Encountering Thomas Sowell
lawliberty.org
Encountering Thomas Sowell
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Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#2> Many people wondered last summer why, for example, on the Black Lives Matter website the organization declared (and has since deleted) a “disruptive” stance on the nuclear family. What did that have to do with mobilizing against police violence?
For a long time I was very sympathetic to BLM, I would even have considered protesting with them. It was the above that caused me to rethink my position and eventually decide that BLM was actually antagonistic to their very goal.
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#3Sowell has the great and challenging characteristic that he never quite gives you the answer that would let you justify your first reactions with, "See? He agrees with me!" His writing is too nuanced to provide an easy escape from thinking, even if people occasionally use cut-up quotes to do so.
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#4It's a loss for Americans of all political stripes that Sowell hasn't been the public face of American Conservatism for decades. He's passionate, articulate, and, most of all, deeply nuanced in his thoughts. I don't always agree with him, but I've rarely read or listened to his thoughts and not come away with something to consider.
I'm excited to read the linked biography when it's published.
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#5I began studying sociology in my mid 20s. That's what threw me off the left most than anything else.
I remember I discovered Sowell about that time, and it was challenging and refreshing.
I'm still a strange flavor of a utilitarian social democrat, but he's the reason why I picked up this routine of reading libertarians and conservatives. I dismissed some controversial right-wing figures in my country and reading their books (sometimes) challenge my ideas, and often improves my empathy.
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#6> The left takes its vision seriously — more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
(“Left” in this context is the authoritarian top-left of the political quadrant)
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#7> The left takes its vision seriously — more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep. (“Left” in this context is the authoritarian top-left of the political quadrant)
[deleted]
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#8This post is awful.
The author takes a drastic misunderstanding of the operating model of BLM, which is largely decentralized, and uses it to attribute degenerative philosophical characteristics to a group of people all banded together on a loose set of shared goals -- primarily stopping racial violence instigated by police, a problem which cannot be denied in the US.
Kendi's work is extremely good, very provocative, and also long enough that I doubt a single person can succinctly summarize it -- let alone refute it through the words of someone else in a mere paragraph.
I suppose "consider the source" is at play here. From what I can tell, this site is nothing but the blogosphere version of some garbage neocon beltway think tank.
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#9Written by Thomas Chatterton Williams [1], author of Self-Portrait in Black and White [2]:
> “It’s not about color for me,” my aunt said while railing against Obama. “For example, I love Thomas Sowell.”
> To that side of my extended family, I became the stereotype of a coastal liberal, writing for the New York Times and wholly out of touch with the real America. In fact, I’ve always prided and defined myself as an anti-tribal thinker, and sometime contrarian, working firmly within a left-of-center black tradition...
Why was this published in Law & Liberty, has he burned his left-of-center media bridges?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton_Williams
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_in_Black_and_Whi...
Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell
#10It's a loss for Americans of all political stripes that Sowell hasn't been the public face of American Conservatism for decades. He's passionate, articulate, and, most of all, deeply nuanced in his thoughts. I don't always agree with him, but I've rarely read or listened to his thoughts and not come away with something to consider. I'm excited to read the linked biography when it's published.
I'm on the conservative side, mostly, and I'm deeply disappointed by most prominent conservative voices. There's much more of value in conservative thought than people hear from conservative mouthpieces in the media, but instead we get ugly stupidity.