect conversations initiated by others that also dwell on what is little better than tittle-tattle. I write to myself as much as anyone else.
If you love the Reformed faith, which is to say, if you value Reformed doctrine, then I offer this exhortation: Make it your goal to talk about Jesus, not celebrities. Make it your goal to tell about the perfections of the Savior more than the failures of the famous. Make it your goal to describe what God has done, not what Christian personalities have failed to do.
This is not to say that there are no circumstances in which it is appropriate to discuss current events and even the foibles and failures of those people who rise and fall within this corner of the Christian world. Sometimes such conversations can be good and necessary, provided they are carried out within the bounds of Christian character and that they go no further than the established facts. Paul named names when appropriate and I’m sure he sometimes gathered his protégés around himself to discuss what had gone wrong with Demas or Hymenaeus or Alexander and what they could learn from those who had first followed and then fallen away.
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Paul claims that all are under sin (Romans 3:9) and uses a number of biblical quotations to show the unrighteousness and irreverence of man (Romans 3:10a, 18), giving further explanation of his sinfulness and examples of his sin (Romans 3:10b–17). Addressing the Jews in particular (cf. Romans 2:17, “if you call yourself a Jew”), Paul clarifies that they are the audience of the Law and identifies its purpose (Romans 3:19–20). 

Romans 3:9–20 concludes Paul’s discussion of man’s unrighteousness in Romans 1:18–3:20.
Paul clearly asserts that both “all, Jews and Greeks [Gentiles], are under sin,” that is, under its power, made obvious man’s many sins (Romans 3:9; cf. 3:13–17). “As it is written” then introduces a number of biblical quotations to show the universal sinfulness of man (Romans 3:10).
Romans 3:10–12 quotes much of Psalm 14:1–3 (almost identical to Psalm 53:1–3). Paul claims as David did that “none is righteous” before God (Romans 3:10; notice Paul’s modification from Psalm 14:1, “There is none who does good”). One could literally translate this phrase, “There is no righteous one,” just as Romans 3:18 could translate, “There is no fear of God.” These two instances of “there is” act as bookends for Romans 3:10–18. Romans 3:19–20 then closes all of Romans 1:18–3:20.
As evidence of man’s unrighteousness claimed in Romans 3:10, the quote from Psalm 14 stack the negatives against mankind—no one understands, seeks for God, or does good but rather turns aside and becomes worthless (Romans 3:10–12; cf. Psalm 14:1–3).
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