Syndicated Columnists
Lessons From the Past
- By Thomas Sowell
Seventy-one years ago this month -- in January 1948 -- a black, 17-year-old high school dropout left home. The last grade he had completed was the 9th grade. He had no skills, little experience, and not a lot of maturity. Yet he was able to find jobs to support himself, to a far greater extent than someone similar can find jobs today.
I know because I was that black 17-year-old. And, decades later, I did research on economic conditions back then.
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Fact-Free Politics
- By Thomas Sowell
In this era when there has been more information available to more people than at any time in the past, it is also true that there has been more misinformation from more different sources than ever. We are not talking about differences of opinion or inadequate verification, but about statements and catchwords in utter defiance of facts.
Among the most popular current catchwords are "climate change deniers." Stop and think. Have you ever -- even once in your entire life -- seen, heard or read even one human being who denied that climates change?
- Hits: 2698
Suicide of the West?
- By Thomas Sowell
Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time.
In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.
The late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put his finger on the problem when he said: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."
- Hits: 12449
Listening to a Liar
- By Thomas Sowell
The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.
The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.
No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.
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Whose Medical Decisions?
- By Thomas Sowell
There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration.
The fact that they got away with it before, with the "stimulus" bill, may have led them to believe that they could get away with it again.
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Three Good Men; Three Great Kids' Books
- By Michelle Malkin
Men get a bad rap. They're blamed collectively for rape culture, violence, war, poverty, climate change and all other manner of global suffering. They're forced to apologize on college campuses for their chromosomes, anatomy and athleticism. They're vilified incessantly in women's magazines, on women's talk shows and at women's confabs promoting the male-bashing #MeToo movement.
Not me.
- Hits: 832
'-30-': An Ending, but Not the End
- By Michelle Malkin
When I first started writing newspaper editorials and columns for the Los Angeles Daily News in November 1992, I learned that "-30-" (pronounced "dash thirty dash") was the journalist's code for letting an editor know where your copy ended. Most media historians believe the typesetting mark originated when news was filed by telegraph. Western Union's famous mid-19th-century 92 Code of numerical shorthand signals lists the meaning of "-30-" as:
"No more -- the end."
I prefer the definition in Webster's Dictionary:
"A sign of completion."
- Hits: 766
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