Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Please contact your local newspaper editor if you want to read the THOMAS SOWELL column in your hometown paper.
The California recall election and its surrounding hoopla may have confirmed the suspicions of some people in other parts of the country that Californians are crazy. But not all Californians are crazy — just the most affluent and highly educated ones. Although...
They say “truth will out” but sometimes it takes a long time. For more than half a century, it has been a “well-known fact” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That view was never pervasive...
It is one of the sad signs of our times that a furor was created because Rush Limbaugh expressed an opinion as to why a particular quarterback seemed to him to be over-rated. In his view, it was because the powers that be in professional football were anxious to have...
Most of the letters and e-mails I receive are a pleasure to read and my only regret is that I cannot answer even one-tenth of them. However, there are certain e-mails and letters that repeat the same fallacies again and again. Let me try to answer one of those...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: If you have a right to respect, that means other people don’t have a right to their own opinions. My computer operating system is so out of date that people don’t even write viruses for it any more. If the debate among...
Many of the pronouncements coming from those who run our public schools range from fallacies to frauds. The new book “No Excuses” by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom exposes a number of these self-serving lies. You may have heard how hard it is to find...
My son learned fractions and decimals when he was in the first grade. He learned them from me as I drove him to school on the Los Angeles freeways, where he became curious about the signs that said things like “Wilshire Boulevard 2 1/4 miles.” At the...
Everyone knows that black students in general do not perform as well in school as white students, much less Asian American students. But few realize how painfully large the gap is. Even fewer know that there are particular black schools, even in low-income...
At George Mason University, they are giving a “roast” — that peculiarly American combination of praise and ridicule — to Walter Williams, professor of economics and columnist extraordinaire. Although I cannot be there, let me participate vicariously with a few observa…
Maybe it is just local pride on my part, but I think California is the purest example of liberal fundamentalism. New York and Massachusetts have their claims on that title, but California is not called the Left Coast for nothing. Some recent examples: After an...
When Billy’s mother sees her 12-year-old son’s popularity with team mates on his baseball team, she thinks back to predictions made when he was a pre-schooler that he would have so much trouble making friends that, among other things, he would probably...
A caller on the Rush Limbaugh show recently had an inspired suggestion for Republicans: Since the “Contract with America” was such a political success back in 1994, why not a Contract with Black America during next year’s election campaign? The...
We may become the first society destroyed by its own experts — especially experts in fields where there is no expertise that can be verified by facts. Over the past several decades, no one has been victimized more by so-called experts than parents and children....
For more than two centuries, the political left has crusaded against the punishment of criminals. Anyone familiar with history can find 18th century writers saying the same things that today’s critics, politicians, judges and the ACLU are saying about how...
What is vital to the interests of black “leaders” and the Democratic Party is to keep blacks paranoid and dependent. For that, everything must be blamed on “racism.”
Here we are, five months after the war in Iraq began, and we haven’t yet solved all of that country’s problems. Who would have thought that we would? Apparently a significant section of the American media either thought that we would or is simply piling on...
Just a week ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the political sensation of California — and of the national media, with his face on the cover of both Time and Newsweek. Polls showed him leading everyone in the horde of candidates for governor by a wide margin. Now...
Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a big splash in the media by entering the California governor’s race. But the real news out of California came a few days before Arnold’s political bombshell. The latest census data show — for the first time —...
Justice Anthony Kennedy won an outburst of applause at a recent meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco when he criticized mandatory sentencing laws. “Every day in prison is much longer than any day you’ve ever spent,” Justice...
It is fascinating to watch special interest groups seeking privileges for themselves in the guise of protecting the rights of other people. A recent issue of Editor & Publisher magazine — the trade journal of newspapers — argued for allowing the use...
Some years ago, while walking across the campus of Stanford University, I happened to encounter the late Glen Campbell, then head of the Hoover Institution, where I work. Glen was also a regent of the University of California and the regents had just made some...
If an incident involves a white cop and a black criminal, you don’t need to know the facts to know how many in the media will react.
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Have you ever heard a single hard fact to back up all the sweeping claims for the benefits of “diversity”? Some people were upset, not by Dusty Baker’s off-hand remark that races differ in their responses to hot...
The Vietnam War showed how dangerous it is to allow a President of the United States to lie us into armed conflict, as Lyndon Johnson did by inflating a minor incident in the Gulf of Tonkin into a means of stampeding Congress into authorizing an escalation of military...
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