art credit: Benjamin T Brixey
One
of my favorite columnists, Dr. Thomas Sowell, is retiring. His farewell column
is here. And here are a few take-aways from it:
Most
people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things
like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did
not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia
continue to call the “have-nots” today have things that the “haves” did not
have, just a generation ago.
In
some other ways, however, there have been some serious retrogressions over the
years. Politics, and especially citizens’ trust in their government, has gone
way downhill.
.
. .
Years
of lying presidents – Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon,
especially – destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility
which the office itself once conferred. The loss of that credibility was a loss
to the country, not just to the people holding that office in later years.
With
all the advances of blacks over the years, nothing so brought home to me the
social degeneration in black ghettos like a visit to a Harlem high school some
years ago.
When
I looked out the window at the park across the street, I mentioned that, as a
child, I used to walk my dog in that park. Looks of horror came over the
students’ faces, at the thought of a kid going into the hell hole that park had
become in their time.
When
I have mentioned sleeping out on a fire escape in Harlem during hot summer
nights, before most people could afford air-conditioning, young people have
looked at me like I was a man from Mars. But blacks and whites alike had been
sleeping out on fire escapes in New York since the 19th century. They did not
have to contend with gunshots flying around during the night.
We
cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can
learn something from the past to make for a better present and future.
Dr.
Sowell is also a prolific author of books; he has made esoteric or
downright boring subjects (such as economics) accessible and interesting. Check
out some of them here. Most will be available at your local library. But his regular columns will be much missed.
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