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Originally posted by Proud American!:
May 06, 2008

Random Events
By Thomas Sowell


Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.

One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already have 34 students from those schools.

When a copy of the 50th anniversary report on members of the Harvard class of 1958 arrived in the mail recently, I thought back to one of my fellow students in that class who had worn a hole in the sole of his shoe but put a folded piece of newspaper in his shoe to cover the hole, rather than tell his parents.

He realized that they would buy him a new pair of shoes if they knew-- and he also realized that they could not afford it.

He went on to become a professor at several well-known medical schools and to have various achievements and honors over the years.

From even further back in time, I received a letter recently from a man who grew up in my old neighborhood back in Harlem. When he and I were in the same junior high school, one day a teacher who saw him eating his brown bag lunch suddenly arranged for him to get a lunch from the school cafeteria without having to pay for it.

It happened so fast that my schoolmate had already taken a bite from the school lunch when he suddenly realized that he had been given charity-- and he wouldn't swallow the food. Instead he went to the toilet and spat it out.

By now his brown bag lunch had been thrown out, so he just went hungry that day. He went on to become a very successful psychiatrist.

Like everyone else, I have also been hearing a lot lately about Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the church that Barack Obama has belonged to for 20 years.

Both men, in their different ways, have for decades been promoting the far left vision of victimization and grievances-- Wright from his pulpit and Obama in roles ranging from community organizer to the United States Senate, where he has had the farthest left voting record.

Later, when the ultimate political prize-- the White House-- loomed on the horizon, Obama did a complete makeover, now portraying himself as a healer of divisions.

The difference between Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright is that they are addressing different audiences, using different styles adapted to those audiences.

It is a difference between upscale demagoguery and ghetto demagoguery, playing the audience for suckers in both cases.

People on the far left like to flatter themselves that they are for the poor and the downtrodden. But what is most likely to lift people out of poverty-- telling them that the world has done them wrong or promoting the work ethic of the Korean girls, the dogged determination of my Harvard classmate with the newspaper in his shoe, or the self-reliance of my fellow junior high school student in Harlem who had too much pride to take charity?

When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

Or will they have only the resentments that have been whipped up by the likes of Jeremiah Wright or the sense of entitlement from the government that has been Barack Obama's stock in trade?

In the real world, a sense of grievance or entitlement, as a result of the mistreatment of your ancestors, is not likely to get you very far with people who are too busy dealing with current economic realities to spend much time thinking about their own ancestors, much less other people's ancestors.

Another seemingly unrelated experience was being in a crowd at a graveside in a Jewish cemetery last week. That crowd included people who were black, white, Asian, Catholic, Jewish and no doubt others. This country has come a long way, just in my lifetime.

We don't need people like either Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama to take us backward.

The time is long overdue to stop gullibly accepting the left's vision of itself as idealistic, rather than self-aggrandizing.

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Originally posted by Proud American!:
...Or will they have only the resentments that have been whipped up by the likes of Jeremiah Wright or the sense of entitlement from the government that has been Barack Obama's stock in trade?

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Imagine if he excepted the liberals labels and logic and felt entitled to what he earned?

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When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

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Originally posted by Pete Kirkman:
The problem I have with Sowell is that his view is horribly slanted. He asks:

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When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

And the answer is--not if they have to depend on Republicans! No one has done more harm to people trying to lift themselves out of poverty than the GD Republicans! They've cut money for student loans, for education grants, for head start programs, for early childhood development programs, for school lunch programs. If Abe Lincoln had grown up with this batch of Republicans running things, they would have taken his piece of chalk and his lamp he studied with at night, and told him that he shouldn't borrow books--that's asking for a handout.

Yeah--I know, my view of Republicans is slanted. That's because I've been listening to the bastards spin the same lies for thirty years or so. Sowell says the country "has come a long way" in his lifetime. That would be no thanks to the GD Republican party, which has opposed every positive social change in this country's history, and hasn't gotten one right since Lincoln.

We don't need people like Thomas Sowell or John McCain to take this country backwards--which is the only way the Republicans face. All their rhetoric is about the good old days and preserving the status quo.

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Originally posted by Pete Kirkman:
The problem I have with Sowell is that his view is horribly slanted. He asks:

quote:

When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

And the answer is--not if they have to depend on Republicans! No one has done more harm to people trying to lift themselves out of poverty than the GD Republicans! They've cut money for student loans, for education grants, for head start programs, for early childhood development programs, for school lunch programs. If Abe Lincoln had grown up with this batch of Republicans running things, they would have taken his piece of chalk and his lamp he studied with at night, and told him that he shouldn't borrow books--that's asking for a handout.

Yeah--I know, my view of Republicans is slanted. That's because I've been listening to the bastards spin the same lies for thirty years or so. Sowell says the country "has come a long way" in his lifetime. That would be no thanks to the GD Republican party, which has opposed every positive social change in this country's history, and hasn't gotten one right since Lincoln.

We don't need people like Thomas Sowell or John McCain to take this country backwards--which is the only way the Republicans face. All their rhetoric is about the good old days and preserving the status quo.

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Originally posted by Benjamin Franklin:
Any opinions out there about the value of your own college educations? And what could help unravel pop the bubble of prestige in college degrees (which -- given the leftward tilt of almost ALL colleges -- could be a major boost for the long-term viability of free-market ideas)?

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Originally posted by Benjamin Franklin:
Blaming education woes on Republicans alone is ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Benjamin Franklin:
The problems really came when the intellectuals convinced people that "investment" in trade schools and such like wasn't as desirable as "investment" in higher education meaning universities....