“Dr. Sowell is right on again.”
He is right on the money many times. Unfortunatly his audiance is us (conservative). As a black conservative I doubt he is widely read outside of conservative circles. He is likely either discounted, ignored or bashed by the left without study at all. A shame really, as he is the sort of voice of reason that Black America needs in its leadership. I highly recommend his autobiography by the way, a facinating read.
Agree on all your points. It is sad that the bulk of Black America listen to the likes of Jackson, Sharpton and Rangel rather than Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, they are the real thinkers and should be the ones listened to.
I shared a class with a young, black, economics major once. During our conversation, I asked him what he thought of Thomas Sowell. This young, black, economics major had never HEARD of him. I was astonished. I directed him to the Internet and wrote out Dr. Sowell’s name for him and strongly advised him to look him up. I never mentioned that Sowell was black, merely that he was, perhaps, the most brilliant man on the planet. I never got a chance to ask him about it, since the young man dropped the class. I would have loved to see what he thought...
A Man of Letters by Thomas Sowell is indeed interesting. And it is such a shame that Sowell is so little known. Indeed, he mentioned in "A Man of Letters" that his books typically sell only around 75,000 copies. Considering the wisdom to be found in his writings, that is sad. There is no other word for it.He mentioned that he finds airline travel burdensome, and at his age he will not agree to it. He was told he was to be awarded a prize and declined to travel to Washington to accept it. But in this case he was further told that the prize was a $250,000 award - and that a private jet would be put at his disposal for the trip. He went, and reports that he now knows one thing that he would do with wealth - travel by private jet.
First I ever heard of Sowell was reading Knowledge and Decisions, and it turns out that that was his breakout accomplishment, leading to his appointment to the Hoover Institution. And although he got his PhD because he wanted to teach, and although he loved to mentor, academic political correctness made a happy teaching career impossible to him. So the Hoover Institution was a real lifesaver for him.