Thomas Sowell

The Supreme Court’s recent decision saying that the federal government can prosecute those using marijuana for medical purposes, even when state laws permit such use, has been seen by many as an issue of being for or against marijuana. But the real significance...

Only a few economic historians are likely to notice that June 17th marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill, and even economic historians are unlikely to be nostalgic about that disastrous legislation. Why not leave the bad news of the...

Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of “menial work” or...

Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change. Having imagined...

The new trinity among liberal intellectuals is race, class and gender. Defining any of these terms is not easy, but it is also not difficult for liberals, because they seldom bother to define them at all. The oldest, and perhaps still the most compelling, of these...

We may look back on some eras as heroic — that of the founding fathers or “the greatest generation” that fought World War II — but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or...

“Who can afford to buy a house in this place?” my wife asked, when I read her the average prices of homes in various northern California communities. “We certainly can’t,” I said. Our home has more than doubled in value since we bought it...

Only in California would a city that is less than 50 years old have a historical society. But, in California, anything more than a couple of decades old is considered historic and anything that is a century old is considered to be ancient history. Nevertheless, the...

Maybe the non-stop denunciations of judicial nominees by Senate Democrats will seem relevant to some people but it is in fact wholly beside the point. Senators who don’t like any particular judicial nominee — or any nominee for any other federal...

It was perhaps appropriate that Dan Rather received the prestigious Peabody award in journalism at the same time when Newsweek magazine was finally backing away from its false story about Americans flushing the Koran down the toilet at the Guantanamo prison. At least...

Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including “black English,” has its roots in the history of those whites who...

Recently a friend described a meeting with a nasty-tempered leftist who was from a rich family. Unfortunately, there are a lot of leftists who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth — and, instead of being grateful, are venomous against American society....

The latest liberal crusade is against the Wal-Mart stores. A big headline on a long article in the New York Times asks “Can’t A Retail Behemoth Pay More?” Of course they can pay more. The New York Times could pay its own employees more. We could all...

Where can you make $2,000 a day, with no real effort? In San Mateo County, California. Before you start packing your bags to head there, you should know that the average homeowner in San Mateo County saw the value of his property increase by $2,000 a day over the past...

Liberals may think of themselves as people who believe in certain principles but, if you observe their actual behavior, you are likely to discover that most liberals have a certain set of attitudes, rather than principles. Liberals may denounce “greed,”...

Sometimes something trivial gives you a clue about something serious. A tempest in a teapot has been stirred up about the zoning laws and New York’s famed Plaza Hotel. By some fluke, half of the Plaza’s ballroom is zoned for commercial use and the other...

As much as I enjoy most of the messages from readers, there is no way that I can answer more than a small fraction of them. The messages I don’t reply to at all are those from obviously ignorant people who offer insults instead of arguments. However, a recent...

“This is your eyewitness news team, reporting from the big, posh April Fools’ Day party at the Dewdrop Inn out at Moot Point, overlooking Dyer Straits. Everybody who is anybody is here. “There’s the karate expert Marshall Artz, timber heiress...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Nolan Ryan’s baseball career was so long that he struck out seven guys whose fathers he had also struck out. (Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds, for example.) Why do some people use a fancy mathematical term like...

Back in the 1980s a White House staffer told about a revealing incident on Capitol Hill. The staffer was walking down the corridors of one of the buildings on the Hill when a Senator motioned to him to step inside his office. “I’m going to make a speech...

Ordinarily, the retirement of a TV newsman would be something to be more or less passed over in silence by friend and foe alike. But the retirement of Dan Rather as anchorman of CBS news has caused so much spin in the media that some of this spin may become...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: How many other species’ members kill each other to the same extent as human beings? How can you be an “insurgent” in someone else’s country? Yet despite the fact that the wave of terrorism in Iraq is led by...

The recent resignation of CNN’s news director, Eason Jordan, after his outrageous remarks about our military at an international forum were reported on the Internet, is only the latest in a series of media scandals, of which Dan Rather’s forged documents...