Deferring to Greatness: Thomas Sowell

I've spent about an hour trying to get some inspiration for writing this evening. Apparently, I already used up all my brainpower for the day.

Then, a brilliant idea came to me. Why not just link to one of my favorite authors, Dr. Thomas Sowell? He's so eloquent, and happens to have had a couple of really great articles during the past few days.

The first one is about Obamacare. The main point is this: if you use your own logic and common sense, you can quickly see that what sounds too good to be true probably is. He brilliantly debunks two of the main arguments for government intervention in the industry: pharmaceutical CEO pay and denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The second one is sort of a follow-up on my last article about race. In case you missed it, my position is that the motivation behind an action is not a consideration: the outcome cannot be not changed by the original intention, so that intention is irrelevant.

However, I may not have made it clear that, as a white person, I know I'm not that qualified to talk about race. Trust me, I know. Hell, I was taught since the first grade to feel guilty about what my predecessors did.

That's why I decided to defer further discussion to Dr. Sowell, someone I admire greatly for his incredible ability to bring economics and policy to life in his books Basic Economics and Applied Economics (among many others). Not trying to pull a 'Sen. Barbara Boxer' here, but if we're talking about race, and my experience can only go so far, it seems appropriate to bring in some of his opinions instead. (In case you didn't know, he's black, so theoretically he's endured racism in this country.)

In this article, Sowell talks about racial profiling and Obama's background in race politics. He contends that there are groups who "benefit greatly from crying racism" and that these issues can never be behind us if we won't let them go. And this one is a really good one on inequity, using a personal story to bring some light to the subject.

Check him out. He's brilliant.