“Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.” – Thomas Sowell

Sowell made this statement over a decade ago, so it should be updated to four decades, maybe five. And now the fruit of replacing what worked with what sounded good is ripe for harvest.

It is a poisonous crop. Criminals running free in New York state and Maryland. The streets of California filled with vagrants and human feces. Unaffordable housing on the Pacific Coast. The state of Virginia attempting to criminalize a large section of their law-abiding population with unconstitutional (and therefore unlawful) gun-rights restrictions.

And yet those who are replacing what worked with what sounded good are doubling down, and insisting that it has to work because it sounds good.