patrick.net

I was blown away by Thomas Sowell's writing when I was maintaining the Econ section in the original Borders Books in Ann Arbor. Really striking and clear prose.

That's where I first learned that "The Holocaust" (purely a marketing term) is not at all unique. Pretty much all endogamous economically successful minorities get massacred or otherwise oppressed sooner or later. It's been part of history forever. It's a simple matter of everyone perceiving them as giving a big "fuck you" to the majority.

- Armenians in Ottoman Turkey
- Chinese in Malasia
- Indians in Uganda
- Lebanese in West Africa
- Tutsi in Rwanda
- Igbo in Nigeria
- Genoese in Istanbul

The only exception seems to be the Parsis of India, who never get killed, perhaps due to their massive funding of public goods like hospitals.

The white South Africans are quite likely to be wiped out if the black majority ever gets the weapons and organization to do it.

Patrick says

That's where I first learned that "The Holocaust" (purely a marketing term) is not at all unique. Pretty much all endogamous economically successful minorities get massacred or otherwise oppressed sooner or later. It's been part of history forever. It's a simple matter of everyone perceiving them as giving a big "fuck you" to the majority.

- Armenians in Ottoman Turkey
- Chinese in Malasia
- Indians in Uganda
- Lebanese in West Africa
- Tutsi in Rwanda
- Igbo in Nigeria

That's the biggest and most legit gripe about the Holocaust.

The other being it sucks all the air out of the room for 200-300% more non Jews, esp. Slavs (and of those, esp. Russian POWs), being executed / worked to death en masse

And to a lesser extent, distracts from Communist Atrocities like Holodmor.

Greeks from Crimea to Malta to Spain to Sicily weren't trusted and subject to campaigns as well during Ottoman Empire days - they were smart, great Merchants, multilingual, and because they weren't Catholic and came from the Ottoman Empire, suspect of dual loyalies/spying.

Right, you never hear in the US about the murders of the Russian POWs by the Germans.

https://rightandfree.com/news/2021/01/19/standing-up-to-the-mob

Joe Biden says he'll "advance racial equity" by making "bold investments" in "Affordable Housing," aiding "businesses owned by Black and Brown people," establishing an "Equity Commission," etc.

Gosh, that'll do it.

Others demand reparations for slavery, more social programs and defunding the police.

Yet, economist Thomas Sowell says, "I haven't been able to find a single country in the world where policies advocated for Blacks in the United States lifted any people out of poverty."

Sowell's a Black man who grew up in poverty. His father died before he was born, and his mother died soon after.

"We were much poorer than the people in Harlem and most anywhere else today," he reflects. "But in the sense of things you need to get ahead, I was enormously more fortunate than most Black kids today."

That's because he discovered the public library. "When you start getting in the habit of reading when you're 8 years old, it's a different ballgame!"

Exploring Manhattan, he saw disparities in wealth. "Nothing in the schools or most of the books seemed to deal with that. Marx dealt with that," says Sowell. He then became a Marxist.

What began to change his beliefs was his first job at the U.S. Department of Labor. He was told to focus on the minimum wage.

At first, he thought the minimum wage was good: "All these people are poor, and they'll get a little higher income. That'll be helpful," he reasoned.

But then he realized: "There's a downside. They may lose their jobs."

His colleagues at the Labor Department didn't want to think about that. "I came up with how we might test this. I was waiting to hear 'congratulations!' (but) I could see these people were stunned. They'd say, 'oh, this idiot has stumbled on something that would ruin us all.'"

Once he saw how government workers often cared more about preserving their turf than actually solving problems, Sowell rethought his assumptions.

He turned away from Marxism and became a free market economist, writing great books like "Basic Economics," "Race and Culture" and my favorite title, "The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy."

Today's self-anointed leaders talk constantly about how America's "systemic racism" holds Black people back.

"Propaganda," Sowell calls it. "If you go back into the '20s, you find that married-couple families were much more prevalent among Blacks. As late as 1930, Blacks have lower unemployment rates than whites."

But if systemic racism was the cause of inequality, he says, "All these things that we complain about, and attribute to the era of slavery, should've been worse in the past than in the present!"

Sowell says the bigger cause of Black Americans' problems today is government welfare initiated in the 1960s. The programs encouraged people to become dependent on handouts.

"You began to have the mindset that goes with the welfare state," Sowell says. "No stigma any longer attached to being on relief."

Sowell concludes that government programs that are supposed to help minorities do more harm than good. Affirmative Action, for example.

In 1965, he took a teaching position at Cornell. The college, he said, had lowered admission standards to diversify the student body, and most students admitted under affirmative action did not do well.

"Half of the Black students were on academic probation," he wrote, later adding, "Something like 1/4th of all the Black students going to MIT do not graduate. (There is) a pool of people whom you are artificially turning into failures by mismatching them with the school."

Saying such things makes Sowell an outcast in academia, and now most everywhere.

Sowell writes, "If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules... that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

Starting next week, you can watch a new documentary on Sowell's life, "Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World," online at FreeToChooseNetwork.org.

Patrick says

"The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy."

This is fucking GOLDEN!

Sowell is an amazingly wise man. He destroyed the glass ceiling argument back in the 80's. Completely tears apart communism, socialism, and other victimhood fallacies.

Even at 90, he's far more on the ball than almost any social commentator out there.

You guys might enjoy Walter Williams. He's a less notable Thomas Sowell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1FxpFmtq0o

Same conclusion different man but I think he is notable. Sorry it's on youtube. Because, fuck Google.

Kek

Patrick says

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

And it looks like a very good book:

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=484

Patrick says

"The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy."

The first sentence in this book is: "Dangers to a society may be mortal without being immediate."

I have to read that book.

NoCoupForYou says

The other being it sucks all the air out of the room for 200-300% more non Jews, esp. Slavs (and of those, esp. Russian POWs), being executed / worked to death en masse

Nazis killed about 3M Poles in Poland, and more in Lithuania and Belorus. No one hears about that as well.

Robert Sproul says

Walter E. Williams (RIP)
Glen Loury
Kemele Foster
Roland Fryer
Larry Elder
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Coleman Hughes

These guys may be going to the Racial Awareness Struggle Camps with us.
The Lunatic Left has invented something they call Multiracial Whiteness (more genteel than screaming "Coon" or Uncle Tom" at them) in order to discredit and defame Blacks that attempt to think for themselves.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/24/960060957/understanding-multiracial-whiteness-and-trump-supporters

Seems the best answer to any virtue signaling white who spouts this nonsense should be:

"So why don't you resign and let a person of color have your job?"

Rb6d says

Nazis killed about 3M Poles in Poland, and more in Lithuania and Belorus. No one hears about that as well.

I heard about it from Polish relatives when I visited them. I thought they were just confused, but the truth is that I was the one suffering the politically motivated history blackout.

Nothing is allowed to compete with The Holocaust.

I remember the first time I watched Sowell. He was schooling some lady on the whole wage disparity BS in the 70's. Guy is ON-POINT!

Excellent documentary about Sowell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK4M9iJrgto&pbjreload=101

WARNING: may cause fatal errors in brains of left-leaning persons.

The first gas experiment was on Polish Political Prisoners, Nazis first used carbon monoxide. This was only a few weeks after Fall Green.

They kept the Prisoners in the mental ward for a while after executing the actual mental patients. The had the foresters dig "drainage ditches" then give them the day off whenever they had to mass execute people.

Polish jokes aside, the smart Polish foresters instantly knew the drainage ditches were 110% BS, so they made blazes to indicate the sites, then they were uncovered after the War.

Probably my favourite aspect of Sowell's wisdom is that he sums it up so efficiently. No flowery wording added to make it sound pompous and intellectual, it gets to the point within a couple of sentences.

Patrick says

Right, you never hear in the US about the murders of the Russian POWs by the Germans.

What's so special about that? Plenty of German POWs were killed by Russians too. War is hell.

A quote I ran into today from the indispensable Dr. Sowell regarding the willful destruction of rigorous scholarship at the hands of lunatic ideologues:
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

Artificial Stupidity, or A.S., I’m using that.

“One of the most dangerous signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.” Thomas Sowell

Robert Sproul says

It really is a tonic to listen to these guys if you are ever despairing from exposure to too much Leftist Lunacy. They have podcasts and books, talks on Youtube. Here is Loury talking to John McWhorter, another worthy voice: https://campusreform.org/?id=16663

Jesse Peterson. Not afraid to question Lez bee anns. He's amazin'

(And yes, almost all of them were abandoned/abused by a male figure or had a single mom with really weird behavior)

Here he is grilling some "Female" Pastor (impossible according to NT).

original link
/

When I read this thread, it’s fuck yeah Thomas you are right on target. Why can’t you be our president/anchorman/editor and not the clowns in power?

I agree with everything this fellow says.

Would vote for him if he ran for president.

BayArea says

I agree with everything this fellow says.

Would vote for him if he ran for president.

Haven't you learned from the last presidency? He won't be allowed to change anything.

Still, it's useful to have truth-tellers in power when almost everyone else in power is corrupt.

I would absolutely vote for Thomas Sowell as well.

Patrick says

Still, it's useful to have truth-tellers in power when almost everyone else in power is corrupt.

I would absolutely vote for Thomas Sowell as well.

Unless Sowell is willing to die, he won't speak truth if he were president.

Look at the shit that Trump had to deal with? He pointed out that our intelligence agencies were corrupt, our media is propaganda and our enemies (although he softened it by just calling out the "fake news" which is all of it), he demonstrated the DOJ engages in selective prosecution, and that the leadership of both parties suck each other's cocks.

He is a billionaire, and he barely survived it. Sowell won't. He'd be assassinated, Ron Paul openly said if he were elected, he'd be assassinated. Trump had his own security as part of the secret service. There's no fucking areas of our government that is putridly corrupt.

Ideally, we need to aim for a Soviet Union style collapse. It wasn't bloodless, but it largely was. Civil war, that's the wrong enemy - the enemy is our government but few people have the balls to say it, and even fewer have the balls to do something about it - I don't. I don't think there are enough people yet.

https://babylonbee.com/news/oregon-stops-teaching-reading-so-kids-wont-be-influenced-by-thomas-sowell-books

Thomas Sowell
@ThomasSowell
·
13h
A $100 bill would buy less in 1998 than a $20 bill would buy in the 1960s. This means that anyone who kept his money in a safe over those years would have lost 80 percent of its value, because no safe can keep your money safe from politicians who control the printing presses.

HunterTits says

That's my Bass player and it's frustrating.

He once copped to me, that he often doesn't understand issues or questions. And it's something he always struggled with. But he's learned, as long as he takes the exact opposite stance of what someone is saying. Then you wont look stupid trying to agree with what they are saying, when you don't know shit about it. It makes him feel informed to disagree, object or flip what is being said.

"You could run through an impressive list of disasters brought about by people with very high IQs."

~Thomas Sowell

In the same vein:
“Many of todays problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.”

Thomas Sowell

ZipperTits says

New column from Thomas Sowell

Holy cow, he's 92 and still writing!