I have adapted the heading of this post from the great Thomas Sowell’s occasional columns expressing “random thoughts on the passing scene.” It is unbelievable how many apothegms he formulated and shibboleths he pierced in those occasional columns. In no way can I rise to Sowell’s standards. I only claim to have a few random thoughts. Random I can do.
Sowell compiled numerous random thoughts from his columns in Part VIII of his 2006 collection Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays, published by the Hoover Institution. Someone at Hoover has proved himself a benefactor of humanity by uploading Part VIII in PDF form here.
Sowell leads off Part VIII with this random thought: “One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.” Here is one more from the same page: “If navel-gazing, hand-wringing or self-dramatization helped with racial issues, we would have achieved Utopia long ago.”
Sowell is a constructive genius. His books constitute a permanent legacy to those who struggle to think clearly, write clearly, or improve “the passing scene” through writing. He presents as a model. Although it is difficult to choose a best of his many books, A Conflict of Visions must be one of them.
I posted my political predictions for the coming year in “My cloudy crystal ball” last week. A prediction is not a wish. I hope every pessimistic political prediction I made proves wrong. That is my wish.
George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch writes: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” In other words, mistakes take many forms. Some are unavoidable. Some are gratuitous. “Prophecy” is the most gratuitous.
I think Joe Biden is the worst president since James Buchanan. Biden’s aspiration seems to be to surpass Buchanan. If so, that would explain a lot. If not, he illustrates the destructive power of leftist ideology.
By contrast, in our recent political history the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton seem benign. We didn’t know how good we had it. As many conservatives have noted, the Biden administration represents a third Obama term.
The environmental movement has done untold damage to the environment. It will keep it up as long as we have wealth to burn on it. I should think that we have passed that point, but President Biden is committed to continue the burning. He believes in it like the Aztecs believed in human sacrifice.
I understand people who enjoy driving electric cars. I don’t understand people who think that driving electric cars contributes to the preservation of the environment. In political terms the environmental movement seems little more than a pure expression of the left’s will to power.
Speaking of the Aztecs, I wonder if anyone under 60 reads William Prescott on Mexico and Peru or even Francis Parkman on North America. I wonder if anyone under 60 has even heard of them.
Thinking of obscure books of merit, The War Against the Automobile by B. Bruce-Biggs (1977) comes to mind.
It may be difficult to assess the damage Biden has done to the interests of the United States at home and around the world, but his opening of our borders and welcoming of illegal immigrants may be the most destructive of his many destructive acts.
In response to a question about Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson recently condemned “people on the ‘right’ who have spent the last two months every single day focused on a conflict in a foreign country as our own country becomes dangerously unstable, on the brink of financial collapse, with tens of millions of people who shouldn’t be here in the country, we don’t know their identities or the purpose of their being here. Like, stuff that could destroy the country for real and make it impossible for my kids to live here. They’ve said nothing about that, and they’re focused with laser intensity on foreign conflicts that I’m like, at some point I’ve got four kids…” I don’t think Ben Shapiro answers to that description. I don’t know anyone who does.
I find that Tucker Carlson increasingly evokes the animus of Charles Lindbergh circa 1941. In a recent interview, however, Tucker sounds to me like the British dude who characterized the anguish over the fate of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
All best wishes to our readers for a happy and healthy 2024.
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