The Quest for Cosmic Justice

October 4, 1999
One of the country's most respected conservative intellectuals, Sowell (Race and Culture, etc.) proclaims a need to clarify the notion of justice. He then hurriedly decrees an absolute dichotomy between "traditional justice"--purely procedural equal treatment--and "cosmic justice." Unfortunately, Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, never satisfactorily defines what he means by cosmic justice, using it as an elastic term. Sowell easily tears apart handpicked examples of ill-conceived cosmic justice while steering clear of serious engagement with opposing positions. Thus he attacks Supreme Court rulings such as Miranda as "attempts to seek cosmic justice in the courtroom," but it requires a much better argument than Sowell provides to see how Miranda is anything but procedural. He equates redistributive state policies with "Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot," as if Western European welfare states simply didn't exist. Sowell makes some very good points in these four essays (touching on the difficulty of defining equal performance, the necessity of considering costs in pursuing abstract ideals and the corrosive political effects of envy), but he overplays his hand. The essay called "The Tyranny of Visions" asserts that conservatives "acquire no sense of moral superiority" from their positions, a point that anyone familiar with Pat Buchanan or with Sowell himself will find hard to swallow. Certainly, a good case can be made that people use the term "justice" loosely and that many conflate procedural justice with metaphysical justice. Beyond that, however, Sowell offers a catechism for true conservative believers.

October 15, 1999
"Much of the world today and down through centuries of history has suffered the terrible consequences of unbridled government power, the prime evil that the writers of the American constitution sought to guard against." It is this "unbridled government power" that prolific political theorist Sowell (Affirmative Action Reconsidered) fears most as something that follows necessarily when societies try to achieve "cosmic justice" (as opposed to "social justice"). "Cosmic justice," he asserts, "is not about the rules of the game" but rather about "putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune." Referring often to 20th-century world history, he argues persuasively that whatever benefits one might hope would result from trying to right the past wrongs of the world (instead of trying to repair the present world), they are not worth the almost inevitable risks of the loss of freedom and the rise of despotism. As Sowell does so well in his other books--many of which analyze the tradeoff between freedom and equality--he presents his case in clear, convincing, and accessible language. Strongly recommended for most public and academic libraries.--Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 1999
Sowell, a prolific critic of modern liberalism, ties into one of its most annoying characteristics: the desire to right undesigned and inherent wrongs that are consequences of differences of gender, skin color, sexuality, physical and mental capability, culture, and history. That desire spurs liberals to pursue cosmic justice, aka social justice, for the sake of an ideal society, instead of ordinary justice for persons and society as they are. Affirmative action, equal pay for formally equal work, and other policies aimed at redistributing wealth express the liberal lust for cosmic justice, Sowell argues. He vehemently stresses how facetious the term "redistribution" is, for wealth was never distributed in the first place. Most galling to Sowell, and intensively analyzed in his "Vision of the Anointed" (1995), is liberals' moral rectitude about cosmic justice--their insistence that those who disagree with them are not mistaken but evil. Out of such self-righteousness, liberals use government to overturn institutions and traditions responsible for American liberty and prosperity. A conservative polemic that liberals should read and cogitate. ((Reviewed September 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)