A Clear Voice for Freedom

Thomas Sowell, at age 86, has just retired from writing his weekly opinion column. I, for one, will miss him. Born in the South during the Depression, Sowell's rise to notoriety could be said to be the embodiment of the American Dream. Perhaps what I enjoyed most was his down to earth way of mocking the prevailing elite attitudes feigning superiority. His writings ever mirrored George Orwell's sentiments that "some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them." After all, "no ordinary man could be such a fool." Sowell's was ever a countering voice to that of the experts that pontificate that our country would be better off if the citizenry would just let the experts make decisions for them. "The fatal misstep of such intellectuals is assuming that superior ability within a particular realm can be generalized as superior wisdom or morality over all," he reminded. His ideas of freedom, equality, and self-governance always echoed those of the nation's founders, rejecting the trend toward more government control administered by ever more distant bureaucrats.

Blinded by their own intelligence, the all-knowing elites miss the bigger picture. "They have often overlooked the crucial fact that the population at large may have vastly more total knowledge . . . than the elites." The challenge is that the "knowledge is scattered in individually unimpressive fragments among vast numbers of people." No one can know it all. By yielding to rule by the few we ignore the majority of information and opinions needed to make the best decisions. The only way to tap into all available knowledge is through a free society that lets each person decide things for themselves. A free society is a learning society. We learn from our own mistakes and from each other. It's an approach that values street smarts as well as book smarts, practical experience as well as theory. And, it's a pragmatic, common-sense approach that builds a successful society. That's why freedom and self-governance are superior to rule by experts. As Sowell put it, it is absurd "for those with one percent of the knowledge in a society to be guiding or controlling those with the other 99 percent."

Closing thoughts from Thomas Sowell's final columns:

"The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer, if they disregard the record of the past."

"Black adults, during the years when I was growing up in Harlem, had far less education than black adults today — but far more common sense. In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity, among both blacks and whites."

"When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce and demand. Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: "What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?""

"You cannot live a long life without having been forced to change your mind many times about people and things — including in some cases, your whole view of the world. Those who glorify the young today do them a great disservice, when this sends inexperienced young people out into the world cocksure about things on which they have barely scratched the surface."

"There are words that were once common, but which are seldom heard any more. The phrase "none of your business" is one of these. Today, everything seems to be the government's business or the media's business. And the word "risque" would be almost impossible to explain to young people, in a world where gross vulgarity is widespread and widely accepted."