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Quote of the Day: Personal Responsibility
Some Dr. Thomas Sowell food today:
To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by ‘society.’ – Thomas Sowell
I am not sure my words can improve on Dr. Sowell’s prescription. The reason Progressives depreciate personal responsibility is if everyone in society took responsibility for their actions there would be no need for the Progressives to fix things. What is more important? A well-ordered society where everyone does well because they own their actions or a society in which everyone else blames everyone else for what goes wrong, and everything unravels as a result?
For Thomas Sowell’s anointed the latter is preferable. “Fixing” things (or at least telling themselves they are fixing things) allows them to feel special and superior. To them, nothing is more important than getting that rush. It is an addiction.
“Sowell food.”
Oh, that’s good. I’m stealing it.
I’ve used it before in a book review I wrote about one of Sowell’s books.
Similar to Jordan Peterson’s advice to fix your own stuff first.
Clean your room people!
h/t @brianwatt
I don’t think anyone can improve on Sowell’s words. He and Freidman make me stop at every sentence and think.
Thanks for this quote. Its nice to be able to ‘like’ something I actually like.
Not if you’re going to pun.
You do poetry, I do punishment.
I have been guilty of punning in the past, but I try to restrain myself. It’s a terrible disease, and more puns are not the cure.
I love Sowell and love his quote. For people to feel rewarded because they are essentially crippling people and encouraging them to remain that way is tragic–for those who practice it, and to those who are poisoned by it. Thanks @seawriter.
My ancestors are Greek. Punning is part of my cultural heritage.
There are many Freidmans out there – I assume you meant Milton. (And I agree with you!)
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Sentences like that will get you sent to a punitentiary!
Glad it’s not cultural appropriation. Of course, I have been informed that even God indulged in a pun.
Oh, I thought it was Kinky.
Is that most basic lesson even talk in schools anymore?
Sadly, it would seem not. At least by those who have drunk the Kool Aid.
Drs. Sowell, Williams, and Friedman are national treasures. It’s so sad that they are not even mentioned in most, if not any, schools these days. If they were more widely read, the Kool Aid would assuredly be rejected.
And speaking of puns, it was Oscar Wilde (I think) who was accused of stealing others’ puns. One evening at a party, he did it again. A few of the guests locked him in a closet and told him he couldn’t come out until he came up with an original one. Whereupon he called out, “O-pun the door.”
I’ve often wondered if the smug superiority of liberals was peculiar to the Deep South, or something more universal. So many Southern liberals fled to the left to escape racism, de jure, de facto, and de deceptionem.* Once in the sunlit uplands of liberalism, they congratulated themselves on being different from those others. (Do those red-dot bumper stickers exist elsewhere?)
I guess to some degree, they are not alone.
*Scholars, forgive the fractured Latin. And tell me the proper term for imagined racism, please.
I had never noticed them. But from what I just found on search, do you mean the blue dot in a red state bumper stickers?
Yes, I meant blue-dot. Is color dyslexia a thing?