i'll just review some of the more interesting aspects of his wikipedia personal history. wikipedia is supposed to be open content so i assume that plagarism isn't an issue here :-).
thomas sewell was born in 1930 in north carolina and his father died before he was born. he moved with his mother's sister to harlem and attended stuyvesant high school, but had to drop out at age 17. he worked in a machine shop and as a delivery man until he was drafted to the marines during the korean war in 1951.
after he was discharged he got his ged and enrolled in howard university (a historically black school) to later transfer to harvard university where he graduated magna cum laude in economics. yada, yada, yada, he graduates from columbia and the university of chicago. now for the last 30 years he has been a senior fellow at the hoover institution at stanford university, a conservative, libertarian-leaning think tank.
oh, and he's black. yeah, that matters to me.
aaanywho, clearly i say all this because i'm enamored with the guy and he happens to be right in line with what i'm feeling at the moment - but...
let's forget for a second that his arguments/examples are brilliantly constructed and presented with wit and personality. based on his life experiences, knowledge, and intellect alone - what possible basis do i have to not take him at his word?
Dear Vijay,
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to take cheap shots at an economics professor who complains from his think tank on the Stanford Campus that intellectual elitists are ruining America. Especially since his arguments are: 1. intellectuals take political stances out of a desire for grant money and the joys of moral high ground, and 2. intellectuals who step outside of their narrow academic fields should not be trusted. If we did believe Sowell on this one, then we would have to conclude that Sowell is actually the last person we should believe. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that his criticisms apply only to those intellectuals who aren't brave enough to say gun control leads to crime, global warming is a publicity stunt, and the New Deal is what actually caused the Great Depression.
After viewing your link to Sowell's interview, I'd had all of him I could stand. Since that interview was basically just 36 minutes of him inflating isolated anecdotes into unjustified themes, I may be oversimplifying his arguments by responding to them here. I assume that since Sowell is an academic, he has at some point published statements more intellectually rigorous than "the Geneva convention doesn't apply in Guantanamo because if you don't play by the rules, you don't get the protection of the rules." Why would we fight wars against people if they played by the rules? If we shouldn't apply the rules to people who don't play by the rules, then what should we do to people who commit crimes? Take them out against a wall and shoot them? That is, after all, what we did to German soldiers in World War II; something Sowell not only defends, but holds up to justify the recent human rights abuses against accused terrorists. Good lord.
I can't imagine that anyone who has ever studied the evidence for global warming can be seriously fazed by Sowell's claim that since temperatures were on the upswing before carbon emissions took off, that global warming is a hoax. If Sowell argues that temperatures would be rising to record levels without our carbon emissions, then he also needs to explain why, despite clear physical reasons that they should, the carbon emissions to our atmosphere are NOT causing warming.
ReplyDeleteI will admit that compared with the other bullshit he spouted, Sowell's comments about U.S. income inequalities were a little more sophisticated. He argued that we shouldn't be worried about growing income inequality in the U.S. because if we track Americans over their working lifetimes, on average they get richer. This is a nice caviat, BUT it is hardly the ultimate indicator of American class mobility that Sowell makes it out to be. Someone could make $15,000 per year, and have $2,000 in their bank account for 20 years, then move up in their later years to make $25,000 and have $10,000 in their bank account, and Sowell is holding that progress up as if they're actualizing the American Dream. Without government assistance, the low income people in our country would not be able to afford retirement, or quality health care, or housing security. Even more important, Sowell's indicator of "progress" allows it to be okay for children to be born into poverty so long as they make marginally more money at a later point in their lives. Everything that we know about neuroscience, childhood development, and job and educational attainment, tells us that the first years of life set the foundation upon which people later achieve. Although some people (like Sowell) are anomalies, peoples' life circumstances from age 0-5 are a scarily reliable predictor of their future economic prospects. If we followed the supposedly "free market" model Sowell promotes, we would not be able to pay for the healthy environments that allow poor children the opportunities they deserve.
While Sowell holds up "central planning" as the straw man against his libertarian dogma, a more just comparison would be the socialist democracies of Western Europe. In Germany for example, people may pay about 50% of their income in taxes. In exchange, people are healthier, and have greater economic mobility. The reality of what taxes can offer us is a more even playing field, where the ideals of freedom and fair competition can actually be achieved.
It is nice to see that some people, like Sowell, can defy poverty and racism to achieve success in our country. However, we should not focus on Sowell's personal triumphs without also acknowledging that many more people have been sabotaged by our racist, classist political system. It is probably not a coincidence that an overwhelming percentage of African Americans in our country disagree with Sowell, and identify as politically liberal.
In other words, I hope you don't become a libertarian.
Love,
Cate
fear not cate, i can confidently say that im still more liberal than half of the world's population by a long shot :-) and i obviously don't agree with everything he says - i wrote this post in a fit of passion :-)
ReplyDeletehowever, will say i think that objectively any minority (women, blacks, etc..) has a much more of a level-playing field becoming part of important decision making processes through sheer merit as a minority in business than in academia or government - weird huh? the ceo of pepsi is an indian woman, the former ceo of ebay is a woman - quick - name me a prominent indian woman in academia or governement...
also, i feel much more comfortable having these kind of thoughts in montreal even though it is a pretty liberal place than i ever did in the bay area - also weird huh?
also interesting...sowell was a marxist at harvard. hmmm...
ReplyDelete