Intellectuals and Race.And an interview
part onepart two I like to compare the situation of the British when they arrived on the coast of North America with the Iroquois on the coast. How did the British get across the Atlantic in the first place? Well, they used trigonometry which I believe originated in the Middle East. They stored their knowledge using an alphabet they got from the Romans. They did their calculations using numbers that came from India. Their weapons used gunpowder that was invented in China. As for the Iroquois, they were on the East Coast and they had no idea there was a West Coast, much less who was there and what their culture might be. So you are talking about two groups with cultural universes of vastly different sizes, and the ones with the biggest cultural universe usually prevail.
And that, is the idea of the American Melting Pot in a nutshell. Cultures able to take and borrow and learn together under a system of respect and rule of law. That is the real reason America became a powerhouse. Now that the law only commands we respect Politically correct opinions and is used to punish and persecute those who disagree - for owning a gun, for teaching your kids at home, for doing anything that resists the liberal encroachment, nothing works.
He said in regards to the book The Bell Curve that although its authors say certain beliefs are untrue, “I ask myself whether the untruth is not better for American Society than the truth.”
And that is Liberalism in a nutshell. I knowingly choose to believe and promote a lie, because I am special, and I know its a lie, but lying to the rubes about this will make the world a better place. My Dad said much the same thing when I proved to him Anthropomorphic Global warming was a lie. Its okay he says, because it promotes "right" behavior. I responded "So if GWB thought the "right" behavior was going to war with Iraq, he is justified in telling any lie to make that happen, right? Maybe we should demand the truth and have everyone make up their own minds instead of pretending we know what is best?" His response? "That's different" - by which, of course, he meant - I'm Different. The Rules don't apply to me. I am superior. (Anyone starting to understand why I am no longer in communication with my family and disobey God by not honoring my Father or Mother?)
if you look at the history of blacks, and I did this in a previous book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, a wholly disproportionate number of successful blacks came from a very small number of highly atypical cultural settings. They came from educational institutions with a culture that was different from the Southern culture in which a vast majority of blacks grew up. And these institutions made a conscious effort to substitute for that culture, often with a culture from New England.
What is really fun is to give a book like this to a liberal and then watch them, without even glancing at it, condemn Sowell as a racist. Then you tell them he IS black.
Sowell's last book, "intellectuals and society" was a fantastic summary of of his views on the cost of knowledge ( meaning I no longer have to hit people with that Tome out of the gate) and I suspect this book will be a wonderful summary of "Affirmative action around the world" combined with "White Liberals, black rednecks", and the trilogy on culture.
