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Sowell: Random Thoughts, Looking Back
Creators Syndicate ^ | December 27, 2016 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on 12/26/2016 11:11:39 AM PST by jazusamo

Any honest man, looking back on a very long life, must admit — even if only to himself — being a relic of a bygone era. Having lived long enough to have seen both "the greatest generation" that fought World War II and the gratingest generation that we see all around us today, makes being a relic of the past more of a boast than an admission.

Not everything in the past was admirable. Poet W.H. Auden called the 1930s "a low dishonest decade." So were the 1960s, which launched many of the trends we are experiencing so painfully today. Some of the fashionable notions of the 1930s reappeared in the 1960s, often using the very same discredited words and producing the same disastrous consequences.

The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer, if they disregard the record of the past.

If you want to understand the fatal dangers facing America today, read "The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill. The book is not about America, the Middle East or nuclear missiles. But it shows Europe's attitudes and delusions — aimed at peace in the years before the Second World War — which instead ended up bringing on that most terrible war in all of human history.

(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: conservatives; legacy; randomthoughts; sowell; thomassowell

1 posted on 12/26/2016 11:11:39 AM PST by jazusamo
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To: jazusamo

Sowell: a relic of a bygone era

Sorry, Mr. Sowell, I must take a rare stance of disagreeing with you.

You are NOT a relic. You are a LEGACY.

Thanks for all of your contributions to the cause of conservatism.


2 posted on 12/26/2016 11:56:00 AM PST by unlearner (11/8/2016 - a new beginning.)
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To: jazusamo
Dr. Sowell is indeed a relic of a bygone era.

Would that we had a million more like him.

3 posted on 12/26/2016 12:10:43 PM PST by IronJack
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To: unlearner; IronJack
You are NOT a relic. You are a LEGACY.

Would that we had a million more like him.

BUMP!

4 posted on 12/26/2016 12:15:07 PM PST by jazusamo (Have YOU Donated to Free Republic? https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: jazusamo

I re-read “The Gathering Storm” earlier this year. Highly recommended and I intend to re-read the rest of the volumes (this is a six-part work on WW2 written by Winston Churchill).


5 posted on 12/26/2016 12:25:35 PM PST by SamAdams76
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To: jazusamo
Any honest man, looking back on a very long life, must admit — even if only to himself — being a relic of a bygone era. Having lived long enough to have seen both "the greatest generation" that fought World War II and the gratingest generation that we see all around us today, makes being a relic of the past more of a boast than an admission.

I feel this way now and I'm not even sixty.

6 posted on 12/26/2016 12:26:58 PM PST by Rummyfan
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To: Rummyfan

I agree. I am pushing 50, but feel like a stranger in my own nation most of the time.


7 posted on 12/26/2016 1:19:58 PM PST by my small voice (A biased media and an uneducated populace is the biggest thre at to our nation.)
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To: Rummyfan

I agree. I am pushing 50, but feel like a stranger in my own nation most of the time.


8 posted on 12/26/2016 1:28:53 PM PST by my small voice (A biased media and an uneducated populace is the biggest thre at to our nation.)
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To: my small voice

I’m 58 and until last month when sanity returned, I thought the world as we knew it was gone for good.


9 posted on 12/27/2016 10:16:26 PM PST by Luke21
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