Thank you Dr. Sowell for putting something that has long bothered me into words. My first job as a 16 year old was washing dishes, I worked up to waiting tables in a short time. That profession helped me thru nursing school until I developed the skills to be a nurse's aid to help me earn the money to finish nursing school. I considered emptying bedpans, cleaning nasty wounds, etc to be just a part of what I was good at doing. I retired as a Certified Nurse Midwife some 50 years after I washed that first dish in a restaraunt. It never once in my life occured to me that I was "too good" to do any of the jobs or that they were beneath me, even the ones I did not like.

It drives me crazy to hear anyone talk about a majority of minorities. By the very definition of the words it is impossible for a minority to be the majority or visa versa.

Ol Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton have done their level best for years to keep race a contentious issue and keep their names in the news. If they can find a warm match anywhere they huff and puff to try to fan it into flames, even throw a few lit ones of their own to keep it fornt and center.

It appears that there is a noticeable increase in disability of the relatively young and the use of "medical marijuana". I have a grandson who got on it and Medicare at 30 so he can stay zoned out the rest of his life without working. On the other hand my sister developed breast cancer in her late 50s and was not able to get on disability SSI until the last few months of her life and never Medicare, when she passed at 62 in 2001.

Well said Dr. Sowell. Politically correct seems to be overall destructive.

The more folks he can get on handouts, the more votes he can count on. That is very scary, no matter how much we try to point out that taking away form thsoe who have it by earning it,and giving it to those who don't particularly care to earn it as long as they can have it anyway will not work in the long term. It seems like the attitude of too many Americans is "I deserve it", not "I earned it"!

There may have been a time and a place where unions were a good thing, but IMHO unions now have taken over the bad guy roll. There is no where for a worker to turn to get rid of abuse from the union bosses. They even demand their dues from those without a job. I worked for over 50 years and never joined a union and never would, thankfully I live in a right to work state.

C'mon, the enviros support lawsuits by green groups to harvest taxpayer dollars, and they tell the rest of us what to do....surely you do not expect them to contribute any of their assets to preserving nature on top of that!

Deiciding what is best for OTHER people is what the left is best at. Whether it is determining the racial/ wealth profile of a neighborhood or whether it is deciding that wolves must be imported and raised by western ranchers despite the personal cost, they are absolutely certain of their superior opinions.

Your analogy to planting orchards is perfect. And of course we would be in even bigger trouble if not for the drilling leases awarded by the Bush administration that are now producing.