Reading Thomas Sowell makes you smarter
I wish HE would run for president
Tom Sowell and I agree completely on all this!
Polls and focus groups are not a substitute for thought.
The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell
1 - “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
2 - “I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s” money.”
3 - “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
4 - “One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.”
5 - “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.”
6 - “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
7 - “The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.”
8 - “I think this man (Obama) really does believe he can change the world, and people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians.”
9 - “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”
10 - “Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.”
11 - “Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.”
12 - “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
Sowell always nails it. I really hate the GOP sometimes because to some extent it is the rich detatched idiots and their consultants that are screwing us in the grassroots. Id think they’d know something about marketing ideas but they don’t and that is the problem. Reagan and Newt Gingrich to a lesser degree understood how to sell ideas. People like Lee Atwater knew how to drive people into our camp and if they couldn’t drive them into our camp they alienated them from the other camp which is often just as important. Thankfully we have a few dozen Tea Party minded folks who are changing the game. Hopefully it will be soon enough.
Have I told anyone lately how much I admire and respect Dr. Sowell?
The term RINOs no longer fits since these idiots are in control of the party. Maybe we should call them unicorns instead because only in a fantasy world will their ideas get them the results they think they will.
I love how Sowell points out that Republicans are doing well at the state level. It’s the national level where the problems lay. For sure, at the national level, too many Republicans break the way of the Democrats when push comes to a vote.
Ironically, I think there may be an odd effect of the success of talk radio at the national level for Republicans. Basically, national-level Republicans have become lazy and rely on conservative celebrities like Rush, Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham, and Buchanan, to preach to the choir and secure the party base at crunch time.
This allows national-level Republican candidates to stand apart from conservatives when it becomes convenient (”I’m not like _that!”_), pursue liberal-leaning policies, and even govern in ways that they hope will bring over Democratic voters.
“Bipartisan government,” “reaching across the aisle,” “sharing power.” These are all buzzwords that mean Republicans doing what Democrats want in the face of the constituents that put them up in office.
It never works. All that happens is that Republican Senators and Congressman do the bidding of Democrats with nothing of substance returned, while Democrats receive all the credit for getting laws passed and take none of the blame—because it was all done through “bipartisanship!”
"Polls and focus groups are not a substitute for thought."