Thomas Sowell: Idiot Emeritus July 31, 2010

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Thomas Sowell: Idiot Emeritus

July 31, 2010

By OTOOLEFAN

Godwin’s Law states that the longer an online discussion goes, the greater the chance of a Nazi reference. No matter what the forum, unless the subject is the Nazis or


Got Hitler?

genocide, anyone making such a comparison automatically loses the argument. Period. By this standard alone, syndicated Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell is the Biggest Loser.

For those who don’t know him, Thomas Sowell (born 1930) is an American economist, retired professor, social critic, political commentator, author, and lunatic. After seeing his vile, depraved weekly columns for the past four years I truly believe he belongs in an institution – which is just where he is.

Since 1980, Sowell has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The Hoover Institution, like the Heritage Foundation and countless others, is basically a welfare program for Right Wing Op-Ed writers.

Wealthy donors give people like Sowell the financial freedom to rail against entitlement programs and rewrite history, particularly the Great Depression. Consequently, they are not bound by prickly things like facts or editors or journalistic ethics.

But before we delve into all things Nazi, let me acquaint you with some of Thomas Sowell’s other bat guano droppings on a host of topics, both historical and contemporary. How this crackpot is taken seriously is more of a mystery to me than Stonehenge or ‘Cop Rock’.

Dig. In a column called “Random Thoughts”, Sowell wrote of FDR and asked incredulously: “How can a President of the United States be re-elected in a landslide after four years when unemployment never fell below 15% for even one month during his first term?”

Good one, Tommy.

Let’s see if we can unravel this enigma, shall we? OK.

First, notice how Sowell doesn’t even bother to mention that U.S. was in the throes of that little jam known as the Great Depression, and had been since 1929. Note, too, how Sowell doesn’t say what the unemployment rate was when the great Herbert Hoover left office and the awful Franklin Roosevelt took office.

In 1933, when FDR became President the national unemployment rate was Twenty-Five Percent! One quarter of the nation was out of work. Maybe Tommy forgot this little fact because in 1933 he was only 3 years old. Yeah, that must be it. (The Meghan McCain Defense.)

Now, during the next four years–the same four years cited by Sowell–the national unemployment rate went from 25% to 16.9%. Funny how he doesn’t tell you this, isn’t it?

Here’s the year by year break down for those of you playing at home:

1933: 25%

1934: 21.7%

1935: 20.1%

1936: 16.9%

So, unemployment fell every year during the first four years of FDR’s first term. It dropped seven points during that period. This would be like President Obama taking office with unemployment at 12% and it falling to 5% by the end of his first term. You think he would be re-elected? And let’s not forget FDR’s rival in the 1936 election; Alf Landon, a man who ran on repealing Social Security, which had just been passed the year before, no thanks to the GOP. Sound familiar?

Shame on you, Thomas Sowell. Is your argument about FDR’s re-election so flimsy that you’re afraid to tell your readers what the unemployment rate was when he took office? I know, as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things”. If you’re truly puzzled as to why FDR was re-elected in a landslide, why not come down from your ivory tower and talk to people who actually lived through the Great Depression.

Ask them why they voted for FDR. Ask them if the New Deal worked or not. FDR won because he put people back to work and gave them hope. Even my 80 year old Republican step-mom will tell you this. Roosevelt created a few programs too, Sowell: FDIC, Social Security, SEC, WPA, and put financial regulations in place that kept us safe from another financial catastrophe until they were dismantled piece by piece. (See S&L Scandal and Financial Meltdown of 2008)

By the way Mr. Sowell, the most recent presidential poll conducted by real historians rates FDR as our 3rd greatest president. I’m no expert, but I think that puts him ahead of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush, whom you described in another one of your idiotic columns as “an honorable man.”

In yet another column, Thomas Sowell protested against the idea of high school students engaging in community service to pad their college resume’. The activity that angered Sowell the most was volunteering at a homeless shelter. It seems that in Sowell World, anyone who ends up in such a shelter is just no good. Students shouldn’t help out at a homeless shelter, he argued, because they shouldn’t have to be involved in, and I quote, “feeding people who refuse to work”.

This ignorant statement is so vile on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. First off, most people who are homeless are homeless because of mental illness – specifically schizophrenia. It’s not due to lack of character or laziness. Beyond that little fact, to label people in a homeless shelter as there simply because they refuse to work is particularly despicable, especially in today’s economy.

God forbid young people help those in need and maybe see just how lucky they themselves are. God forbid young people get a glimpse of just how cruel life can be. God forbid they develop a sense of compassion or community – they might not want to become millionaires! Where’s the profit in that?

Using Sowell’s logic, battered women seeking shelter do so because they refuse to get along with their husbands or boyfriends. I guess people who were homeless in the Great Depression got that way because they refused to work also. This thinly veiled contempt for people that drips from every paragraph of Sowell’s columns reveals to me a man whose heart serves no other function but to pump blood into a jaundiced brain. Guess no one will ever accuse Thomas Sowell of being a “compassionate conservative.”

Last year Sowell devoted an entire column to the notion that Rush Limbaugh had never made any racist statements in his professional life. Guess Sowell doesn’t watch football.

Here’s what Sowell wrote last summer about what he thinks might happen if Iran gets the Bomb.

“Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War 2. It is hard to believe that it would take more than that for the United States of America to surrender – Especially with people in control of the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running just a couple years ago.”

Huh?

So let me get this straight, Tommy; If Iran were to drop two nuclear bombs, we would surrender? WTF? Is this why they call you “brilliant”? Yeah, Dems are weak – especially those two pansies who guided us through World War 2; FDR and Harry Truman.

“Turning tail and running in Iraq”? You mean that illegal, immoral war George W. Bush started instead of pursuing the actual people who attacked us on 9/11? Kind of like invading China after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Like the GOP today, Thomas Sowell’s solution to every foreign policy problem is WAR.

After Sowell has us surrendering to Iran, here’s how he finishes that scenario:

“Perhaps people who are gushing over the Obama Cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under Sharia law.”

Thorazine, anyone?

I can’t imagine that even Thomas Sowell believes this nonsense. He’s simply pandering to the serial bedwetters of the far Right. After all, it pays the bills. If, however, Sowell really believes this garbage he is clearly insane or, at the very least freebasing Metamucil.

One of the most remarkable political events in recent times took place the summer of 2008 when then Senator Barack Obama spoke to a large, cheering crowd in Berlin. And what did the great Thomas Sowell have to say about this?

“To find anything comparable to the crowds’ euphoric reactions to Mr. Obama, you would have to go back to the old news reels of German crowds in the 1930’s with their adulation of their Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.”

Actually, Mr. Sowell, no, we don’t. Not even close. We need only go back to June, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy addressed the brave people of West Berlin and stood proudly with them, declaring “Ich Bin Ein Berliner.” Remember that? It was kind of big deal. After his stirring speech, JFK was informed by the Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, that on his best day, Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer, never had as large an audience as he did on this day.

Oh but wait a minute….If JFK drew a larger crowd than Hitler, he must have been even more like Hitler than Hitler! Do I have to connect the dots? It all makes sense now. Like Hitler, JFK mesmerized a nation with his soaring rhetoric and got us all to carry out his evil agenda. We were so brainwashed that we even followed him to the moon! Chilling, isn’t it?

In Sowell’s warped mind, anyone who can draw a massive crowd must be like Hitler. If this is the case, then Garth Brooks is Hitler, too!

The massive audience in a unified Berlin wasn’t worshipping Obama. After eight years of the disastrous go-it-alone, cowboy diplomacy of Bush/Cheney, these people were just happy to hear from a potential President whose foreign policy didn’t consist of simply thumbing his nose at the rest of the world.

But by far the most amazing and inspiring spectacle of all was the sight of thousands of Europeans proudly waving American flags again. When was the last time we saw that? And this piece of shit Sowell compares him to Hitler?

If all of this isn’t vile enough, Thomas Sowell’s latest ad Hitlerum about the BP Oil Disaster made national news. Last month, BP agreed to voluntarily set aside $20 billion to compensate those whose lives and livelihood and already been destroyed by this tragedy. Even Bill O’Reilly was happy about this. But Thomas Sowell could only see Nazis again, saying, “That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.”

So getting BP to take responsibility for the disaster they caused is going to lead to another Holocaust? This is the kind of screwball opinion I’d expect from someone in a straitjacket.

Speaking of screwballs, Sowell’s column was actually read on the House Floor by GOP Congressman and Slow Talker Louie Gohmert (R TX).

“When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics…”

You mean like teabaggers?

Never one to pass up an opportunity to be hateful, Sarah Palin jumped on Thomas Sowell’s Crazy Train, and linked to this idiotic column on her Twitter page. When it blew up in her face only hours later, she tried to jump off the Sowell train by tweeting, “ I never compared Obama to Hitler”.

No Sarah, you just endorsed and linked to an op-ed piece written by a man who compares President Obama to Hitler almost every week. This is another classic example of that great conservative trait of personal accountability that Palin and others brag about possessing.

And there were others, Michele Bachmann and Sharon Angle (who even Joe Scarborough called a “jack-ass”) who referred to the BP victim fund as a slush fund, and even one member of the GOP, Congressman Joe Barton went so far as to personally apologize to the CEO of BP, calling the victims fund a “shake-down”. How much does a new ocean cost anyway?

What the hell is wrong with these people? Whose side are they on?

Dear Mr. Sowell: There are at least six Million reasons why you need to stop calling President Obama Hitler. I wonder what Anne Frank would think of your despicable Nazi comparisons? You trivialize the actual evil of the Nazis, and insult the memory of their victims. Have you no shame?

Shame on you.

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