The waning of the constrained vision
On the American right's embrace of the American left's view of human nature
In 1987, the economist Thomas Sowell wrote A Conflict of Visions which drew a distinction between two opposing views of human nature: the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision.
The constrained vision holds that human nature is fundamentally limited in terms of knowledge, morality, and foresight. It can be bent by incentives but not erased. Individuals will always be self-interested, tribal, and have bounded knowledge. Social policy is an endless series of trade offs between imperfect solutions. Progress is possible, but it comes from the slow evolution of decentralized processes—markets, common law, and cultural tradition—which aggregate the tacit knowledge of millions of participants.
The constrained vision is wary of our ability to design new institutions from scratch. The accumulated societal wisdom embodied in traditions is superior to any individual's reasoning. Grand schemes that redesign social systems from the ground up inevitably produce unintended consequences. The constrained vision therefore emphasizes incremental change, empirical evidence over theory, and process over intentions.
The unconstrained vision holds that human nature is malleable and perfectable. The goal of social policy is to provide comprehensive solutions (eliminate poverty, war, racism) rather than to merely manage trade-offs. The unconstrained vision places its faith in the expert application of reason, favoring the deliberate design of social systems and institutions. It is more comfortable with centralized problem-solving, and skeptical of tradition and decentralized decision-making. Outcomes can and should be optimized, and we should judge reform efforts by how close reality approaches an ideal.
Sowell uses the constrained and unconstrained vision to explain political disagreements. Those set on radical change often cannot fathom why there are those who are opposed—especially when those people have trouble articulating explicit reasons beyond simply citing tradition. Those skeptical of change cannot understand why some are so disposed to risk what we have built to chase some abstract ideal like “justice” or “fairness” or “equity”.
While Sowell emphasizes that his visions transcend political labels, it's hard to dispute that the unconstrained vision is typically held by progressives and the constrained by conservatives.1 The archetypical Burkean conservative has a deep admiration for tradition and is skeptical of radical change. The archetypical progressive is pointing out some current injustice, demanding that the system be changed until the injustice is uprooted. Their belief that the system can be deliberately designed to eradicate injustice leads them to think that change is being avoided only because of the evil people in power (corporations, billionaires, and so on).
With this framing of political disagreement in mind, Donald Trump's rise to the helm of conservative politics is all the more surprising. Trump's administration represents the unconstrained vision in full force.2 They are quickly reversing relationships with longstanding allies, deliberately delivering some of the biggest shocks to the world financial system in modern history, radically dismantling longstanding institutions, and asserting control over universities and their funding.
Regardless of whether you think these policies are good or bad, they clearly embody the unconstrained vision. They show a willingness to redesign the system from scratch, believing that much national and international order can be intentionally and successfully manipulated. Policies are not justified by weighing up merits and demerits, instead they appeal to fairness and justice, framing the discussion in terms of victimization (either America as a whole, or subsets of American culture). There's no incremental rollout of these policies, no discussion of potential tradeoffs. Insofar as conservatives have the constrained vision of human nature, Trump is the most anti-conservative president to ever hold office.
Of the two American parties, the unconstrained vision used to be the purview of the democrats. If, fifteen years ago, you had been told that one of the two parties was going to radically change the structure of government overnight, which party would you have guessed? Republicans used to write op-eps criticizing the democrats for adopting the unconstrained vision, with titles like "Unconstrained, Un-conservative".3 Insane policies of the left, like defunding the police, used to be mocked by conservatives for being utopian. Then conservatives turned around and adopted their own utopian defunding scheme in the form of DOGE.
Specific policies aside, the careening of the American right towards the unconstrained vision is worrying precisely because the left is already prone to it. A healthy tension often emerges between the constrained and unconstrained visions: the latter pushing for drastic reform, the former looking to maintain what we’ve built. This dialectic leads to change, but change that is slow, manageable, realistic, and attuned to tradeoffs. This tension is, in my view, responsible for the remarkable progress that we've witnessed over the last several hundred years.
Two parties susceptible to utopian thinking is destabilizing for American—and global—politics. I'm hoping the constrained vision makes a comeback.
But one can certainly think of counterexamples. Foreign policy is one. Hawkishness tends to exist more on the right, which is a belief in the ability of America to intervene in and successfully solve the world's problems.
I hesitate to say that Trump himself adopts the unconstrained vision because his personal psychology remains a mystery to me.
This is not a shot at Jonah Goldberg, who I respect a lot.