Economist Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has been one of the pre-eminent thinkers in America for decades. His latest book, Discrimination and Disparities, is an examination of what he calls the “invincible fallacy” that improper discrimination must be to blame for different outcomes between people of different races or sexes, or those sorted almost any other way.

This is refuted again and again by empirical evidence, Prof. Sowell tells Editorial Director Hugo Gurdon, in an interview for the Washington Examiner’s “Modern Conservatives” series. Politicians, mostly on the Left, manufacture grievances and win over voting groups with promises of policies that won’t work and often do enormous damage.