Random Thoughts

By Thomas Sowell (Archive) · Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Before becoming a perfectionist, you might think about the fact that the human race has survived for thousands of years without being anywhere close to perfection.

I would vote against anyone who plays the race card. Race and politics have been an explosive mixture in countries around the world.

If you were to make a lineup of the all-time best New York Yankees at each position, three of the four infield positions would be filled by those currently playing-- Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Robinson Cano. Mark Teixeira would be in the running at first base, except for the great Lou Gehrig.

If polygamists were not allowed to redefine marriage to suit themselves, why should homosexuals be allowed to?

Although Tiger Woods' behavior that led to his divorce does him no credit, it is a credit to him that he cared enough about his family that losing them ruined his performance in golf. If he gets married again, I suspect that he will not repeat what he did.

In a sense, politicians don't know what they are talking about. But, in another sense, they know exactly what they are talking about. They may not have a clue about the issue they are discussing and yet be experts on how to get you to think they know.

This is truly the "me" generation, when someone will release secret information that includes who has been helping us in the fight against terrorism-- information that can get girls' faces mutilated and their parents beheaded by our Islamic terrorist enemies.

Politicians often act as if you can create costs without creating consequences. Force insurance companies to cover more things and then act surprised when the premiums go up. Mandate more benefits for employers to provide for their employees and then act surprised when they don't hire as many workers. It is great political theater but lousy economic policy.

I know people who are blind or retarded who nevertheless have jobs. So you can imagine how much sympathy I have for able-bodied men who are begging on the streets.

The problem with splitting the difference between opposing sides, as many negotiators are prone to do-- whether these negotiators are marriage counselors, labor arbitrators or the United Nations-- is that this gives an advantage to the side with the most unreasonable demands, and therefore promotes more unreasonable demands in the future.

The title of the article on the cover of the September 13th issue of Time magazine-- "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace"-- speaks volumes about our times and about us. Future historians looking back at the history of this era may well be baffled as to why both our media and the administration in Washington embraced our enemies and repudiated our friends.

How anyone can read history and still believe in political messiahs is beyond me. The fact that it has become possible to graduate from even our most prestigious colleges and universities, still fundamentally ignorant of history, may have much to do with our electing a political messiah to the White House-- for which we, our children and grandchildren will pay dearly.

Franklin D. Roosevelt called December 7, 1941-- when Pearl Harbor was bombed-- "a date that will live in infamy." What should also live in infamy is the time when too many Americans forgot about Pearl Harbor and started wringing their hands with guilt about Hiroshima.

Do people understand that the world toward which the Obama administration is leading us is a world where individuals' economic well-being is no longer determined by how much their goods and services are valued by those pay for them, but by politicians in Washington? The counterproductive economic consequences of this are dwarfed by the harm done by making us all dependents and supplicants of "public servants" who become in reality public masters.

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