Sowell: Random thoughts on politics, history, income inequality

• Among the common phrases of the past that we seldom hear today is “None of your business.” Apparently everything is other people’s business these days, including the media’s business and the government’s business.

• In this scientific age, it is amazing how many people act as if magic words can make realities vanish. For example, they talk as if behavioral differences between groups can be made to disappear by saying the magic word, “stereotypes.” This fallacy affects everything from statistical claims of discrimination to admitting refugees with cultures hostile to our own.

• After a famous naval victory in the War of 1812, Commodore O.H. Perry reported: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” After the Republican congressional majority’s repeated capitulations to the Democrats’ minority, congressional Republicans could say, “We have met the enemy and we are theirs.”

• The central non sequitur of the political left is that, because America has never lived up to its ideals, it is to be condemned and repudiated. But what society of human beings has ever lived up to all its ideals? Despite all its achievements, America is condemned by the left because it is not exempt from all the sins and failings found in societies around the world.

• One of the apparently immortal fallacies is the belief that disarming peaceful people reduces violence. That fallacy underlies both national disarmament and gun control within nations.

• In trying to come up with alternatives to the welfare state, even some staunch conservatives have created plans that exempt low-income people from paying taxes, or plans that provide some basic income to all, making it unnecessary to work. But exempting anyone from responsibility and reciprocity as members of society risks disaster for those individuals and for society.

• Egalitarians never seem to understand that promoting economic equality in theory means promoting resentments and polarization in practice, making everyone worse off.

• Someone is always parading statistics showing that some small number of people at the top of the income scale have more than some larger number of people at the bottom. But would we be better off if people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had never created things that widened our access to opportunities and enriched our lives, just because it also enriched theirs?

• Some are surprised at how many young people look favorably on socialism. But socialism is a wonderful-sounding idea. Those who have lived through its disasters in the 20th century, or learned about them from history, are likely to see through appearances to the reality. A young age prevents the former and our dumbed-down education prevents the latter.

• A biographer of Herbert Hoover said that he was a great man but not a great president. Had he never become president, Hoover’s greatness in other areas would still be remembered today. But his economic moves as president were amplified by his successor, and mired the country in a decade of tragedy. Great achievements in other areas are no reason to make someone president.