Every once in a while Thomas Sowell compiles his random thoughts — usually in the form of aphorisms related to current events — into a column. I believe he used to call these columns “Random thoughts on the passing scene.”
Today’s column collects his random thoughts. I thought several of his thoughts from today’s column might qualify as the quote of the day (and all of them are worth reading). Here is his opening thought:
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
Will somebody say amen? You have to think that through for a bit, and then it detonates. Here is the next thought, this one illuminating the current campaign season:
Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama’s claims about “creating jobs” with one plain and inescapable fact — “there hasn’t been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office.” Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost.
Here is another thought of the detonating variety:
If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.
I truly believe! One more thought for the campaign season:
If there is ever a Hall of Fame for confidence men, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff will have to take a back seat to Barack Obama. Obama is the gold standard — or, perhaps more appropriately, the brass standard.
And then there is this one, which I am afraid is on its way to becoming an eternal truth:
I have never known a word to become absolute dogma, without a speck of evidence, the way “diversity” has.
All of which inspires a random thought of my own. I hope that in a Romney administration Sowell will be recognized with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.