This is the season of college Commencement speeches -- an art form that has seldom been memorable, but has increasingly become toxic in recent times. Two themes seem to dominate Commencement speeches. One is shameless self-advertising by people in government, or in related organizations supported by the taxpayers or...
Editor's Note: The following is part one in a two part series. Click here for part II. Among the many disturbing signs of our times are conservatives and libertarians of high intelligence and high principles who are advocating government programs that relieve people of the necessity of working to...
Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them." After decades of massive expansions of the welfare state, the answer seems to range from "not very much" to "making matters worse." Undaunted, people in a number of countries are coming up...
Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster. While throngs of...
However great the shock of the massacre in Orlando, it is only a matter of time before we start hearing again the fact-free dogma that "diversity is our strength." If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over...
Former Nation of Islam member Thomas Hagan (a.k.a. … Based on what actually happened in history, renown scholar ThomasSowell writes:
The vogue [which began in the 1960s] of repudiating … But Sowell also notes:
Of all the reactions against the supposed "slave names" among blacks, the most painfully ironic has been…
“Recently I was foolish enough to try to reason with an environmentalist,” wrote Stanford economist ThomasSowell. … Sowell conflated these ideas because socialism and environmentalism have become opposite sides of the same coin.…
Last week the Supreme Court of the United States voted that President Obama exceeded his authority when he granted exemptions from the immigration laws passed by Congress. But the Supreme Court also exceeded its own authority by granting the University of Texas an exemption from the Constitution's requirement...
ThomasSowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. … To find out more about ThomasSowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate…
There was a time when the Fourth of July meant something more than a three-day weekend. Speeches, writings and commemorative ceremonies reminded us of the origins and greatness of America. No matter where in the world our ancestors came from, we today are almost invariably better off because they came...
In a recent interview with "Uncommon Knowledge" host Peter Robinson, famed economist and syndicated columnist ThomasSowell expanded … Sowell attempted to do just that. … Slavery, according to Sowell, is a much smaller factor.
Watch the full clip below, courtesy of the WSJ:…
Some time ago, burglars in England scrawled a message on the wall of a home they had looted: "RICH BASTARDS." Those two words captured the spirit of the politicized vision of equality -- that it was a grievance when someone was better off than themselves. That, of...
Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, and European governments' counter-attacks are more than just a passing news story. Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture. And this is...
3) Rarely does government ever "fix" problems: There’s always some politician promising to “solve” a problem, but as the great Thomas … Sowell says, “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs."…
ThomasSowell begins the fifth edition of "Basic Economics." … Sowell points out that the most basic thing that can be said about economics is that we live in a world of scarcity.…
President Barack Obama's absence from the great gathering in Paris of national leaders from other countries, to show their solidarity with France in its opposition to Islamic terrorists, was another sign of the Obama administration's continuing irresolution in the face of terror. Even the recent courageous message of...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Who says President Obama doesn't promote bipartisanship? His complicity in Iran's moving toward nuclear bombs has alarmed some top Senate Democrats enough to get them to join Republicans in opposition to the Obama administration's potentially suicidal foreign policy. Before the current...
With 2015 just getting under way, the buzz of political activity makes it seem almost as if we are already in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is honing her message to appeal to the mindset of the left wing of her...
In his recent trip to India, President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his -- denigrating the United States to foreign audiences. He said that he had been discriminated against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even now, "terrible poverty."...
It was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire -- and wrong -- predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of...
Irving Kristol Award, and the late Richard Herrnstein, a Harvard professor; MIT scientist and best-selling author Steven Pinker; and Thomas … Sowell, the black “conservative” economist, nationally-syndicated columnist, and Hoover Institution fellow have been saying for decades…
When Alfred E. Neuman said "What me worry?" on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have...
Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are "cherry-picking" the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do. Many controversies about how students should be admitted to educational institutions, especially those...
