Author: Thomas Sowell

There are some very serious issues at stake in this year’s election — so many that some people may not be able to see the forest for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of America as we have known it. The America that has flourished for more than […]

Governor Mitt Romney’s choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate is one of those decisions that seem obvious — if not inevitable — in retrospect, even though it was by no means obvious to most of us beforehand. Anyone who wants to get a quick sense of who Paul Ryan is should […]

Books about the history of Harlem have long fascinated me — my favorite being “When Harlem Was in Vogue” by David Levering Lewis. However, a more recent book, titled simply “Harlem” by Jonathan Gill, presents a more comprehensive history — going all the way back to the time when the Dutch were the first settlers […]

It has long seemed to me that there is far more rationality in sports, and in commentaries on sports, than there is in politics and in commentaries on politics. What has puzzled me is why this is so, when what happens in politics has far more serious effects on people’s lives. To take one common […]

If Milton Friedman were alive today — and there was never a time when he was more needed — he would be one hundred years old. He was born on July 31, 1912. But Professor Friedman’s death at age 94 deprived the nation of one of those rare thinkers who had both genius and common […]

It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loud enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and nowhere more […]

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and […]

Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun […]

There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but were often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same […]

Barack Obama’s great rhetorical gifts include the ability to make the absurd sound not only plausible, but inspiring and profound. His latest verbal triumph was to say on July 13th, “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” As an example, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business […]

When I first saw a book with the title, “White Girl Bleed A Lot” by Colin Flaherty, I instantly knew what it was about, even though I had not seen the book reviewed anywhere, and knew nothing about the author. That is because I had encountered that phrase before, while doing research for the four […]

Nothing produces more of a sense of the futility of facts than seeing someone in the mass media repeating some notion that has been refuted innumerable times over the years. On July 9th, on CNN’s program “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer, commentator Gloria Borger discussed President Obama’s plan to continue the temporary extension of […]

Anyone who wants to study the tricks of propaganda rhetoric has a rich source of examples in the statements of President Barack Obama. On Monday, July 9th, for example, he said that Republicans “believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, […]

One of the reasons for the popularity of political rhetoric is that everybody can be right, in terms of their own rhetoric, no matter how much the rhetoric of one side contradicts the rhetoric of the other side. President Obama constantly repeats how many millions of jobs have been created during his administration, while his […]

Trying to choose the greatest pitcher of all time is at least as difficult as trying to choose the greatest hitter of all time. In both cases, the best we can do is narrow down the list. Outside a charmed circle of five batters, no one had both a higher lifetime batting average and a […]

Nothing is likely to get an argument started among sports fans faster than attempts to name the all-time greatest in any sport, or even the all-time greatest in a particular aspect of a sport. However, in baseball, we can at least narrow down the list of possibilities — considerably, in fact — when it comes […]

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by […]

Nowhere is political rhetoric more shameless — or more dangerous — than in the pious names that politicians give to the legislation they pass. Perhaps the most egregious example is the so-called “Indian Child Welfare Act,” which callously sacrifices the welfare of Indian children. Time and again, children with some American Indian ancestry, who have […]

Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear a lot of words — and the meaning of those words is not always clear. So it may be helpful to have a glossary of political terms. One of the most versatile terms in the political vocabulary is “fairness.” It has been used over […]

If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase “social justice” would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different people. In other words, if you are a politician, you can get lots of people, with different concrete ideas, […]

Politicians seem to have a special fondness for words that have two very different meanings, so we are likely to hear a lot of these kinds of words this election year. “Access” is one of those words. Politicians seem to be forever coming to the rescue of people who have been denied “access” to credit, […]

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Many people may have voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because of his charisma. But anyone familiar with the disastrous track record of charismatic political leaders around the world in the 20th century should have run for the hills when they encountered a politician with charisma. What is scarier […]

President Obama’s latest political ploy — granting new “rights” out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country’s long-run problems. Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration […]

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a “socialist.” He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard […]

Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be “a uniter, rather than a divider” and that he would “bring us all together.” It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a […]

Would anyone work to support themselves or their families — and then turn over a chunk of that hard-earned money to somebody else, just because of the words used by that somebody else? A few people may be taken in by the words of con men, here and there, but the larger tragedy is that […]

Attorney General Eric Holder recently told a group of black clergymen that the right to vote was being threatened by people who are seeking to block access to the ballot box by blacks and other minorities. This is truly world-class chutzpah, by an Attorney General who stopped attorneys in his own Department of Justice from […]

“Education” is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen […]

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth […]

Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of “tax cuts for the rich” — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, […]