Work is a journey on which you welcome challenge . . .
Work does not instantly respond — work digs to discover and inquires to clarify. Work is difficult and demands discernment. Work wonders, pauses, listens, absorbs, and reflects.
Work does not rest on who’s right and who’s wrong: Work wants to know if there’s something more to see, something to learn, something that sharpens the mind. Work never stops building on the foundation of your own work and what you learn from the work of others.
Work works its way through material that is not easy.
Work recognizes complexity and the demands of in-depth explanation. Work will go on a trip to ideas that take time and effort to understand. Work knows that you can’t see your way to a solution without understanding the different dimensions of a problem.
Work does not defend before you consider
Work does not race to conclusions — work arrives at them through careful consideration. Work is willing is rethink what you think you know. Work takes integrity, courtesy, curiosity, courage, and decency.
Work comes with the willingness to be wrong.
Work is not self-satisfied. Work does not sling snippets of certitude — work crafts argument on the merits. Work is an exchange where each party takes information into account. Work does not issue childish insults — work demands that you act your age.
Work respects your intelligence by using it — and shows respect to others as we work our way to mutual respect. Work won’t be pretty and might even get ugly — but work will do what it takes to work it out.
And if you wanna start solving problems — work is what it’s gonna take.
Speaking of work
I’m looking for fiercely independent thinkers for an idea that could turn the tide. If you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well.
Please contact me through the site or DM on Twitter — as I no longer respond to Tweets or superficial fragments of any kind.
Thank you!
For nearly 20 years
I’ve been practically spit on by people promoting principles I followed to find he didn’t. I’ve written many pieces on Sowell and this is the best his crowd has to offer:
From the get-go
Almost every post points to an identifiable disconnect — enough to know that something’s not right with people you put on a pedestal.
You could skip the post and go straight to the doc — and watch one at a time for 7 days, 7 weeks or 7 months. You could watch clips and ask questions — exploring in a piecemeal pursuit of the truth in whatever way works for you.
You do nothing of the kind.
You skim my site and breeze on by clips at the crux of the story — as you’re not looking to learn, you’re looking to respond.
And entire industries are engineering that need.
We get rewarded by hearts, likes, thumbs-up — and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth.
— The Social Dilemma
I suggest you start here
One Tweet is all it should take:
Thomas Sowell flagrantly failed to follow the facts on Iraq WMD — opting to peddle party-line talking points that poison political discourse & butcher debate to this day. Here’s my 7-part documentary that exhaustively details the biggest and most costly lie in modern history
My doc originated from a perfectly framed question by someone I despise. A sound question is the same as a sound argument — just as the truth is the truth:
Regardless of the source and their motives — to argue in good faith, you must take that information into account.
HANNITY: Does this fit the profile of a person with racial animus — a guy that took a black woman to his prom? He mentored black children and after the program concluded he continued mentoring them, brought minority children into his home, and then stood up for a black homeless man against the Sanford police.
Does that fit the profile of a man that’s racist?
TAMARA HOLDER: It may or may not. It may or may not.
The only logical answer to Hannity’s question is ‘”NO!”
Due to the confines of the question, the answer would still be “no” — even if he were a racist. . . . Tamara Holder contaminated the discussion by refusing to separate her support for even a second — to simply answer a question with integrity . . .
— Richard W. Memmer: Prologue
Every single Sowell supporter pulls the same stunt. At every turn, the faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold him to his own standards.
In the aftermath of 9/11, did Thomas Sowell have motive to lie in order to support his party in the invasion of Iraq?
By simply acknowledging what could not be more obvious, you’re not saying he lied — you’re just recognizing he had motive to (just as every politician and pundit did).
But his acolytes don’t play the rules they want others to follow — as they issue one Discount Deal after another to absolve him:
In almost a year and a half of challenging the echo chamber around Sowell (a force field of fallacy that stoops to savagery and stupefying feats of stupidity to defend the indefensible):
Only a few have responded with manners — and this guy went even further:
Quite anti-Sowell
That was the first sign of shortcomings — as nobody who’s taken the time to digest my writings would say that.
Saying I’m “anti-Sowell” is like saying my poem is anti-war.
It’s pro-thinking
to hear your views on what Sowell gets wrong
Shouldn’t you have some baseline understanding of that already — so you can properly frame your questions? You’ve got a ton of a material at your fingertips (including my 7-part 2 hours and 40 minutes documentary on the matter):
Seems like you’d look into that
But that’s me . . .
The same guy who interviewed a world-renowned nuclear scientist and corresponded with a key physicist — along with Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence at the State Department.
So I know a thing or two about the craft of interviewing.
And if the counter is:
I don’t have the time or interest in some tubes . . .
If you’re not gonna look at the evidence, what’s the point?
And those tubes took us to war in the Middle East — killing and maiming a helluva lot of people. Then there’s the untold damage on multiple fronts (including helping to create the clusterfuck of a country we have now).
The Right treating Bush like the Second Coming of Christ — set the stage for the rise of the Rock Star they spent the next 8 years railing against. So by Sowell blindly defending Bush, he helped create this endless bullshit below.
Brilliant!
But apparently, the point is conversation for the sake of conversation. For The Genius of Thomas Sowell, it’s about show business — for me, it’s about the truth and what’s right.
Just listening to disagreement doesn’t get it done — it’s what you do with the information that matters most.
In the end, after all his politeness and posturing — he’s as prejudiced as the apologists who came before him, blowing off my work as just some documentary on just “some tubes.”
These people make it impossible to put a pinprick through the envelope of intransigence encasing their brain.
How many of his books have you read?
Of all the questions you could have asked — that is what’s pressing on your mind? Since I’m not challenging Sowell on anything within his wheelhouse, whether I’ve read all of ’em or none of ’em has no bearing the issues in question.
It’s not that I mind him asking. What I mind is his flagrant failure to come prepared with at least some specific questions germane to the matter.
Is there anything else you object to on Sowell?
A record riddled with lies and hypocrisy isn’t enough to warrant concern?
Somebody brilliant . . .
Would certainly know that America’s March of Folly into the Middle East comes with consequences.
Just how brilliant could you be and blow it on something this big and glaringly obvious?
This isn’t about intelligence, it’s about ulterior motives.
But if he really were brilliant, shouldn’t he have the foresight to recognize the inherent holes in those motives? That however well-intentioned they might be, catastrophic consequences tend to come with endless lying and ineptitude.
Not to mention the poison of partisanship to absolve it all — running the nation into the ground while you’re at it.
At what point does it dawn on you and your beloved Sowell — that blind loyalty to that cause would predictably damage your others?
Look around
I’m not brilliant — and I figured that out all by myself.
True folly, Tuchman found, is generally recognized as counterproductive in its own time, and not merely in hindsight. In Tuchman’s template, true folly only ensues when a clear alternative path of action was available and ruled out.
Hard to Imagine . . .
That I have to explain that quote to people who seemingly live to flood the internet with his words.
He and his flock incessantly complain about the media — and they don’t make policy. But the second I scrutinize Sowell — suddenly you have new standards.
180 — how fitting
I’m not convinced
— The Genius of Thomas Sowell
Well, ya shouldn’t be — because you haven’t looked at the evidence. He went on to say something along the lines of:
I don’t feel obligated to do so
So you do a podcast promoting Thomas Sowell’s “brilliance” — but don’t follow his fundamental tenets when it doesn’t suit you.
Got it!
What hard evidence do you have?
— Thomas Sowell
Hard enough to drop the hammer on you a hundred times over.
Consider yourself lucky that concrete evidence of mathematical certainty doesn’t qualify with your flock when it comes to protecting you and their interests.
Nor does any notion of responsibility and accountability.
Those things only apply to people you don’t like. His army of apologists are gutless in the face of facts they don’t like — disguised by their goose-stepping glory in the Facts Over Feelings Parade.
He’s the Grand Marshal of this lockstep lovefest — and the Admiral of the Scot-Free fleet.
And right on cue
Like Glenn Loury replied last year . . .
A man who once called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by my site and signed up:
Sowell is a great man because of his books. I stand by that. you want to refute his books — go ahead. I’m listening.
You said that they had no argument against your [R]ebuttal to Brown University’s letter on racism in the United States.
Neither do you on your “National Treasure.”
You wanna confine his record to a box of beliefs that suit you, and ignore anything that doesn’t. So the rules of argument you espouse on a daily basis don’t apply to you . . .
A lot of that goin’ around
Sowell sold out to sell those books you stand by.
The Genius of Thomas Sowell
Is that this fraud got followers to believe he’s not only a genius, but some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes to boot.
There’s a thing about Sowell that isn’t often mentioned . . . he can step completely outside of the race thing and just express himself about just stuff — which is not the usual.
Sowell has a habit of headlines oozing in partisan pettiness. On two of the biggest events in history — Sowell seems pretty tribal to me.
Desperate and Ugly in Florida
And I find it interesting that with Sowell — one reason some people today would find it hard to go with him is that he doesn’t write with that tribalist sense.
Weapons of Crass Obstruction
He’s trying to be purely objective and there’s nothing in him of — here’s what we down here think. Here’s what we’ve been through.
Weapons of Political Destruction
It’s not seasoned with any of that — he’s just trying to have a white lab coat on and look at the facts.
If his Crap is King claims on WMD isn’t “seasoned” to you, Mr. McWhorter — what is?
Hard to Imagine
And Damn Disappointing to Boot . . .
It’s bad enough I gotta deal with unyielding yahoos who yearn to praise Sowell as if it’s a daily duty to broadcast his brilliance (while butchering his principles in practice).
But to see people I respected fall into the same trap — enabling their “National Treasure” and the echo chamber around him: Good grief!
The crude, dirty “brutes” of the land of the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. The Yahoos are irrational people and represent the worst side of humanity. By contrast, the wise and gentle Houyhnhnms, their masters, are rational horses and represent humanity at its best.
The likes of Loury & McWhorter see themselves as Houyhnhnms — as if they’re immune to irrational behavior in defense of their interests.
And the icing on the cake to . . .
When Sowell did act like a Maverick on another matter of world-altering consequence — you got to discount that too:
Perfectly crafted common sense . . .
Advertised and delivered . . .
You — did not . . .
Jesus Christ — I can’t imagine living a life so self-satisfied. The mindlessness of these people is staggering.
There’s no there there . . .
That can happen when you refuse to open your eyes . . .
Unbelievable
But predictable as day and night.
The United States is now a country obsessed with the worship of its own ignorance. . . . [W]e’re proud of not knowing things. Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything.
It is a new Declaration of Independence: no longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.
We no longer have those principled and informed arguments. The foundational knowledge of the average American is now so low that it has crashed through the floor of “uninformed,” passed “misinformed” on the way down, and is now plummeting to “aggressively wrong.” People don’t just believe dumb things; they actively resist further learning rather than let go of those beliefs.
I was not alive in the Middle Ages, so I cannot say it is unprecedented, but within my living memory I’ve never seen anything like it.
I know the feeling — all too well
There’s no willingness to say, “I’m wrong.” I mean, you have to take a 2×4 to these people, basically — to get ’em to, sorta, knock ’em down and admit they were wrong.
The Genius of Thomas Sowell is proud of his beloved genius for changing his mind about Trump.
For someone who sat there stumped by my question about motive in the aftermath of 9/11 — it’s hardly surprising that ulterior motives never entered his mind as a factor for Sowell’s change of heart once Trump became president.
For people immersed in politics — I’d like to think you’d have a better understanding of how it works.
And I don’t give a damn how many of his books you’ve read — you don’t know Thomas Sowell the way you think you do.
The ultimate irony is that your blind loyalty limits him — while my criticism could elevate him to heights your hero-worship ensures he’ll never go.
Believe it or not, my aim is to make Thomas Sowell the catalyst who could turn the tide. But in order to do that, I gotta take him to task for his reprehensible record on Iraq WMD.
Don’t shake your head. I’m not done yet. Wait till you hear the whole thing so you can . . . understand this now . . .
So you found one small crack in Sowell’s character where he defended Iraq having WMD, does that hurt his credibility?
This man muddied the waters of debate to serve himself — on a little matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11.
Factoring for his history of hypocrisy and lying on that — along with ripping the Left while shamelessly ignoring the debauchery on the Right:
That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
Lo and Behold
Even in the most unsophisticated years of my youth, I would have never bought something so impossibly simplistic as Sowell’s “said so and so” — and the Right’s ubiquitous belief that “everybody believed Iraq had WMD.”
My mind would never allow me to accept something so easily.
I don’t know how people find the path of least resistance so satisfying — as I love the demands of difficulty and discernment.
To not step up my game in the midst of opportunity or challenge — would be tantamount to treason upon my very existence.
His acolytes have no interest in such a demanding way of life — as defending the faith is all that matters in the religious-like following around Sowell.
They spread the gospel by mindlessly countering with boilerplate beliefs that have no bearing on the issues in question.
What works with them would never fly with me. If you oversimplify an issue that clearly calls for careful examination, I know you’re hiding something.
If you constantly complain about the other side and defend your own at every turn — you’re not playing by the rules you rail on others for failing to follow.
Occasional criticism of your own party doesn’t qualify as having a history faithful to objective scrutiny.
One Voice Became Two 