[late]

Our country has a small army of Black academics, politicians, activists and former politicians like Micheal Steele to learn from. I certainly have.

Sowell is not famous for his intellectual work, far from it. He got scooped up, and promoted, by the Right as one of their token Blacks.

I used to talk with a DC lawyer that did international law, who knew Bork. Bruce is profoundly conservative, and opposed Bork's getting appointed to the Supreme Court. According to Bruce (and nearly everyone else) he lacked the judicial temperament to play at that level.

Sowell raved about him.

Sowell is notorious for conclusion jumping. You see that a lot with people that jump from one extreme to the opposite extreme of political ideology. There were problems with a migrant labor program, so he rejected the entire idea behind it . There are ways to deal with problems, if you have the patience to do your homework, so to speak.

One of our posters has discovered Sowell, and suddenly it's Sowell this, and Sowell that.

You can call him a hired gun, if you are uncomfortable with calling a kook. But you can do better.

[Rich]

Sowell is one of the great intellectual's of our time. I'm no conservative, so there's plenty I disagree with him on, but his work on the persistence and power of culture is of vital importance. Culture nearly always trumps both race and racism.

[Julian658]

Our country has a small army of Black academics, politicians, activists and former politicians like Micheal Steele to learn from. I certainly have.

Sowell is not famous for his intellectual work, far from it. He got scooped up, and promoted, by the Right as one of their token Blacks.

I used to talk with a DC lawyer that did international law, who knew Bork. Bruce is profoundly conservative, and opposed Bork's getting appointed to the Supreme Court. According to Bruce (and nearly everyone else) he lacked the judicial temperament to play at that level.

Sowell raved about him.

Sowell is notorious for conclusion jumping. You see that a lot with people that jump from one extreme to the opposite extreme of political ideology. There were problems with a migrant labor program, so he rejected the entire idea behind it . There are ways to deal with problems, if you have the patience to do your homework, so to speak.

One of our posters has discovered Sowell, and suddenly it's Sowell this, and Sowell that.

You can call him a hired gun, if you are uncomfortable with calling a kook. But you can do better.

Sowell is one of the best in America and admitted to Harvard when there was no affirmative action. At age 90 he is way better than most. The black community never gave him any respect because he did not say what they wanted to hear.

[late]

Sowell is one of the best...

"Economists don’t think of Thomas Sowell as an economist. He doesn’t do econometrics and he doesn’t do formal modeling and he doesn’t run behavioral econ experiments. Economics is a science. What Sowell does is not science.

The last time he published in an academic journal was 1979"
https://www.quora.com/What-do-other-eco ... mas-Sowell

The nicest way to put this is to say he's an eccentric, and the world has moved on without him.

He is best known for being a Right wing hired gun.

[Julian658]

"Economists don’t think of Thomas Sowell as an economist. He doesn’t do econometrics and he doesn’t do formal modeling and he doesn’t run behavioral econ experiments. Economics is a science. What Sowell does is not science.

The last time he published in an academic journal was 1979"
https://www.quora.com/What-do-other-eco ... mas-Sowell

The nicest way to put this is to say he's an eccentric, and the world has moved on without him.

He is best known for being a Right wing hired gun.

I tend to agree, he is mostly a book author and a favorite of the right wing. He is certainly adored in some circles.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/contri ... l/_/N-2vct

He is not like Glenn Loury who is still teaching at Brown and who has been in both the deep left and the right---------------now mostly a centrist. Another one that is mostly a centrist and very logical is Robert McWhorter. The black community hates these guys because they don't sing the lyrics or follow the music of the anti-racism hymns.

[late]

The black community hates these guys because they don't sing the lyrics or follow the music of the anti-racism hymns.

Study after study demonstrates the damage to health and sanity done by racism. They have problems with kooks because even if racism doesn't get them gunned down, it will definitely shorten their life by having negative impacts on their health.

[Julian658]

Study after study demonstrates the damage to health and sanity done by racism. They have problems with kooks because even if racism doesn't get them gunned down, it will definitely shorten their life by having negative impacts on their health.

These intellectuals do not deny racism. In fact, no one i know does. They simply have a different approach that they feel is more effective. They do not like the way people fight racism these days.

[late]

These intellectuals do not deny racism. In fact, no one i know does. They simply have a different approach that they feel is more effective. They do not like the way people fight racism these days.

Given that Republicans are in a cold sweat panic passing hundreds of bills to disenfanchise people... I don't like the way they are trying to bring back Jim Crow.

[Julian658]

Given that Republicans are in a cold sweat panic passing hundreds of bills to disenfanchise people... I don't like the way they are trying to bring back Jim Crow.

Tovarish late:

That is tribal and right out of your echo chamber. Don't you want to know how they would approach the problem? These guys are not Republicans, they are centrists. I will admit they seem conservative to those on the left.

[late]

That is tribal and right out of your echo chamber. Don't you want to know how they would approach the problem? These guys are not Republicans, they are centrists. I will admit they seem conservative to those on the left.

It's not just racist as hell, they are an existential threat to the Republic. White Supremacists becoming the only party would not just kill democracy and end the Republic. It would unleash death and chaos at a level we haven't seen since the Civil War.

That is radical.

[anna]

Given that Republicans are in a cold sweat panic passing hundreds of bills to disenfanchise people... I don't like the way they are trying to bring back Jim Crow.

We don't agree on at least one fundamental idea but I definitely agree with you here.

[Julian658]

It's not just racist as hell, they are an existential threat to the Republic. White Supremacists becoming the only party would not just kill democracy and end the Republic. It would unleash death and chaos at a level we haven't seen since the Civil War.

That is radical.

How did you go from Sowell to White Supremacists? This is a hyper reaction. You know Sowell is black right? Yes, you do. And so is Loury and McWhorter. These guys are down the center, I am confused by your post.

I will admit you have a point about the issue of civil war. The current polarization is off the charts. To that you can add group ID politics and we end up with division, balkanization and civil war.

[Pants-of-dog]

I can not think of a good argument that Sowell has ever made.

[blackjack21]

I'm no conservative, so there's plenty I disagree with him on, but his work on the persistence and power of culture is of vital importance.

Sowell wasn't a conservative, but more of a Milton Friedman style libertarian.

Sowell is one of the best in America and admitted to Harvard when there was no affirmative action. At age 90 he is way better than most.

Howard, Harvard, Columbia and University of Chicago. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in economics. Masters at Columbia. He got his PhD in economics from University of Chicago.

The black community hates these guys because they don't sing the lyrics or follow the music of the anti-racism hymns.

He was hated by white liberals, primarily because he criticized academia and the welfare state.

White Supremacists becoming the only party would not just kill democracy and end the Republic. It would unleash death and chaos at a level we haven't seen since the Civil War.

There are hardly any white supremacists around any more, and paradoxically the left claims that the United States was founded by white supremacists. I think your concerns are more the product of an anxiety disorder.

How did you go from Sowell to White Supremacists? This is a hyper reaction. You know Sowell is black right?

I think he's prepping us to a charge that Thomas Sowell was a white supremacist.

The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'

This sort of thing scares people like late.

[late]

How did you go from Sowell to White Supremacists?

You did.

You were talking about Republicans, and they are White Supremacists now, by definition.

[late]

I can not think of a good argument that Sowell has ever made.

Economics isn't supposed to be a religion. But Sowell got religion, markets are the cure for everything. The fact that no good economist (starting with Adam Smith) thought economics was a religion matters not a bit to kooks, because they also have religion.

[BlutoSays]

Thomas Sowell Archives - great reads

https://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell1.asp

[Rancid]

I've seen exactly one Thomas Sowell video on youtube. Didn't seem all that bad to me.

[Unthinking Majority]

Don't know a ton about Sowell. We don't argue for and against academics as "people", we argue against their ideas. It would seem better to present ideas you don't like from Sowell and show us how they're wrong, instead of trying to discredit all his arguments in one fell swoop by labeling him a "kook".

Typically everyone is right about some stuff and wrong about others. Nobody bats 1000. And even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. Like sometimes Jordan Peterson is bang on and sometimes he spouts idiocy.

[Pants-of-dog]

Don't know a ton about Sowell. We don't argue for and against academics as "people", we argue against their ideas. It would seem better to present ideas you don't like from Sowell and show us how they're wrong, instead of trying to discredit all his arguments in one fell swoop by labeling him a "kook".

Typically everyone is right about some stuff and wrong about others. Nobody bats 1000. And even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. Like sometimes Jordan Peterson is bang on and sometimes he spouts idiocy.

Unfortunately, many people argue for academics as people. In Sowell’s case, conservatives love to quote him because he is black.