Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.’
Tag: Thomas Sowell
(1930- ) American economist, turned social theorist, political philosopher, and author. He is currently Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Tearing down instead of building up
Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong.
Equal treatment for all
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
Fantasyland
Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Educated into ignorance
In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.
‘Social justice’ leads to despotism
The political left has never understood that, if you give the government enough power to create ‘social justice,’ you have given it enough power to create despotism. Millions of people around the world have paid with the lives for overlooking that simple fact.
The changing role of schools
In the schools and colleges, the intelligentsia have changed the role of education from equipping students with the knowledge and intellectual skills to weigh issues and make up their own minds into a process of indoctrination with the conclusions already reached by the anointed.
The politics of envy
Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.’
Labor is not the source of wealth
Brilliance — even genius — is no guarantee that consequential factors have not been left out or misconceived. Karl Marx’s Capital was a classic example of an intellectually masterful elaboration of a fundamental misconception — in this case, the notion that ‘labor,’ the physical handling of the material and instruments of production, is the real source of wealth. Obviously, if this were true, countries with much labor and little technology or entrepreneurship would be more prosperous than countries with the reverse, when in fact it is blatantly obvious that the direct opposite is the case.
The urge to censor
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.