Random Events [Thomas Sowell](MUST READ!)

Townhall ^ | May 6, 2008 | Thomas Sowell

[2ndDivisionVet]

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.

[aruanan]

Well, I found the answer to a lot of my questions HERE in the detailed history of ACORN. It was folks like these that seduced several generations of people and turned them into resentful wards of the state.

[Thom Pain]

It’s a shame that the people who most need to read Dr. Sowell’s work are illiterate (Thanks to the Libs).

[nicola_tesla]

What’s sadder is that liberals probably think Sowell was an affirmative action student.

[nicola_tesla]

Read the book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” by Charlotte Iserbyt and the book “Educating for the New World Order” by Beverly Eakman and you will have some facts to add to your premiss.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

How does he get so much into so few words?

He's led an interesting life, has the wisdom to appreciate it and the generosity to share it.

[metesky]

Right, that’s also the first time I have seen that it was ACORN flap-ears was “organizing” for.

[Tolik]

Thomas Sowell:

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.

Nailed It!
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[mad_as_he$$]

Association with ACORN should automatically disqualify Obama for the presidency. They are nothing more but shake down artists. They are responsible for dragging paint companies through the dirt and trying to extort millions from them over lead paint. If they prevail it will cascade through ALL industry and companies that made perfectly legal products could be liable for things they never even made. They are a rent a mob with bad intentions.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Demean a few generations, though, and there is no pride left.

Yep, we spent the last 40 years beating self-reliance and dignity out of the next generation in the guise of "giving them dignity and respect".

Now there are few people who even see charity as charity, much less have any gumption about receiving it. Even rich people get in line for free government handouts.

[patj]

You always amaze me with all the links and facts that you can whip out at at the drop of a thread.

[Edison]

“”...In the late 1960s, ACORN founder Wade Rathke was a NWRO organizer and a protegé of Wiley. Rathke also organized draft resistance for the militant group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the same period.

In 1970, Rathke formed a new organization called Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)....”

So this is where the link between Obama and William Ayers starts. Ayers was associated with the SDS early on before moving to the Weather Underground.

[Redleg Duke]

"I’m 57. I grew up poor but I didn’t know it at the time."

Similar here! I am white, grew up in Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s and didn't realize until I was out of college that I had grown-up poor! There was always food on the table and clothes on my back and a roof over my head, but I never realized how tight things were for my folks. But I was loved and instilled with pride and self-respect and the pride came from earning it through genuine achievement!

[r-q-tek86]

Great article

[alwaysconservative]

We also grew up poor, but felt rich, in love, laughter, in a family of faith and strength of character. One of the lessons I learned in the community is that nothing is free. Those who get “free” things from charity didn’t really get them free; they just had to trade all their self-respect and self-sufficiency for the shiny free stuff. It was the previous generations that felt that that price was too high. The current belief in entitlement to “freebies” is caustic and destructive.

Like Ronald Reagan, I’ve often felt that the worst thing the politicians did to the native American Indian was to strip them of their self-respect and dignity in return for “free” reservation land and guaranteed charity. You want to see a greater than 50% unemployment rate, go to a reservation. THAT’s what “gummit’s” version of “charity” in the form of well-meaning but misguided programs can accomplish. And those stuck in that rut vote more than 90% Democrat. It’s really, truly sad to see what once-proud people have become on welfare.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The question to ask is what exactly was it that accomplished the seduction to get a group of people to give up their self-respect.

Losing Ground:
American Social Policy, 1950-1980 by Charles Murray

Naked Nomads:
Unmarried Men in America by George F Gilder