Thomas Sowell

Two unrelated events last week provide some clues as to why our education system is failing. First, Canada College in San Mateo, California, held a job fair — for kindergartners! Apparently there is nothing too silly to spend the taxpayers’ money on, even...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Even though Saddam Hussein’s regime has been toppled, there are still pockets of resistance — not only in Iraq but in Paris, Berkeley, and in the editorial offices of the New York Times. These die-hards may hold out...

Princeton professor James M. McPherson’s recent arguments for affirmative action, in a newsletter to members of the American Historical Association, makes many sweeping assertions and implicit assumptions that need not even be challenged to show the shakiness of...

Old-timers may remember a radio program about a crime-fighting hero called The Shadow, who had “the power to cloud men’s minds, so that they cannot see him.” Affirmative action has that same power today. Some of the murkiest thinking of our times has...

Perhaps nothing so epitomized what is wrong with the media as Wolf Blitzer of CNN “reporting” on the war in Iraq, talking not about what had happened but about something that had not happened. No one had yet found weapons of mass destruction, he said, even...

Those of us whose pessimism about our country’s social degeneration sometimes borders on despair have been given a reality check by the dedication, discipline, and decency of our troops in Iraq, as well as by the advanced technology of the military equipment...

The recent deaths of journalists in Baghdad are more than just personal tragedies. Both the chances that these journalists have taken and the indignant reactions by the surviving journalists are a sad sign of a growing lack of realism in our times, especially among...

A San Francisco sports writer has joined the chorus of those who argue that Pete Rose should be admitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite being banned from baseball for violating one of its cardinal rules, against betting on ball games. The argument is: What...

If you would like to be taller than you are, do you think that joining a basketball team would help? After all, statistics prove that members of basketball teams are taller than other people. If this seems like a strange way to reason, it is the same kind of reasoning...

Someone once said of Lillian Hellman that every word she uttered was a lie, including “and” and “the.” Many defenders of affirmative action deserve a Lillian Hellman award. Not only is much of what they say contradicted by readily available...

No issue has been more saturated with dishonesty than the issue of racial quotas and preferences, which is now being examined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Many defenders of affirmative action are not even honest enough to admit that they are talking...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Never before in history has the word “unilateral” been thrown around so gratuitously when the issue was war. Only in recent years has there been any question that a sovereign nation takes the solemn step of going to...

We have heard a lot about anti-war demonstrators. Indeed, we have heard a lot from anti-war spokesmen, as the media continue their corrupt practice of providing free air time to those whose antics provide them with footage for their news broadcasts. But what about...

A recent news story about a teacher who assigned her students to write anti-war letters may have seemed like just an isolated episode, but teachers using students for their own little ego trips is by no means uncommon. Perhaps the worst recent example was a teacher...

While Senate Democrats are filibustering against the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal appeals court, liberals in the media are filibustering against conservative judges in general. The hallmark of these liberal media filibusters is that they can find little...

My favorite salesman in my favorite camera store in Palo Alto, California, happened to mention that he lives in the town of Tracy. That is about an hour and a half drive to work in rush hour traffic. Why was this man spending three hours a day on the highway? Because...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Everything is relative. In most of coastal California, Ted Kennedy would be politically middle of the road — and, in San Francisco, right of center. A lot of what is called “public service” consists of making...

One of the many fashionable idiocies that cause American schools to produce results inferior to those in other countries is the notion that education must be “relevant” to the students — and especially to minority students with a different...

It is a painful reminder of human folly, irresponsibility, and exhibitionism that millions of “anti-war” demonstrators have somehow convinced themselves that they have some special aversion to war. No sane human being wants war. There would be cheers...

Sometimes a phrase betrays a whole mindset. Someone quoted in the New York Times recently referred to the Bush tax cut as one in which “most of the benefits would be showered on the richest taxpayers.” Keeping money that you yourself earned is called...

Liberals have been throwing money at problems for so long that it should not be surprising that they are now ready to throw money at the problem they have with the predominance of conservative talk show hosts on radio. For a change, rich liberals will be throwing...