Thomas Sowell in National Review touches on random hot-button issues in America—from the folly of government-run medical care to the absurdity of our politically correct institutions of higher education to the farce of class warfare. As Mr. Sowell points out, it’s as though we are living in an era where sanity is controversial. Thomas Piketty, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, seemingly does not have his facts straight, but is touting, to much liberal acclaim, a grand confiscatory plan for global taxation. Baltic states in NATO? Putin would overrun them before NATO could even decide what time to meet. Why, asks Mr. Sowell, is Mitt Romney popping up every other moment in the media? Is he hoping to get another chance to lose? Meanwhile, if the Democrats retain control of the Senate after this year’s election, Barack Obama can go hog-wild loading our federal courts with judges who will ignore the Constitution and promote his far-left political agenda—long after Mr. Obama is gone. Meanwhile, as Mr. Sowell laments, American voters, in an “irresponsible and catastrophic decision,” put a man in the White House based on rhetoric and racial symbolism.
Will the Veterans Affairs scandal wake up those people who have been blithely saying that what we need is a “single payer” system for medical care? Delays in getting to see a doctor have been a common denominator in government-run medical systems in England, Canada, and Australia, among other places.
Class-warfare rhetoric would have us resenting “the top 10 percent” in income. But that would be a farce, because most of us would be resenting ourselves, since more than half of all Americans — 54 percent — are in the top 10 percent at some stage of their lives.
Some people act as if the answer to every problem is to put more money and power in the hands of politicians.
Freedom means nothing if it does not mean the freedom to do what other people don’t like. Everyone was free to be a Communist under the Stalin dictatorship, and everyone is free to be a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. Yet whole generations are coming out of our colleges where only those who are politically correct are free to speak their minds. What kind of America will they create?In Thomas Piketty’s highly-praised new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he asserts that the top tax rate under President Herbert Hoover was 25 percent. But Internal Revenue Service records show that it was 63 percent in 1932. If Piketty can’t even get his facts straight, why should his grandiose plans for confiscatory global taxation be taken seriously?
Sometimes I think that this is an era when sanity has become controversial.
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