41–50 of 272 posts
It was frustrating and challenging. I fear that he's not gifted in any way, as the summary of the book suggests. He has had a load of speech problems that has slowed down his reading abilities dramatically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't consider myself a huge Sowell fan, but I do recognize his appeal. He speaks simply, writes prolifically, uses data generously, and has no issues calling out BS. For that reason alone is he better than most political commentators.
Yeah, I guess if your baseline is political commentator, almost anything would be an improvement. But I fail to understand how supposedly nuanced he is. To me, he looks like a caricature of the American libertarian/conservative flavor.
Sowell is the man. Read his books.
> 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)
The political quadrant model is seriously overrated. It may be that libertarian/authoritarian Left is a meaningful distinction in some contexts and not others; or that authoritarian Left/Right is a useful categorization for some purposes, but not for others.
I don't get what make him popular around certain crowds in HN. He is very polemical (I mean he was arguing that Obama would lead the US to live under Sharia law), is not a particularly good scholar, nor very insightful. Certainly, nothing he wrote as articles gave me a desire to read some of his books. There are tons of smarter, more interesting people in the conservative sphere, especially around libertarian/conserv…
I think the terms “good scholar” and “insightful” are fairly subjective and open to interpretation so I am curious how you define them. I wonder if you could provide a few example of comparable people you think fit those descriptions better?
But in the same generic "conservative / learning libertarian" tradition as Sowell, I vastly prefer people like Tyler Cowen and to a lesser degree Russ Robert to give two very famous examples.
Written 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 an…
Yes and no. He doesn't burn bridges, but left of center media elites pull up the drawbridges. On topics like this, they view college activists as authoritative, objective sources of truth on race. Those activists view Sowell, and TCW, as heretics.
I don't get what make him popular around certain crowds in HN. He is very polemical (I mean he was arguing that Obama would lead the US to live under Sharia law), is not a particularly good scholar, nor very insightful. Certainly, nothing he wrote as articles gave me a desire to read some of his books. There are tons of smarter, more interesting people in the conservative sphere, especially around libertarian/conserv…
http://web.archive.org/web/20090624060334/http://article.nat...
You can argue that his claims about Iran's capabilities are exaggerated (Or that he was unaware of the then-secret war against Iran already going on), but the idea that Iran claims to be a sharia state and the laws of Iran are not something most Americans would want their granddaughters to have to live under is hard to dispute.
> 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 deci…
As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).
I don't get what make him popular around certain crowds in HN. He is very polemical (I mean he was arguing that Obama would lead the US to live under Sharia law), is not a particularly good scholar, nor very insightful. Certainly, nothing he wrote as articles gave me a desire to read some of his books. There are tons of smarter, more interesting people in the conservative sphere, especially around libertarian/conserv…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do hope everyone would be at least sympathetic towards other human beings wanting justice and equal treatment. I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website. I hope you reconsider your stance…
I get that BLM is decentralized and I agree that most people are just protesting injustices, but then my question is: to whom did all that money go? Clearly it went to someone . Isn't it fair to consider this organization representative of BLM? > Black Lives Matter raised more than $90 million in 2020 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/black-lives-matter-raised-...
(The link you provide outlines where the money went.)