Ever Wonder Why?: And Other Controversial Essays

EVER WONDER WHY?

and Other Controversial Essays

Thomas Sowell

HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS

Stanford University Stanford, California

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

www.hoover.org

Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 548

Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Sowell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

First printing, 2006

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ISBN 0-8179-4752-3

ISBN 978-0-8179-4753-8 (electronic)

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

T. S. Eliot

Contents

Preface

PART I: THE CULTURE WARS

Ever Wonder Why?

Animal Rites

Us or Them?

Twisted History

Explaining to the Grand Kids

Human Livestock

The Wright Stuff

The Legacy of Eric Hoffer

One-Uppers versus Survival

The Equality Dogma

The Inequality Dogma

Equality, Inequality, and Fate

Hiroshima

The Tyranny of Visions

The Tyranny of Visions: Part II

The Tyranny of Visions: Part III

The Immigration Taboo

The Left Monopoly

I Beg to Disagree

4th Estate or 5th Column?

PART II: ECONOMIC ISSUES

Why Economists Are Not Popular

Housing Hurdles

The Cost of Medical Care

Subsidies Are All Wet

A Taxing Experience

Profits without Honor

Profits without Honor: Part II

Two Earthquakes

Peter Bauer (1915–2002)

Journalists and Economics

Stock Crash Aftermath

Milton Friedman at 90

Price Gouging in Florida

Economic Power

A Relic of the Recent Past

Who Can Afford It?

Free-Lunch Medicine

Free-Lunch Medicine: Part II

Free-Lunch Medicine: Part III

Manufacturing Confusion

A Cold Shower

An Old New Vision

Third World Sweatshops

Third World Sweatshops: Part II

Privatizing Social Security

Privatizing Social Security: Part II

Living Wage Kills Jobs

A Happy Birthday?

PART III: LEGAL ISSUES

Calculated Confusion

Judges and Judgment

Justice for Little Angelo

Property Rites

Property Rites: Part II

Property Rites: Part III

Foreign Law Is Not Law

Medical Lawsuits

Fixing the Jury System

Half a Century after Brown

Half a Century after Brown: Part II

Half a Century after Brown: Part III

Umpires, Judges, and Others

Big Business and Quotas

The Grand Fraud

The Grand Fraud: Part II

The Grand Fraud: Part III

The Grand Fraud: Part IV

Saving Quotas

The High Cost of Nuances

The Polio Fallacy

PART IV: POLITICAL ISSUES

Spoiled Brat Politics

Spoiled Brat Politics: Part II

The Compassion Racket

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004)

Gun Control Myths

Gun Control Myths: Part II

A Painful Anniversary

The High Cost of Shibboleths

Why Do They Hate Us?

Foreign Allies

My Platform

The Oldest Fraud

The Left's Vision

The Left's Vocabulary

Abstract People

Looking Back

PART V: SOCIAL ISSUES

Mealy Mouth Media

Achievements and Their Causes

Talkers versus Doers

Talkers versus Doers: Part II

Liberals and Class

Liberals and Class: Part II

Liberals and Class: Part III

The Autism Spectrum

The High Cost of Busybodies

The High Cost of Busybodies: Part II

The High Cost of Busybodies: Part III

The High Cost of Busybodies: Part IV

Partial Truth Abortion

Lying about Yosemite

Growing Old

April Fools' Party

PART VI: EDUCATION ISSUES

Choosing a College

The Idiocy of Relevance

Julian Stanley and Bright Children

For What Purpose?

School Performances

School Performances: Part II

School Performances: Part III

College Admissions Voodoo

Summer De-Programming

Fat in California's Budget

A Scary Report

Teaching to the Test

Teaching to the Test: Part II

Teaching to the Test: Part III

Smart Problems

Vouchers Vindicated

Artificial Stupidity

Good Teachers

A Sign of the Times

Suspicious Stats

Peers and Pied Pipers

PART VII: RACIAL ISSUES

Older Budweiser

Rosa Parks and History

Friends of Blacks

Friends of Blacks: Part II

Recycled Racism

Dangerous Democracy?

Are Cops Racist?

Rattling the Chains

Roasting Walter Williams

Diversity in India

Race and IQ

Race and IQ: Part II

Race and IQ: Part III

An Old War and a New One

Silly Letters

Black History Month

Bravo for Bill Cosby

Quota Logic

Quota Logic: Part II

PART VIII: RANDOM THOUGHTS

Random Thoughts

Preface

Many explanations are given for the events of our time and the events in history. One of the most common explanations is that various external circumstances led or forced people to do this or that, and one of the most overlooked explanations is that various internal drives led them to do the things they did, including things that made no sense in terms of the external circumstances. One of these internal drives—especially the desire to feel important, in T.S. Eliot's words—fits many notions and actions that would be hard to explain otherwise.

The desire of individuals and groups to puff themselves up by imposing their vision on other people is a recurring theme in the culture wars discussed in the first section of the essays that follow. Such attempts at self-aggrandizement in the name of noble-sounding crusades are too often called idealism rather than the narrow ego trip that it is.

Right after the section containing essays on culture war issues comes the largest section in this book, on economic issues. The reason for so many essays on economics is not just the importance of the subject itself but also the utter confusion that reigns among the general public, and even among the intelligentsia, over very basic principles of economics—and even very basic words, like wages, taxes, or the national debt.

The great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that we need education in the obvious more than exploration of the obscure. It is especially important to explain economics so plainly that it becomes obvious because so many in politics and the media have created so much confusion in the process of spinning issues to fit their own agendas. Those who want a complete introduction to the subject can read my Basic Economics but the essays here simply try to clarify particular misconceptions on particular issues.

A wide range of legal, social, racial, and educational issues are dealt with in the other sections of this book. All of these essays first appeared as syndicated columns carried in newspapers across the country. As such, they had to be readable and concise, and they often dealt with issues that were in the news. However, from the large number of these columns written over the past few years I have selected for publication here those columns which deal with issues of continuing relevance and interest.

While I take responsibility for all the conclusions reached in these essays, I must also acknowledge the work of others that made these writings possible. First of all, there is my research assistant, Na Liu, whose insights as well as diligence have enabled me to discuss the wide range of topics covered in these columns with a background of knowledge to draw on. She has been very ably assisted by the dedicated work of Elizabeth Costa. All this is made possible by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where we are all employed and which has generously supported our research. Finally, I must acknowledge the contribution of Karen Duryea, my editor at Creators Syndicate, who has caught many a typographical or grammatical error in my columns, as well as inadvertent misstatements, saving me from public embarrassment.

While many serious issues are discussed in these pages, sometimes there is also a little humor, without which it would be hard to face many of life's realities.

Thomas Sowell

Hoover Institution

Stanford University

PART I

THE CULTURE WARS

Ever Wonder Why?

When you have seen scenes of poverty and squalor in many Third World countries, either in person or in pictures, have you ever wondered why we in America have been spared such a fate?

When you have learned of the bitter oppressions that so many people have suffered under, in despotic countries around the world, have you ever wondered why Americans have been spared?

Have scenes of government-sponsored carnage and lethal mob violence in countries like Rwanda or in the Balkans ever made you wonder why such horrifying scenes are not found on the streets of America?

Nothing is easier than to take for granted what we are used to, and to imagine that it is more or less natural, so that it requires no explanation. Instead, many Americans demand explanations of why things are not even better and express indignation that they are not.

Some people think the issue is whether the glass is half empty or half full. More fundamentally, the question is whether the glass started out empty or started out full.

Those who are constantly looking for the root causes of poverty, of crime, and of other national and international problems, act as if prosperity and law-abiding behavior were so natural that it is their absence which has to be explained. But a casual glance around the world today, or back through history, would dispel any notion that good things just happen naturally, much less inevitably.

The United States of America is the exception, not the rule. Once we realize that America is an exception, we might even have a sense of gratitude for having been born here, even if gratitude has become un-cool in many quarters. At the very least, we might develop some concern for seeing that whatever has made this country better off is not lost or discarded—or eroded away, bit by bit, until it is gone.

Those among us who are constantly rhapsodizing about change in vague and general terms seem to have no fear that a blank check for change can be a huge risk in a world where so many other countries that are different are also far worse off.

Chirping about change may produce a giddy sense of excitement or of personal exaltation but, as usual, the devil is in the details. Even despotic countries that have embraced sweeping changes have often found that these were changes for the worse.

The czars in Russia, the shah of Iran, the Batista regime in Cuba, were all despotic. But they look like sweethearts compared to the regimes that followed. For example, the czars never executed as many people in half a century as Stalin did in one day.

Even the best countries must make changes and the United States has made many economic, social, and political changes for the better. But that is wholly different from making change a mantra.

To be for or against change in general is childish. Everything depends on the specifics. To be for generic change is to say that what we have is so bad that any change is likely to be for the better.

Such a pose may make some people feel superior to others who find much that is worth preserving in our values, traditions and institutions. The status quo is never sacrosanct but its very existence proves that it is viable, as seductive theoretical alternatives may not turn out to be.

Most Americans take our values, traditions and institutions so much for granted that they find it hard to realize how much all these things are under constant attack in our schools, our colleges, and in much of the press, the movies and literature.

There is a culture war going on within the United States—and in fact, within Western civilization as a whole—which may ultimately have as much to do with our survival, or failure to survive, as the war on terrorism.

There are all sorts of financial, ideological, and psychic rewards for undermining American society and its values. Unless some of us realize the existence of this culture war, and the high stakes in it, we can lose what cost those Americans before us so much to win and preserve.

Animal Rites

If you think there is a limit to how much childishness there is among Californians, you may want to reconsider—especially for Californians in academic communities.

Recently a mountain lion was discovered up in a tree in Palo Alto, a residential community adjacent to Stanford University. This was at about the time of day when a nearby school was getting ready to let out. There had already been an incident of a horse being found mauled by some animal on Stanford land, and some thought it might have been a mountain lion that did it.

Fearing that the mountain lion might find one of the local school children a tempting target, the police shot and killed the animal. Outrage against the police erupted up and down the San Francisco peninsula and as far away as Marin County, on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, more than 30 miles away.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, The police agency has been flooded with outraged calls and e-mails from people inflamed by TV news videotape of the lion lolling peacefully in a tree just before an officer shot it to death with a high-powered rifle.

Yes, the mountain lion was sitting peacefully. That is what cats do before they pounce—usually very swiftly.

Second-guessers always have easy alternatives. One protester against the murdering of such a beautiful creature said that it easily could have been removed from the premises and relocated and that the dirty blood-thirsty bastards who killed it should be ashamed of themselves.

The protester offered no helpful hints on how you easily remove a mountain lion from a tree—and certainly did not volunteer to demonstrate how to do it in person the next time the police find a mountain lion up a tree in a residential neighborhood.

Animal rights advocates said the police could have given the mountain lion a chance by attempting to tranquilize it while it was up in the tree, and save shooting as a last resort if it turned aggressive.

A makeshift shrine has been erected on the spot where the mountain lion died. Flowers, cards and photos have been placed around it.

This is an academic community where indignation is a way of life. Those engaged in moral exhibitionism have no time for mundane realities.

The police, of course, have to deal with mundane realities all the time. Not long before this episode, the police had tried to capture three mountain lion cubs by shooting them with tranquilizers. They missed on two out of three tries with one cub.

What if the police had shot a tranquilizer gun at the adult mountain lion in the tree and missed? Would they have had a chance to get off a second shot at a swiftly moving target before he pounced on one of the hundreds of children that were soon to be leaving school near him?

Moral exhibitionists never make allowance for the police missing, whether with tranquilizers shot at mountain lions or bullets fired at a criminal. The perpetually indignant are forever wondering why it took so many shots.

It would never occur to people with academic degrees and professorships that they are both ignorant and incompetent in vast areas of human life, much less that they should keep that in mind before they vent their emotions and wax self-righteous.

Degrees show that you have knowledge in some special area. Too often they embolden people to pontificate on a wide range of other subjects where they don't know what they are talking about.

The fact that academics are overwhelmingly of the political left is perfectly consistent with their assumption that third parties—especially third parties like themselves—should be controlling the decisions of other people who have first-hand knowledge and experience.

The cops probably haven't read Chaucer and don't know what existentialism is. But they may know what danger is.

Some Palo Alto parents of small children living near where the mountain lion was killed said that the police did the right thing. There are still some pockets of sanity, even in Palo Alto.

Us or Them?

A reader recently sent me an e-mail about a woman he had met and fallen for. Apparently the attraction was mutual—until one fateful day the subject of the environment came up.

She was absolutely opposed to any drilling for oil in Alaska, on grounds of what harm she said it would do to the environment.

He argued that, since oil was going to be drilled for somewhere in the world anyway, was it not better to drill where there were environmental laws to provide at least some kinds of safeguards, rather than in countries where there were none?

That was the end of a beautiful relationship.

Environmentalist true believers don't think in terms of trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis. There are things that are sacred to them. Trying to get them to compromise on those things would be like trying to convince a Muslim to eat pork, if it was only twice a week.

Compromise and tolerance are not the hallmarks of true believers. What they believe in goes to the heart of what they are. As far as true believers are concerned, you are either one of Us or one of Them.

The man apparently thought that it was just a question of which policy would produce which results. But many issues that look on the surface like they are just about which alternative would best serve the general public are really about being one of Us or one of Them—and this woman was not about to become one of Them.

Many crusades of the political left have been misunderstood by people who do not realize that these crusades are about establishing the identity and the superiority of the crusaders.

T.S. Eliot understood this more than half a century ago when he wrote: Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

In this case, the man thought he was asking the woman to accept a certain policy as the lesser of two evils, when in fact he was asking her to give up her sense of being one of the morally anointed.

This is not unique to our times or to environmentalists. Back during the 1930s, in the years leading up to World War II, one of the fashionable self-indulgences of the left in Britain was to argue that the British should disarm as an example to others in order to serve the interests of peace.

When economist Roy Harrod asked one of his friends whether she thought that disarming Britain would cause Hitler to disarm, her reply was: Oh, Roy, have you lost all your idealism?

In other words, it was not really about which policy would produce what results. It was about personal identification with lofty goals and kindred souls.

The ostensible goal of peace was window-dressing. Ultimately it was not a question whether arming or disarming Britain was more likely to deter Hitler. It was a question of which policy would best establish the moral superiority of the anointed and solidify their identification with one another.

Peace movements are not judged by the empirical test of how often they actually produce peace or how often their disarmament tempts an aggressor into war. It is not an empirical question. It is an article of faith and a badge of identity.

Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace—not for actually producing peace but for being part of what was called the peace process in the Middle East, based on fashionable notions that were common bonds among members of what are called peace movements around the world.

Meanwhile, nobody suggested awarding a Nobel Prize for peace to Ronald Reagan, just because he brought the nuclear dangers of a decades-long cold war to an end. He did it the opposite way from how members of peace movements thought it should be done.

Reagan beefed up the military and entered into an arms race that he knew would bankrupt the Soviet Union if they didn't back off, even though arms races are anathema to members of peace movements.

The fact that events proved him right was no excuse, as far as members of peace movements were concerned. As far as they were concerned, he was not one of Us. He was one of Them.

Twisted History

One of the reasons our children do not measure up academically to children in other countries is that so much time is spent in American classrooms twisting our history for ideological purposes.

How would you feel if you were a Native American who saw the European invaders taking away your land? is the kind of question our children are likely to be confronted with in our schools. It is a classic example of trying to look at the past with the assumptions—and the ignorance—of the present.

One of the things we take for granted today is that it is wrong to take other people's land by force. Neither American Indians nor the European invaders believed that.

Both took other people's land by force—as did Asians, Africans, Arabs, Polynesians, and others. The Indians no doubt regretted losing so many battles. But that is wholly different from saying that they thought battles were the wrong way to settle the question of who would control the land.

Today's child cannot possibly put himself or herself in the mindset of Indians centuries ago, without infinitely more knowledge of history than our schools have ever taught.

Nor is understanding history the purpose of such questions. The purpose is to score points against Western society. In short, propaganda has replaced education as the goal of too many educators.

Schools are not the only institutions that twist history to score ideological points. Never Forget That They Owned Lots of Slaves is the huge headline across the front page of the New York Times' book review section in its December 14, 2004 issue. Inside was an indictment of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.

People of every race and color were enslaved—and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.

Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century—and then it was an issue only in Western civilization.

Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.

But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.

Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the total population.

It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.

In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to Cuba, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States—despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal at the time in Africa, in Cuba, and in the United States.

What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination but what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.

That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost for every six people freed. Maybe that was the only answer. But don't pretend today that it was an easy answer—or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains, when most leaders and most people around the world at that time saw nothing wrong with slavery.

Incidentally, the September 2004 issue of National Geographic had an article about the millions of people still enslaved around the world right now. But where was the moral indignation about that?

Explaining to the Grand Kids

Those of us who are optimists believe that someday sanity will return to our society. Our media, our officials—perhaps even our schools and colleges—will begin to talk sense. Those of you who are young may live to see it.

But there is a down side to sanity. Once there is a whole generation raised to think—to examine evidence and use logic—you are going to be confronted with a need to explain to your grandchildren how our generation could have done the things we did. You don't want your grand kids to think that your whole generation was crazy.

Grandpa, they will say, today we were reading in history—

History?

Yes, Grandpa. There's a subject in school called history.

Well, we didn't have that back in my day. We had social studies or current events or multiculturalism. But we didn't have this thing you call history.

Well, history is about what happened in the past, Grandpa—like back when you were young.

I'll be darned.

Anyway, we learned in history today that back in your times, people who refused to work were supported by people who did work. Is that true, Grandpa?

Well, yes, we were compassionate to the poor and the downtrodden, like the homeless and such.

Why were people homeless, Grandpa?

They didn't have enough money to buy houses or rent apartments.

Were you homeless, Grandpa?

No. I had a regular job and used part of my salary to pay the rent.

Why didn't the homeless do that?

Well, it is hard to explain. They had a different kind of lifestyle, they sort of dropped out of society. They lived a more laid back kind of way.

Took drugs?

Yeah, drugs, alcohol, stuff like that.

And you gave them money that you had worked for, Grandpa?

Well, not so much personally, but I paid taxes and the government gave money to the homeless, provided places for them to sleep, and so forth.

But you voted for the government, Grandpa.

Yeah, most of the time.

If the voters didn't want their money spent this way, the elected officials wouldn't have done it.

You sure do a lot of thinking things out, honey.

That's called logic. They teach that in school too.

Logic? I heard something about it vaguely, but we didn't have time for it in school when I was young. We had to express our feelings about things like trees and animal rights and being non-judgmental.

You weren't supposed to have judgment, Grandpa?

Well, if you were judgmental, that might hurt someone else's self-esteem.

So you couldn't tell the homeless to go get a job like you had, because it would hurt their self-esteem?

Exactly. It would be cultural imperialism—and that would be wrong because one culture is just as good as another.

But, Grandpa, in our history class we learned that people from all over the world were trying desperately to get into the United States—some paying to get smuggled in from Mexico or Asia, some trying to cross the Caribbean in leaky boats and drowning.

Why, yes, that happened.

But, if all cultures were equal, why were these people risking their lives trying to go from one culture to another?

I never really thought about that, honey. Gee, they must be working you pretty hard in school, to have you doing all this thinking.

Aren't people supposed to think, Grandpa?

I suppose it's all right for those who like it. I don't want to be judgmental.

Human Livestock

An old television special featured great boxing matches of the past, including a video of a match between legendary light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore and a young Canadian fighter named Yvon Durelle. In that fight, each man was knocked down four times. Since Archie Moore was also among those serving as commentators on the program, someone asked him if he knew that this was a great boxing match while he was fighting it.

Yes! he replied emphatically. At the time, he had said to himself: This is the kind of fight that any fighter would love to be in—a knockdown, drag-out—and emerge the winner.

Overcoming adversity is one of our great desires and one of our great sources of pride. But it is something that our anointed deep thinkers strive to eliminate from our lives, through everything from grade inflation to the welfare state.

The anointed want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving, and competition. They want the necessities of life to be supplied as rights—which is to say, at the taxpayers' expense, without anyone's being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers.

Nothing is to be earned. Self-esteem is to be dispensed to school children as largess from the teacher. Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed and matched by race and sex and whatever else the anointed want to take into account, in order to present whatever kind of picture the anointed think should be presented.

This is a vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the anointed. All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures controlled and directed by our betters.

Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant—whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers—provoke instant hostility from the anointed.

Automobiles enable you to come and go as you wish, without so much as a by your leave to your betters. The very idea that other people will go where they want, live where they want, how they want, and send their children to