Curtis Dahlgren
SOWELL FOOD (part 2)
By Curtis Dahlgren
"It's amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites." – Thomas Sowell
WAS he talking about Donald Trump, or Sowell himself? Donald is rich; Donald is hated. Because he's rich maybe? The theme on Yahoo News this week was "8 men own as much as one-half of the world does."* The mainstream media will probably go back to that theme a lot with Trump movin' on down to the White House. Envy is a very popular 4-letter word, so Tom Sowell's "Top 50" quotations couldn't have been found at a better time. Here are a fistfull of words more:
"If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms."
"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."
"Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of 'diversity' that we have heard gushed about for years? . . It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word."
"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."
"Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. . . It has nothing to say about philosophy . . "
"If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates."
"Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws . . . Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount – and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed."
"It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think."
"The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
"The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past."
"Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export . . [and] it's every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders."
"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. . . Rhetoric is no substitute for reality."
P.S. That's a mere appetizer for Sowell's writings. And the winner is:
"Whenever someone refers to me as someone 'who happens to be black,' I wonder if they realize that both of my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on."
PPS:* As for those eight richest men, the economically illiterate probably think their money is sitting under a mattress in Moscow or in some bank vault, doing nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth; most of these men not only expanded the world's money supply, they are helping to keep it circulating (i.e., the "velocity" of money).
In other news this week, I suppose I should mention that there's to be an inauguration, the worst day of their lives for some of those Little Johnnies in college. Someone even played Bhuddist monk and set himself on fire to "protest" the election's result. Can you say "Counter-productive" boys and girls?
Maya Angelou will probably be MIA, so I want to volunteer a poem for the inauguration of our 45th President:
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world you'll find
Success begins with a person's will-
It's all in the state of mind.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later, the person who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.
- author unknown
"I will prepare and someday my chance will come." – Abraham Lincoln
We hope and pray that President Trump has been prepared (long before he even thought of running). His chance has now come, and if the Little-Johnnie "protesters" will get out of the way, Donald might help us "win" again, because "the fellow thinks he can."
A "protester" from the 1960s, Mark Rudd, once said, "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
I don't have to tell you that there has been a change in the direction of the wind, and it's boomeranging on the losers who used to love it "back in the ol' USSR" (but now hate the Russians), which reminds me of a joke:
What did the skunk say when the wind changed?
"It's all coming back to me now."
More to come.
OH – JUST ONE MORE THING – A PRAYER FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION:
O God, Who knowest our necessities before we ask, if misgivings assail us, allow us not to become the prey of useless forebodings through the habit of morbid and sinful worry. Guide us all the way so that we may keep our faces toward the light always, that our shadows may always lie behind us. AMEN.
[From "Today With God" – January 19th]
© Curtis Dahlgren
January 23, 2017
"It's amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites." – Thomas Sowell
WAS he talking about Donald Trump, or Sowell himself? Donald is rich; Donald is hated. Because he's rich maybe? The theme on Yahoo News this week was "8 men own as much as one-half of the world does."* The mainstream media will probably go back to that theme a lot with Trump movin' on down to the White House. Envy is a very popular 4-letter word, so Tom Sowell's "Top 50" quotations couldn't have been found at a better time. Here are a fistfull of words more:
"If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms."
"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."
"Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of 'diversity' that we have heard gushed about for years? . . It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word."
"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."
"Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. . . It has nothing to say about philosophy . . "
"If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates."
"Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws . . . Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker's productivity worth that amount – and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed."
"It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think."
"The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
"The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past."
"Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export . . [and] it's every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders."
"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. . . Rhetoric is no substitute for reality."
P.S. That's a mere appetizer for Sowell's writings. And the winner is:
"Whenever someone refers to me as someone 'who happens to be black,' I wonder if they realize that both of my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on."
PPS:* As for those eight richest men, the economically illiterate probably think their money is sitting under a mattress in Moscow or in some bank vault, doing nothing. Nothing could be further from the truth; most of these men not only expanded the world's money supply, they are helping to keep it circulating (i.e., the "velocity" of money).
In other news this week, I suppose I should mention that there's to be an inauguration, the worst day of their lives for some of those Little Johnnies in college. Someone even played Bhuddist monk and set himself on fire to "protest" the election's result. Can you say "Counter-productive" boys and girls?
Maya Angelou will probably be MIA, so I want to volunteer a poem for the inauguration of our 45th President:
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world you'll find
Success begins with a person's will-
It's all in the state of mind.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later, the person who wins
Is the fellow who thinks he can.
- author unknown
"I will prepare and someday my chance will come." – Abraham Lincoln
We hope and pray that President Trump has been prepared (long before he even thought of running). His chance has now come, and if the Little-Johnnie "protesters" will get out of the way, Donald might help us "win" again, because "the fellow thinks he can."
A "protester" from the 1960s, Mark Rudd, once said, "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
I don't have to tell you that there has been a change in the direction of the wind, and it's boomeranging on the losers who used to love it "back in the ol' USSR" (but now hate the Russians), which reminds me of a joke:
What did the skunk say when the wind changed?
"It's all coming back to me now."
More to come.
OH – JUST ONE MORE THING – A PRAYER FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION:
O God, Who knowest our necessities before we ask, if misgivings assail us, allow us not to become the prey of useless forebodings through the habit of morbid and sinful worry. Guide us all the way so that we may keep our faces toward the light always, that our shadows may always lie behind us. AMEN.
[From "Today With God" – January 19th]
© Curtis Dahlgren
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