2016 May 7^th

A couple of days ago Thomas Sowell, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the esteemed University of Chicago, published a column titled “Some thoughts on politics, life.” (That’s not a bad title so maybe I’ll use it myself someday.) Dr. Sowell’s initial thought, however, exposed the fact that a doctorate in anything is no guarantee that the holder has an education…training maybe, but that isn’t education. In an early paragraph, Dr. Sowell offers this opinion: “I don’t understand how people who cannot predict the weather five days in advance can predict the climate five decades from now.”

That is simply false to fact; the weather most certainly can be predicted, and with reasonable accuracy, five days in advance. Visit Key West in February and you won’t need a down coat; nor will you pack a bathing suit for a visit to Minneapolis at Christmas time.  Hurricane strikes are routinely predicted helping to save lives and property. We know that in the long run a certain number of people in any age cohort will die but we can’t predict who they will be; that’s how insurance rates are set. A man with a doctorate in economics doesn’t know that?

Of course he knows that but his political blinders force him to make the conservatively correct comments about global warming. As a result he makes a fool of himself.

Sowell continues with his litany of angst. He writes, “Of all the disheartening signs of the utter ignorance of so many college students, nothing so completely disheartened me as seeing on television a black college student who did not know what the Civil War was about.” Why are you surprised Dr. Sowell? The Texas board of education doesn’t know either. They have changed their textbooks so that slavery emerges as a minor cause.

The Texas statement on secession states in straightforward terms that Texas was leaving the union because the Union insisted that they abandon slavery. The Texas board of education couches leaving the Union in states’ rights terms but the “rights” alluded to was the right to have slaves.

When the secessionist states complained that the union was going to deprive the citizens of their property the property they were talking about were African Americans. So it is no surprise that a black college student should be unsure about the cause of the Civil War. Ask your right wing Texas friends why they doctored the state’s textbooks to show slavery was less a negligible factor in the Civil War.