Posted on 05/25/2015 11:20:23 AM PDT by jazusamo
This is the season of college graduations, and many people may be wondering what kinds of gifts would be most appropriate for young people leaving the world of academia and heading out to face the challenges and opportunities of adulthood in the real world.
Given the narrow range of left to far left views of the world on most college campuses, and the vast ignorance of other views, even among graduates of elite academic institutions, one valuable gift might be a book giving a different perspective on the world.
The recent publication of "American Contempt for Liberty" a hefty, 417-page collection of columns by economist Walter E. Williams, would be an excellent choice. For many college graduates, this book would be virtually an education in itself, covering many issues and presenting many perspectives they have never encountered before, in this era of academic lockstep thinking on social issues.
How often will most college students have seen Social Security exposed as "The National Ponzi scheme," as one of Professor Williams' columns does in plain, hard-hitting English? Or see minimum wage laws examined in terms of their actual results, rather than their pious rhetoric?
Another book that would open the eyes of most of today's graduates to a world they have never encountered or conceived is "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple. It shows the actual effects of the welfare state on the way people live their lives. It is not a pretty picture, but inexperienced young people need to become acquainted with realities, after years of hearing high-sounding theories.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
Amen...Your brother needed and used Colt. He didn’t need the publications Dr. Sowell mentioned, in fact he probably could have written some on the subject. :)
Well, I gave my kid a home with two imperfect parents in a community with safe schools. I helped him with his homework. I paid for his college and gave him a new car. I think we are good.
Dr. Sowell is too modest.
His thin volume on economy would be an excellent start.
“Economic Facts and Fallacies”
If the newly graduate is open for more eye-opening to the real world, his “Intellectuals and Race” would be another excellent follow-up reading.
"...there have always been those who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government. There is but one safe rule...confine (it) within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution....Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed." - Andrew Jackson's Valedictory
"We have received it [the Constitution] as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as to the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred awe as the palladium of our liberties, and with all the solemnities of religion have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here and our hopes of happiness hereafter in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution . . .? No. We were not mistaken. The letter of this great instrument is free from this radical fault. . . . No, we did not err! . . . The sages . . . have given us a practical and, as they hoped, a permanent* Constitutional compact. . . . The Constitution is still the object of our reverence, the bond of our Union, our defense in danger, the source of our prosperity in peace: it shall descend, as we have received it, uncorrupted by sophistical construction, to our posterity. . . ." - President Andrew Jackson's Proclamation of December 10, 1832
*Underlining added for emphasis
" However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed." - Andrew Jackson, 7th Annuel Message to Congress, December 7, 1835
"The Constitution and the laws are supreme and the Union indissoluble." - Andrew Jackson, Message to Congress, January 16, 1833
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