Larry Doyle
Sense on Cents
Business Insider
3/1/2011
America needs more men like Thomas Sowell.
A regular reader of Sense on Cents brought Thomas Sowell to my attention a few months back. Sowell was born in North Carolina and moved to Harlem at the age of nine. His personal story is beyond inspirational. I commend it to anybody looking for evidence of how to succeed in the face of real odds.
America should embrace and elevate Thomas Sowell and his work. I am happy to do just that today. Sowell knows a thing or two about real freedom and democracy. Are we to merely assume because some in the Middle East may want freedom, that freedom will be theirs? We should not be so naive.
Sowell waxes eloquently on these prized cornerstones of our nation in writing, Is Democracy Viable?
Those who see hope in the Middle East uprisings seem to assume that they will lead in the direction of freedom or democracy. There is already talk about the “liberation” of Egypt, even though the biggest change there has been that a one-man dictatorship has been replaced by a military dictatorship that has suspended the constitution.
Perhaps the military dictatorship will be temporary, as its leaders say, but we have heard that song before. What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government…
…Regardless of one’s political leanings, collectively we should not take Sowell’s note of caution lightly. A nation that does not work to prize and cherish its freedom and liberties runs the real risk of losing them.
Has our nation embraced the virtues necessary to promote real freedom with liberty and justice for all over the course of the last few years if not longer? When an industry the size and scope of our financial services industry is able to capture its own regulatory oversight does that promote real liberty and true justice? Does it? Think about that?
What might Thomas Sowell think?
Freedom and democracy can not be taken for granted…
Read the entire article at Business Insider.
