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.
Although most Americans seem to understand the gravity of the situation that terrorism has put us in — and the need for some serious military response, even if that means dangers to the lives of us all — there are still those who insist on posturing, while...
While the casualties in the terrorist attacks are expected to run into the tens of thousands, in a larger sense the casualties run into the millions because we are all affected now and will be as long as we live. People from all over the country have kept the phone...
Pearl Harbor is the only thing in this century that can compare to the terrorist catastrophe that has struck the United States. With all its shock and tragedy, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ended our naive innocence about the dangerous world we live in and...
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell’s decision to pull the American delegation out of the so-called U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, will be just a footnote in history. But we can at least hope that it may be a turning point...
With police on hand to try to maintain order, the Loudoun County (Virginia) board of supervisors recently imposed severe restrictions on the building of homes, despite angry protesters. The board’s plan allows only one house to be built for every 10 acres in...
The predictable media reaction to Gary Condit’s bobbing and weaving has been to say that he should be candid, come clean and “get all this behind you.” It is the kind of advice that they have offered repeatedly over the years to people in trouble,...
There are few things more heartwarming than watching people rise out of poverty to a better life. When it is a whole nation in the process of doing so, it is especially inspiring. That is the theme of a marvelous new book titled “ India Unbound: The Social and...
It has become all too common for some innocuous remark by a public figure to be seized upon and twisted to make it seem “racist,” setting off loud denunciations by those who are in the business of loud denunciations. Meanwhile, actions and policies that do...
The U.S. Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health have launched a campaign to get a government program created to “identify” children with autism at age two and then subject them to “intensive” early intervention for 25...
Last month, a front-page story about minimum wages in The Wall Street Journal illustrates what is wrong with contemporary journalism as much as it illustrates anything about the minimum wage law. The first nine paragraphs deal with one individual who is wholly...
One of the clues in the Chandra Levy case that may have been dismissed too quickly was a call to the police on the morning of her disappearance, reporting a woman’s scream heard in the building where she lived. This seems to have been disregarded as an unrelated...
“Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled.” Did you know that? It is just as well if you did not, because it is not true. It takes no research to prove that it is not true. If there had been just two children in...
A new political dogma is being spun in the media. “Science,” they say, has now “proved” that global warming is a real danger and that human beings are responsible for it, so that we need to take drastic steps to reduce greenhouse gases. This...
The execution of Timothy McVeigh has again raised the issue of capital punishment. Much of the case against capital punishment does not rise above the level of opaque pronouncements that it is “barbaric,” by which those who say this presumably mean that it...
Some people were surprised when California’s Governor Gray Davis hired two Democratic Party operatives at $30,000 a month to serve as spinmeisters during the current electricity crisis. But all indications are that they are well worth their money. Think about...
The U.S. Postal Service has raised its rates twice this year and is already talking about raising rates again next year. It has also made noises about eliminating Saturday mail deliveries. But the big problem with the Postal Service is not any of these particular...
Over the years, the phrase “unintended consequences” has come up with increasing frequency, as more and more wonderful-sounding ideas have led to disastrous results. By now, you might think that people with wonderful-sounding ideas would start to question...
We have belatedly come to appreciate “the greatest generation” that fought and died in World War II to preserve the freedom that Americans enjoy today. But the disappearance of history from our schools, and its virtual disappearance as a requirement for...
The obvious makes headlines in California. Maybe this shows that a sense of reality or common sense is not something that can be taken for granted among Californians. A recent headline stretching across the top of the front page announced that “Population dwarfs...
The red-legged frog is only the latest of many supposedly endangered species whose habitats may be kept off-limits to human beings, even if that means stopping the building of much-needed housing. We have grown so used to having the interests of millions of human...
MY FELLOW-ECONOMIST WALTER WILLIAMS has for years kept track of how much money it would take to lift every American man, woman and child in poverty above the official poverty level. That sum has consistently been some fraction of the money actually spent in...
In the years ahead, more violent criminals may be walking the street, some taking the lives of law-abiding citizens, because someone in the White House couldn’t keep his big mouth shut about how they were going to retaliate against Republican Senator Jim...
A reader in Michigan says that he has been living in retirement on $15,000 a year — about $5,000 from Social Security and about $10,000 from stocks he owns in Southern California Edison. But now that the California government has forced Southern California...
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