http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040624.shtml Random thoughts
Thomas Sowell
A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like "arraigned," "curried" and "exculpate" meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.
If the same number of people who have been killed in terrorist attacks in Iraq over the past year had been killed on the battlefield in one month, it would not have been nearly as big a news story in the media. Terrorists get more bang for the buck when papers like the New York Times make each individual murder front page news, day after day.
People sometimes ask if I have tried to convince black "leaders" to take a different view on racial issues. Of course not. I wouldn't spend my time trying to persuade the mafia to give up crime. Why should I spend time trying to convince race hustlers to give up victimhood? It's their bread and butter.
Of all the theories that persist despite tons of hard evidence against them, the champion is the theory of "overpopulation." The evidence was against it in Malthus' time and has been for two centuries since then. The next time someone tries to sell overpopulation hysteria, ask them to name just one country that had a higher standard of living when its population was half of what it is today.
I have always been offended by the song that says, "Everything is beautiful in its own way." If everything is beautiful, then the word "beautiful" has no meaning. If everything were purple, there would be no word "purple" in the language because it would not distinguish one thing from another.
