Posted on 01/05/2015 8:58:57 AM PST by jazusamo
Some time ago, burglars in England scrawled a message on the wall of a home they had looted: "RICH BASTARDS."
Those two words captured the spirit of the politicized vision of equality — that it was a grievance when someone was better off than themselves.
That, of course, is not the only meaning of equality, but it is the predominant political meaning in practice, where economic "disparities" and "gaps" are automatically treated as "inequities." If one racial or ethnic group has a lower income than another, that is automatically called "discrimination" by many people in politics, the media and academia.
It doesn't matter how much evidence there is that some groups work harder in school, perform better and spend more postgraduate years studying to acquire valuable skills in medicine, science or engineering. If the economic end results are unequal, that is treated as a grievance against those with better outcomes, and a sign of an "unfair" society.
The rhetoric of clever people often confuses the undeniable fact that life is unfair with the claim that a given institution or society is unfair.
Children born into families that raise them with love and with care to see that they acquire knowledge, values and discipline that will make them valuable members of society have far more chances of economic and other success in adulthood than children raised in families that lack these qualities.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
A good half of the world will not recognize that the looter is the greedy one.
A+
(as usual)
That is why I scrawled a message on the outside of my home:
You loot - I shoot.
Easily understood and a definite attention getter.
It is like a starving man who sees a meal, knowing it will never be his.
Sowell's work demolishes many, if not all, liberal tropes related to racism, equality, and income disparity.
Brilliant work.
But I have come to the conclusion it is all for naught. The people who need to read it the most are the ones who will never read it and will resist reading it and understanding it to the last.
To quote Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
In this case, liberals are so heavily invested that, if they were to read Sowell's work with an open mind, they might well have their entire liberal edifice come crashing down on top of themselves. And they can't let that happen.
It is interesting that you would quote a liberal/socialist (Sinclair) against liberals, or perhaps I mean ironic.
If ever there was a man who was anti wealth and corporation, it is Sinclair.
Still, nice quote.
If you want to read someone else who is beating his head against a wall, read Alex Epstein’s “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” I can’t help but quote him to people who spout anti wealth, anti energy, anti population, pro environment tripe.
Sadly, for the most part you’re right.
I have a Google alert for Dr. Sowell and it’s not uncommon to receive several alerts in a week regarding letters to the editor criticizing one or more of his columns, some calling for the paper to stop printing his columns.
The vast majority are written by leftists who don’t have a clue what Dr. Sowell is saying but understand his writings don’t fit their agenda.
Fortunately there are many who write letters supporting him.
“Rich Bastards” pretty much sums up the governing philosophy of the Left. Someone once told me that the measure of your character defects is the difference between what you want out of life and how hard you are willing to work to get it. If you want a nice car but are not willing to work to get it, you will steal one, or be envious of people who have them.
The protesters (for ANY cause) are usually young people ... under 30 types ... that have paid no dues nor scraped any knuckles, but have been led to be overactive in their display(s) of displeasure.
Thus; The Thomas Sowells are not read by the ones that SHOULD read him
So us older farts have to ignore the protesters ... or go (attempt to) bust some heads when we realize we're terminal of something and have nothing to lose by being arrested ... or die of a heart attack trying to act like a 27 year old.
Ass kickin' has apparently gone by the wayside for 'time out'
He left out the connection between the facts and the conclusion, here. "Studies show" (wizard words ;-) that a child's school success can be predicted based on the number of words the child understands when he starts school. Verbal comprehension is both in itself a key academic ability, and a marker for a whole array of factors that contributed to academic success.
The “rest of the story” is the biographical information that Sowell is too modest to refer to in his article.
In “A Personal Odyssey” Sowell recounts his childhood in Harlem and his tough time in the educational system. He had to drop out of High School but after the Marine Corps ended up magna cum laude at Harvard for his Bachelors in economics. Working hard and eventually getting a doctorate from the University of Chicago, he left his early study of Marx and became a free market man through force of intelligent observation, not through some sort of political conversion.
He was the perfect candidate for the politics of race and victimization, but just too damn intelligent to buy into it.
At age 84 this brilliant man is still writing the most deep and thoughtful books as well as his columns that are wonderful educational moments.
If we had to pick the four writers that redefined modern conservatism in the chronological order of their ascendancy, we could do no better than Russell Kirk — Fredric Hayek — Milton Friedman — Thomas Sowell.
He keeps his columns very non-technical for the general reader. As his detailed books on Late Talking Children would stress, he very well understands all the detailed distinctions, he just did not want to “go into the weeds” while making his broader point in straight forward prose.
We are so polarized that neither truth, logic, fairness, nor anything else matter. It's a blood feud.
This is true, I dislike him and his work, but dang, that particular quote sure does fit.
Now my hands feel dirty...
Good point and funny you mention that.
A couple days ago I saw a very short video (1 minute plus) segment where Peter Robinson asked Dr. Sowell about how he went from a high school dropout to a Harvard graduate in so few years.
Dr. Sowell didn’t go into it and was very modest about it.
One problem with leftists and “equality” is that their solutions never equalize up; they always close the gap by lowering everyone.
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