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Undoing the Brainwashing
May 22, 2013 | 26 comments
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Wimps Versus Barbarians
May 21, 2013 | 30 comments
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Looking Back — And Forward
May 15, 2013 | 19 comments
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Lies About Libya
May 14, 2013 | 80 comments
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Bouncing Ball Politics
May 8, 2013 | 16 comments
A Further Perspective
Obama’s Rhetoric
It’s important to resist all the rhetoric about “giving back” and focus on safeguarding our freedom.
Barack Obama’s great rhetorical gifts include the ability to make the absurd sound not only plausible, but inspiring and profound.
His latest verbal triumph was to say on July 13th, “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” As an example, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Let’s stop and think, even though the whole purpose of much political rhetoric is to keep us from thinking, and stir our emotions instead.
Even if we were to assume, just for the sake of argument, that 90 percent of what a successful person has achieved was due to the government, what follows from that? That politicians will make better decisions than individual citizens, that politicians will spend the wealth of the country better than those who created it? That doesn’t follow logically — and certainly not empirically.
Does anyone doubt that most people owe a lot to the parents who raised them? But what follows from that? That they should never become adults who make their own decisions?
The whole point of the collectivist mindset is to concentrate power in the hands of the collectivists — which is to say, to take away our freedom. They do this in stages, starting with some group that others envy or resent — Jews in Nazi Germany, capitalists in the Soviet Union, foreign investors in Third World countries that confiscate their investments and call this theft “nationalization.”
Freedom is seldom destroyed all at once. More often it is eroded, bit by bit, until it is gone. This can happen so gradually that there is no sudden change that would alert people to the danger. By the time everybody realizes what has happened, it can be too late, because their freedom is gone.
All the high-flown talk about how people who are successful in business should “give back” to the community that created the things that facilitated their success is, again, something that sounds plausible to people who do not stop and think through what is being said. After years of dumbed-down education, that apparently includes a lot of people.
Take Obama’s example of the business that benefits from being able to ship their products on roads that the government built. How does that create a need to “give back”?
Did the taxpayers, including business taxpayers, not pay for that road when it was built? Why should they have to pay for it twice?
What about the workers that businesses hire, whose education is usually created in government-financed schools? The government doesn’t have any wealth of its own, except what it takes from taxpayers, whether individuals or businesses. They have already paid for that education. It is not a gift that they have to “give back” by letting politicians take more of their money and freedom.
When businesses hire highly educated people, such as chemists or engineers, competition in the labor market forces them to pay higher salaries for people with longer years of valuable education. That education is not a government gift to the employers. It is paid for while it is being created in schools and universities, and it is paid for in higher salaries when highly educated people are hired.
One of the tricks of professional magicians is to distract the audience’s attention from what they are doing while they are creating an illusion of magic. Pious talk about “giving back” distracts our attention from the cold fact that politicians are taking away more and more of our money and our freedom.
Even the envy that politicians stir up against “the rich” is highly focussed on those particular high income-earners whose decisions the politicians want to take over. Others in sports or entertainment can make far more money than the highest paid corporate executive, but there is no way that politicians can take over the roles of Roger Federer or Oprah Winfrey, so highly paid sports stars or entertainers are never accused of “greed.”
If we are so easily distracted by self-serving political rhetoric, we are not only going to see our money, but our freedom, increasingly taken away from us by slick-talking politicians, including our current slick-talker-in-chief in the White House.
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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spike59| 7.19.12 @ 6:15AM
Thank you, Mr Sowell...exactly on point. This administration is so utterly inept, so clueless on economic matters, and so ignorant/comtemptous of the values and ethic that made the country great, that they simply cannot justify another 4 years in power on the basis of their record and philosophy; the need the nation divided and distracted by sideshows about birth control and shiny objects like how many tax records a candidate must release; if the election is, as i believe it should be, about the record of this administration, its philosophy, the economy, and the way forward for this country, there's no way the re-election of this silver tongued bungler-in-chief can be justified
TLP| 7.19.12 @ 10:09AM
He is a Leader with extraordinary Oratorical Skills, who uses those skills to Mesmerize his Sycophantic Followrs in to the Streets, after whomever their Leader Identifies as their Enemy with his uninterrupted repetition of one BIG LIE, after another.
Why does that sound so FAMILIAR?
Brookschwarzenegro | 7.19.12 @ 3:31PM
This piece makes more sense than Sowell's others; still, Sowell strikes me as a curmudgeon pretending to be a Christian.
Perhaps when he says he is a libertarian THEN he is being candid?
benny havens| 7.19.12 @ 6:47AM
I get a sermon every Sunday about giving back. I really don’t need a sermon from someone who has been on the take since he entered college. That reminds me, where did he get the money to go to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard?
Appleby| 7.19.12 @ 6:52AM
And why have we never seen his degrees, diplomas or transcripts from any of those schools he allegedly attended?
Purp| 7.19.12 @ 7:03AM
Well, at least your honest and fully repeated the lines the president said, without losing it's context. Congrats for that.
But you're wrong on noting that athletes and actors are not accused of being greedy - it's just that they aren't hurting others in order to make their money, not like business CEO's that fire people or ship their jobs overseas when they don't need to, or Wall Street Wonders that screw everyone to make a killing with financial trickery. So the angst against them is not nearly as great or as richly deserved.
Appleby| 7.19.12 @ 7:30AM
I suppose an athlete who makes $100 million a year did that all by himself, eh? Not the team that hired him and is paying him; not the fans that troop out to see him (and buy his autograph, assuming he can write his name), not the schools that trained him -- not the parents (or at least the mother) that brought him up ... a guy who can do anything with a bawl but autograph it, he did that ALL BY HIMSELF?
Purp| 7.19.12 @ 8:20AM
Who said he did it all by himself? No one ever does, but that wasn't the point.
Appleby| 7.19.12 @ 2:47PM
What is the point?
WillyP | 7.21.12 @ 12:40PM
The point is, he is a lefty with no point, so must resort to non-sensical posts to make his point.
Or to put it in a popular meme style that even lefties could understand if the could understand:
Pointless Lefty is Pointless.
Louis Jenkins| 7.19.12 @ 8:53AM
Wow, actors are not accused of being greedy? Obama turns to those people every chance he gets for thousand dollar (+) plates. That's the only time they are not greedy. I find your use of athletes and actors a very poor example. And CEOs, there in the business to make money. When the wages got to high in the north, the cotton spinning mills went south, and when those wages became too high, they shipped the jobs overseas. Why does Obama turn to the bankster CEOs for funding and then run them down at other times? Obama is perhaps as greedy as the next person, only difference is he spreading the wealth-our wealth. And there's not much left.
lost| 7.19.12 @ 12:36PM
You missed one reason why companies ship jobs over seas: excessive government regulations. Government regulations have become punitive against business.
Petronius| 7.19.12 @ 9:01AM
Businesses are NOT Support groups.
JD| 7.19.12 @ 12:38PM
In Purp's magical world, employers owe jobs to employees. To employ someone is not to help them, and to not employ them is to hurt them. This is ludicrous.
I am not in any way obligated to hire anyone; if I do, it's my choice, and I can change my choice at any time.
Mimi | 7.19.12 @ 8:32AM
This ....collectivist, slickster-in-chief is not slow to rob us of FREEDOM it's been FULL SPEED AHEAD with him. Any American who can not see and feel the " knock -the - door -down" style needs a wake-up call. The LIBERTY robbing came so fast, so bold, so blatent...It's left us spinning....and to question our own good senses...How could this be...with America's first . black, personally pleasing President.
Now about 1/2 the population is truly aware of the danger we are facing. The man's plan for the next 4 years is unknown....we can only surmise...those of us who know and fear the coming future has to work to ALERT all citizens. The work has begun...we can together sweep this danger out of our mist.
Thank you Thomas Sowell !
jothepro| 7.19.12 @ 8:42AM
What was the point, purp/commie..
Petronius| 7.19.12 @ 9:03AM
What "give back" really means is, GIMME! It is the cry of the ignorant, indolent, incompetent, Infantile Loser.
Ken (Old Texican)| 7.19.12 @ 9:07AM
Dr. Sowell,
I'm sure you would agree.....the single most destroyer of freedom is TIME.
Older now, and all crippled up, I am no longer "free" to play chase with my Labrador. I'm no longer "free" to climb down a mountain side to fly fish in pristine stream.
etc etc etc.
As the old Toby Keith song goes..."...a lot of men dead, so I can sleep soundly in my bed." (heh, or words to that effect..)
November will tell us if we have gone over the cliff of dependency on the gubmint. I guess me and a hundred million other old farts will have to again load "old betsy"...(and we will.)
You know quite well the old saying: "An old man won't fight you. He will merely shoot you."
Yes sir it may have finally come to that. A hundred million of us old geezers may just have to lay down our lives.....to take out a couple of hundred criminals in our government.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know.....but I'm already on "their" list. I merely serve notice that they are also on mine.
At least I have good shoes and boots. I don't have to follow General Washington in bloody rags in freezing cold mud to lay down my life.
I pray every day that your wise counsel turns the tide. Let's all keep working for it.
MK48| 7.19.12 @ 9:49AM
Man Becomes God
Illuminism.......the Luciferian religion......teaches that man can become God, that he can evolve, through initiatory steps, into a god state himself.
The New Age speaks of a "Christ," but this New Age Christ is not Jesus Christ of the Christians........does Lucifer come to mind.
Albertus Magnus| 7.19.12 @ 6:26PM
The Leftist-Atheist "New Age" movement is essentially narcissistic. They do not worship God since they refuse to believe in anything greater than themselves. When Moses went up the Mountain at Sinai, the Israelites whom God had freed from Egyptian slavery fashioned for themselves a golden calf and worshipped it. They turned from God and worshipped what they created with their own hands, essentially worshipping themselves as the supreme beings.
Today's Leftists have turned from God again and fashioned a massive government for them to worship, again essentially worshipping themselves through the creation of their own hands. Leftists are driven by their own egos and since they see no power greater than themselves, there are no moral restrictions to limit their actions and lust for power. This is what drives the Leftist mind, the worship of self. Man may think he is himself god, but he is wrong.
Joe D.| 7.19.12 @ 11:13AM
Once again a Lawyer trying to steal someone else's hard earned money with phoney talking points. Should we not kick out all of the liberal lawyers in Washington?
And as you said government did nothing for us that we did not pay for and allow them to do for us. We do not need them to be happy. That is why they keep lieing to us about how important they are and how we need them so much.
Tom Kyba| 7.19.12 @ 11:27AM
Wow Purp, re your first post. What's with the quote from Marxism for Dummies? Time for another thought experiment. It's not ok for athletes and actors because they aren't destroyers. It's because they pay their fealty to your dumbo-eared master. If 95% of the entertainment industry were dumping on Obama for the last 3+ years instead of mindlessly slurping him, you would not have mentioned them. Period. End of story. I know it, you know it, and the freakin' fence post knows it. You are insulting everyone here as well as yourself.
ElGordo| 7.19.12 @ 12:05PM
I have to forgive our affirmative action president's mistatement.
.
I've always believed that he was not competent to correctly complete a simple sentence.
.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons he's hiding his college records
JD| 7.19.12 @ 12:39PM
CNN et al have not yet even reported these Obama quotes. The public will remain blissfully unaware of them. This is why Obama wins.
Al Adab| 7.19.12 @ 12:43PM
We continue to hear these statements coming from first candidate Obama and now president Obama. The man means what he says, yet we do not listen. In '08 he promised to "fundamentally transform America" and now we know what that means and what it looks like. Anybody happy with that?
John Navratil| 7.19.12 @ 2:22PM
Al Adab,
Do you think we'll see an "Office of the President-Unelect" seal on a podium on Nov. 7?
Al Adab| 7.19.12 @ 3:43PM
I had almost forgotten about the egotistical "president elect" seal. What a megalomaniac. Makes Lyndon Johnson seem normal. Have a great evening John.
Frank Natoli| 7.19.12 @ 4:39PM
Two can play this game.
The Marxists want to charge for infrastructure, roads, etc.?
Why not charge those who were too lazy to use the infrastructure, roads, etc., and thus failed to be as productive as they had every opportunity to be?
You want to hammer people who were too highly motivated, too willing to accept risks, too willing to put their sweat and tears into what the market demanded and ultimately triumphed?
Why not hammer people who did none of those things because they lacked the motivation, they were unwilling to accept the risks, and they simply chose not to?
arebel1| 7.19.12 @ 4:40PM
I find it comical that the president and warren push this point of view, knowing that what they have earned was ill-gotten. The president when he claimed (as his book biography clearly states) that he was foreign born (I am not saying he was, only that he claimed it - probably why he won't release his college documents). And warren claiming her "cherokee" heritage!
Maybe if they had actually accomplished something on their own, they wouldn't be so quick to promote collectivist ideas.
Marvin E. Fox | 7.19.12 @ 10:15PM
You are right about Obama. Obama can talk the talk; but, if you listen with active brain cells, you discover he expects his listeners to walk the walk he has talked. His performances are usually about things he hasn't done, doesn't intend to do, and won't allow anyone to force him to do. One step beyond clever seems to be beyond his area of expertise.
Marvin E. Fox