Skip to main content

SOWELL SHOWS HOW WE ARE DISMANTLING AMERICA

Parents may be upset because of differences of opinion with their grown children on current events. They may differ on, say, global warming. Their offspring may have seen Al Gore’s move, “An Inconvenient Truth,” perhaps in school or college. They can’t ask them if they have read anything on the other side, but have they seen the British Channel 4 television special, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”? How can they know what’s right till they have heard the other side, says Sowell.

If they were a member of a jury, would they be content to learn the defendant’s case presented solely by the prosecution? Wouldn’t they insist on hearing the defendant’s side from the defendant itself? If so, why should they be content with hearing only one side of global warming?

This is only one of the many issues which students hear about in school or college. Are they being educated or indoctrinated? Thomas Sowell’s new book is Dismantling America, perhaps the 20th by this economist, scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a black, and an orphan. His Basic Economics textbook has been translated into six languages. Dismantling America is a collection of his newspaper columns on issues on which the public has received chiefly one side, the politically correct party line. Yet that is the jury that will ultimately decide the nation’s fate, says Sowell.
.
NOT ALWAYS RICH OR POOR. Should tax cuts for the top 1% be terminated? Should the half of the population that does not pay an income tax, pay something? In the bottom fifth of the income-distribution, total income increased by 91% between1996 and 2005. Most of the people in the bottom fifth rise out of it over time. In the top fifth, some do not remain there more than one decade. “More people from the bottom fifth end up in the top fifth than remain at the bottom,” says Sowell.

Tens of millions in China and India have moved out of poverty, but we never hear about them. The ideologues’ “behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left’s denunciations of society,” says Sowell.

MINIMUM WAGE. The politicians talk about increasing jobs, but the government cannot create jobs except by taking money away from others, or selling bonds, or imposing mandates. That is transferring wealth, not creating it, says Sowell. Mandating a minimum wage is a way of reducing the number of jobs. Politicians mandate things that employers must provide, which the public thinks is getting something for nothing. Raising the minimum wage makes workers more expensive to employers, so they hire fewer. It is cheaper to pay overtime than hire new workers. As the minimum wage rises, unemployment does not disappear.

RACE. For the left, blacks are trophies or mascots that must be seen on campus. A mascot is a symbol of somebody else’s success. In college, there are lower admissions standards for blacks, who, when they do not make it, are replaced by more blacks. “The point is to have black faces on campus, as mascots symbolizing what great people there are running the college,” says Sowell.

Leftists have destroyed black neighborhoods by urban renewal and replaced them with “upscale homes or pricey businesses—neither of which the former residents can afford.” Another common practice is “leaping to the defense of black criminals” by liberals who need black mascots. They do not hesitate “to throw blacks to the wolves for the benefit of the teachers’ unions, the green zealots, . . . or people who keep low-priced stores like Wal-Mart out of their cities.” Using blacks as mascots is “ugly,” says Sowell.

POLITICIANS. How can government insure you for less than a private insurance company? They make a third party pay. If anything bothers us, we go to a politician. For the politicians, nothing is impossible. They don’t pay. They don’t make you pay. They make third parties pay.

FAIRNESS. First-born have higher IQs than their younger siblings. Twins have lower IQs than if born singly. Between Western and Eastern Europe, there is a bigger gap than between blacks and whites, because the highly advanced Roman legions, who had the language, more easily invaded Western than Eastern Europe, so language had a longer time to develop in Western than Eastern Europe, says Sowell.

The University of California at Berkeley dropped four science teachers in order to spend their salaries on low-income achievers. This fairer distribution of funds means everybody will get what the low-income achievers get, to wit “lessons in note-taking.” Says Sowell, this is equalizing downward by lowering those at the top.

In Toronto, the Japanese have higher incomes than others, so they are considered “privileged.” In politically correct societies, achievement is a privilege.

Philosopher John Rawls wants a fair society that “arranges end-results.” (Is this where OBE, Outcome-Based Education, comes from?) Rawls’s “fair” conception ignores natural endowment and social circumstances like families and cultures “with different priorities, attitudes and behavior,” says Sowell.

The Germans can make beer. No other nationality can make beer as the Germans can. Other nationalities are unfairly underrepresented in the beer-making industry.

Edmund Burke, 19th century British philosopher, warned of “new power in new persons.” Sowell, quoting Burke’s observation that “eloquence may exist without wisdom,” says that President Obama never ran anything but fired the head of GM and is telling bankers how to run their business.

By Natalie Sirkin
e-mail: sirnat9@gmail.com

Comments

Bruce Rubenstein said…
I have read a few of Sowell's books and he is very intelligent..but wrong here.I think the USA isnt being dismantled as much as it is being re-arranged.The new elite is the education class and the highly educated white collar work force.We remain the strongest world power in world history,even with our problems.
Priscilla said…
Don,
I just received a call from the National AFL-CIO in DC concerning the CT. Senate race. As a union member for twenty eight years and a officer in a union for fifteen of those I get annoyed when the unions have this need to fill the members head with lies and statistics that are false. Any member who takes the time to research a little can make up their own minds on the facts and not be misled. As citizens of before they go to the voting booth they have an obligation to do just that for the good of this state, their families and the future of Connecticuts' economy. If they do not invest that little bit of time then it would be best if they did not go to the polls in November. These statements on these recorded lines to AFL-CIO members for example today mentioned that Linda McMahon only allows independent contractors and does not provide health insurance to her employees and thus that will mean she will be against fixing the health insurance debacle in this
country is a glaring example of what is wrong with these types of messages the AFL-CIO is sending out. I am hoping the members know enough to find out the truth for themselves before they pull that lever.
It seems folks often take more time to research what kind of car to buy than they do to research and dig out the truth about what a candidate stands for. This year they need to research all the candidates like they are buying a car.

Popular posts from this blog

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e