As I have asked my all too liberal children often "Who´s going to watch the watchers?" I haven´t seen enough wisdom in government to trust their judgement, especially after watching the fiasco known as sequestration make its´ ugly march to fruition. 535 congressfolks, an administration constantly telling the voters how wonderfull it is, and they came up with a plan that any normal 7th grader could reject as stupid!

Sowell as usual makes points against which there are no effective arguments. Does anyone really believe that our government is capable of acting wisely and efficiently with so many counterexamples sitting there. Obamacare will be the worst of all.

Dr. Sowell should have been a surgeon as he is always so swift and precise!

The guy is dead right again.

Biggest mistakes in human history we made by the ruling class.

When we humans act, we act in our own best interest. If we make a mistake, we suffer the consequences.

If someone else is making decisions for me, he is making them for his own best interest (professional, monetary, etc.). If he makes a mistake, he does not suffer the consequences--I do.

That´s why we should all be responsible for ourselves, and our dependents--just as the Founders intended.

The biggest goobermint error was the Death Bill.

A perfect article for my friends who have only recently become aware that perhaps what is going on politically, matters a bit more than the latest escapades of a pop star.

The Soviet Union was being praised to the skies by such literary luminaries as George Bernard Shaw in Britain and Edmund Wilson in America, while literally millions of people were being systematically starved to death by Stalin and masses of others were being shipped off to slave labor camps.

Although to some, this may sound like something out of the Middle Ages, it´s not that far back. Everythng I see and hear out of this Administration and its movers and shakers like Cass Sunstein tells me that this is where they would like to see it go once again, with them in charge.

Lest anyone think it can´t happen here and that such things only happen across the oceans, the huddles masses who don´t know they are no longer free -- those who get the free stuff -- are the very people who will be starved into submission, killed, or recruited for Obama´s "civilian police force" he threatened to form on American soil.

Sowell´s analysis is, as always, solid and indisputable, except to those for whom truth no longer matters. What a shame there are so many such people.

The key line is that the dims see themselves as shepherds; they see us as sheep. The problem is that they´re largely right; the sheeple elected Fauxbama. The fact is that the dims don´t consider those voting for them to be wise; they consider them to be stupid and in need of ´guidance´. The rest are considered reactionaries. Until we start training students to think rather than be ´sensitive´ and ´nonjudgmental´ this problem will persist.

Reply #9:"Until we start training students to think rather than be ´sensitive´ and ´nonjudgmental´ this problem will persist."
A perfect way to start, #9, would be to insist that high school and college students have Thomas Sowell in their history/social studies curriculum.

Let us not forget... some animals are more equal than others. i.e. animals of the political class.

Dr. Sowell´s mind is so loaded with wisdom, insight, and common sense. Whenever I read his articles, I wish he were a justice sitting on the SCOTUS. I realize that Sowell is not a lawyer--still....

Yes, there are smart, very smart, I would say wise conservatives. Dr. Sowell is one of the best.
But! How many Americans have access to his wisdom? 1%? Maybe a little bit more. And the reason for that being that we don´t have conservative mass media.
Our enemies commie/fascist cabal (I don´t mince words here) know that very well. They were schooled by likes of hitler/stalin who started with conquering the mass media and big money. That´s what current rulers did in America. And what was the conservative answer to that? Articles in Investor´s Daily and Mark Levin´s talk show! Is it enough fighting thousands of radical newspapers and TV station? Don´t think so.

Obama is packaged as being smarter than you. He was passed off as a second Lincoln during the release of a recent movie. He´s been portrayed as the Democratic Reagan.

The real truth is he has no college record he can be proud of because he´s spent millions to keep it hidden. He´s nothing more than a Marxist community organizer, a half-term Senator from Illinois with a penchant for voting "present" on major issues, and a mooch who´s lived his whole life on other people´s money.

This man is a total fraud and we are allowing him to transform our America from something our Founder´s pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish, into a horror from which we will be hard-pressed to recover. This is a stupid...STUPID move!

It is a fantasy that some think him saintly (complete with halo-like aura above his head), but more likely we´ve encountered the demonic.

FTA..."Disarmament" was the mantra of the day among the intelligentsia, often garnished with the suggestion that the Western democracies should "set an example" for other nations — as if Nazi Germany or imperial Japan was likely to follow their example.

Just change the country names to Russia, North Korea and every Muslim nation and we have the same idiocy today - especially in our White House.

FTA: "But government officials cannot admit to making a mistake without jeopardizing their whole careers."

And therein lies the problem folks.

Public service was never meant to be a career. It has become so incredibly lucrative and the politicians have so protected their interests that I´m afraid that nothing short of a revolution will change it.

Dr. Sowell packs more simple wisdom into a clearly-worded two page article than anyone, methinks.

Here, he clearly states his thesis, provides multiple devastating examples to support it, then (like any timeless philosopher) he leaves us with a pithy point to ponder:

"Tragically, too many of us are apparently willing to be sheep, in exchange for being taken care of, being relieved of the burdens of adult responsibility and being supplied with "free" stuff paid for by others."

Did you not see yourself among the "many of us" that Dr. Sowell chides?

Dr. Sowell is a national treasure. Sensible and highly readable every time. I send his two-pagers to useful idiots, knowing even they find him readable and his reasoning unassailable.

It is horrifying when the government treats (considers) his people like slaves, what is more horrifying is when people agree with that.
This quote (how ironic it is!) is the banner of the russian newspaper Pravda nowadays.

According to John F. Kerry, Cass Sunstein has the right to be stupid. Unfortunately his elite academic profile can be very damaging to citizens with good common sense. Something this intellectual fraud lacks.

Dr. Sowell´s intellect is light years ahead of the egg-head no sense Sunstein.