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Thomas Sowell Ages So Well
Thomas Sowell is retired, but the Twitter account Thomas Sowell offers daily quotes from his writings. A couple of them caught my eye over Thanksgiving.
“There was a time when we honored those who created the prosperity and the freedom that we enjoy. Today we honor the complainers and sue the creators. Perhaps that is inevitable in an era when we no longer count our blessings, but instead count all our unfulfilled wishes.”
“Because of the neglect of history in our educational system, most people have no idea how many of the great American fortunes were created by people who were born and raised in worse poverty than the average welfare-recipient today.”
“Never take other people for granted. There is a point of no return in all relationships.”
Many of us are taught to always do our best. The day I learned as a young adult that my best was different on any given day was a life changer. It meant I could cut myself some slack on those days where just getting through them was the best I could do. Sowell says it this way:
Published in General“Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.”
A lot of wisdom there.
Today we are instructed to look at them as the oppressors and robber barons.
Yes. Sowell is one of those seemingly never-ending wells of wisdom. Like you could ask him about any number of subjects and get answers all day but barely touch what he has to say (all worth hearing, too).
Re: those who built great American fortunes… Their business practices could get pretty cutthroat; some of their labor practices contributed to rise of private unions. BUT, they were also tough as nails with tremendous drive to build something lasting, to succeed. Some of them in their later years became great philanthropists.
Above all, they took personal responsibility for their successes and failures. To them work was a blessing; a gift that kept on giving back the harder they worked. They were human, not perfect.
No wonder Progressives dislike Americans like JD Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Edison, JP Morgan, Conrad Hilton, JC Penney…Those men were the epitome of taking responsibility for getting what they wanted. If you wanted more, you dreamed bigger and baked a bigger pie, not give it to bureaucrats to decide which ways it gets sliced and who gets which pieces. Merit vs. entitlement. Infinite vs. finite.
That was not where I was expecting this to go, given the title.
Four small quotes, but containing so much wisdom. As a nation, we ignore our elders at our own risk.
I think the best explanation is that we are in the third great cultural era. The first was the “Honor Culture” or as some call it, “Shame-Honor Culture.” That was a time when personal disputes were settled by the two parties. Duels were an extreme example. Boys were taught to fight back against bullies. Girls did not seem to have as many “mean girl bullies.”
Then came the era of “dignity Culture” where the authorities were authorized to settle disputes and the individual was taught to be “above settling disputes in person.” Guns were pretty much banned. It worked better in old established cities, especially in Europe and Asia.
Now we have the “Victim Culture” in which the disputes are exaggerated and “microaggresions” are recorded. Not only do we avoid settling disputes personally but we are expected to exaggerate them and punish by shaming the other. If necessary, lies can be mobilized to punish those we really hate.
I love Sowell. His personal memoir was terrific and so straightforward: tough times and he made his way through by just doing what he needed to do! Thanks, Mim.
Mim,
Beautiful quotes that are perfect for a day of Thanksgiving. Where will we be when we no longer have men like Sowell that will tell us the truth in such short order?
Regards,
Jim
I have said for years that Thomas Sowell is the wisest man in America.
Not sure what you were expecting, but the title was a play on Sowell’s name meant to describe how well his writing holds up. The quotes mentioned are suggestive of his themes of personal responsibility and meritocracy, as opposed to redistribution or victimhood.
I miss seeing his writing on a regular basis.
If I could donate any part of my body to keep Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams alive for another thirty years, I’d do so. I’d offer my brain tissue, but it would a drastic step down for the both of them . . .
That is why I love Sowell: thoughtful words that are practical!
The irony is that so many teaching history in our schools and colleges cling to and therefore perpetuate the idea coined by Matthew Josephson in his book The Robber Barons. But as Burton W. Folsom Jr. (Hillsdale College) writes in The Myth of the Robber Baron, there is the side to this story which somehow has escaped historical texts. Interestingly, (with no reviewer at large ever having disputed any of his facts in his entire book), he writes of two groups of business developers whom he describes as “political entrepreneurs” and “market entrepreneurs.”
The political entrepreneurs he defines as those who tried to succeed in business by use of federal aid, pools, vote buying, or stock speculation.
By contrast, market entrepreneurs were those who succeeded by creating a superior product at a lower cost by using more efficiency in their operations and investing their own money in new technologies. As Forrest McDonald wrote in the introduction to Folsom’s book,
“ [the political entrepreneurs] were in fact comparable to medieval robber barons, for they sought and obtained wealth through the coercive power of the state, which is to say that they were subsidized by government and were sometimes granted monopolies by government.
“Invariably, their products or services were inferior to, and more expensive than, the goods and services provided by market entrepreneurs, who sought and obtained wealth by producing more and better for less cost to the consumer. The market entrepreneurs, however, have been repeatedly – one is tempted to say systematically – ignored by historians.”
I wonder how that might be received by the SJW gang.
BTW, the story gets even more interesting in Folsom’s book. Recommend it as a great read.