From: pjmedia.com, by Tyler O’Neil, on Dec 27, 2016
Economist Thomas Sowell has long been one of the leading lights of the conservative movement in America. His path from high school dropout to renowned professor has inspired thousands and his insights on the history of race relations in America are invaluable.
On Tuesday, Sowell announced his retirement from 25 years of writing political columns. The professor is putting his pen to rest following an “awful” political year. During a stay in Yosemite National Park, he realized that “four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program” felt “wonderful.”
After dropping out of high school at age 17, Sowell graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University at age 28, and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago a decade later. He taught economics at several universities, and has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University since 1980.
Over his distinguished career, Sowell has written more than thirty books. Most notable are: Wealth, Poverty, and Politics; Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy; A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles; and Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
Sowell has never been afraid to pen the most politically incorrect truths, and he has provided a well-informed and nuanced view of race and economics in America in a uniquely compelling voice.
Conservative leaders lamented his retirement from politics, praising the professor’s influence and wisdom.
Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint declared that Sowell’s “brilliance & wit outshone economists half his age—& often, less than half his sense.”
1. “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
2. “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
3. “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
4. “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
5. “Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
6. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is: he confuses it with feeling.”
7. “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
8. “Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that the census data of that era showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults.”
9. “The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.”
10. “The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.”
11. “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
12. “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”
13. “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”
14. “Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.”
And a bonus: “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”
Thomas Sowell, you will be sorely missed.
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First, I added the parenthetical “he’s retiring” to the original article’s headline because when I first read it, I immediately interpreted “in honor of his last column” to mean that he’d died. I learned moments later that he was just retiring – so, to prevent an initial misunderstanding by others, I added those two words.
Those quotes are perfect examples of Sowell’s politically incorrect view of our politics. My favorite is number 4, “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” How true!
How could anyone read those quotes and not nod your head in agreement?
The country elected the wrong black man to be our president in 2008. As proof that many of us conservatives aren’t truly racist, if he had run, we could have happily voted for Thomas Sowell instead of that vapid, Muslim-leaning, half-black socialist, Barack Obama and the country would have been far better for it.
Dr. Sowell is a black man who grew up in a segregated world and not only survived it without being becoming a racist himself but has prospered by recognizing the fraud being utilized by the black activists to keep black people in line. He is the antithesis of Barack Obama, Sowell is a genuine black man who grew up in the black community, worked at ordinary jobs, and served his country in the military before educating himself in the arcane world of economics. I invite anyone who’s interested in learning more about Sowell to check out his Wikipedia entry HERE.
His writings are appreciated for their insightful wisdom and he has established himself as a brilliant logical thinker. I can think of no conservative writer that I respect more and I’ve posted a number of his pieces during my blogging career. Indeed, he will be sorely missed.
Garnet92.
Categories: Political
Pesky Truth 
It’s a sad day for the rest of us when someone as wise and genuinely intelligent as Thomas Sowell retires. He has always had a gift for exposing the fraudulence of liberalism in the most succinct and understandable way. Fortunately for us he leaves behind a treasury of writings that are so full of insight and wisdom that like the writings of Thomas Jefferson they will never be out of date.
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Well said, Garnet. There are a number of black men (which we were never opposed to) that could have become our president and done a much better job than O and would have been infinitely better for our country. Thomas Sowell was certainly high on that list.
Indeed he will be sorely missed, and lucky for us he has left us with many nuggets of wisdom. It’s just too bad that the people who need his wise words the most are the very ones who’ve probably not followed him for years and listened to him. Their loss, right?
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Of course, I don’t know Mr. Sowell personally, but I’ll bet that the quantity of lies that he tells is minuscule compared to Barack Obama.
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Pray that he will tire of retirement, and soon return to the fray, at least intermittently.
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Totally agree, dave. His wisdom is too valuable to lose entirely. I too hope that he continues to write, at least occasionally.
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Dr. Sowell is a national treasure. His words of common sense wisdom, backed by scrupulous statistical verification, will be sorely missed!
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Amen! His is one voice that is valued by every conservative that I know. I’ve mentioned his “retirement” to several friends and every single on was aware of it already and will be sorry to lose his common sense voice.
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