Happy Birthday Dr Sowell
The great one just keeps on going:
Incredible as it may seem, the world-renowned economist and political and social commentator Thomas Sowell has just turned 96. What is especially incredible is the fact that his mind appears as sharp as ever, and he keeps turning out vitally important written and verbal commentary.
That I have the highest regard for this great man is evidenced by the fact that this happens to be my 151st article that discusses him, quotes from him, or mentions him. I certainly will keep on writing about his vital contributions to the crucial issues of the day. Another indication of my respect for Sowell: while I do not have all of his books, I do own 35 of them.
But sadly there would be some folks who are completely unaware of Sowell and his work. So offering a few quotes (out of hundreds, if not thousands) is one way to introduce him to you. I start with six brief quotes on a variety of topics, and then present one entire essay by him.
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. When politicians discover some group that is being vocal about not having as much as they want, the ‘solution’ is to give them more. Where do politicians get this ‘more’? They rob Peter to pay Paul. After a while, of course, they discover that Peter doesn’t have enough. Bursting with compassion, politicians rush to the rescue. Needless to say, they do not admit that robbing Peter to pay Paul was a dumb idea in the first place. On the contrary, they now rob Tom, Dick, and Harry to help Peter.” Is Reality Optional? 1993, p. 131
“No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk. What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.” Controversial Essays, 2002, p. 6
“What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given ‘class’ labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing ‘class’ makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms.” The Vision of the Anointed, 1995, p. 48
“The phrase ‘I feel’ is often used by American students to introduce a conclusion, rather than say ‘I think,’ or ‘I know,’ much less ‘I conclude.’ Unfortunately, ‘I feel’ is often the most accurate term—and is regarded as sufficient by many teachers, as well as students. The net result, as in mathematics, is that many students are confident incompetents, whether discussing social issues, world events, or other subjects. The emphasis is on having students express opinions on issues, and on having those opinions taken seriously (enhancing self-esteem), regardless of whether there is anything behind them.” Inside American Education, 1993, p. 5
“Discrimination as an explanation of economic and social disparities may have a similar emotional appeal for many. But we can at least try to treat these and other theories as testable hypotheses. The historic consequences of treating particular beliefs as sacred dogmas, beyond the reach of evidence or logic, should be enough to dissuade us from going down that road again—despite how exciting or emotionally satisfying political dogmas and the crusades resulting from those dogmas can be, or how convenient in sparing us the drudgery and discomfort of having to think through our own beliefs or test them against facts.” Discrimination and Disparities, 2018, 2019, p. 28
“Those who carry the civil rights vision to its ultimate conclusion see no great difference between promoting equality of opportunity and equality of results. If there are not equal results among groups presumed to have equal genetic potential, then some inequality of opportunity must have intervened somewhere, and the question of precisely where is less important than the remedy of restoring the less fortunate to their just position. The fatal flaw of this kind of thinking is that there are many reasons, besides genes and discrimination, why groups differ in their economic performances and rewards. Groups differ by large amounts demographically, culturally, and geographically – and all talk of these differences have profound effects on incomes and occupations.” Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality, 1984, p. 42
Sowell On Anti-Semitism
In his 1999 collection of essays Barbarians Inside the Gates (Hoover Press), one of the articles that is reprinted therein is titled “Singling Out the Jews”. It has to do with the slave trade and anti-Semitic accusations concerning it. The entire piece is worth sharing here.
Nothing represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than an attempt to have a rational discussion of racial issues. Nevertheless, recent controversies about anti-Semitic speakers accusing Jews of being slave traders on television, and on college campuses across the country, raise painful questions that have to be addressed.
Blacks and Jews are by no means the only peoples implicated in discussions of slavery. The whole tragic history of slavery has been ideologically distorted beyond recognition, even before the recent demagogic vogue of charging Jews with trading blacks in bondage.
One symptom of this distortion is that many people think automatically of blacks in the antebellum South when slavery is mentioned. Yet Brazil alone imported more than six times as many slaves from Africa as the United States did, and the Islamic countries imported more than the entire Western Hemisphere.
Africa, however, has not been unique as a source of slaves. Slavery has existed virtually everywhere that human beings have existed. Professor David Eltis of Queens University in Canada, a leading scholar in this field, says that slavery was “universal” until very recently as history is measured, that “few peoples in the world have not constituted a major source of slaves at one time or another.”
The very word “slave” derives from the Slavs, who were enslaved longer than the entire history of the United States, and about twice as long as blacks were enslaved in North America.
Despite the universality of this hideous institution and its victims, books and articles on slavery are overwhelmingly about slavery in the United States, or at most about slavery in the Western Hemisphere. This is true of both academic studies and popular literature. Many use this universal institution as a moral indictment, selectively applied to Western civilization.
Ironically, it was Western civilization which eventually destroyed slavery around the world, during the era when European imperialism reached every continent. Even autonomous nations which abolished slavery usually did so under pressure from the West or in order to avoid the national embarrassment of being regarded as uncivilized by the West. But this whole epic story—perhaps the biggest moral achievement in history—remains largely untold, because it does not fit the ideological vision of the intelligentsia.
On a subject where such ideological distortion has been the rule rather than the exception, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would take it a step further and single out Jews as responsible for the enslavement and trading of Africans. But when it came to enslaving human beings and trading them like cattle, blacks did it, whites did it, Jews did it, Gentiles did it. There was slavery in China and Russia and in the island paradise of Bali.
If this presents an ugly picture of the human race, so be it. But to talk about Jews trading slaves is like saying that white people have toenails. It is true enough in itself, but grossly misleading if it suggests that non-whites do not have toenails.
During the long era of slavery, going back thousands of years and extending around the world, merchant peoples in general traded slaves along with other merchandise. Venetians, Greeks and Jews did so in Europe, the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, The Arabs in Africa and the Middle East, as well as various African tribes, among many other peoples in many other places.
None of those who are trying to whip up Americans of African ancestry against Jews points out that the Arabs were among the principal enslavers and traders of Africans, while Jews were much more likely to be trading Slavs in Medieval Europe and around the Mediterranean. No doubt diligent research can turn up cases of Jews holding or trading black slaves in the Western Hemisphere, but blacks themselves did the same thing in the Caribbean and in New Orleans and Charleston, among other places. Nobody’s hands are completely clean.
Even if the discussion of slavery is arbitrarily restricted to the enslavement of black people, Jews come far down the list of those involved. They cannot compare with the number of Africans who held fellow-Africans in bondage in Africa, not even counting those who sold their black brothers to the white man.
Most Jews were in no position to trade slaves, and had all that they could do to survive the persecutions to which they were themselves subjected. But leading scholars—both Jews and Gentiles—affirm that Jews were not exempt from taking part in this global trade.
The singling out of Jews and the implication that they had some special role in the enslavement of Africans is an outrage rightly being condemned, though not by enough people. Unfortunately, it is only a further extension of the pervasive selective history and selective moral indignation that has long marked the discussion of slavery and other issues, even in “respectable” circles. (pp. 189-191)
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