Some gems of wisdom from Thomas Sowell
From Thomas Sowell’s column last December:
1. Some people seem to think that, if life is not fair, then the answer is to turn more of the nation’s resources over to politicians — who will, of course, then spend these resources in ways that increase the politicians’ chances of getting reelected.
2. If someone wrote a novel about a man who was raised from childhood to resent the successful and despise the basic values of America — and who then went on to become President of the United States — that novel would be considered too unbelievable, even for a work of fiction. Yet that is what has happened in real life.
3. Everybody is talking about how we are going to pay for the huge national debt, but nobody seems to be talking about the runaway spending which created that record-breaking debt. In other words, the big spenders get political benefits from handing out goodies, while those who resist giving them more money to spend will be blamed for sending the country off the “fiscal cliff.”
4. The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit — replacing what works with what sounds good.
MP: For the last one (#4), I think we could also apply that conclusion to many other areas like: a) the history of education (e.g. replacing phonics with whole language and replacing traditional math with “rain forest math”), b) the history of public transportation (e.g. replacing cost-effective, convenient cars and freeways with expensive, cost-ineffective light rail transit systems that require massive taxpayer life support in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles), and c) the history of energy policy (e.g. trying to replace low-cost, energy-efficient, reliable fossil fuels with high-cost energy-inefficient alternatives like ethanol, wind, and solar, which typically require massive taxpayer life-support).
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