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Knowledge and Decisions
Today I wanted to cover lots of different topics, so here is a thought from Thomas Sowell:
Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.
And to think that I was worried about high marginal rates of taxation. The full article is here.
Not so long ago, Yana asked me: "What does Thomas Sowell think of Barack Obama?" I believe I now have an answer for her.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 29, 2009 at 03:31 PM in Law | Permalink
Comments
And to think I used to think Sowell was biased, thanks for clearing that up...
Posted by: kxf_in_dc at Jun 29, 2009 3:36:25 PM
This has to be the stupidest remark I have ever seen coming out
of the usually intelligent Thomas Sowell. So what is it that
Obama is doing or has done that might lead to our granddaughters
living under Shari'a law? His Cairo speech in which he expressed
respect for Islam? Maybe his failure to egg on protesters in the
streets of Tehran to really go out in large numbers and get gunned
down and put to death for treason? His insistence that Israel
obey international law and stop building settlements in the West
Bank? Just what? Gag.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 3:39:57 PM
Sowell used to have half a brain, so I can't figure out whether he's just become deranged over the past few years, or whether he cynically sees more revenue in writing wingnut gibberish than in doing anything intelligent.
Posted by: Anderson at Jun 29, 2009 3:41:18 PM
A few years ago I heard Sowell say that his job was going on Limbaugh's show and making Rush look like a moderate centrist by comparison.
So, yeah, he wants to be the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe. As Anderson said, he probably found that that was more lucrative then trying to appeal to people's intellects with reasoned argument.
Posted by: bartman at Jun 29, 2009 3:47:13 PM
About 20 years ago, Sowell somehow transformed into the cranky old man yelling at kids to get off his yard. Seriously, it has been decades since we've seen the man who wrote Knowledge and Decisions, Ethnic America or even A Conflict of Visions.
Posted by: Mike at Jun 29, 2009 3:48:11 PM
I ask that you never ever link something that makes me want to vomit so much ever again. Well at least not without giving me a better understanding of how much craziness I am about to witness so I can prepare. It's like sending a boy who has never left a cave to that new transformers movie, they just have to be prepared and fortified to do deal with such a thing.
It's just before the quoted text that the article peaks:
"A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.
Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago."
Posted by: Travis at Jun 29, 2009 3:49:38 PM
When I read this sort of stuff I can't help but wonder if those saying it are 1) crazy, 2) stupid, 3) craven partisan hacks of the worst sort, or 4) otherwise liars. It really must be one of these 4, or more likely, a mixture of them. Which applies to Sowell?
Posted by: Matt at Jun 29, 2009 3:56:32 PM
I just read his "Economic Facts and Fallacies" and although some of the arguments were shaky, I certainly wouldn't call them batshit crazy, like that article.
Mankiw referred to this Sowell article during the election,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/ego_and_mouth.html
There's a clear difference in tone between his online articles and his books. Like the internet brings out the crazy in him (as it does with most internet users!)
Also I just noticed at the bottom of the newer article just posted,
"EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting."
Considering what was left in, I can't imagine what was changed.
Posted by: Will at Jun 29, 2009 4:02:09 PM
Magnitude may be off, but he sure got the direction right.
Posted by: Td at Jun 29, 2009 4:03:47 PM
Sowell is brilliant and correct. People attack Sowell here but ignore what he is writing. He hates the direction the country is going. Pelosi and Obama are the two farthest left politicians we have ever seen in such high office. Iran is a danger to world peace.
I think Sowell is correct, if Iran set of a nuclear bomb in America, with the threat of hidden bombs in other cities, Obama would cut a deal with Iran as fast as he could. And we are quickly reaching the point were Iran will have the ability to make such threats. And perhaps not this country, but countries throughout the middle east will face the threat of sharia rule. Why do liberals stay so mute about the treatment of women in muslim countries, while praising Obama his speeches about the need to respect muslim culture?
Posted by: DanC at Jun 29, 2009 4:18:35 PM
where are the betting markets on the US surrendering to Iran during Obama's first term
Posted by: Eli at Jun 29, 2009 4:20:07 PM
Honestly, Thomas Sowell is one of the few public figures I really respect on a fundamental level. He is a man after my own heart, especially since we have similar backgrounds.
Posted by: Billare at Jun 29, 2009 4:23:14 PM
Ummm, yeah.... I consider myself conservative in a lot of ways, but I keep wondering when republicans will find something other than fear to argue with. Another thing, maybe I missed it, but what has Iran ever done to the US? Yes, they took our embassy and held hostages for a long time, but that was 30 years ago and they had some arguments for doing so (cough CIA cough). Yes, they fought against out alley in Iraq, the same alley that was known to use chemical weapons and be a monster in general. I am fully willing to believe that the regime in Iran is repressive, but a big step needs to be taken to go from that to using nukes on the US. I'm pretty sure their message has been consistent over the past thirty years, they don't like Israel and they want the US to keep out their life. I wish Sowell and his ilk could point to some actual, credible threats from Iran, them not liking us is not a reason to fear them nuking us...
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Jun 29, 2009 4:37:04 PM
The lack of self-awareness in that piece is mystifying. Nowhere, does it seem to occur to Sowell that off the wall rhetoric like that might be contributing to the ills of the Republican Party.
You may not agree with Obama's policies but do you really want these guys running the country? Right now, Obama is the only serious game in town.
Posted by: Karl Smith at Jun 29, 2009 4:48:47 PM
Actually, the last time that Iran (or its predecessor, Persia) invaded another
country was in the late 1700s. It was Saddam Hussein who invaded Iran to start
the war with them that went on during the 1980s. Also, while it is easy to
forget, Vilayet-el-faqih Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, the man who has just declared
the election in Iran in favor of Ahmadinejad, issued a fatwa in 2003 still in
place last time I checked that declares nuclear weapons to be un-Islamic. Oh,
and in case anybody thinks this is all baloney, I note that the uranium
enrichment Iran engages in is at too low a level to produce bombs. It is
consistent with their publicly stated desire to have a civilian nuclear power
program, which they can legally have according to the NNPT, of which they are
a signatory.
Somehow for years we lived with the Soviet Union possessing thousands of
nuclear weapons (and Russia still has plenty), and despite all kinds of threats
from them, I do not remember us exactly rolling over and surrendering. So, the
threat of Iran with two bombs, assuming they ever get them, will cause us to do
so? Really, some people are living in fantasy land.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 4:51:58 PM
Explain to me how our debt quadrupled in one year. As of 1/21/09 or debt was about $10 trillion. It will be $40 trillion by 2010? Data please.
What does Sowell propose we do about Iran? If he is posting at NRO. I presume he wants us to bomb and invade. Eternal war in the Middle East seems to be their goal. He clearly knows nothing about the Iran and the Middle East.
Steve
Posted by: steve at Jun 29, 2009 5:02:55 PM
Is Thomas Sowell the Right's Paul Krugman? Sowell was never as highly acclaimed as Krugman was but both are very intelligent economists who now spend all of their efforts spewing asinine and extremist views.
Posted by: Billy at Jun 29, 2009 5:04:46 PM
DanC, let's do a little comparison. Taking for granted that Iran could actually assemble several weapons that could easily be smuggled into American cities (a long-shot itself), they do not have the ability to threaten the United States:
United States:
1.45 million active-duty troops
11 aircraft carriers
19 ballistic missile submarines
2,700 active nuclear weapons
Iran:
820,000 active-duty troops
0 aircraft carriers
0 ballistic missile submarines
1-5 (maybe? By 2011-2012, perhaps?) nuclear weapons
Given this imbalance in capabilities, rather than capitulate to Iranian demands if bombs were hidden in US cities (again, an unlikely scenario), any American president would credibly threaten to turn the Islamic Republic of Iran into a sheet of glass.
Posted by: Tony at Jun 29, 2009 5:08:34 PM
Please don't feed the trolls. ;-)
Posted by: Greg at Jun 29, 2009 5:13:34 PM
"Winning" a war against Iran would be cold comfort for the millions of Americans who might be killed as a consequence.
Iran has a government whose slogan is "Death to America", they have "A World Without America" conferences, and military parades with "America" written on the missiles. These are threats -- and if they are not, the Iranian leadership certainly isn't doing much to convince anyone otherwise.
The leadership belongs to a death cult that puts their depraved religious beliefs ahead of everything.
And now they are developing nuclear weapons.
As they say, "What could go wrong?"
Remember: War and genocide is the rule, not the exception, for our species. It's easier to stop the threat now than it will be after New York/DC become craters.
Posted by: Bill Nelson at Jun 29, 2009 5:28:15 PM
think Sowell is correct, if Iran set of a nuclear bomb in America, with the threat of hidden bombs in other cities, Obama would cut a deal with Iran as fast as he could.
Don't be an idiot. Aside from the fact that the Iranians aren't even close to having the technology to compress nuclear bombs down to the "suitcase" level, the response to an attack on a US city would be to turn Iran into a mass of fused silica.
The leadership belongs to a death cult that puts their depraved religious beliefs ahead of everything.
Please. What they care about most of all is staying in power in Iran. And for all their hot rhetoric about the US, it didn't stop them from making a deal with the US to release the Embassy Hostages in exchange for being able to buy American weapons.
Posted by: Brett at Jun 29, 2009 6:02:30 PM
I agree with Billy that Sowell is the Right's Krugman.
What a shame that such a brilliant man has consciously and unashamedly dumbed himself down, thus discrediting every opinion he holds. I find it particularly tragic, since I happen to agree with a great many of Sowell's early writings, and hate to see him ruin his own good name. (Krugman, on the other hand, I encourage to preach on. He may be a hit with the masses, but his obvious mendacity will drive intelligent, honest people away from Progressivism. If there's one thing the Libertarian-Right needs right now, it's honest, intelligent people.)
On the topic of Iran, it seems to me that air strikes and JDAM's could do a pretty good job of crippling Iran's nuclear capabilities. What's the argument against taking this approach? That Iran's nuclear ambitions are limited to cheap power generation? I recall a lot of those arguments floating around in the past half-decade, but it's getting hard to say it with a straight face. Do people believe that a nuclear-armed Iran wouldn't be so bad? Really? Are you willing to bet Jerusalem or Washington DC on that belief? If so, you're either impressively confident in your ability to impute the mental processes of military and political leaders in Iran, or unimpressively cavalier with Israelite and American lives.
Regarding Tony's argument that Iran would never EVER consider using nuclear weapons because of the USA's obvious military superiority:
Whether or not the US has 11 or 12 aircraft carriers is immaterial to this discussion, as is the capability of the US to turn the entire Middle East into a sheet of glass. Would the US government ACTUALLY respond to a terrorist nuclear strike with murky ties to the Iranian nuclear program? The answer is no. And thank god for that. But for all the benefits of living in a society that would hesitate to wipe out a billion people to punish a dozen, one of the drawbacks is that no amount of ICBM's will deter untraceable terrorist cells.
Bottom line, The United States has the following strategic options in the short to mid term:
1) Conduct (or permit Israel to conduct) air strikes against the Iranian nuclear program.
2) Implement Orwellian controls on immigration, imports and the daily lives of citizens.
3) Accept a non-trivial possibility of a nuclear strike on an American city in the next decade.
Number (1) may not be everyone's favourite option on that list, but it is certainly worthy of our consideration.
Many criticisms can be fairly leveled at Thomas Sowell. He is an embarrassment to his ideological allies, and in addition to discrediting Rightish-Libertarianism, he wastes his considerable talents churning out Krugmanesque columns for the Fox News rank-and-file. But he is correct to take seriously the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Zdeno
Posted by: Zdeno at Jun 29, 2009 6:02:41 PM
Steve, I think Sowell might have been referring to the annual deficit. I got confused there as well.
Billy, agreed. Krugman's and Sowell's recent material is...obnoxious. Though I still read Krugman's blog, more for amusement than enlightenment...what can I say, I enjoy polemics.
Tony: The possession of even one nuclear weapon (with the potential of wiping out, let's say, half of New York City) levels the playing field much more significantly than what you are portraying. Not saying I quite agree with DanC that a nuclear armed Iran will destroy the universe, but honestly those stats are misleading.
Posted by: Tim at Jun 29, 2009 6:12:44 PM
Bill Nelson,
Your evidence that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons is what? Are you
aware that Khamene'i is the Commander-in-Chief who has declared that nuclear
weapons are un-Islamic and that there is no evidence that they are enriching
uranium to a level that can be used in nuclear weapons? Please get your facts
straight before you repeat inane propaganda.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jun 29, 2009 6:16:35 PM
"Sowell used to have half a brain, so I can't figure out whether he's just become deranged over the past few years, or whether he cynically sees more revenue in writing wingnut gibberish than in doing anything intelligent."
Yeah, he seems to be suffering from Krugman's disease.
Posted by: anon at Jun 29, 2009 6:20:51 PM
