[From article]
But who reads history these days? Moreover, those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the left — which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study — are not likely to get much attention.
The net results are bright people, with impressive degrees, who have been told for years how brilliant they are, but who are often ignorant of facts that might cause them to question what they have been indoctrinated with in schools and colleges.
[. . .]
Recently Kirsten Powers repeated on Fox News Channel the discredited claim that women are paid only about three-quarters of what a man is paid for doing the same work.
But there have been empirical studies, going back for decades, showing that there is no such gap when the women and men are in the same occupation, with the same skills, experience, education, hours of work and continuous years of full-time work.
[. . .]
Facts are not liberals' strong suit. Rhetoric is.
Jan. 21, 2014/ 20 Shevat, 5774
Fact-Free Liberals
By Thomas Sowell
* * *
[From article]
the two American cities where rent control laws have existed longest and strongest — New York and San Francisco — are also the two cities with the highest average rents.
[. . .]
armed criminals prefer unarmed victims.
[. . .]
it is surely no coincidence that those few places in the industrial world which have had no minimum wage law, such as Switzerland and Singapore, have consistently had unemployment rates down around 3 percent.
[. . .]
When words trump facts, you can believe anything. And the liberal groupthink taught in our schools and colleges is the path of least resistance.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell012214.php3#.UuS0wt30CzsJewish World Review
Jan. 22, 2014/ 21 Shevat, 5774
Fact-Free Liberals: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
* * *
[From article]
What the war on poverty was intended to end was mass dependency on government. President Kennedy said, "We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence."
The same theme was repeated endlessly by President Johnson. The purpose of the "war on poverty," he said, was to make "taxpayers out of taxeaters." Its slogan was "Give a hand up, not a handout." When Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark legislation into law, he declared: "The days of the dole in our country are numbered."
Now, 50 years and trillions of dollars later, it is painfully clear that there is more dependency than ever.
[. . .]
Massive "sex education" programs were put into schools, claiming that this was urgently needed to reduce a "crisis" of teenage pregnancies and venereal diseases. But teenage pregnancies and venereal diseases had both been going down for years.
The rate of infection for gonorrhea, for example, declined every year from 1950 through 1959, and the rate of syphilis infection was, by 1960, less than half of what it had been in 1950. Both trends reversed and skyrocketed after "sex education" became pervasive.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell012314.php3#.UuS2Rd30CzsJewish World Review
Jan. 23, 2014/ 22 Shevat, 5774
Fact-Free Liberals: Part III
By Thomas Sowell
* * *
[From article]
I was also very interested in the history of ideas — and years of research in that field repeatedly brought out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers on the left had only contempt for "the people."
[. . .]
Leftists like Rousseau, Condorcet or William Godwin in the 18th century, Karl Marx in the 19th century or Fabian socialists like George Bernard Shaw in England and American Progressives in the 20th century saw the people in a role much like that of sheep, and saw themselves as their shepherds.
[. . .]
The vision of the left is not just a vision of the world. For many, it is also a vision of themselves — a very flattering vision of people trying to save the planet, rescue the exploited, create "social justice" and otherwise be on the side of the angels. This is an exalting vision that few are ready to give up, or to risk on a roll of the dice, which is what submitting it to the test of factual evidence amounts to. Maybe that is why there are so many fact-free arguments on the left, whether on gun control, minimum wages, or innumerable other issues — and why they react so viscerally to those who challenge their vision.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell012414.php3#.UuS3Ut30CzsJewish World Review
Jan. 23, 2014/ 22 Shevat, 5774
Fact-Free Liberals: Part IV
By Thomas Sowell
