I am a Slacker

How many months ago did I finish Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell?  Am I like my eldest son who seemed to believe that if he kept a library book that he liked way beyond the due date, it was his?  This I believe is a tad of my rationale for not writing a review of said book.  My politically conservative friend from work lent me this book and introduced me to Sowell.  I now look for his editorials in the NY Post where before his small picture left me cold.  It is like spotting a unicorn walking down the street ...the political pundits and newspapers have declared the possibility of an African American intellectual as much an oxymoron as military intelligence or now IRS neutral competence.  

But I proudly join the ranks of Sowell groupies, if such a group exists and would eagerly ready more of his essays and theories.  But on to I & S.  (E McM forgive me for dog-earring the following excerpts in his graciously loaned copy.)  

With another headline to re-emphasize Sowell's disdain for the intellectual elite who consider themselves the true rulers, the penultimate policy setters, as the headlines blare about Bubba and Hellary foisted their wannabe clones of In-Huma and her aptly named Weiner spouse, let me quote:

" ... help 1explain why so many leading intellectuals have so often backed notions that proved to be disastrous.  It is not simply with particular policies at particular times that intellectuals have often advocated mistaken and dangerous decisions.  Their whole general approach to policy making -- their ideology -- has often reflected a critical misconception about knowledge and its concentration or dispersion.  Many intellectuals and their followers have been unduly impressed by the fact that highly educated elites like themselves have far more knowledge per capita .. than does the population at large ... They have often overlooked the crucial fact that the population at large may have vastly more total knowledge ... If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available ... the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among the elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster."  ... "Other forms of this general notion include judicial activiism, urban planning and other institutional expressions of the belief that social decisions cannot be left to be determined by the actions and values of the less knowledgeable population at large."

Why is this not echoing from the rafters of American?  Why isn't Sowell the 21st Century equivalent of the Federalist Papers?  

I am too tired tonight to copy the many dog earred pages that I wanted to quote at length.  Sowell makes one thinks that there could be an intent to, a la 1984, reduce the thinking power of Americans.  How much as school curriculum debased critical thinking and debate?  How intolerant have we become to be normal and not different or logically presenting the other side of an argument?  Debate is replaced by tarnished filibuster?  Dissertation by sound bite and spin.  Has America lost its Sowell?  He should be required reading in any high school participation in government course.  Newspapers, not just the NY Post, should publish him along side the opposition on editorial pages.