TOWNHALL.COM
December 20, 2011
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
MORE:
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/12/20/the_past_and_the_present
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
THOMAS SOWELL: Back to the Future?
September 13, 2011
Those who are impressed by words seem to think that President Barack Obama made a great speech to Congress last week. But, when you look beyond the rhetoric, what did he say that was fundamentally different from what he has been saying and doing all along?
Are we to continue doing the same kinds of things that have failed again and again, just because Obama delivers clever words with style and energy?
Once we get past the glowing rhetoric, what is the president proposing? More spending! Only the words have changed -- from "stimulus" to "jobs" and from "shovel-ready projects" to "jobs for construction workers." (Mostly union and temporary jobs!)
CONTINUE READING:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/13/back_to_the_future_111307.html
Those who are impressed by words seem to think that President Barack Obama made a great speech to Congress last week. But, when you look beyond the rhetoric, what did he say that was fundamentally different from what he has been saying and doing all along?
Are we to continue doing the same kinds of things that have failed again and again, just because Obama delivers clever words with style and energy?
Once we get past the glowing rhetoric, what is the president proposing? More spending! Only the words have changed -- from "stimulus" to "jobs" and from "shovel-ready projects" to "jobs for construction workers." (Mostly union and temporary jobs!)
CONTINUE READING:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/13/back_to_the_future_111307.html
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
More than 80 years ago, the "tax cuts for the rich" argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.
Thomas Sowell: Brass Oldies
Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as "golden oldies." There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well. These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.
One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of the left, "tax cuts for the rich." How long ago was this refuted? More than 80 years ago, the "tax cuts for the rich" argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.
When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon's prescription for getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!
Then as now, there were people who failed to make the distinction between tax rates and tax revenues. Mellon said, "It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue for the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates."
How can that be? Because taxpayers change their behavior according to what the tax rates are. When one of the Rockefellers died, Mellon discovered that his estate included $44 million in tax-exempt bonds, compared to $7 million in Standard Oil securities, even though Standard Oil was the source of the
Rockefeller fortune.
For the country as a whole, the amount of money tied up in tax-exempt securities was estimated to be three times as large as the federal government's expenditures and more than half as large as the national debt.
In short, huge amounts of money were not being invested in productive capacity, such as factories or power plants, but was instead being made available for local political boondoggles, because this money was put into tax-exempt state and local bonds.
When tax rates are reduced, investors have incentives to take their money out of tax shelters and put it into the private economy, creating higher returns for themselves and more production in the economy. Andrew Mellon understood this then, even though many in politics and the media seem not to understand it now.
Mellon was able to persuade Congress to lower the tax rates by large amounts. The percentage by which tax rates were lowered was greater at the lower income levels, but the total amount of money saved by taxpayers was of course greater on the part of people with higher incomes, who were paying much higher tax rates on those incomes.
Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73 percent to 24 percent. In other words, these were what the left likes to call "tax cuts for the rich."
What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose. Because economic activity increased, the government received more income tax revenues. In short, these were tax cuts for the economy, even if the left likes to call them "tax cuts for the rich."
This was not the only time that things like this happened, nor was Andrew Mellon the only one who advocated tax rate cuts in order to increase tax revenues. John Maynard Keynes pointed out in 1933 that lowering the tax rates can increase tax revenues, if the tax rates are so high as to discourage economic activity.
President John F. Kennedy made the same argument in the 1960s -- and tax revenues increased after the tax rates were cut during his administration. The same thing happened under Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. And it happened again under George W. Bush, whose tax rate cuts are scheduled to expire next January.
The rich actually paid more total taxes, and a higher percentage of all taxes, after the Bush tax rate cuts, because their incomes were rising with the rising economy.
Do the people who keep repeating the catch phrase, "tax cuts for the rich" not know this? Or are they depending on your not knowing it?
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/10/26/brass_oldies
Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as "golden oldies." There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well. These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.
One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of the left, "tax cuts for the rich." How long ago was this refuted? More than 80 years ago, the "tax cuts for the rich" argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.
When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon's prescription for getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!
Then as now, there were people who failed to make the distinction between tax rates and tax revenues. Mellon said, "It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue for the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates."
How can that be? Because taxpayers change their behavior according to what the tax rates are. When one of the Rockefellers died, Mellon discovered that his estate included $44 million in tax-exempt bonds, compared to $7 million in Standard Oil securities, even though Standard Oil was the source of the
Rockefeller fortune.
For the country as a whole, the amount of money tied up in tax-exempt securities was estimated to be three times as large as the federal government's expenditures and more than half as large as the national debt.
In short, huge amounts of money were not being invested in productive capacity, such as factories or power plants, but was instead being made available for local political boondoggles, because this money was put into tax-exempt state and local bonds.
When tax rates are reduced, investors have incentives to take their money out of tax shelters and put it into the private economy, creating higher returns for themselves and more production in the economy. Andrew Mellon understood this then, even though many in politics and the media seem not to understand it now.
Mellon was able to persuade Congress to lower the tax rates by large amounts. The percentage by which tax rates were lowered was greater at the lower income levels, but the total amount of money saved by taxpayers was of course greater on the part of people with higher incomes, who were paying much higher tax rates on those incomes.
Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73 percent to 24 percent. In other words, these were what the left likes to call "tax cuts for the rich."
What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose. Because economic activity increased, the government received more income tax revenues. In short, these were tax cuts for the economy, even if the left likes to call them "tax cuts for the rich."
This was not the only time that things like this happened, nor was Andrew Mellon the only one who advocated tax rate cuts in order to increase tax revenues. John Maynard Keynes pointed out in 1933 that lowering the tax rates can increase tax revenues, if the tax rates are so high as to discourage economic activity.
President John F. Kennedy made the same argument in the 1960s -- and tax revenues increased after the tax rates were cut during his administration. The same thing happened under Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. And it happened again under George W. Bush, whose tax rate cuts are scheduled to expire next January.
The rich actually paid more total taxes, and a higher percentage of all taxes, after the Bush tax rate cuts, because their incomes were rising with the rising economy.
Do the people who keep repeating the catch phrase, "tax cuts for the rich" not know this? Or are they depending on your not knowing it?
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/10/26/brass_oldies
Friday, September 24, 2010
DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
America In Decline, Sowell Says, Citing Spending And Int'l Policy
By DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/22/2010 07:17 PM ET
Early in his administration, President Reagan confidently asserted that "America's best days lie ahead." At the time it was true, but noted economist Thomas Sowell thinks it's no longer the case.
In his new book, "Dismantling America," Sowell argues that this nation is becoming one that many Americans no longer recognize as the country they grew up in or expected to pass on to their children and grandchildren. Rather, like Rome, America may be entering a prolonged period of decline.
Sowell sat down with IBD recently to discuss the political, social and economic forces that are leading to this decline and what, if anything, can reverse it.
IBD: What are the markers of national decline? What characteristics are different from a few decades ago that if they don't improve will lead to this country falling apart?
Sowell: One of the most serious current signs is the governing style of this administration, which is to impose as many things as possible on the public from the top down, without even letting them know what's going on.
Huge bills that fundamentally change the way the economy op erates have been rushed through Congress without hearings, without debate, and so fast that not even the members of Congress have a chance to read them. That's circumventing the notion of a constitutional government, and that's really at the heart of what the country is. The only analogy I can think of from history is when the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French for an English-speaking nation. The utter arrogance — you're not even to know what the laws are until it is too late.
Reckless spending is another. The deficit and the national debt, as a percentage of GNP, is higher now than it was during any time except World War II. Moreover, once World War II was over we stopped the spending and started paying off the existing debt. We're going in exactly the opposite direction.
Of course, the one that trumps them all is on the international scene. That's where Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons. I'm just staggered at how little attention is being paid to that compared to frivolous things. If a nation with a record of sponsoring international terrorism gets nuclear weapons, that changes everything and it changes it forever.
Someday historians may wonder what were we thinking about when you look at the imbalance of power between the U.S. and Iran, and we sat there with folded hands and watched this happen, going through just enough motions at the United Nations to lull the public to sleep. That, I think, is the biggest threat.
IBD: Do you think the Israelis will take out Iran's nuclear program if they will be condemned by the "international community" and can't rely on backing from the Obama administration?
Sowell: If the choice is between condemnation or annihilation, I think they will go for condemnation. There may be reasons why it isn't feasible, but it's a tremendous choice to leave on them.
IBD: What has Obama done to hasten our decline?
Sowell: He has affronted our allies, but he's very clever about it. He's done it in ways that the general public is unlikely to notice. But it is in ways that people in other countries cannot mistake at all, such as the downgrading of the visits of the prime minister of Britain or Israel. At one time the visit of the prime minister of Great Britain meant a state dinner, a press conference and so on.
His first foreign policy gambit was to fly to Russia and offer to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting Russian cooperation with the United States. All he really got out of that was a demonstration of his amateurishness and of his willingness to sell out allies in hopes of winning over enemies. That ploy was tried in the 1930s and didn't work all that well.
IBD: One big trend leading to America's decline that came through in the book was how politicians and activists use rhetoric.
Sowell: It's partly that, but it is also the education system has not taught people how to see through rhetoric. Somewhere Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of education is to create a mind that cannot be humbugged by words. Well, that is not the purpose of American education now. Much of the humbugging by words takes place inside the educational institutions themselves. Students are not generally taught to see both sides of an issue and learn how to analyze in such ways to see what the differences are and how you would sort it all out. Instead they're given one side and they're told that one side is it.
Schools all around the country have shown Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." But I doubt that one-tenth of students have seen the British Channel 4 production called "The Great Global Warming Swindle."
IBD: So if children are taught only one side as unquestioned truth, what's the value of experience and wisdom?
Sowell: At one time students were taught, "You're young, you're inexperienced, you have a lot to learn. It's not up to you to make sweeping conclusions about society." Today that is not the message. Today when I see young kids, sometimes elementary students, carrying banners for some crusade, someone ought to tell them that you don't even know anything. Or you hear they are writing letters to the president on nuclear policy and so on. Within the past week, I got a letter from a high school senior who was about to inform me about economics in general and about the reason why there was a Great Depression and why it is necessary that Obama does the things he does. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But students are encouraged to think that way.
IBD: You note in your book that Americans take a lot of good things in this country for granted. How does that hasten our decline?
Sowell: You have to have a sense that freedom is always under siege, and not just by people who don't believe in freedom but by people who have their own agendas and either don't know or don't care that those agendas mean reducing other people's freedom. So if you don't have a sense of the danger from those sources, you're going to face a steady erosion of freedom, because people put their own agendas ahead of other people's freedom.
IBD: The "Vision of the Anointed" — the idea that there is an anointed elite qualified to run other people's lives — surely that must be playing a role in the dismantling of America.
Sowell: Oh, absolutely! And I think no one believes in that vision more so than Barack Obama, with the possible exception of Michelle Obama. They are the ones who know what we need. The very idea that anyone would take over someone else's medical care and think that it can be run from Washington by bureaucrats is just staggering. There needs to be a healthy fear of "making a difference" in areas where you have no expertise. Some years ago I was in a hotel, and the hotel clerk called me up and asked, "Is this Dr. Sowell?" I said yes. He said, "There is a pregnant woman downstairs in labor. Would you please come downstairs and help with the delivery?" I was absolutely appalled. That ought to be the reaction of most people when presented with an opportunity to "make a difference" in an area where they don't know what they are talking about.
IBD: How does the housing crisis embody some of the trends in the book?
Sowell: Everything that was done wrong in the past has been continued and escalated in the present. The recent so-called financial reform act left out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Fannie and Freddie are two institutions that are in the production and distribution of moral hazard.
Nothing will increase risk more than by shifting it to somebody else. If I thought the government would back me up, I'd go into the commodities market and put a million dollars into soybean futures. Knowing that the government is not going to back me up, I won't go within 100 miles of the commodities market.
Politicians know that politically it pays to have the taxpayers pick up the bill (as with Fannie and Freddie). People ask me sometimes, "Why do politicians keep making the same mistakes? Don't they ever learn?" And I reply, "They do learn! They learn they can get away with it. That's what they learn."
IBD: What is the "fallacy of fairness"?
Sowell: Most people would say that the government should treat everybody alike, judge them by the same standards, reward or punish them according to the same rules. That we can pretty much agree on.
But there is a more esoteric notion of fairness. Is it fair if one person is born into the world in circumstances that virtually guarantee their failure and others are born into circumstances that virtually guarantee their success? That kind of fairness is not social injustice, because society doesn't create it and society can't do much about it.
In my case I can see it pretty vividly. I'm one of those people who was separated from my siblings in infancy, grew up not knowing they existed and learned about them later on. We were all raised by poor people with very little education. But the family in which I was raised was determined that, although they had no education, I should have an education. I remember what a fuss was made when I was promoted to the seventh grade. I was taken aback by it and someone said to me, "You've now gone further than any of us."
Now contrast that with my younger brother raised down in North Carolina. One day, as a teenager, someone noticed he had on his Sunday clothes in the middle of the week. When asked why, he said he was graduating from high school that day. No one came to see him graduate or thought much of it, even though none of the people in his family had ever gone to high school. So he had to do it all on his own .
I had a sister who was also raised hundreds of miles away. And when she went to Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., which was an elite school, there was resentment in her adoptive family. The reason was that the biological daughters in that family were nowhere near smart enough to go to that school.
Sociologists would come along and lump all three of these families together. But the kinds of things that matter are the things that politicians and bureaucrats can't do much about.
Now, you can create scholarships, tutoring programs and so on. But you have to recognize that the values that the kids have are the crucial things that will make or break them.
IBD: In your book you have two columns titled "Empathy Versus the Law," and you discuss the rule of law vs. the rule of lawyers and judges. Explain how that is leading to our decline.
Sowell: Empathy is one of the weasel words of our time. It is a prettier word than bias, but it means the same thing. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with those firefighters in Connecticut gave a free demonstration what empathy and bias mean. And yet not only was she confirmed; there were Republicans who announced going in that they were going to confirm her.
One of the things that happens is that people have no sense of what the law is supposed to be. It's not a matter of righting wrongs.
In the days of the French Revolution, "representatives on missions" were sent around the country to right wrongs. They had the power to overrule any laws or local officials. They carried their own guillotines with them. That notion of law, that's the direction those who are pushing judicial activism are going.
There was a time when we understood the judge's job is not to have empathy; his job is to carry out the law as written. And if it was a bad law it was up to the legislature to change it.
IBD: What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Could it reverse our decline?
Sowell: I'm sure it's one of the elements. I think one of the things more important than the Tea Parties is that so many people who were not political activists before have been spurred into action by the kind of things that have been done and the dangers they see. The biggest danger is not to see the danger. There are increasing numbers of people who see the danger. There are increasing numbers of people according to the polls who have no confidence in the media. I was delighted that Newsweek magazine is having so much trouble because they richly deserve it. There was one time I wondered who they were going to put on the cover once the Obamas were gone. So there are those signs, and as the great philosopher Yogi Berra said, "It's not over till it's over."
© 2010 Investor's Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Investor's Business Daily, IBD and CAN SLIM and their corresponding logos are registered
By DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/22/2010 07:17 PM ET
Early in his administration, President Reagan confidently asserted that "America's best days lie ahead." At the time it was true, but noted economist Thomas Sowell thinks it's no longer the case.
In his new book, "Dismantling America," Sowell argues that this nation is becoming one that many Americans no longer recognize as the country they grew up in or expected to pass on to their children and grandchildren. Rather, like Rome, America may be entering a prolonged period of decline.
Sowell sat down with IBD recently to discuss the political, social and economic forces that are leading to this decline and what, if anything, can reverse it.
IBD: What are the markers of national decline? What characteristics are different from a few decades ago that if they don't improve will lead to this country falling apart?
Sowell: One of the most serious current signs is the governing style of this administration, which is to impose as many things as possible on the public from the top down, without even letting them know what's going on.
Huge bills that fundamentally change the way the economy op erates have been rushed through Congress without hearings, without debate, and so fast that not even the members of Congress have a chance to read them. That's circumventing the notion of a constitutional government, and that's really at the heart of what the country is. The only analogy I can think of from history is when the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French for an English-speaking nation. The utter arrogance — you're not even to know what the laws are until it is too late.
Reckless spending is another. The deficit and the national debt, as a percentage of GNP, is higher now than it was during any time except World War II. Moreover, once World War II was over we stopped the spending and started paying off the existing debt. We're going in exactly the opposite direction.
Of course, the one that trumps them all is on the international scene. That's where Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons. I'm just staggered at how little attention is being paid to that compared to frivolous things. If a nation with a record of sponsoring international terrorism gets nuclear weapons, that changes everything and it changes it forever.
Someday historians may wonder what were we thinking about when you look at the imbalance of power between the U.S. and Iran, and we sat there with folded hands and watched this happen, going through just enough motions at the United Nations to lull the public to sleep. That, I think, is the biggest threat.
IBD: Do you think the Israelis will take out Iran's nuclear program if they will be condemned by the "international community" and can't rely on backing from the Obama administration?
Sowell: If the choice is between condemnation or annihilation, I think they will go for condemnation. There may be reasons why it isn't feasible, but it's a tremendous choice to leave on them.
IBD: What has Obama done to hasten our decline?
Sowell: He has affronted our allies, but he's very clever about it. He's done it in ways that the general public is unlikely to notice. But it is in ways that people in other countries cannot mistake at all, such as the downgrading of the visits of the prime minister of Britain or Israel. At one time the visit of the prime minister of Great Britain meant a state dinner, a press conference and so on.
His first foreign policy gambit was to fly to Russia and offer to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting Russian cooperation with the United States. All he really got out of that was a demonstration of his amateurishness and of his willingness to sell out allies in hopes of winning over enemies. That ploy was tried in the 1930s and didn't work all that well.
IBD: One big trend leading to America's decline that came through in the book was how politicians and activists use rhetoric.
Sowell: It's partly that, but it is also the education system has not taught people how to see through rhetoric. Somewhere Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of education is to create a mind that cannot be humbugged by words. Well, that is not the purpose of American education now. Much of the humbugging by words takes place inside the educational institutions themselves. Students are not generally taught to see both sides of an issue and learn how to analyze in such ways to see what the differences are and how you would sort it all out. Instead they're given one side and they're told that one side is it.
Schools all around the country have shown Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." But I doubt that one-tenth of students have seen the British Channel 4 production called "The Great Global Warming Swindle."
IBD: So if children are taught only one side as unquestioned truth, what's the value of experience and wisdom?
Sowell: At one time students were taught, "You're young, you're inexperienced, you have a lot to learn. It's not up to you to make sweeping conclusions about society." Today that is not the message. Today when I see young kids, sometimes elementary students, carrying banners for some crusade, someone ought to tell them that you don't even know anything. Or you hear they are writing letters to the president on nuclear policy and so on. Within the past week, I got a letter from a high school senior who was about to inform me about economics in general and about the reason why there was a Great Depression and why it is necessary that Obama does the things he does. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But students are encouraged to think that way.
IBD: You note in your book that Americans take a lot of good things in this country for granted. How does that hasten our decline?
Sowell: You have to have a sense that freedom is always under siege, and not just by people who don't believe in freedom but by people who have their own agendas and either don't know or don't care that those agendas mean reducing other people's freedom. So if you don't have a sense of the danger from those sources, you're going to face a steady erosion of freedom, because people put their own agendas ahead of other people's freedom.
IBD: The "Vision of the Anointed" — the idea that there is an anointed elite qualified to run other people's lives — surely that must be playing a role in the dismantling of America.
Sowell: Oh, absolutely! And I think no one believes in that vision more so than Barack Obama, with the possible exception of Michelle Obama. They are the ones who know what we need. The very idea that anyone would take over someone else's medical care and think that it can be run from Washington by bureaucrats is just staggering. There needs to be a healthy fear of "making a difference" in areas where you have no expertise. Some years ago I was in a hotel, and the hotel clerk called me up and asked, "Is this Dr. Sowell?" I said yes. He said, "There is a pregnant woman downstairs in labor. Would you please come downstairs and help with the delivery?" I was absolutely appalled. That ought to be the reaction of most people when presented with an opportunity to "make a difference" in an area where they don't know what they are talking about.
IBD: How does the housing crisis embody some of the trends in the book?
Sowell: Everything that was done wrong in the past has been continued and escalated in the present. The recent so-called financial reform act left out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Fannie and Freddie are two institutions that are in the production and distribution of moral hazard.
Nothing will increase risk more than by shifting it to somebody else. If I thought the government would back me up, I'd go into the commodities market and put a million dollars into soybean futures. Knowing that the government is not going to back me up, I won't go within 100 miles of the commodities market.
Politicians know that politically it pays to have the taxpayers pick up the bill (as with Fannie and Freddie). People ask me sometimes, "Why do politicians keep making the same mistakes? Don't they ever learn?" And I reply, "They do learn! They learn they can get away with it. That's what they learn."
IBD: What is the "fallacy of fairness"?
Sowell: Most people would say that the government should treat everybody alike, judge them by the same standards, reward or punish them according to the same rules. That we can pretty much agree on.
But there is a more esoteric notion of fairness. Is it fair if one person is born into the world in circumstances that virtually guarantee their failure and others are born into circumstances that virtually guarantee their success? That kind of fairness is not social injustice, because society doesn't create it and society can't do much about it.
In my case I can see it pretty vividly. I'm one of those people who was separated from my siblings in infancy, grew up not knowing they existed and learned about them later on. We were all raised by poor people with very little education. But the family in which I was raised was determined that, although they had no education, I should have an education. I remember what a fuss was made when I was promoted to the seventh grade. I was taken aback by it and someone said to me, "You've now gone further than any of us."
Now contrast that with my younger brother raised down in North Carolina. One day, as a teenager, someone noticed he had on his Sunday clothes in the middle of the week. When asked why, he said he was graduating from high school that day. No one came to see him graduate or thought much of it, even though none of the people in his family had ever gone to high school. So he had to do it all on his own .
I had a sister who was also raised hundreds of miles away. And when she went to Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., which was an elite school, there was resentment in her adoptive family. The reason was that the biological daughters in that family were nowhere near smart enough to go to that school.
Sociologists would come along and lump all three of these families together. But the kinds of things that matter are the things that politicians and bureaucrats can't do much about.
Now, you can create scholarships, tutoring programs and so on. But you have to recognize that the values that the kids have are the crucial things that will make or break them.
IBD: In your book you have two columns titled "Empathy Versus the Law," and you discuss the rule of law vs. the rule of lawyers and judges. Explain how that is leading to our decline.
Sowell: Empathy is one of the weasel words of our time. It is a prettier word than bias, but it means the same thing. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with those firefighters in Connecticut gave a free demonstration what empathy and bias mean. And yet not only was she confirmed; there were Republicans who announced going in that they were going to confirm her.
One of the things that happens is that people have no sense of what the law is supposed to be. It's not a matter of righting wrongs.
In the days of the French Revolution, "representatives on missions" were sent around the country to right wrongs. They had the power to overrule any laws or local officials. They carried their own guillotines with them. That notion of law, that's the direction those who are pushing judicial activism are going.
There was a time when we understood the judge's job is not to have empathy; his job is to carry out the law as written. And if it was a bad law it was up to the legislature to change it.
IBD: What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Could it reverse our decline?
Sowell: I'm sure it's one of the elements. I think one of the things more important than the Tea Parties is that so many people who were not political activists before have been spurred into action by the kind of things that have been done and the dangers they see. The biggest danger is not to see the danger. There are increasing numbers of people who see the danger. There are increasing numbers of people according to the polls who have no confidence in the media. I was delighted that Newsweek magazine is having so much trouble because they richly deserve it. There was one time I wondered who they were going to put on the cover once the Obamas were gone. So there are those signs, and as the great philosopher Yogi Berra said, "It's not over till it's over."
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Saturday, July 24, 2010
Dismantling America
Thomas Sowell: Dismantling America
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.
How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people 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?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/10/27/dismantling_america/page/full#
Thomas Sowell's Biography Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
©Creators Syndicate
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.
How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people 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?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/10/27/dismantling_america/page/full#
Thomas Sowell's Biography Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.
TOWNHALL DAILY: Sign up today and receive Thomas Sowell and Townhall.com's daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.
©Creators Syndicate
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