Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell

     If you are not familiar with Thomas Sowell, you are missing important thoughts from a great man.  Sowell is now in his early ‘80s and continues to be one of our best thinkers.  He is an economist, social theorist, political philosopher, prolific author, a professor, and many other things that give witness to a magnificent mind.

            He wrote an article in the Investor’s Business Daily entitled, “Is the U.S. now on a slippery slope to tyranny?”  This raised some liberal eyebrows.  But speaking truth to power sometimes has that result.  Sowell is a conservative/libertarian. Maybe that’s why I have such great admiration for this man.

            It would take a very large book to give Thomas Sowell the credit he deserves.  In a recent column he shared a number of quotes, a few of which I will include here.  These were included with his article relating to the Zimmerman lynching.  I hope you will think about them and how they apply.

"Many respectable writers agree that if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant he may stand his ground and that if he kills him he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this court." (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Brown v. United States, 1921)

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." (John Adams)

"A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence." (Jean-Francois Revel)

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie." (J.A. Schumpeter)

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." (T.S. Eliot) 

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow." (James Madison) 

"A society that puts equality -- in the sense of equality of outcome -- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests." (Milton Friedman) 

"...leniency toward criminals contrasted starkly with severity toward the law-abiding citizen's right to defend himself or herself." (Joyce Lee Malcolm) 

"Criticism is easy; achievement is more difficult." (Winston Churchill) 

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." (Paul Johnson) 

"It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant." (President Calvin Coolidge) 

Have you wondered why Obama, Holder, Jackson, Sharpton, and other race-baiters have put a racial spin on the Zimmerman case, when that wasn’t a factor in the trial?  Aside from increasing racial divisions, it has taken our eyes off government malfeasance in providing guns to Mexican drug cartels, the Benghazi cover-up, and the tyranny of the IRS and DOJ, among so many other things.  With help from the media, the masses are blindfolded again and led like children away from the train wreck, while being given something to play with that is simple and easily understood. Something as simple as black and white.