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Sept. 4, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
September 4, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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That is right, uh Johnny Donovan.
It's uh Walter E. Williams sitting in for the uh vacationing Rush Limbaugh.
And uh he's gonna be back on uh Tuesday, but uh we're gonna have the best of on Monday.
And you can be on with us uh by calling 800 2828 2.
And um we're trying to get uh Dr. Thomas Sowell on the phones uh with us right now.
Uh maybe some kind of uh uh mix up in there.
Um do we have s okay.
Okay.
While waiting for Tom, uh and maybe Tom can help us when the uh when he comes on the show when we finally get him.
Um let me just kind of state out uh state some findings for you.
There's a professor uh in um University of Hawaii, I think he's emeritus right now, uh, called uh uh Dr. Rummel, Professor Rummel.
And he's written a book called Death by Government.
And he points out in this book that from 1917 until the collapse of the Soviet Union, that these people, uh mainly Stalin, murdered or caused the death of sixty-one million people, mostly its own citizens.
Since nineteen forty-nine, China's Mao Sedung is responsible for the death of thirty-eight million of its own citizens, and some people say uh that that's a number too low.
It's maybe it's 45 uh million.
Now, now here's my question.
Now, uh another fact.
When John Kenneth uh Galbraith visited Mao's China, uh he praised Mao Sedong and the Chinese system.
Now, the reason why I bring this up is that I think last week or the week before, California uh representative Diane Watson, she praised Cuba's health system, and she praised Fidel Castro, saying that you can think whatever you want about Fidel Castro, but he's one of the brightest leaders I've ever met.
Now, here's my question.
How is it or how come these people on the left praise and have sympathy for these tyrants by these monsters of human history?
That is Mao Sedung and Stalin, they made Hitler Hitler's 18 million, estimate 18 million, uh made Hitler look like a Boy Scout.
But uh the these uh the academics, they they uh during the uh 1960s, 1970s, they used to march around campus with Mao's little red book and praising Mao Zedong.
That's a question that I have.
How come these people, mostly on the left, have such sympathy and admiration for some of the world's greatest barbarians?
We'll get to that question a little bit later on, but right now we want to welcome to the show uh Dr. Thomas Sowell.
Welcome to the show, Tom.
Hi, well.
Hey, uh what I w what I want to do is uh to talk about your uh let's say your latest book, the uh the housing boom and bust.
Uh uh ladies and gentlemen, that's uh Tom Sowell's 43rd book.
And by the way, before we get into housing boom and bust, do you have anything forthcoming?
Yes.
Uh I have I have a book called uh Intellectuals and Society, which I've just finished and which should be out in January.
Oh, Intellectuals and Society.
I think the thing that you're just talking about about the intellectuals going for all these mass murderers.
Uh this was true.
This has been true throughout the 20th century.
I'll be darned.
Black and back Hitler and all the rest of them.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yeah.
Well, uh well, Time Magazine had him down, I think for the man of the year, didn't he?
Excuse me.
I think Time magazine had Hitler on his cover as a man of the year back in the 30s sometime.
He might well have, but the apologist for them and for Stalin...
Are just unbelievable.
Oh my god.
Okay, maybe we'll get to that a little bit later on.
But uh let's talk a little bit about housing boom and bust.
And and and in uh in a nutshell, can you say well well what what are some of the causes or or some of the basic causes of this uh housing uh boom and subsequent bust in our country.
Well, uh I I guess the key uh factor was the notion that the government should allow people uh to be able to buy a house uh who ordinarily didn't have the money for a down payment off of the mortgage payments.
And so uh the pressure was put on all sorts of lending institutions uh to uh lend to people who didn't meet the normal standards.
And we discovered the hard way why the normal standards had been normal.
Yeah, and and a matter of fact, uh you say in the book that um that President Clinton's uh attorney general, Janet Reno, uh threatened legal action against l uh lenders whose racial statistics uh raised her suspicions.
Oh oh absolutely.
A and and more than that, uh uh th it uh banks which whose statistics didn't please the government, couldn't get government permission to make business decisions that other businesses make all the time, like mergers and acquisitions or even putting in ATMs.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And and and and and it wasn't just the uh the Democrats responsible for this, uh it was uh the Bush administration too.
Uh you you're s you're saying the book.
Oh, absolutely.
That the uh it was bipartisan.
It was bipartisan as as I I've often said the things that are bipartisan are usually twice as bad as things that are partisan.
That's a good point.
And and and and people just in Washington just uh ignored warning after warning uh about Oh absolutely.
And you absolutely uh uh any number of people uh including as far away as uh the the Economist magazine in London, uh I even did a piece for the Wall Street Journal, but they're Alan Green's fan tried to warn them.
Nobody could warn them.
They would they were hellbent for doing things the way they preconceived it, and this is how they led us into the disaster.
Yeah, right.
And and and a lot of the financial meltdown is precisely a result of the subprime issues.
Oh, uh absolutely, because uh people then not only th the ri the original lenders uh sold a very large b part of the uh mortgages they wrote, and one of the people who one of the institutions that bought them was Fan were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.
Uh and so all these risks were then passed on.
And so since they could pass on the risk, they didn't have to be fussy about whether the lenders really had the money that they said they had or any of the other things.
And so there were mortgages written for people who would say, you know, I'm making two hundred thousand a year, and they wouldn't check the guy might be unemployed for all they know.
They don't care.
And they call these loan no they and they call these loans uh uh no doc loans or liar loans.
Oh uh absolutely.
But uh they they write the mortgage, then they'd sell the mortgage to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and then the risk became the taxpayers problem.
That's right.
And and and banks did not, as you point out, that banks and lent and other lending institutions, they did not have the incentive to uh search because heck they're they're making money, and so they uh they'll they'll make out a mortgage or they'll they'll they'll lend people money, and whether it's good, whether it's a good mortgage or a bad mortgage, the bank still makes money because they sell it off to the uh uh Fannie May or Freddie Mac.
Yeah, in other words, they they sell they sell a thirty year loan, but they w they're not gonna wait thirty years for it.
They say they just to get the money, they sell it to Fannie Mayor Freddie Mac.
They get their money right now and they start lending it out again.
Yes, yes, yes.
Now now here's here's what really gets me, and I haven't found a um a completely satisfactory answer to it, and I believe you c you come very, very close to it in your book, and that is uh how can the politicians get away with blaming this uh subprime crisis and these pro and these economic problems that we're having,
how can they get away with blaming it on on deregulation, the uh free market system and and and they're yeah, people like uh Barney Frank and and Chris Dodd, they're just blaming it on everybody except themselves.
Well, if there's nobody to to uh to to expose what they're doing, they can get away with it forever.
I suspect that Barney Frank is uh an odds on favor to get reelected.
Uh Chris Dodd has a few problems.
But uh that's what that's one of the problems of political decision making.
Uh no matter what what pro what uh uh crises they may uh create, if the public doesn't uh connect the dots, they go on and they're great at hauling up before these congressional committees, members for people from the banking industry or the Wall Street people, and just denouncing them on nationwide televisions.
And that then convinces the public that that's where the the problem originated.
Whereas the people who are doing the denouncing usually had far more to do with the situation than the ones there denouncing.
That's absolutely right.
And but but it seems that yeah at at least what you when I was going to UCLA going getting my uh graduate education uh the uh Armin Alshen and some of the other uh economists that uh they said that people are not stupid in the long run and nor are they ignorant in the long run but uh uh uh uh it sure in the hell seems like many Americans are well uh depending on how how you how long you define the long run.
I'm sure there's historians of the tw of the uh twenty second century look back on our times they will have this all sorted out but of course uh that that won't do us any good.
Uh-huh right well um I don't know I I think that the uh housing boom and bus is a uh is an excellent work and I think you got it out there uh in in time for it to uh maybe make uh a difference with uh some people but let's I hope so and and and and they can get the book where they can get it on Amazon.com anywhere Amazon dot com uh lazyfair books uh uh Barnes and Noble where wherever uh okay I'd
I'd like to switch bases a little bit to—do we have time?
Yeah, okay.
I'd like to switch a little bit and talk about the intellectuals.
And can you come up with a reason why we have all these intellectuals that are key supporters or found—or hero worshipers of some of these barbarians in our history, such as Mao Zedong and and and Stalin.
Wow that that that's a tall order.
Uh I think one of the reasons is that those people talked the kind of talk that the the intellectuals like to hear.
And uh since talk is making mainly what they're about that that's what they go by.
I mean uh Hitler made some of the greatest uh peace speeches of the nineteen thirties uh and of course it it made sense for him to do that because he's arming Germany to the teeth but that's only going to be effective if the other countries don't arm as well.
That's right.
So he talks about and so he then talks about how wonderful peace is and he's offering all sorts of you know non-aggression packs and all kinds of stuff like that.
And the intellectuals in the Western democracies were just eating it up.
And uh then is now they they they always described the intellectuals did uh uh military deterrence as an arms race.
Well uh if Hitler's arming and you don't arm you're in big trouble.
That's absolutely right.
And I I believe one time you point out or somebody pointed out that when Hitler was uh in the process of verse of um violating the Versailles treaties during the mid-thir it was during the mid-thirties that France alone could have taken him down but they allow him to accumulate uh weapons and uh and and of and France alone uh France became a victim.
Oh oh oh absolutely uh when when uh let was sent troops into the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles uh Hitler himself uh admitted later that if the French had had acted and sent their troops in he said we would have to have left with our tail between our legs and it and uh many people uh have argued that had that happened Hitler would have been so disgraced it would have been the end of the Nazi regime.
Now I I would imagine that the uh uh the the Amadine in uh in in the Iran he must be saying these people are fools they're letting me go to develop nuclear weapons.
Oh no question about it and this is in a sense even worse than what happened in the case of Hitler because the uh one once uh you have Two or three nuclear weapons, you are suddenly the master of anybody who isn't willing to stand there and see two or three of their major cities blown to pieces.
Yeah, right.
Uh i if the Iranians are willing to die and we're not, then we have we are gonna lose any confrontation.
That's right.
Absolutely.
Can you can you hold on for uh come after this break?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay, all right.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, and it's Walter Williams fitting in for Rush Limbaugh, and you can be on uh with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And right now we're on the uh phone with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell, and if you missed the first part of it, we talked about his book, uh Housing Boom and Bus, which is available at Amazon.com, and it really gives an expose of the uh subcrime uh subprime uh uh crisis.
And before we went to the break, Tom, I was talking about uh Iran and nuclear weapons, but in a column that you just wrote this week, uh in it's called Suicide of the West.
And it says uh in part of the into your second paragraph, you say, in ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.
And so I guess your your I Iran's getting nuclear weapons would be part of that uh installment plan on a large scale.
Oh absolutely.
Uh on on on the small scale is things like turning this a terrorist loose who killed all those hundreds of Americans, uh back in nineteen eighty-eight.
But also throughout Western Europe, uh more and more uh the Isla uh the Islamic extremists are getting their way.
That is, there are places in France and other countries that are de facto living under Sharia law, or even when people are brought into uh uh courts in various countries, uh, you know, for example, things like honor killings and so on, uh people say, well, you know, that's part of their culture.
Fine, it's not part of our culture.
Uh you know, at one time you know they used to say, uh when in Rome do as the Romans do.
Now today, under multiculturalism, it's when in Rome tell tell the Romans what to do.
That's right.
And and matter of fact, in in Great Britain, I believe, uh uh one bank used to uh advertise uh savings uh by having uh using a piggy bank, and that was offensive to uh some Muslims and uh and the banks had to withdraw the ad.
Oh, absolutely.
And then other other other things like Miss Piggy for uh uh on the Muppets and so on.
So so we no longer have freedom of speech in a number of countries uh we're gonna eventually reach the point where we can't even uh uh warn each other about the dangers because that will be regarded as spreading hatred.
Yeah, right, absolutely.
And and and in uh in western Europe they really have a problem because in some of those countries, I believe I sent you a a little uh study uh where in some of those countries the uh the birth rate of the of the European people, let's say in in Italy and France and in Germany, the birth uh uh rate is far below the replacement rate, you know, in some countries like one point two, and you need two point one, two point three children to replace each generation.
And uh and in those countries, in those same countries, the Muslim uh birth rate is like uh two, three, and four uh children uh per couple.
And so it it's it's conceivable that uh uh twenty, thirty, fifty years from now uh many of the countries in Europe will be uh uh uh Muslim countries.
Oh oh absolutely.
And even before you reach that point, there will be a sufficient uh voting population that no one dares to say anything critical uh because if you know elections in most democratic countries are fairly close.
And so if you offend uh any one segment of the population that's really uh you know very uh militant, why then uh sanction.
And so you're again it's it's it's uh split side on the installment plan.
That's absolutely right.
And uh and but however, I think the uh the prime minister of Australia, he gave a clear message to the Muslims there.
Uh he told them that if they want Sharia law, if they want other Muslim practices, they can go back to their home countries.
Yes, he he is the only leader that I know of in the Western world that has said that.
Uh uh other than that, the rest of our being mealy mouth.
Yeah, right.
And and and and including our own president.
Oh, no question about it.
And especially, I would say, especially our own president trying to make nice with Muslims and trying to make nice with other enemies around the world.
Tom, there are a couple of phone calls.
Can you stay on past the break and come back and we can take care of some of these phone calls?
Well, thanks a lot.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882 to talk to Tom Solt about his book and the other issues that we've been talking about.
about Walter Williams sitting in for Rush who will be back on Tuesday and Monday will be the uh best of and you can be with on on with us by calling 800 282882 and right now we're with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell and let's go to the phones uh we have uh let's see let's go to Bob Bob how you doing okay you're on with Dr. Thomas Sowell hey uh Dr. Tom and
and Walter, listen, I do a lot of broker price opinions and modifications for evaluation for about 32 different banks.
And I'm just wondering, when are they going to put a program together to help these people?
Because that's my largest market out there, people who are basically losing their homes.
Tom, you're saying.
Pardon?
Hello?
Yes.
You're on with Bob.
Yes.
Oh, all right.
I'm baffled as to why the government government should be picking who should be living in what houses uh houses are not going to lie uh vacant permanently if the people who are in there now and can't pay for it leave or forced out then the price of the house is going to come down somebody else will move in.
Why in the world should the government intervene with the taxpayers' money to subsidize the people who made the mistake of getting it over their heads and therefore keep the house not available to people who will pay what they can afford uh and move into it.
Uh right now there's not a there's not enough buyers out there.
Most of my buyers are people that are getting foreclosed on in the in the situation is their credit gets damaged.
And all I'm saying is that you know they need to put some sort of like a reentry program together to help these people get back into a home.
Something where because their credit's already ruined but these people don't want to move into the street and if they got caught you know in in a bad economy I understand we have a lot of prize you'd be surprised how many people who don't live in houses are not living on the street.
They're called apartments.
I lived in them for half a century, and it did me no harm.
So, again, I don't know why you think politicians in Washington should be deciding who will live where.
That's absolutely right.
And many Americans believe that, Tom.
And then also the question I would have asked to Bob or to anybody who feels this way is that where is the government going to get the money to do this?
That is, they don't get it from the tooth fairy.
They don't get it from Santa Claus.
the Easter money they have to get it from some other American so how come you feel that you have the right to live at the expense of some other American that's rather that's rather strange.
And matter of fact that's my uh quotation on on my website for this month it's one by uh Frederick Bastiat and he says when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it oh absolutely and and that's what we have done.
Let's now go to Randy in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Welcome to the show, Randy.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
You guys were talking about totalitarian regimes earlier.
And I remember a month or so back, Rush said that if the House H.R. 3200 health care reform bill had gone through the House and through Senate, Barack Obama would have signed that thing.
and we would have had a massive change in our society overnight.
and he would have allowed it.
If allowed I think that Barack Obama would become one of these totalitarian uh leaders that the left just loves And he would push for term limit uh uh uh you know um changes to allow him to stay in just like Hugo Chavez.
And and he would have support for that with the with the left.
And and uh, you know, the the left has been um in Mark Barant's book, I can't remember the name of it, but he's got some quotes from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, and Jane Fonda said that uh we should all get down on our hands and knees and pray that we could we could be communists.
And and uh Tom Hayden basically said the same thing, which is probably why they got married.
But uh these these uh these recent oaths that were sworn, uh pledges that were sworn by the uh uh how uh Hollywood celebrities out in Utah somewhere uh, you know, uh pledging to become servants of Barack Obama is just one thing.
I'll tell you another What what what's your question, Randy?
Okay.
Well, I uh I just wanted to give one example of what I'm talking about.
You know, the the left is so uh infatuated with these leftist leaders or these tyrants and these revolutionaries, they invited Fidel Castro on the Ed Sullivan show many years ago.
And he got a standing ovation.
Well, I I don't know.
I would not I would not get a standing uh uh location, uh uh standing ovation for being on Ed uh Sullivan's show or or any of the other ones.
Uh can we take another call?
Yes, uh let's go to uh Mark in San Diego.
Do you have a question for Dr. Thomas Sowell?
Welcome to the show, Mark.
Yeah, hi, Dr. Williams and soft.
Uh I had a thought on your um on the elite and liberals and their search for power.
I I see them just a thought I had, it's just my own, I'm a family doc, but um you know they're the anointed leap, they come out of a university where they get these utopian and idealistic ideas, and uh they just seem like they're very narcissistic, where they're rather arrogant, self-centered, and they um they get the sense of superiority, and and then they just discount the American people where they feel like uh they're stupid, they're ignorant, they don't know anything unless they're in New York or San Francisco.
You know, and it just seems delusional and narcissistic to me.
I just uh Tom Tom, have you found that to be the case?
Oh, absolutely.
Well again, this is it has been the case uh on the left at least for at least two hundred years, uh, that uh they have only contempt for the public.
Uh and uh they feel that because they have degrees from these well-known universities and other accomplishments, that that makes them uh somehow uh philosopher chief.
It's amazing because when you think about it, there are other people who are just as amazing as intellectuals within their realm, that is uh chess grandmasters, uh musical prodigies, but chess grandmasters and musical prodigies don't amount don't uh imagine that this entitles them to tell other people how to live.
You're you're absolutely right.
And and one of the quotes uh in your um in your piece uh this week, actually the excellent piece is available at town hall.com.
Uh this it's called The Suicide of the West, that uh Thomas Sowell wrote for this week's column.
He said in there that Adam Smith uh who happened also to be from Scotland, where these uh where this uh uh Abel uh Bazard something was released, uh the guy who's who uh killed the um the people on the on Pan Am Flight, he said that Adam Smith was was also uh from Scotland, and it's Adam Smith who said, quote, Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
But people don't think that way uh nowadays, Tom, do they?
No, no, they don't.
We we have a tendency to have sort of arbitrary focus on some particular group of people, and and we want to do something for them in utter disregard of what the repercussions are for other people.
I mean, this whole thing about keeping people in their houses uh after they've uh gone out on a limb and uh bought more house than they could afford, uh is just one small example of that.
But it's true everywhere.
You want you want to be compassionate to this mass murderer.
Well, yes.
I mean Yeah, yeah, well, he has prosperous cancer.
Can we can we can you say one more segment?
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
Uh we'll be back with Tom Sowell and your calls after this.
We're back.
Uh Walt Williams talking with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell.
We were talking about the terrorists.
We talking about uh his book, uh housing boom and bus.
And now I want to ask uh Tom another question because I know you've written a number of uh columns about it.
Uh what do you see as the major uh uh danger of Congress and uh and the White House getting involved with our health health care system.
Oh my gosh.
That is possible.
They well they will stop they will uh overrule what doctors say uh you should need as treatment.
And they will overrule it based upon their idea of what will quote bring down the cost of health care.
And given how given that most people spend far more money on on medical treatment when they're old and when they're young, that means a lot of old people are gonna be sacrificed.
Now they they can call it whatever they want, they can pretty it up with calling it ethics.
This is already happening in Britain, it's already happening in other countries.
There's not the slightest reason to doubt that when you give them that power, it will happen here in the United States.
That's right.
And matter of fact, uh when you speak about Britain, uh that the um the health secretary, they have a they have a particular name for it, but she has yeah, yeah.
But uh but the person who's in charge of it, I forget the name for name of the late lady, but she said that uh that it's okay for people to be denied medical care who have unhealthy lifestyles, such as if you're a smoker,
uh uh if you're obese, then you should not be uh eligible for uh or or there's a real chance that you might not get the kind of treatment that you need because you are guilty of maintaining a health style that uh affects your health.
A lifestyle that affects your health.
Well, well, these people are closet totalitarians, there's just no question about it.
I mean they they are so convinced that they know that what's best for us, and that we poor dummies that we are would never understand it, that this is the kind of stuff you can expect.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And and and this might go to something that we were saying it towards the beginning hour.
This is this might be where why Mao Sedung might be uh a hero to some of these people.
They well, they might not like uh or they might not support all the murder, but they surely support the kind of the level of government control over people's lives.
Yeah, but once once you agree to give the government this huge amount of power, it's it's like opening the floodgates.
When you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.
Uh-huh.
And so if you give the government enough power to to quote create social justice, you've given them enough power to make life miserable for for millions of people.
That's right.
And and I and I think uh uh uh Friedrich Hayek, uh an uh one of the uh Nobel laureate uh in economics, uh he he made he he wrote something uh some time ago uh saying that the scum tends to rise to the top.
And uh and when he was saying that it takes a particular kind of person to choose to be in um uh to choose to be a master.
I think he was using the case of uh you might be able to tell somebody uh sell somebody a slave, but you might not might not be as easy to uh get that person to whip him because he just did not have the the moral fortitude to be able to do that kind of stuff.
And so yeah, uh and then of course what would happen is that he would then end up selling the slave to someone who was capable of doing that.
And that's right.
You have all kinds of well-meaning people who are who are cutting out all kinds of utopian goals, and when they aren't prepared to do the things that are necessary to reach those goals, power will pass one way or another to people who are willing.
That's right.
Uh that uh the uh Karinsky would never have murdered all the people that the Bolsheviks murdered, but it was his overthrow of the Tsar which set the stage for the Bolsheviks.
Yeah, right, yeah.
We have uh one more caller for you, Tom.
Uh uh, Tony from uh Edmonds uh Washington.
Welcome to the show, Tony.
Uh, thank you, sir.
Um I I just want to hoping the um uh Mr. Sol could make a comment or observation regarding our birth rate.
Um, you know, we seem to pride ourselves that we're at two point one replacement rate with our population, yet um we are burdening our younger generations with this heavy debt load coming through college, and it's proving that that uh uh young people are putting off families, even getting married, uh, in order to service this debt and and the implications that that will cause upon our society, you know, five, ten years from now.
Well, uh I well, that's a very large question.
Uh I'm not so sure that I think the the college bur debt burden has been grossly exaggerated.
Uh we're talking about an average of about twenty thousand dollars which is the price for a very modestly priced car.
Now most of Americans buy several cars during a lifetime.
They only pay off a college debt once.
I don't know why people who can buy cars can't afford to pay off one college debt that they use to get their education.
What do you think about that, Tony?
Well, my daughter just got married last year, and she and her husband just graduated from Wheaton College.
And they have a debt load of $600 per month for the next 10 years to pay off.
And they're just over like $30,000 cumulative.
So, I mean, that's a fairly heavy load for a young couple in the sense that you're going to pay off one.
well they just they just don't buy a house right away I mean I I I don't I don't know I don't know why my why why the government should should subsidize this r uh when they don't subsidize cars.
Uh in fact one one of the real problems with with the high cost of colleges is precisely the government subsidies.
Studies have shown that for every dollar the government spends to help people go uh pay their college bills the bills go up by fifty cents.
Uh I talked with a with the president of a of a college some years ago who told me frankly it would make no sense for him to pa make his tuition affordable because the government formulas kick in when their tuition is so high that most people can't afford it.
So we he would lose millions of dollars if he kept his tuition affordable that is absolutely right.
Uh we have the we have to take a break with go make some money Tom and there's one fellow from Los Angeles has very interesting question and can you hold on to answer that one?
Well sure yes okay uh we'll be back with your calls after this we're back and we're on the phone with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell and we have been talking about his n his uh new book Housing Boom and Bus but we have Eric uh from Los Angeles uh to talk about uh a book Tom wrote some time ago uh the uh vision of the anointed uh Eric welcome to the show thank you for having me on both doctors uh I uh I pulled this book off my shelf uh when I heard uh Dr. Sowell
talking here the vision of the anointed the subtitle of which really crystallizes the point here self-congratulation as a basis for social policy.
This was relevant in nineteen ninety five when Dr. Sowell wrote it and it's all the more relevant right now especially uh in combination with race and culture which he which he wrote in nineteen ninety four you you mix these two together uh and uh maybe throw in his older book on Marxism and you have the picture it's being laid out right in front of us.
Okay.
And uh I would strongly advise people to to read the vision of the anointed.
It's he is he's right on point.
That's that's one of Tom that's one of your books that you like the best, don't you isn't it?
It is it it is.
And because i it goes into the reasons why why people say what the kinds of things they say.
Uh uh yeah and the evidence against them and and you know my favorite is uh is knowledge and decision with the vision of the anointed is very very good.
Uh thanks lad Eric here's a question I have to uh ask you before you leave uh Tom uh what do you think of the uh president uh calling uh the schools and talking to the children oh my it is classic I mean the first thing that occurred to my mind was the Hitler youth from the nineteen thirties.
All all all the dictators want to get their hands on the kids.
They get them early on.
Uh Stalin, Hitler, Castro, you name them they want to get the kids because the kids first of all don't have any experience.
All they have they live in a world of words in the school and these guys are great with words.
Yeah.
Whereas the uh the rest of us have lived you know a few decades and we realize that words really don't cut it.
But don't don't you think that's it's insidious But don't you think that their teachers uh will tell uh uh tell them what's right and what's wrong.
Oh my you know we one of the tragic things is that we have people in our schools who think their job is to indoctrinate people with political correctness.
I mean our kids don't know as much math as the kids in other countries or they don't know enough enough English and so on.
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