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They had to silence him! | Thomas Sowell interview with Charlie Rose

Written by Thomas Sowell

Here is Thomas Sowell back with this interview. He reveals the truth about what goes on in the media, government, and in politics.

Transcript: They had to silence him! | Thomas Sowell interview with Charlie Rose

Well, there’ll be people in the media in the academic world and in politics, particularly those who believe that third parties can make better decisions than people can make for themselves and particularly when they are those third parties.

I think most people who have not been in the academic world would have to see the academics in action to realize how deeply they believe this. I can remember a conference at Middlebury College some years ago in which they were laying out these plans for how they would manipulate the poor in order to get them to do this to do that to do the other, and I said “who are we to be running these people’s lives?” and they looked at me as if I were a man from Mars speaking a language they had never heard before.

Thomas Sowell came to famous one of the first black intellectuals to question many of the policies advocated by the Civil Rights establishment today he is in the enviable position of seeing many of his ideas particularly those criticizing affirmative action gaining increasing popularity now in his latest book he criticized his self-styled Elites who through a combination of wrong-headed compassion and egoism have created many of the ills of contemporary America I’m pleased to have the author of the vision of the anointed a fellow North Carolinian Thomas Sowell thank you you still have family in Charlotte let’s say that don’t you oh I have Ryan relatives out in Gastonia but most most of them are on the East Coast now. oh from New York and and you grew up in Charlotte until you were eight yeah and then moved to Harlem yes uh and then what happened I grew up there I was the age of I left Harlem and then I’ve been moving ever since and left Harlem to go all Heavens I went uh to first down down to Washington for a few months and then I was drafted into the Marine Corps and uh from there on I went on to college and graduate school and all the rest of it wanting to do what with your life well I had to find that out but uh early on I guess I I wanted to be an economist I simply took economics courses and I I know I had no idea what economics was about until I took the courses and I found that I did far better than that than anything else and so there was really no the choice was made for me do you know why that was I mean what what part of your oh I could speculate but not really right was Milton Friedman a mentor for you yes um when I first went to the University of Chicago uh he was my advisor and I took a course from him but that really was not the turning point in my intellectual career I was a Marxist before I took Milton Friedman’s course and I was a Marxist after I took so he didn’t turn you from a Marxist no no but uh what what did that was working for the government and uh I began to see what it means to have the government control things I was dealing with minimum wages in Puerto Rico as a summer intern and I began to realize that one people were losing their jobs as you kept raising the minimum wage and two that the labor department really didn’t care about that because the minimum wage law was supplying about a third of their uh Appropriations administering that and in fact I spent the summer trying to wrestle with the idea of how could we test whether the minimum wage law was really causing these jobs to be lost in Puerto Rico and I finally at the end of the summer came up with something I I felt very proud of myself and I could see the stunned looks on people’s faces as I told them this in the office they realized oh my God this man has stumbled onto something that will ruin us all I was waiting for the congratulations you see and I could see these stunned faces instead and that’s interesting right because I’ve been watching a few economists and academics um your Shelby Stills your Walter Williams and your time of Souls and that’s one thing they all kind of agree on here right more government more problems right he said himself like I it did it took from it took me to work for the government inside the building to realize um that that’s not the answer right so it took a real life experience in there um to make the change from a Marxist to what he is today let’s keep it going and I can see these stunned faces instead how was it though for you and I’ve watched you and read you for years to be an African-American man respected by a cross-section of your peers and yet be so against the grain of fellow African-Americans well I don’t know that the we could say against the grain of fellow African Americans you mean fellow African-American intellectuals yeah well I don’t think African-American intellectuals are any more typical of African Americans than white intellectuals are off whites uh if you went by by uh intellectuals uh uh you know uh John Anderson got more votes at Stanford than Ronald Reagan did yeah so I don’t I’m not sure probably got more votes in Cambridge too yeah I wouldn’t be surprised and so uh intellectuals are not typical of anybody other than intellectuals uh what was it that bill bucker used to say I’d rather be judged by the by the first people in the New York phone director but then by The Faculty at Harvard oh absolutely my goodness yes that’s a very rational Choice yeah but it was not difficult for you in a sense I mean you even though let’s assume that in terms of certainly civil rights establishment you were in in some ways what a pariah well yes no I mean they they’ve had a wonderful way of handling from a tactical point of view uh they simply keep quiet when I come out with a book and it’s a two-week Wonder uh and then after the two weeks have passed they resume as if it hadn’t happened and so that that is so much better than engaging me in any kind of debate because they really don’t have the facts on their side you ever wanted to be after that experience dealing with minimum wage in Puerto Rico to be in government at any level anywhere I can’t really think that I have I’ve probably had more opportunities to be in government since uh the the than anyone who has never actually been in government yeah uh that uh yeah they wanted you badly because you would have been I mean you would have helped the cause too well I don’t know about that someone someone who came to me I said to him you know the president of the United States has better things to do with his time than constantly have to be saying well you know what Tom really meant was did were you a friend of Reagan’s no no no I I barely knew my I said it on a luncheon with other people with him once I I was impressed with the man that won he was not at all like the caricature in a lot of things either intellectually or in terms of personal compassion uh one of the things he described which I proposed quite moving was a man who had been condemned to death and the papers came to him of course for the appeal for the commutation and how he went through these papers looking for anything that would be justification for commuting them and the man was absolute wrongo from day one you know there was absolutely nothing there and he said he wasn’t going to just overrule the court on the basis of you know you want to overrule according so the execution went forward and the night of the execution he said you know there were people gathered around the governor’s mansion they were out and healing and praying outside as the hour of execution came and he said you know I don’t mind telling you I was in the governor’s mansion healing and praying too did you turn down the job of Secretary of Education yes why why not uh because you didn’t believe they should be a Department of Education I don’t believe the Department of Education I really wrestle with that because education is so horrible in this country that even though I knew I’d have been miserable in the job uh I thought well you know a lot of people have you know people have been miserable in Normandy and iwajima and I wouldn’t be here if they weren’t uh but I finally had to ask the question what what do I have the political skills to accomplish that would make it worth the hassle that I would go through not not kind of hassle I would give to other people and I thought really I don’t have those skills and you had no ego drive to say be at the cabinet of the president to be there to be a member of the President’s Cabin that’s you know that’s a person so this is kind of good right it’s kind of uh answering a lot of my questions I had about them of like you know why why didn’t he like you know I’m saying push forward and you know into the education sector and try to make a you know hop into a role there and try to try to make a change so him giving us direct answers to a lot of my questions on this interview man to be there to be a member of the president’s Capital that’s you know that’s a pretty impressive achievement not that you haven’t had a lot of impressive achievements in your life but that’s a rather oh it is no I I I’ve seen too many hangers on in my life if you want to be one of them would you have liked to have served in the Supreme Court you don’t have to be a lawyer to be someone raised that question you know the first time I heard that raised it was back in and I was I just given a talk on Capitol Hill and we were walking across I was walking across the Capital grounds with a bunch of young legislative aides and I said I poo pooed the whole thing and among those young legislative AIDS was a young man named Clarence Thomas and YouTube stay friends and oh you became friends yes you know and you you approved of his confirmation oh absolutely my God I thought it was a truly horrible thing that happened to him you know I’ve uh he and I have talked you know alone for hours on various occasions and uh never has he ever used any language that couldn’t have been repeated in Sunday school so the thought that you know he did all this stuff was absolutely I mean you know sometimes that brings you to the conclusion that Anita Hill lied oh yes uh but I I could also analyze it you know what I saw a video about that I think it came up in my uh my feed one time I think he was before Joe Biden I believe so you guys let me know down below I might get that one next man because I’ve never heard that I keep hearing about it but I haven’t I haven’t seen it myself you know I mean it was way back in the day you know what I mean so I might have to do that one next conclusion that Anita Hill lied oh yes uh but I I could also have analyzed it I in fact I wish I hadn’t simply dismissed it because think about it she said um but At first she didn’t even want Clarence to be told that she was a sourceless story now imagine two people are alone when something happens and then years later someone comes and tells you a story how hard will it be to Guess Who the other person was if if the story if it really happens and what Earthly point would that be and not telling him so what do you think her motivation was oh there’s there’s tons of it out there I mean people don’t go to Yale law school in order to teach at Orville or Roberts University yeah but she’s not there now I know but I’m saying you know uh she has she had a lot to try to explain away yeah people know people don’t go into a big Washington law firm in order to quit and become a government employee so she was looking for an explanation that’s one possibility but but I I’ve read other things and learned other things from other sources about her yes and you know that she didn’t get the job that she wanted um a lot of things yeah and and you’re pleased with Justice uh uh uh Thomas on the court oh well yes he’s one of he’s one of three people that I still believe uh the Constitution means what it says the other is Scalia and rehnquist yes [Laughter] well okay the vision of the anointed self-crafter congratulations as a basic for social policy I mean you posit here that they’re a group of self-anointed elitist who are responsible for what in America well for much much of the social policy of the past years and for the disastrous consequences that have fallen from those policies and who are these people well there’ll be people in the media in the academic world and in politics uh particularly those who believe that uh third parties can make better decisions than people can make for themselves and particularly when they are those third parties uh I I think most people who have not been in the academic world would have to see the academics in action to realize how deeply they believe this I can remember a conference at Middlebury College some years ago yeah in which they were laying out these plans for how they would manipulate the poor in order to get them to do this to do that to do the other and I said who are we to be running these people’s lives and they looked at me as if I were a man from Mars speaking a language they had never heard before this interview is a little bit different man I think on this one he’s being a little bit more open to his his personal you know takes in his personal life and things has gone through here I think we’re learning more about him you know and his views and how he got to these views um on this interview here it’s kind of interesting it’s kind of just draw me like therefore believe I mean I I this is almost University kind of debate do you therefore believe that that the government has no responsibility uh for those uh less fortunate than ourselves if free enterprise they cannot find at least a place in the market economy well there are many things the government can do I think the most important thing they can do is maintain a framework of law in which people do in fact find jobs and find progress after all this is not a hypothetical question as if this situation has never come up before I mean look at the entire history of the United States I mean the United the United States has not become a prosperous country only after the New Deal I mean history didn’t begin in the s or even in the s and you look at the history of blacks for that matter you know that the blacks have come a very long way long before the first civil rights law was passed in s in fact in the five years prior to the Civil Rights Act of blacks Rose into professional and similar occupations to a greater extent than in the five years afterwards so you would have even if you were if you look back now as an economist and and in some ways as a historian at the civil rights legislation that was passed in – and through the Great Society you and in terms of voting rights as well you would say those laws those civil rights laws were unnecessary and counterproductive oh no no and so oh you had to get rid of the Jim Crow system you had to have trouble they had to have voting rights and so on but I remember back in writing to a friend as the Civil Rights Act of was being uh fought out in Congress that I hope this law would pass with absolutely no crippling amendments exactly as it was written because among other that had some good things in it but one was one reason but the other reason was that I was convinced that it would not have the effect that they thought it would have and that one and what I assumed very incorrectly was that once people saw that yes this would break down the Jim Crow system it would not cause any dramatic Improvement in the economic condition of black people that you know and the people would then say no now we have to turn to something else in order to do that and I was completely wrong about that that when when it didn’t produce that result they said well it just shows we need more of the same which is the old argument you know we try policy X and it absolutely goes nowhere we need stronger policy X as this argument has been I’m sure voiced to you before Clarence Thomas benefited from affirmative action who said so Clarence Thomas says so I bet no he doesn’t no he does not Clarence Thomas does not say that that uh affirmative action programs helped him in terms of the educational opportunities to that question he might well for one thing I for one thing I my understanding and I I haven’t researched it my understanding is that he was admitted uh to college the university one thing I my understanding and I I haven’t researched my understanding is that he was admitted uh to college the year before they began their affirmative action program I don’t know what and what and and what the program did was to delegitimize what he had done yeah that he had he was a man with an outstanding academic record right uh and he and he goes out into the job market and people and despite this interview look at him and they say you got there only because affirmative action because of your own marriage ordinarily someone with that kind of record you’d look at saying this guy is really a world beater uh but no I know I’ve seen that in my own life uh I’m old enough that I can I’ve gone through the whole metamorphosis what have you seen in your own life all right when I was in the in the Marine Corps in this and during this Korean War I was trained as a photographer and I was assigned to Camp Lejeune North Carolina where great many of Southerners were in the Marine Corps white Southerners and in that Barracks whenever somebody had a photographic problem this camera wasn’t working his pictures didn’t come out right and so forth they would come to me I was astonished the most biggest redneck in in the barracks would come to me they asked me and there were all these white photons fixing my camera yeah why is this and I finally figured it out they said you know if this guy is black and he’s a photographer he must be some photographer you know now uh when I started teaching in the night early s at the Douglas College I read up on all the stuff about new teachers just seeing how uh it’s hard to get the respect of the students particularly if you’re not much older than they are and I look younger than I was uh and so I worried about that you see and I walked in that room the first day and there was Instant Respect and I I you know it sort of took me back and I I realized no no they they’re they’re saying look this guy I was the first black male to teach there this guy must be something else you know go forward now years by this time I’ve completed my degree I’ve written my books eternal life all the whole thing I’m now teaching at UCLA and students will come up to me at the end of the term they’ll say how much they like the course and all that and somewhere in the course of that yeah there’ll be a slip up and they’ll let it let it out that they were quite surprised that the course was as good as it was and one of the one of the things that struck me even before the end of the term one kid came to me one day and he had a passage in the book he was having trouble with and he said can you tell me what this means I explained to him what that passage meant he said are you sure and I said yes I wrote The Textbook and he looked on the front he’s really embarrassed but this is what affirmative action has done so you can’t see any possibilities that in fact it increased the pool as you know it’s frequently used the expression of I don’t know what action can do is increase the pool I don’t know what that means and I I’ve never had anybody explain it to me I’ve studied affirmative action in this country in India and Malaysia you know in Sri Lanka in Nigeria uh they have they have some version of it in uh Israel well I’m going to explain as it was explained to me it is the notion of it let’s say you’re an admissions committee at Harvard and you’re going to choose so many people you’re going to let people in for a variety of reasons one is sheer academic Merit they scored on their college boards that’s a good entry they’ve got a brilliant uh academic and athletic background and they happen to be a virtuoso violin player you know oh yeah and the violin player helps yeah or let’s say they come from Nevada they don’t have a lot of Nevada at Harvard and that’s also say that they are come from from Sri Lanka they don’t have many people from Sri Lanka there and let’s also say that that they also are African-American and that that ought to be a factor in in choosing from that pool maybe that’s one of the big corporations because what uh because diversity of a student body is a healthy Factor I’m fascinated with the extent of which words we’re conditioned to react like Pavlov’s dog’s words I hear diversity someone was asking don’t make me look bad diversity it was a trustee of a college was saying that they were going to pick a new college professor I said what you should do is have a stopwatch there and just count how long it is to to each of the uh contestants says the word diversity and the guy who says it you know he’s minutes into the interview and the other guy who says that you know the first sentence the guy who takes minutes he should be at the top of the list the guy who said it the first setting should be at the bottom because the question what’s wrong with diversity I don’t get the point my point is that this is a word that has become magic what does it mean if anything become magic are you saying to me that all black people are alike therefore you’ve got to mix and match by race this is not diverse unless it’s diverse along no I’ll tell you what I’m saying I’m saying that I think that it would be different to have people of different kinds of experiences uh and me mentioned Sri Lanka didn’t we and you know and it’d be interesting to have some people uh with an Asian background wait wait an Asian back an African-American uh people uh that come from uh Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue as well as from Henderson North Carolina all of that would make a healthy student body I don’t think everybody ought to come from uh the sons of of Harvard graduates all right my daughters mainly because they’re not always the best students no that’s right but uh uh all right um that all even I think that that doesn’t make it I I slipped my point there for a minute well I mean you have thought long and hard about this and much longer than I have and you bring them no but wait wait that’s the theory unfortunately unfortunately the facts are quite different in places like Harvard and Stanford and Cornell dude what you have what you have is the black son of the black doctor right who lived in the same neighborhood with the white son of the white dot right and now you’re giving me diversity because these two people are not necessarily they have scholarships that they offer to kids but now we’re going away from the whole racial thing I’m saying the racial thing has been used as a proxy for something that is not a proxy for because the vast majority of blacks who go to places like Harvard and Cornell and Stanford are not blacks from the ghetto those are blacks from out there you know they’re from Malibu uh you know they’re from Pacific Palisades uh they’re from Winnetka and so forth they’re from the very same neighborhoods they’re from the very same neighborhoods as the whites are there and so and so now you call it diversity ahead of myself here uh do you think that the era of these uh social Engineers from whatever establishment they come from media Academia government is over no I wish it were I think they’re going to go underground they’re going to hunker down and then and when and then wait wait absolutely and we have people in the room and among among the Republicans for example who uh I said these things like this are like crabgrass you’ve got to root it out do not cut back on the Appropriations for the National Endowment if you’re not going to get rid of it you don’t want to gut come on I mean you clearly don’t want to gut the net I do not I want to destroy it entirely of course I don’t want to gut it you want to dismantle that’s right because it’s like a democratic get public television as well you you got it but uh uh well you’ll never appear on the dealer again thank you very much oh okay oh no but it’s like crabgrass these people are going to hunker down and then they’ll wait for it for to change the political thing and I think these guys are like somebody who’s put in the lawn mower over crabgrass but these guys you seem to be saying are everywhere but you’re not talking about just bureaucrats you’re the same I mean you’re saying it’s the New York Times it’s CBS oh absolutely absolutely it’s Harvard University and the Yale faculty oh absolutely UCLA faculty yeah the Stanford faculty yes all of them oh absolutely you know what it amazes me is that you buy into these conspiracies like this it’s conspiracy no not conspiracy at all these people there’s people somehow have come to a power establishment have come to this like-minded idea about well that’s happening many times in history pointed and I I don’t believe it for a minute I think if people at Harvard meet holy independently and sealed off from people from Stanford yeah and they go into those rooms they will come out with the same kinds of policies because they went in with the same assumptions and because their experiences you suggest are essentially the same probably well I don’t know about that I don’t know about that then why do they come to the same conclusion oh because the operator right under the same assumptions and why do they have the same assumptions for reasons which you can go back into history no no come on why do they have the same time women go back in history uh this has been a set of assumptions that’s been very popular among intellectuals what has happened in our time is that intellectuals have been taken much more seriously since the s than they were before I think we’re suffering the consequences of it it’s not the first time in history the intellectuals have been taken seriously uh and disasters have followed so we shouldn’t have taken Milton Friedman seriously Milton Friedman uh is one as one is a very typical like this game and say well you guys shouldn’t take intellectually let me answer the question except by seriously I mean in a sense I should have clarified this in the sense that they are Exempted from the test of facts did it work when I hear people come on the end say these lofty things I say to myself show me where we’ve ever gotten better off listening to people like this all right I I see these psychologists coming on to how you should raise your children I said who are children better today now that we’ve been listening to these people for years are they happier are they more learned uh you know test scores go down venereal disease goes up suicide rates go up in what way are we better off at having listened to them yeah I think the host is uh is is challenging challenging his ideas here um which is important man because it’s bringing out kind of almost the best of time or so right his answer he’s answering the questions uh from a thinker’s perspective all right he’s given some dope great accurate quests or answers here but it seems to me that you do engage a little bit in group dismissal that you innocent wave your hand and not know anybody knows rather than saying that that each of these kinds of Institutions or that there is not a group thinking the institution you you tell me that the uh uh your group think someone did a survey at Stanford a couple years ago they found whole departments in which there was not one Republican why is it that on the Washington I mean look at editorial people who write the editorials and and under the bylines or for the paper of the Washington Post you’ve got George will there and certainly what George Will says is different from what David Broda says absolutely and certainly what Bill Sapphire says is quite different from what Tom Friedman says from what absolutely uh Marine Dowd thinks absolutely but they’re all of the New York Times that’s that’s very true yeah but the fact is that they are the exceptions they are the exceptions as Milton Friedman is exception um the only good guys are the exceptions and meaning gender free this missile that’s not that that’s one of the words I I I latch on to in the chapter about the vocabulary of the anointed that whenever you reach a conclusion that is different from what from what they have they say you’ve dismissed it you can spend three volumes analyzing it and at the end you come up and saying it’s wrong oh he dismissed it yeah I like how even when the host was kind of you know saying his opinion he was solidified Thomas so was solidified like yo yeah what you’re saying is factual I mean there’s no argument he doesn’t argue with facts if if it’s facts if it’s studied if it’s statistics he doesn’t argue with stats man um and he respects that um whether it come from him or somebody else man he’ll agree with you as long as he as long as what you’re saying is uh absolutely has been proven you know I mean he’s not gonna allow you to say anything crazy while uh having a conversation with him but anyway so again that was time to Soul Man um great video let me know what you guys think down below of course make sure you hit this video with a thumbs up like so we can get this thing pushing and uh until next time y’all be safe out there peace

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Thomas Sowell

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