The Inconvenient Truth about Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown

Among the many painful ironies in the current racial turmoil is that communities scattered across the country were disrupted by riots and looting because of the demonstrable lie that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a white policeman in Missouri — but there was not nearly as much turmoil created by the demonstrable fact that a fleeing black man was shot dead by a white policeman in South Carolina. Totally ignored was the fact that a black policeman in Alabama fatally shot an unarmed white teenager, and was cleared of any charges, at about the same time that a white policeman was cleared of charges in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

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Sowell: Leaders Of The Left And Their Contempt For 'The People'

By Thomas Sowell
One of the things that attracted me to the political left as a young man was a belief that leftists were for "the people." ✧ Fortunately, I was also very interested in the history of ideas — and years of research in that field repeatedly brought out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers on the left had only contempt for "the people." ✧ That has been true from the 18th century to the present. Even more surprising, I discovered over the years that leading thinkers on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum had more respect for ordinary people than people on the left who spoke in their name.

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Sowell: The Fallacy of Redistribution

By Thomas Sowell, Economist/Author
The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are. ✧ Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect intended. Read more at Townhall.com...

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Sowell: Two Different Worlds

Excerpt from Thomas Sowell's article, Two Different Worlds: Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth. Read the full article at Townhall.com... Read More......

Friedman vs. Piven

"In this clip from the 1980 Free To Choose, socialist Frances Fox Piven tangles with Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. We thought this would be interesting in light of the recent dustup between The New York Times and Fox News (Glenn Beck) on the subject of Piven." --FreeToChooseNetwork Read More......

Sowell: A crossroads election

ONENEWSNOW.com, 11/1/2010 by Thomas Sowell - "Most elections are about particular policies, particular scandals or particular personalities. But these issues don't mean as much this year-- not because they are not important, but because this election is a crossroads election, one that can decide what path this country will take for many years to come. ∴ Runaway "stimulus" spending, high unemployment and ObamaCare are all legitimate and important issues. It is just that freedom and survival are more important. ∴ For all its sweeping and scary provisions, ObamaCare is not nearly as important as the way it was passed. If legislation can become laws passed without either the public or the Congress knowing what is in those laws, then the fundamental principle of a free, self-governing people is completely undermined. Read more at One News Now... Read More......

Sowell on American collapse

Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and esteemed author, responds to insightful questions by Hoover research fellow Peter Robinson on Sowell's latest book, Dismantling America.
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Sowell: Race Card Fraud

TOWNHALL.COM/Archives by Thomas Sowell - This is not the first time that an organization with an honorable and historic mission has eventually degenerated into a tawdry racket. But that an organization like the NAACP, after years of fighting against genuine racism, should now be playing the game of race card fraud is especially painful to see. Read more at Townhall...

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust. Read More......

Sowell: Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

INVESTORS.COM (IBD) News & Analysis, 6/21/2010 by Thomas Sowell (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - "When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. ∴ Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ∴ "Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union. ∴ Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive. ∴ In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government." Read More......

Sowell: A Tangled Web

Townhall.com, 7/7/2009 by Thomas Sowell - While the recent Supreme Court decision in the New Haven firefighters' case will be welcome news to those who don't think that a gross injustice is O.K. when those on the receiving end are white, the reasoning behind the 5 to 4 decision is a painful reminder that the law is still tangled in a web of assumptions, evasions and contradictions when it comes to racial issues. ∴ Nor have these problems been clarified with the passage of time. On the contrary, the growing complexity and murkiness of civil rights law over the years recalls the painful saying: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Read more at Townhall.com... Read More......