Deplorable Yankee
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
The Nonconformist
Over a lifetime of scholarship and public engagement, economist Thomas Sowell has illuminated controversial topics such as race, poverty, and culture.
Coleman Hughes
Summer 2020
The Social Order
Arts and Culture
Measured by his contributions to economics, political theory, and intellectual history, Thomas Sowell ranks among the towering intellects of our time. Yet, rare among such thinkers, Sowell manages never to provoke, in the reader, the feeling of being towered over. As Kevin Williamson observed, Sowell is âthat rarest of things among serious academics: plainspoken.â From 1991 until 2016, his nationally syndicated column set the bar for clear writing, though the topics he covered were often complex.
âToo many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity,â Sowell once said, âand some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech.â If academics birth needlessly complex prose, editors too often midwife it. An editor, Sowell once quipped, would probably have changed Shakespeareâs âTo be or not to be, that is the questionâ to something awful, like âThe issue is one of existence versus non-existence.â
Consider Sowellâs clear, brief explanation of the economic idea of âscarcity.â âWhat does âscarceâ mean?â he asks in his laymanâs textbook, Basic Economics. âIt means that what everybody wants adds up to more than there is.â Not only is pointless complexity absent from Sowellâs prose; so is the first-person perspective. The words âIâ or âmeâ scarcely show up in his 30-odd books, but for his memoir, A Personal Odyssey.
To his critics, Sowellâs writing style is severe. But to his fan baseâwhich includes figures as different as Steven Pinker and Kanye Westâitâs a refreshing break from the self-absorbed drivel that frequently passes for cultural commentary nowadays. Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and leading public intellectual, named Sowell the most underrated writer in history. West, for his part, tweeted out a handful of Sowell quotes to millions of followers in 2018.
Sowellâs first piece of writing was published in 1950âa letter to the now-defunct Washington Star, urging the desegregation of the cityâs public schools. The only hint during this period that he would someday be an economist was a budding interest in Karl Marx. For Sowell, Marxâs ideas âseemed to explain so much,â including his own âgrim experience.â At the time, Sowell was a 20-year-old high school dropout, working as a clerk by day and taking classes by nightâa situation that actually marked an improvement over his being unemployed and, for a time, homeless in his late teens.
Indeed he is underrated...and hated by the left
Long read
www.city-journal.org
Over a lifetime of scholarship and public engagement, economist Thomas Sowell has illuminated controversial topics such as race, poverty, and culture.
Coleman Hughes
Summer 2020
The Social Order
Arts and Culture
Measured by his contributions to economics, political theory, and intellectual history, Thomas Sowell ranks among the towering intellects of our time. Yet, rare among such thinkers, Sowell manages never to provoke, in the reader, the feeling of being towered over. As Kevin Williamson observed, Sowell is âthat rarest of things among serious academics: plainspoken.â From 1991 until 2016, his nationally syndicated column set the bar for clear writing, though the topics he covered were often complex.
âToo many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity,â Sowell once said, âand some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech.â If academics birth needlessly complex prose, editors too often midwife it. An editor, Sowell once quipped, would probably have changed Shakespeareâs âTo be or not to be, that is the questionâ to something awful, like âThe issue is one of existence versus non-existence.â
Consider Sowellâs clear, brief explanation of the economic idea of âscarcity.â âWhat does âscarceâ mean?â he asks in his laymanâs textbook, Basic Economics. âIt means that what everybody wants adds up to more than there is.â Not only is pointless complexity absent from Sowellâs prose; so is the first-person perspective. The words âIâ or âmeâ scarcely show up in his 30-odd books, but for his memoir, A Personal Odyssey.
To his critics, Sowellâs writing style is severe. But to his fan baseâwhich includes figures as different as Steven Pinker and Kanye Westâitâs a refreshing break from the self-absorbed drivel that frequently passes for cultural commentary nowadays. Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and leading public intellectual, named Sowell the most underrated writer in history. West, for his part, tweeted out a handful of Sowell quotes to millions of followers in 2018.
Sowellâs first piece of writing was published in 1950âa letter to the now-defunct Washington Star, urging the desegregation of the cityâs public schools. The only hint during this period that he would someday be an economist was a budding interest in Karl Marx. For Sowell, Marxâs ideas âseemed to explain so much,â including his own âgrim experience.â At the time, Sowell was a 20-year-old high school dropout, working as a clerk by day and taking classes by nightâa situation that actually marked an improvement over his being unemployed and, for a time, homeless in his late teens.
Indeed he is underrated...and hated by the left
Long read
The Nonconformist
Measured by his contributions to economics, political theory, and intellectual history, Thomas Sowell ranks among the towering intellects of our time. Yet, rare among such thinkers, Sowell manages never to provoke, in the reader, the feeling of being towered over. As Kevin Williamson observed...
www.city-journal.org
