Thomas Sowell

On page 28 of last Sunday’s New York Times, right opposite the page where the obituaries were, at the very bottom was a news item almost exactly the size of a 3-by-5 card. It was a fraction of an Associated Press dispatch about Richard Brodhead, president of...

It is painful — and dangerous — how little we learn from history, even when it is recent history. Just a year ago, “rape” charges spread lynch-mob hysteria on the campus of Duke University and in much of the liberal media, while professional...

High-speed car chases by police on highways, or even on residential streets, have become a staple of television news. An estimated 500 people died as a result of high-speed car chases last year. Nearly half the people killed were innocent third parties. The police...

During the first 30 years of my life, I had no health insurance. Neither did a lot of other people, back in those days. During those 30 years, I had a broken arm, a broken jaw, a badly injured shoulder, and miscellaneous other medical problems. To say that my income...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: I can’t get as fiercely involved as some other people do in controversies about the origins of human life on earth. I wasn’t there. One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are...

It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise. The old advertising slogan, “Progress is our most important...

A whole nation following the tragedy of a mine cave-in in Utah was struck by the further tragedy of another cave-in at the same mine, killing men who had gone underground to try to rescue the miners trapped there. The second tragedy was avoidable — but only if...

Two recent tragedies — in Minnesota and in Utah — have held the nation’s attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention. Those politicians who are always itching to raise tax rates have seized upon the neglected infrastructure...

It took a collapsing bridge in Minnesota to alert people across the country to the fact that many other bridges in many other places have been allowed to deteriorate without adequate maintenance. If this were just a matter of poor political leadership at various...

European nations protesting Saddam Hussein’s death sentence, as they protested against forcing secrets out of captured terrorists, should tell us all we need to know about the internal degeneration of western society, where so many confuse squeamishness with...

There are very few saints among people of any race, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. None should be above criticism. Increasingly, however, there are tighter and tighter restrictions on what you can say about more and more groups. San Francisco radio...

Nowhere is political frivolity more in evidence than in issues involving racial and ethnic groups. Disagree with some policies or demands and you become an instant “racist.” The substance of those policies or demands, and the substance of the objections to...

Although socialism has long claimed to be for the poor, it has probably done more damage, on net balance, to the poor than to the rich. After all, the rich have enough money to leave the country if they think the socialists are going to do them any serious harm. Some...

This past week has told us more than we wanted to know about ourselves and about our enemies. There was far more controversy over remarks made by the Pope than over the violence unleashed by Muslims against people who had nothing to do with what the Pope said. That...

When you enter a boxing ring, you agree to abide by the rules of boxing. But when you are attacked from behind in a dark alley, you would be a fool to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. If you do, you can end up being a dead fool. Even with a nuclear Iran...

Recently one of those increasingly familiar New York Times editorials disguised as news stories was headlined “Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa.” There was a chart with photos of people from conservative think tanks saying things favorable to...

One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose callousness toward others made the “sins” of...

It is hard to think of a time when a nation — and a whole civilization — has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea...

Do higher rates of imprisonment reduce crime? Is crime a result of poverty, unemployment, and the like? Are alternatives to incarceration more effective in preventing criminals from repeating their crimes? Some people would hesitate to try to answer any of these...

The general mindset of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century. The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest...