Thomas Sowell: American schools are undermining American society. Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened. Among the factors he cited were the country's educators. That struck me as odd, and not very plausible, at the time.
But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd, and more and more plausible. Today, I see our own educators playing a similar role in creating a mindset that undermines American society. Schools were once thought of as places where a society's knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education -- one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas. If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and read it. Listening to a Liar. | The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them. The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated.
If you go by words, you can be led into anything. No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess— for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Race Cards. | If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter's new book, "Mugged. " Its subtitle is: "Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. " (Buy it for 40% off the cover price by clicking here or in KINDLE at a 52% discount by clicking here).
Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best. Many people will learn for the first time from Ann Coulter's book how a drunken hoodlum and ex-convict, who tried to attack the police, was turned into a victim and a martyr by the media, simply by editing a videotape and broadcasting that edited version, over and over, across the nation. Meanwhile, the people whose slick editing set off this chain of events received a Pulitzer Prize. "Mugged" is more than an informative book. Killing The Goose - Thomas Sowell. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is one of those old fairy tales for children which has a heavy message that a lot of adults should listen to. The labor unions which have driven the makers of Twinkies into bankruptcy, potentially destroying 18,500 jobs, could have learned a lot from that old children's fairy tale.
Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don't want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their employees more than the union wages, just to keep them from joining a union. Why would they do that, if it is just a question of not wanting to pay union wages?
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions' members. An Overdue Book - Thomas Sowell. If everyone in America had read Stephen Moore's new book, "Who's The Fairest of Them All? ", Barack Obama would have lost the election in a landslide. The point here is not to say, "Where was Stephen Moore when we needed him?
" A more apt question might be, "Where was the whole economics profession when we needed them? " Where were the media? Thomas Sowell Archives. Phony in Chief. | When President Barack Obama and others on the left are not busy admonishing the rest of us to be "civil" in our discussions of political issues, they are busy letting loose insults, accusations and smears against those who dare to disagree with them. Like so many people who have been beaten in a verbal encounter, and who can think of clever things to say the next day, after it is all over, President Obama, after his clear loss in his debate with Mitt Romney, called Governor Romney a "phony. " Innumerable facts, however, show that it is our Commander in Chief who is Phony in Chief. A classic example was his speech to a predominantly black audience at Hampton University on June 5, 2007.
That date is important, as we shall see. Departing from his prepared remarks, he mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10 percent as much as the federal government does. Random Thoughts. Gross Misconceptions. | This country is at a historic crossroads, and the path we choose can determine our future far beyond the next four years. Our children and grandchildren may someday bless us or curse us for what we do this Tuesday. Against that background, it is painful to see the petty talking points and gross misconceptions that seem to dominate this year's election campaign. Take the question of jobs. How many times have we heard about how many jobs have been added during the Obama administration? The government can always increase some jobs, either directly by hiring more people or indirectly by policies that increase employment in particular industries or regions.
Yet who in the media even asks that question? Instead, they focus on the unemployment rate. Another gross misconception on the job front is that jobs created during a given administration are a result of the policies of that administration, as are any other signs of economic recovery. Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell on Creators. Income inequality has long been one of the liberals' favorite issues. So there is nothing surprising about its being pushed hard this election year.
If nothing else, it is a much-needed distraction from the disasters of ObamaCare and the various IRS, Benghazi and other Obama administration scandals. Like so many other favorite liberal issues, income inequality is seldom discussed in terms of the actual consequences of liberal policies. When you turn from eloquent rhetoric to hard facts, the hardest of those facts is that income inequality has actually increased during five years of Barack Obama's leftist policies.
This is not as surprising as some might think. There is a sweeping array of other government subsidies, whether in money or in kind, which together allow many people to receive greater benefits than they could earn by working at low-skilled jobs. Most of the households in the bottom 20 percent of income earners have nobody working.
Invincible Ignorance - Thomas Sowell. Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of "gun control" advocates? The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive. Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates.
Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many. When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. On Christmas, Liberals Are By No Means Liberal - Thomas Sowell. Random thoughts on the passing scene: When I was growing up, an older member of the family used to say, "What you don't know would make a big book. " Now that I am an older member of the family, I would say to anyone, "What you don't know would fill more books than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
" At least half of our society's troubles come from know-it-alls, in a world where nobody knows even 10 percent of all. 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. The annual outbursts of intolerance toward any display of traditional Christmas scenes, or even daring to call a Christmas tree by its name, show that today's liberals are by no means liberal. Behind the mist of their lofty words, the totalitarian mindset shows through. Many people say, "War should be a last resort. " Intellectuals & Society.
Vision of the Anointed. "Forward" to the Past? - Thomas Sowell. The political slogan "Forward" served Barack Obama well during this year's election campaign. It said that he was for going forward, while Republicans were for "going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place. " It was great political rhetoric and great political theater. Moreover, the Republicans did virtually nothing to challenge its shaky assumptions with a few hard facts that could have made those assumptions collapse like a house of cards.
More is involved than this year's political battles. The word "forward" has been a political battle cry on the left for more than a century. The seductive notion of economic equality has appealed to many people. What these idealistic experiments all had in common was that they failed. They learned the hard way that people would not do as much for the common good as they would do for their own good.
Similar experiments were tried on a larger scale in other countries around the world. Taxing the Poor - Thomas Sowell. With all the talk about taxing the rich, we hear very little talk about taxing the poor. Yet the marginal tax rate on someone living in poverty can sometimes be higher than the marginal tax rate on millionaires. While it is true that nearly half the households in the country pay no income tax at all, the apparently simple word "tax" has many complications that can be a challenge for even professional economists to untangle.
If you define a tax as only those things that the government chooses to call a tax, you get a radically different picture from what you get when you say, "If it looks like a tax, acts like a tax and takes away your resources like a tax, then it's a tax. " One of the biggest, and one of the oldest, taxes in this latter sense is inflation.
Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all. Of course, prices skyrocketed with vastly more money in circulation. That's not all. Fiscal Cliff Notes - Thomas Sowell. Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year?
All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting "the rich" to pay "their fair share" is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics. No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. This is an insult to our intelligence. What about "investing in the industries of the future"? Fiscal Cliff Notes: Part II - Thomas Sowell. Editor's Note: This column is part II in a series. Part I can be found here. One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he plays "chicken" with the Congressional Republicans along the "fiscal cliff," is that Obama is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media-- nor, apparently, by the Republicans.
A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit-- so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich.
" What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is. The official statistics which show plainly how wrong Barack Obama is can be found in his own "Economic Report of the President" for 2012, on page 411. The Need to Explain - Thomas Sowell. About Townhall.com Townhall.com is the leading source for conservative news and political commentary and analysis. Townhall is packed with breaking news headlines, political news, and conservative opinion with Townhall columnists including Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, Star Parker, Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell, and many more of your favorite conservatives.
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