I asked the team, “who is Thomas Sowell and does he know he’s black?” this morning on our call.
I was met with blank stares. I asked the question because I was linked to a Twitter account yesterday where a quote of his was posted that said:
“It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago.” – Thomas Sowell
The call went very quiet for a while. I thought I accidentally pressed the mute button or turned the volume off.
Finally someone said something to the effect of “don’t worry, he’s a little known economics guy at Stanford. No one really listens to him. He gives no interviews. His views are way too controversial. Sure, he’s educated and has written a ton of books, but he’s an outlier. Don’t worry.”
I looked him up. Kind of an amazing story about being a high school drop-out in Harlem to going on to graduating from Harvard and University of Chicago and maybe Columbia. Lots of schools. Now somehow linked to Stanford. And, yes, black. He has written around 25 books and some of his more famous quotes are:
“I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take someone else’s money.”
“In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting re-elected.”
“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”
“Freedom had cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”
“Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.”
“Too much of what is called “education” is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.”
“The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the ego of the elites.”
And so so so many more.
Literally, the guy is a living, breathing, walking quote machine. Way too much common sense. And a black conservative? I thought the only ones were Diamond, Silk and the my pillow guy’s friend, Herman Cain.
I ordered one of his books that defend charter schools. Apparently black students have been able to overcome the white-black education gap in charter schools in places like New York but there is a backlash by liberals, teachers unions, etc. against these schools. Not sure why – I really don’t understand. I would think that it would be a goal to get these minorities great educations. But, there is quite a bit I don’t understand, I guess. Probably my best play would be to read his books and say and do the opposite. He had one quote that makes sense to me about my own campaign and my party:
“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
Wait, that wasn’t it.
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
Nope, that wasn’t it either. Here it is:
“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
Yep, that’s the one. It should be ME that decides what’s best. Or, actually a team of elites and intellectuals that tell me what to say. They’ll tell me what to tell you about what you are allowed to want, say, think – we’ll tell you what’s best.
Come on, man.