I’m not sure where I first encountered Thomas Sowell’s writings, but from the start I was hooked. His articles used to appear in National Review, I believe, when I was a regular reader a ways back in time and though I recall not its title, the first book of his that I read was a collection of essays bound in a light blue cover.Essentially Sowell writes with an incisive wit about tough, complex topics in an accesible, straight-talking style. As a black conservative with Harvard roots (earned the hard way) he appeals to me because he’s not afraid to speak his mind, to call it as he sees it. And he doesn’t stay in the corral.
Here are some notes from an article I came across at National Review Online tonight called "Random thoughts on the passing scene." There are many more pearls where these come from. Google Search: Thomas Sowell. If you don’t know his work, he’s worth getting acquainted with.
Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can’t stop with just one.
Anyone who is honest with himself and with others knows that there is not a snow ball’s chance in hell to have an honest dialogue about race.
I wonder what radical feminists make of the fact that it was men who created the rule of “women and children first” when it came to rescuing people from life-threatening emergencies.
Barack Obama’s motto “Change you can believe in” has acquired a new meaning — changing his positions is the only thing you can believe in. His campaign began with a huge change in the image he projects, compared to what he was doing for 20 years before.
After getting DVDs of old Perry Mason TV programs and old Law & Order programs, I found myself watching far more of the Perry Mason series. The difference is that too many Law & Order programs tried to raise my consciousness on social issues, as if that is their role or their competence.
Although most of the mainstream media are still swooning over Barack Obama, a few critics are calling the things he advocates “naive.” But that assumes that he is trying to solve the country’s problems. If he is trying to solve his own problem of getting elected, then he is telling the voters just what they want to hear. That is not naive but shrewd and cynical.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
© 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
14 comments:
I Googled Mr. Sorell, and read several of his pieces at Townhall.
Wonderful stuff.
Right in front of my eyes, in a column called "Dangerous Demagoguery Part II" I saw Mr. Sorell pretend to "prove", through mostly unnamed "sources", that the income gap between the rich and poor is NOT widening in the US. Our children have MORE opportunity to advance than we had, not less.
Sure.
And, evidently, to believe one's own eyes, instead of some convoluted statistics presented by Mr. Sorell, is "dangerous demagoguery".
Whatever. Townhall comments are obviously screened to allow no serious debate against Townhall propaganda.
I noticed that you said that Mr. Sorell graduated from Harvard "the hard way".
I looked up some biographical information on him, and couldn't really find anything on how he financed his education. I did notice that he'd been in the military during WWII, however, which made me suspect that maybe he was a beneficiary of the G.I. Bill -- which, of course is a liberal entitlement program. Is that what you were referring to as "the hard way", or do you have a link to other info on how he paid for his education?
Sorry I spelled the name wrong throughout. I Googled it right, then somehow typed it wrong on the comment form, and kept referring back to that, instead of to the correct name. A couple of times the thought crossed my mind that I should check the spelling of the name before posting, because something didn't quite look right. But, I was in a hurry to get to work, and I posted before checking.
That doesn't change my opinion of Mr. Sowell's or Townhall's journalistic ethics, though.
Or my question of what you were referring to with "earned the hard way".
Yo, ran out of time to reply this a.m.... did my blogging first.
The "hard way" I was referring to was essentially a paraphrase of a Sowell essay in which he was critical of affirmative action programs that caused many blacks to have their earned credentials questioned because of lax requirements for people of color in some institutions at that time. He had been to Howard first and was suprised when he arrived at Harvard that his roommates never went out to party, were always hitting the books. One finally leveled with him that he was not going to make it unless he, too, hit the books like that. He took the advice to heart, buckled down...
The details (Howard, for example) may be incorrectly recited here because it was 20 years ago or so when I readit, but the essential point was as recited here pretty much, and one that Bill Cosby has likewise spoken out on.
Then Sowell was actually saying there aren't two ways to get through Harvard (hard and easy), but only one way.
I quote from an editorial I ran across this morning, comparing the (since overturned) affirmative action program at the University of Michigan to admission policies at Harvard:
"At the undergraduate level," said Bush, "African-American students and some Hispanic students and Native American students receive 20 points out of a maximum of 150, not because of any academic achievement or life experience, but solely because they are African American, Hispanic or Native American."
If our President had the slightest sense of irony, he might have paused to ask himself, "Wait a minute. How did I get into Yale?" It wasn't because of any academic achievement: his high school record was ordinary. It wasn't because of his life experience--prosperous family, fancy prep school--which was all too familiar at Yale. It wasn't his SAT scores: 566 verbal and 640 math.
They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard accepts 40% of applicants who are children of alumni but only 11% of applicants generally. And this kind of affirmative action makes the student body less diverse, not more so. George W. Bush, in fact, may be the most spectacular affirmative-action success story of all time. Until 1994, when he was 48 years old and got elected Governor of Texas, his life was almost empty of accomplishments.
Yet bloodlines and connections had put him into Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School, and even finally provided him with a fortune after years of business disappointments. Intelligence, hard work and the other qualities associated with the concept of merit had almost nothing to do with Bush's life and success up to that point."
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/timep.affirm.action.tm/
When you admit someone into Yale or Harvard Business School with SAT scores as low as that, and end up with a graduate who mangles the English language the way George Bush does, doesn't that cheapen the value of an education from those schools?
Would a black American have been admitted to Yale or Harvard with scores that low?
By the way, I still know don't know how Mr. Sowell's education was financed. I suspect the GI Bill.
To quote JFK, life is not fair. "...there is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in the military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair." Press conference, 3/21/62.
Yes, Harvard and Yale did indeed have their own form of good old boy networks, and the networks still exist today in many places. In the old days everything was that way... or at least for the privileged, it seems.
I wasnted to be a novelist at one time, but I did not have a huge nest egg and the opportunity to just write and make art while my inheritance paid the bills. Yes, there are some writers who made it on merit but many who made it on wealth and connections (when you look into their personal bios)...
My dad grew up in abject poverty, got a break with the G.I. bill. I grew up in middle class NJ and had privileges, but not as many as many of my peers whose parents were exceedingly wealthy by 60's standards... I am fully conscious that I had nothing to do with some of my advantages.
Things are very complex and perfect fairness will never happen. This does not, however, nullify personal responsibility by those in power to provide greater fairness, to help others... Again, no man is an island and the poor man is one with the rich, if he'd but see it and they ought by conscience to understand this.
Kerry and Gore were not exactly "un-privileged" themselves, for the record. But I do hear what you're saying abot W and you have hit the nail on the head as to why Americans are cynical about the whole political process. On election day, the process has not delivered us the most capable Americans to choose from to lead us into the future. It gives us politicians.
I too was born fortunate -- white, little bit of a pinhead, perhaps, (but I get by), lots of land in the family, an established business, escaped the war, still a meaningful GI Bill, am fairly sharp at languages, my dad taught me to use my hands as well ........
I just read this, though, which says that students are even having a hard time to get loans, now, let alone grants.
"Forget back-to-school shopping: With just a few weeks to go before the start of the fall semester, many college students are doing some last-minute student-loan shopping as more and more cash-strapped lenders drop out of the student loan business.
As investors have grown wary of putting money in the student loan market, some 100 lenders have gotten out of the college loan business, leaving many students in the lurch.
Texas A&M University financial aid director Delisa Falks said that in the last few days, the university has heard from seven different lenders saying they could no longer provide federally guaranteed loans.
It's a problem that has been ongoing nationwide for months, leaving many students with fewer options for financing their college educations.
Falks said that while there are many other lenders to take the place of the recently discontinued lenders, "it's very disappointing that it's gone this way in the student loan industry."
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/story?id=5475085&page=1
I remember when Bob started college, as low-income as we were, all he could get was loans. There were no grants available, even in the 1990's.
A good portion of the money that I sold the old Hoad homestead for went to his student loans. He'd studied computer programming, and got good grades. But I guess to be truly responsible for his own life, he should have been prescient that most of that kind of work was going to be farmed out to India -- like my kind of work was farmed out to Mexico.
This farming out was done by so-called "pro-Americans", of course. Who would dare call them "traitors"?
The fact that there weren't any jobs as promised, didn't release Bob from having to pay off those loans. He paid them off, but I think maybe he holds a little bitterness against those who sold him out in favor of workers from India, so the big boys could get a little richer.
Now the younger kids can't even get loans. Well, if you've got enough money to pay, you're OK. Otherwise, you don't get a higher education in the US anymore. This provides more poor boys and girls to join the army to fight the $3 trillion dollar war. (No shortage of money, for that, eh?)
But, on the other hand, Mr. Sowell has presented statistics saying that the income gap between rich and poor is actually shrinking in the US ........
As my uncle Ray used to say when he was getting hot under the collar: "Ja! ja!"
(Ask Susie what that means.)
Regarding the whole subject of college and student loans and the promise of jobs... well, no one is telling these kids "let the buyer beware." I have long been critical of the student loan racket, and false promises of wealth if you get a college education. Our schools underwent a major change in focus somewhere after we were in high school. There used to be two tracks... the college bound track and the track for kids not cut out to be college material.
We now have all kinds of schools with kids all told that college will make this big difference for them. They don't go to school to learn, only to getth egrade, the diploma, the promise of wealth. Many if not most study things they have no real interest in only because someday it will mean more money. It's a scam, and the education establishment knows it.
I have seen middle aged people still hounded for re-payment on their college loans, at least one I know who lived two years in the back seat of his car.
But, who is ultimately to blame? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
And I still don't know how Mr. Sowell financed his education, as he was being educated "the hard way."
By "personal responsibility", I'm sure. He no doubt pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
Like you and I didn't have to do. Our families had houses and lands, and we were white.
My son went to college to learn computer, as there were supposed to be jobs in that field. Obviously, he didn't show personal responsibility, as neither he nor I guessed that millions of US jobs would be farmed out to foreign countries by "patriotic" Americans in Washington.
Obviously, he shouldn't have gone to college in the beginning. He wasn't cut out for it in the "Compassionate Conservatives" book. Though I wonder what the same people would have said when my son graduated from high school in '92, if he would have announced that he had no plans to go to college, and didn't care about any additional education. What would YOU have said, for instance? In fact, I think I remember what you DID say back then.
But -- Who is to blame? I would blame those who sold out the blue-collar jobs to foreign countries, plus those who supported those policies. And I you are blaming those who decided to go to college, but should have known they "weren't cut out for it" -- and you steadfastly refuse to discuss the responsibility of those who sent all those millions of jobs out of the US in order to enrich their own selves. A classic case of coddle the perpetrator, and blame the victim.
Another thing.
A BIGGER variety of people had the opportunity to go to college when we were in high school, NOT a smaller variety, as you're trying to say. Several of us Wagners got to go (including Arlene, of the older generation), and we were farmers' sons and daughters. As you said, your father also benefited from the former policy to educate as many as possible.
That WAS the case in the '40's through the '70's. It is NOT NOW the case in the '90's and '00's -- though you're trying your hardest to twist it around.
I do not know how he financed his education either. But he had to work hard to keep up his grades.
As for your son, he was always smart and worked hard. I can't recall ever even thinking anything but positive about him
My complaint with "college track" is that they have eliminated the things like mechanics etc. I visited my high school this spring, a campus style high school with nine buildings. The 200 building was shop and auto mechanics, etc. It was prep for the trades. They have eliminated that whole building and replaced it with more classrooms. There are guys who would do well in that "track" who are not book learning types.
As for those who sent jobs out of the country, I do not know how to answer. I've read many things that make it less than black and white. Way too much for this short space of time. If Americans weren't so in love with cheap goods, maybe it could be produced without cheap labor.
The rest of the story has not been told either. Companies may benefit short term, but some lose sales by taking that action. I have had two situations personally when I did NOT buy because the tech support was overseas.
I'm sure Mr. Sowell did have to work hard to keep up his grades.
IF he also took the personal responsibility to pay for his own education, he would have had to work very, VERY hard. Harvard isn't cheap.
IF he took the GI bill, maybe he paid it back -- though I've never yet heard of anyone who is against "liberal" multi-Million dollar social programs and/or "conservative" multi-Billion dollar bailouts, to have refused to take advantage of either one of them.
I noticed something in the Sowell article you linked to, and have a simple question regarding it. It's not that I expect you to know the answer, and I'd like to ask Mr. Sowell himself in an open blog, but it seems that National Review Online doesn't have one. I suppose I could write a letter to the editor, like I did with that other conservative site you linked to, but I pretty much think I'd get the same result. (No word from that other site either, by the way. They seem to be hiding under their soap-box.)
But, anyway, here's the quote from Mr. Sowell that I have a question about: "With all the big-name entertainers who have put on shows in prisons, why have so few put on shows for our troops in Iraq?"
My question is: Please name just ONE big-name entertainer who has put on a show in a US prison, since Johnny Cash in 1968 or '69. If you can't name several of them, admit that you're spewing off on things you know nothing about.
Thank you.
I know I'm already below the fold, but still wanted to comment on this:
"As for those who sent jobs out of the country, I do not know how to answer. I've read many things that make it less than black and white. Way too much for this short space of time. If Americans weren't so in love with cheap goods, maybe it could be produced without cheap labor."
Yes, anyone likes cheap goods. But what makes me angry is that the people who pushed for "free trade" agreements such as NAFTA (which is the one that put me out of business), promised the American people that these agreements would INCREASE American exports, and be a boon to the American economy. You'll have your cake, and eat it, too, they promised.
The chickens have come home to roost, however. Everyone (or nearly everyone, I have my doubts about Mr. Sowell) has started to notice that there has been an increase in unemployment and underemployment in the US, that huge trade deficits have led to a large and still-continuing fall in the US dollar, and that the US has become dependent on other not-necessarily-friendly countries for even its basic needs.
It's particularly maddening to hear those who supported those policies now telling the victims of them, "Let the buyer beware," and "What ever happened to personal responsibility?"
I didn't buy those free-trade policies. I wasn't taken in; I wasn't in support of them any more than I supported the deregulation during the past 30 years that resulted in the Savings and Loan crisis of the '80's, Enron, the tech bubble-burst, the stranglehold the insurance and health-care industries now have on the American people, and the present credit bubble-burst (that is not even close to over, yet).
Yet I and millions of others have been made victims of these policies. There are millions of homeless in America, people who can't afford even basic health care, and people living in cars. (Believe me, there is no homelessness in Laos, no soup kitchens, no one sleeping in cars and being chased off by police, and no one scrounging through garbage for survival. The main pillar of Lao culture is that people should take care of each other.)
I'm not holding my breath waiting for those who supported those policies to take any responsibility for their mistaken predictions (or outright lies, whatever the case may be). Indeed, those on the top became rich, on the backs of their victims who they are now blaming.
You are right that people in government generally do not own up to their bad legislation. They can blame the process for twisting what they originally supported, or that the final version bill wasn't what they originally read, or they can just forget about it.
Just was looking up Sorrel, everything I read sounded like a white racist cracker, attempting to sound inteligent... His "solutions" seem to say " well we know Blacks are bad, and responsible for there problems, they need to listen to us conservatives, . What a joke, and the other commenters that are Black,who agree with him, oh sorry I did not mean to offend you, I mean the other Colored negro uncle Thomases on this page that like Uncle Thomas,...Don't know how to break it to you, But these evil racists are not going to need u much longer, agree with them or not, you will be in their crosshairs... I have caught some of them laughing at your like, did not know i heard em..See how much they love you when they start Suceeding from the UNION. AGAIN
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