 If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent.
Thomas Sowell
Despite the rise in the income of the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers as a statistical category, both absolutely and relative to the incomes in other categories, as flesh-and-blood human beings those individuals who were in that category initially had their incomes actually fall by a whopping 50 percent between 1996 and 2005.
Thomas Sowell
Book: Intellectuals and Society. Basic Books; p. 38
Blacks today are just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today. Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites. If race A differs from race B in IQ, and two generations of race A differ from each other by the same amount, where is the logic in suggesting that the IQ differences are even partly racial?
Thomas Sowell
Vol. 28, American Spectator, 02-01-1995, pp 32.
What does "rational" mean? At its most basic, it means an ability to make a ratio, as with "rational numbers" in mathematics. More broadly, it means an ability to weigh one thing against another.
Thomas Sowell
Ideals vs. Realities
Survival in the market often requires recognizing mistakes and changing course, while survival in politics often requires denying mistakes, continuing the current policies, and blaming the bad policies on others.
Thomas Sowell
The Housing Boom and Bust, second edition, page 153
Elites may have more brilliance, but those who make decisions for society as a whole cannot possibly have as much experience as the millions of people whose decisions they pre-empt.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/100729-sowell-smart-sacrifice.php
Few combinations are more poisonous than race and politics. That combination has torn whole nations apart and led to the slaughters of millions in countries around the world.
Thomas Sowell
Race and Politics: Part I
When somebody who has never owned a slave apologizes for slavery to somebody who has never been a slave, then what began as mushy thinking has degenerated into theatrical absurdity-- or, worse yet, politics.
Thomas Sowell
Too many apologies
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems-- of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
Thomas Sowell
Solving Whose Problem?
As a private citizen, Barack Obama has a right to make as big a jackass of himself as he wants to. But, as President of the United States, his actions not only denigrate a nation that other nations rely on for survival, but raise questions about how reliable our judgment and resolve are-- which in turn raises questions about whether those nations will consider themselves better off to make the best deal they can with our enemies.
Thomas Sowell
Bowing to "World Opinion"
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated [his czars] more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Thomas Sowell
Dismantling America
Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to "keep insurance companies honest"-- and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.
Thomas Sowell
Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV
What does it say about her qualifications to be on the Supreme Court when her supporters' biggest talking points are that she had to struggle to rise in the world? Bonnie and Clyde had to struggle. Al Capone had to struggle. The only President of the United States who was forced to resign for his misdeeds-- Richard Nixon-- had to struggle. For that matter, Adolf Hitler had to struggle! There is no evidence that struggle automatically makes you a better person.
Thomas Sowell
Out of Context II
The code word for the new racism is 'diversity.' The Constitution of the United States says nothing about diversity and the Constitution is what a judge is supposed to pay attention to, not the prevailing buzzwords of the times.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/02/out_of_context_part_ii_96786.html
Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.
Thomas Sowell
"Out of Context?" Op. Ed. on the Sotomayor nomination.
Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word "torture," there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it-- which is what our terrorist enemies do-- and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.
Thomas Sowell
Debate Over 'Torture' Lacks Seriousness (Thanks, Joe.)
If you don't think government bureaucrats can make questionable decisions, then you haven't dealt with many government bureaucrats.
Thomas Sowell
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/04/22/words_versus_realities
One of the wonders of our times is how much more attention is paid to the living conditions of a bunch of cut-throats locked up in Guantanamo than to the leading international sponsor of terrorism getting nuclear weapons.
Thomas Sowell
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/02/11/random_thoughts?page=2
One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.
Thomas Sowell
Random Thoughts
Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/090130-sowell-government-spending.php
Whoever called politics "the art of the possible" must have had a strange idea of what is possible or a strange idea of politics, where the impossible is one of the biggest vote-getters. People can get the possible on their own. Politicians have to be able to offer the voters something that they cannot get on their own. The impossible fills that bill perfectly.
Thomas Sowell
The Art of the Impossible
Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.
Thomas Sowell
Ego and Mouth
The recent death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should make us recall what he said when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." What would a Barack Obama presidency mean, other than more concessions and broader smiles, while Iran goes nuclear?
Thomas Sowell
RealClearPolitics
There have always been people without judgment but this is the first era in which being non-judgmental is considered good -- though how anything can be considered good if you are non-judgmental is another puzzle.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050714.shtml
It is fascinating to watch politicians come up with "solutions" to problems that are a direct result of their previous solutions. In many cases, the most efficient thing to do would be to repeal their previous solution and stop being so gung-ho for creating new solutions in the future. But, politically, that is the last thing they will do.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4044
Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3856
The older I get, the more I realize that arguing on the basis of facts and logic only gets you labeled as someone who is out of step with the times, if not lacking in "compassion."
Thomas Sowell
Capitalism Magazine
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.
Thomas Sowell
1992
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.
Thomas Sowell
Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in that sense. Economic benefits result from the transformation of matter in form, location, or availability (intellectually or temporally). It is these transformations that create economic benefits valued by consumers, and whoever arranges such transformations contributes to the value of things, whether his hands actually come into contact with physical objects or not.
Thomas Sowell
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
Thomas Sowell
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Thomas Sowell
People who send me letters or e-mails containing belligerent personal attacks probably have no idea how reassuring their messages are, for they show that critics seldom have any rational arguments to offer.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3580
If slavery were the real issue, then slavery among flesh-and-blood human beings alive today would arouse far more outcry than past slavery among people who are long dead. The difference is that past slavery can be cashed in for political benefits today.
Thomas Sowell
Cultures are not museum pieces. They are the working machinery of everyday life. Unlike objects of aesthetic contemplation, working machinery is judged by how well it works, compared to the alternatives.
Thomas Sowell
'Conquests & Cultures'
|
