Thomas Sowell is one of our great thinkers, and we would do well to pay attention to him. Recently he penned a four part series of articles explaining the mindset of the left. Links to the four articles follow below with very short synopses and quotes from each.
In The Mindset of the Left: Part I he explains that the left is always trying to blame bad behavior on external factors:
At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil — that some people simply choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of excuse, from poverty to an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.
In The Mindset of the Left: Part II he addresses the left's relationship with poverty and implies a sinister goal of ginning up government dependence:
Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have air-conditioning, television, own a motor vehicle and, far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the taxpayers' money.
This kind of "poverty" can easily become a way of life, not only for today's "poor," but for their children and grandchildren.
Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit "tax" on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire.
If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it?
In short, the political left's welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left's agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society. The vast amounts of money wasted are by no means the worst of it.
In The Mindset of the Left: Part III he talks about equality and the left's obsession with equal outcomes.
A never-ending source of grievances for the left is the fact that some groups are "over-represented" in desirable occupations, institutions and income brackets, while other groups are "under-represented."
From all the indignation and outrage about this expressed on the left, you might think that it was impossible that different groups are simply better at different things. ...
All this moral melodrama has served as a background for the political agenda of the left, which has claimed to be able to lift the poor out of poverty and in general make the world a better place. This claim has been made for centuries, and in countries around the world. And it has failed for centuries in countries around the world.
In The Mindset of the Left: Part IV he gets to the left's assumption that they know better than everybody else.
At the heart of the left's vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves.
That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare.
He goes on to provide a personal example. After he left home at the age of 17 he worked two jobs totaling 60 hours a week so that he could not only pay for necessities but save money. However, back then unemployment among black youths was a fraction of what it would become later when the economy prospered. That was because the left kept raising the minimum wage which had the effect of eliminating jobs. He goes on:
I don't know what I would have done if such busybody policies had been in effect back in 1949, and prevented me from finding a job before my last dollar ran out.
My personal experience is just one small example of what it is like when your options are very limited. The prosperous busybodies of the left are constantly promoting policies which reduce the existing options of poor people even more.
Saving the best for last, Sowell concludes with this:
Nothing is easier for people with degrees to imagine that they know better than the poor and uneducated. But, as someone once said, "A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him."
A great explainer he is.
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