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Henry J's Blog & BS
Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2014 10:06 AM
I wanted to
send this along in case you haven't had the opportunity to read Thomas Sowell's
fine commentary. If you aren't familiar with Thomas Sowell, please permit me to
introduce you...Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is
www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web
page at www.creators.com. Okay...you've met him. Now--Thomas and I offer you an
opportunity to take a brief glance at a small bit of his ideology.
Some have said that we are
living in a post-industrial era, while others have said that we are living in a
post-racial era. But growing evidence suggests that we are living in a
post-thinking era.Many people in Europe and the
Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel's military action
in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian
civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than the number of
Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that started this
latest military conflict.Are these protesters aware
that vastly more German civilians were killed by American bombers attacking Nazi
Germany during World War II than American civilians killed in the United States
by Hitler's forces?Talk show host Geraldo Rivera
says that there is no way Israel is winning the battle for world opinion. But
Israel is trying to win the battle for survival, while surrounded by enemies.
Might that not be more important?Has any other country, in any
other war, been expected to keep the enemy's civilian casualties no higher than
its own civilian casualties? The idea that Israel should do so did not originate
among the masses but among the educated intelligentsia.In an age when scientists are
creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem
to be creating artificial stupidity.It is much the same story in
our domestic controversies. We have gotten so intimidated by political
correctness that our major media outlets dare not call people who immigrate to
this country illegally "illegal immigrants."Geraldo Rivera has denounced
the Drudge Report for carrying news stories that show some of the negative
consequences and dangers from allowing vast numbers of youngsters to enter the
country illegally and be spread across the country by the Obama
administration.Some of these youngsters are
already known to be carrying lice and suffering from disease. Since there have
been no thorough medical examinations of most of them, we have no way of knowing
whether, or how many, are carrying deadly diseases that will spread to American
children when these unexamined young immigrants enter schools across the
country.The attack against Matt
Drudge has been in the classic tradition of demagogues. It turns questions of
fact into questions of motive. Geraldo accuses Drudge of trying to start a
"civil war."Back when masses of
immigrants from Europe were entering this country, those with dangerous diseases
were turned back from Ellis Island. Nobody thought they had a legal or a moral
"right" to be in America or that it was mean or racist not to want our children
to catch their diseases.Even on the less contentious
issue of minimum wage laws, there are the same unthinking reactions.Although liberals are usually
gung ho for increasing the minimum wage, there was a sympathetic front page
story in the July 29th San Francisco Chronicle about the plight of a local
non-profit organization that will not be able to serve as many low-income
minority youths if it has to pay a higher minimum wage. They are seeking some
kind of exemption.Does it not occur to these
people that the very same thing happens when a minimum wage increase applies to
profit-based employers? They too tend to hire fewer inexperienced young people
when there is a minimum wage law.This is not breaking news.
This is what has been happening for generations in the United States and in
other countries around the world.One of the few countries
without a minimum wage law is Switzerland, where the unemployment rate has been
consistently less than 4 percent for years. Back in 2003, The Economist magazine
reported that "Switzerland's unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in
February." The most recent issue shows the Swiss unemployment rate back to a
more normal 3.2 percent.Does anyone think that having
minimum wage laws and high youth unemployment is better? In fact, does anyone
think at all these days?Jim Morris
Twilight
Imagery, Inc.
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