Random Events - Essay by Thomas Sowell

[jmichna]

Dr. Sowell is right on target, as usual:

Random Events
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.
One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already have 34 students from those schools.

When a copy of the 50th anniversary report on members of the Harvard class of 1958 arrived in the mail recently, I thought back to one of my fellow students in that class who had worn a hole in the sole of his shoe but put a folded piece of newspaper in his shoe to cover the hole, rather than tell his parents.

He realized that they would buy him a new pair of shoes if they knew-- and he also realized that they could not afford it. He went on to become a professor at several well-known medical schools and to have various achievements and honors over the years.

From even further back in time, I received a letter recently from a man who grew up in my old neighborhood back in Harlem. When he and I were in the same junior high school, one day a teacher who saw him eating his brown bag lunch suddenly arranged for him to get a lunch from the school cafeteria without having to pay for it.

It happened so fast that my schoolmate had already taken a bite from the school lunch when he suddenly realized that he had been given charity-- and he wouldn't swallow the food. Instead he went to the toilet and spat it out.

By now his brown bag lunch had been thrown out, so he just went hungry that day. He went on to become a very successful psychiatrist.

Like everyone else, I have also been hearing a lot lately about Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the church that Barack Obama has belonged to for 20 years.

Both men, in their different ways, have for decades been promoting the far left vision of victimization and grievances-- Wright from his pulpit and Obama as a community organizer for the radical group ACORN, as a collaborator with former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, and as the member of the U.S. Senate with the farthest left voting record.

Later, when the ultimate political prize-- the White House-- loomed on the horizon, Obama did a complete makeover, now portraying himself as a healer of divisions.

The difference between Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright is that they are addressing different audiences, using different styles adapted to those audiences.

It is a difference between upscale demagoguery and ghetto demagoguery, playing the audience for suckers in both cases.

People on the far left like to flatter themselves that they are for the poor and the downtrodden. But what is most likely to lift people out of poverty-- telling them that the world has done them wrong or promoting the work ethnic of the Korean girls, the dogged determination of my Harvard classmate with the newspaper in his shoe, or the self-reliance of my fellow junior high school student in Harlem who had too much pride to take charity?

When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

Or will they have only the resentments that have been whipped up by the likes of Jeremiah Wright or the sense of entitlement from the government that has been Barack Obama's stock in trade?

In the real world, a sense of grievance or entitlement, as a result of the mistreatment of your ancestors, is not likely to get you very far with people who are too busy dealing with current economic realities to spend much time thinking about their own ancestors, much less other people's ancestors.

Another seemingly unrelated experience was being in a crowd at a graveside in a Jewish cemetery last week. That crowd included people who were black, white, Asian, Catholic, Jewish and no doubt others. This country has come a long way, just in my lifetime.

We don't need people like either Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama to take us backward.

The time is long overdue to stop gullibly accepting the left's vision of itself as idealistic, rather than self-aggrandizing.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

I hope we have been successful raising our kid so she enters adulthood with neither an expectation of entitlement nor a sense of resentment.

[mhillsing23]

Very good article, thank you for the post.

[Brickboy240]

Dr. Sowell is wise beyond his years. Another example of if you take the chip off your shoulder and buckle down...you CAN achieve great things in this country.

The man is a conservative because of his world view and value of the ethic of hard work. He is a man to be admired by anyone of any race, but if you ask the first 5 black people you see walk by, "who is Thomas Sowell?" chances are they will give you only a blank stare.

Too bad, because if more black Americans had Dr. Sowell's world view, instead of that of Obama or Rev. Wright, the black community would not be plagued by the things that plague them to this day.

- Brickboy240

[Ed Ely]

Thomas Sowell has been one of my
favorite editorialist for many years.

A great conservative voice who speaks
with common sense. Abe Lincoln would
be very proud of him because he has stuck
with the Party of Lincoln and not the Party
against Lincoln.

Ed

[Ishpeck]

Thomas Sowell is one of my heroes.

Thomas Sowell | Home

Horrendously nerdy looking but... I don't know who among my heroes isn't.

[eric_t12]

the left isn't the only one with a track record for divisive maneuvers.

the monopoly is quite authoritarian, whether they be left- or right-leaning seems, somewhat, irrelevant to me.

[Delija]

Obama .......... as a collaborator with former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers,


LOL...I respect and admire Sowell, but only to the extent of when he's being honest. The (above quote) implication of Obama and "Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers" being "collaborators" is anything but "honest".

Is there enough truth to it to make it not a "lie"? Yes.

Is there any context to it whatsoever to put the relationship into it's proper context? No.

This is not a defense of Obama, nor a defense of Ayers. Nor is it a condemnation of Sowell. It is strictly meant as an observation on how words can be used to present a distortion of reality without needing to lie. Some people....Sowell, and I'd say the same about Obama....have a "gift" in the use of language which enables them to say "X" and have you believe they said "Y".

There should be no surprise that these people end up as editorialists or politicians. Their "gift" is perfectly suited for both professions.

Anyone who can make other's believe in what isn't.....what better jobs could they possibly be suited for?

Problem is.....their "gift" rewards them, not their respective readers nor constituents....at least not when they are using the "gift" to be purposely misleading.

And for us less brilliant "normal" folks - the "plain talkers" and trusting listeners.......how can we know when we are being manipulated? My guess is that as often as not, we can't. Probably MORE often than not.

Now of course there are those who will say that Sowell has no agenda and no reason to mislead. And probably even some (likely less) that would say the same about Obama....But to those people I'd only suggest that they think about the PURPOSE of these two men's very positions. Being an editorialist...being a politician....by definition, both professions are inherently about HAVING AGENDAS.

Of course I could be wrong, and expect to be told exactly that.

Just my $.02

Peace,
D.

[Etta Place]

Originally Posted by eric_t12

the left isn't the only one with a track record for divisive maneuvers.

the monopoly is quite authoritarian, whether they be left- or right-leaning seems, somewhat, irrelevant to me.

In fact, Mr. Sowell's whole column is divisive.

[Frenchy]

Obama .......... as a collaborator with former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers,

He sneaks this in, in an otherwise rational argument. Separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Etta Place]

Originally Posted by Frenchy

He sneaks this in, in an otherwise rational argument. Separate the wheat from the chaff.

I agree with this. However, in this editorial and in one that was posted here previously, Sowell alludes to things Obama has done without giving specifics. He lumps Obama in with Wright and others of that "type" without giving examples. It's like the RNC writing letters to potential donors hitting all of the hot button talking points to get people riled up. Sowell is more subtle than the RNC, but the effect is the same. He's reinforcing a stereotype.