[deiznof]

His economics are sound, but I often find that his takes on social issues are extremely reductionist. His social views a lot of the time are just standard conservative views (and wrong IMO), I wish he wasn't being praised for that.

One example being his view on systemic racism, which he described as:

“It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels in the age of the Nazis, in which he was supposed to have said that people will believe any lie if it’s repeated long enough and loud enough. And that’s what we’re getting.”

I just can't take this sort of person seriously in regards to social issues. I just can't do it. And he does this all the time, all of his social views are just ultra-reductionist conservatives views that are identical to the things my hardcore mask-refusing conservative relatives post on facebook.

[tlear]

It is immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable. As a propagandist you must take care to use things that can not be countered. Systemic racism is one of those.

What is the systemic racism measure for Canada vs US? That is his point, you can use that stick to beat anyone and anything you want without having to supply a shred of evidence. Just keep repeating it and call everyone who disagrees racist or Uncle Tom.

[RoboticWater]

If it were immeasurable and undefinable, then we wouldn't have studies showing disproportionate sentencing of Black people [1] or the persistent negative effects of redlining [2]. And if it were unchangeable, we wouldn't be able to construct studies to show the specific choke-points of racial inequality, nor suggest policy solutions to remedy them.

> What is the systemic racism measure for Canada vs US?

I don't understand this. Why do you want to measure against other countries, and why phrase it like you just want one number? Is it not enough to claim that certain inequalities appear in certain aspects of our society?

It would be like asking for a measure of our foreign policy. Sure, we could probably make one, but that seems like an entirely inadequate means of actually assessing what's happening in a complex sociological ecosystem. Our assessments have to be more individualized.

> That is his point, you can use that stick to beat anyone and anything you want without having to supply a shred of evidence. Just keep repeating it and call everyone who disagrees racist or Uncle Tom.

You can do that with anything though. I've heard all the same language used in Climate Change discourse: "well, if you don't think humans caused climate change, they'll just label you anti-science and beat you out of the discussion." This is just a blatant rhetorical tactic to shift discussion from about the actual problem—and indeed all the evidence that this problem has—to nebulous Twitter mobs.

[1] https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2852856

[tathougies]

When it comes to redlining, sowell directly addresses it in in Vision of the Anointed. He points out that the kinds of houses blacks tend to purchase tends to be ignored in studies that find widespread discrimination.

For example blacks are much more likely to want to buy multi family homes. The income and other requirements for these are much stricter which is why they are denied loans more often.

Moreover, he points out that if blacks were being subject to stricter requirements then one would expect that they were less likely to default since the requirements are notionally to calculate default risk.

He points out that before the redlining legislation black and white default rates were broadly the same indicating that whatever criteria the banks used it fulfilled its main purpose of estimating default likelihood.

He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired.

Before you make blanket statements on the man you should be familiar with his stance on things. Your comment lacks the nuance that one is apt to find in any sowell book.

[deiznof]

>He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired.

Sowell talked about the CRA and was proven wrong by multiple studies, like this one, which has a section dedicated to how the CRA wasn't a problem: https://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/research...

Stop the Sowell worship. Please, internet, for the love of god. He will always talk about how everything that democrats do is bad and everything conservatives do is good. He isn't right on everything all the time.

[vadansky]

This seems more to say that the 2008 housing crisis was not caused by the CRA, which no one said it did.

[deiznof]

It's actually an extremely common argument that conservatives make to this day. Thomas Sowell blamed the CRA himself, so I'm not sure what your point is.

[_fq4v]

> Stop the Sowell worship. Please, internet, for the love of god. He will always talk about how everything that democrats do is bad and everything conservatives do is good. He isn't right on everything all the time.

Stop the bad-faith discussion. I never 'worshipped' Sowell. The commenter above claimed that Sowell has not grappled with various studies that show various racial disparities. I've read his works, and Sowell indeed does directly confront these studies, so to say he is ignoring evidence is wrong.

Whether or not Sowell is right is not really up for discussion. What was being discussed is whether Sowell acknowledges studies on topics he is interested in. Indeed he does, and he finds issues in many studies as well as other studies that have remained mostly unacknowledged by academia.

> He isn't right on everything all the time.

This is a ridiculous standard to judge anyone by. No one is right all the time. Stop changing the goalposts.

[RoboticWater]

I'm not debating Sowell—I don't have the background to dispute his claims, I'm arguing against the notion that systemic racism is "immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable" and is thus propaganda. Researchers might be wrong about their findings, like in any field, but you can't just handwave the research as dogma.

If Sowell is responding to specific claims made by researchers of systemic racism, then it can't possibly be merely empty rhetoric, it's a subject of active academic inquiry.

[_fq4v]

Sowell believes that systemic racism doesn't exist because he has examined the various research and finds issues with all of them -- namely that the various discrepancies they find can be explained in other ways.

He never claimed that systemic racism could not exist. In fact, in his books, he openly admits that he believes that it did indeed once exist. He just questions whether the studies being produced today are done so without pre-existing bias (are they looking for data to back up their belief, or vice versa) and whether the data produced evidentiates the conclusion. If indeed the studies you cite and that he refutes are looking for data to back up their pre-existing conclusion, then propaganda is the correct description.

No one has put forth the argument that Sowell believes systematic racism cannot ever exist. All that has been said is that he questions whether it currently exists today and the conclusions of the studies you cite.

[RoboticWater]

> No one has put forth the argument that Sowell believes systematic racism cannot ever exist.

The comment I was responding to literally said "It is immeasurable, undefinable, unchangeable. As a propagandist you must take care to use things that can not be countered. Systemic racism is one of those." A very clear implication that systemic racism doesn't exist.

Now, this may not be Sowell's views, but fortunately for Sowell, I never mentioned him in my initial reply.

> He just questions whether the studies being produced today are done so without pre-existing bias (are they looking for data to back up their belief, or vice versa) and whether the data produced evidentiates the conclusion.

All science is performed with biases. We couldn't possibly form a hypothesis without following our intuitions first. The question is whether our biases conform to the data. Of course, biases may also shape how we interpret data, but this is true for everyone. Sowell may be right, but let's not pretend that he, or anyone for that matter, is the only one approaching this research with a truly neutral, unbiased approach.

I think it's fair to subject research into systemic racism to scrutiny, but that's merely the process of academic review. It should never be touted as cutting through the propaganda, as if Sowell is some kind of crusader against the dogmatic PC police left.

> In fact, in his books, he openly admits that he believes that it did indeed once exist.

Now, call me crazy, but given that he believes it once existed, I find it hard to believe that he also believes that it's just over and done with now. John Lewis just died recently, and I consider it unlikely that we'd ferret out racism from our systems in just that span of time, especially when I hear stories of, for instance, a North Carolina legislature disenfranchising Black people with surgical precision as recent as 2014. If we still have that kind of explicit racism in our public institutions, it's unreasonable to think more subtle forms aren't also causing unequal outcomes.

[JPKab]

Thank you for linking to studies on the systemic racism issue.

"Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors’ initial charging decisions, particularly the filing of charges carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Ceteris paribus, the odds of black arrestees facing such a charge are 1.75 times higher than those of white arrestees."

It should also be noted that the vast majority of people talking about the sentencing disparity ascribe 100% of the sentencing difference to racism, when this paper states that it's actually a 10% delta, and the other 90% is due to previous criminal record, etc. It's not like activists ever cared about nuance.

The issue I have with the term "systemic racism" is that it is typically used in a purposefully nebulous fashion to capture and group a collection of specific, actionable issues that can be measured.

[RoboticWater]

Physics is also a purposefully nebulous term used to capture and group a collection of specific issues that can be measured. God forbid people want to group together racial disparities caused by institutional practices under the term "systemic racism." We could call them "fiddledydoop" for all I care, but there is obviously a good reason to group these things together.

Of course, you seem to be implying that people aren't actually trying to address these issues individually, and you couldn't be more wrong. Academics and policymakers alike are forming and implementing solutions all the time. You might just be looking too closely at Twitter.

It's frankly insulting that, despite the ongoing tragedy of racial inequality and the abundance of experts actively working to resolve it, that you and others are so caught up in such meaningless semantic games.

> It should also be noted that the vast majority of people talking about the sentencing disparity ascribe 100% of the sentencing difference to racism

I'm not sure how you can substantiate that claim.

> it's actually a 10% delta

You say that like a 10% delta because the color of your skin isn't tragic.

> It's not like activists ever cared about nuance.

Are they supposed to? We have a representative democracy for a reason: average people and activists push for change, and experts and representatives try to enact that push a reasonably as possible. I wouldn't expect the average person to approach policy failures with moderation. Most don't have years of higher education or a heterogeneous voter base to appease to moderate them. That goes for all sides. Don't act like the constituency who decry systemic racism approach it with the same nuance as Sowell.

[JPKab]

Your analogy isn't correct. Physics isn't used as a catch-all to explain things that haven't been researched.

And I never said the 10% delta wasn't awful. That is of course a horrific thing that must be addressed. It's also a specific issue that can be measured and solved.

Systemic racism is used just like God was when I, growing up in the south, had to defend my belief in evolution. The favorite weapon of the biblical creationists is termed "God of the gaps". They would look for some biological feature (their favorite was the human eye) that wasn't fully explained by evolutionary science, and then claim that gap in science had to be filled by God's existence.

Systemic racism is "racism of the gaps". Every discrepancy between two arbitrarily separated groups is termed evidence of some non-specific, internal bigotry that absolutely must exist. The fact that various cultural groups behave and raise children differently is ignored. Southern whites are much poorer than norther whites. Must be bigotry. It couldn't be cultural differences.....

Women are radically underrepresented as victims of police violence. There must be systemic bigotry towards men by police. Asians are underrepresented in police killings. Police must systemically favor them.

We know that this isn't true, and that women are underrepresented in police killings because they are dramatically less likely to be in confrontations with police. But this logic is willfully ignored in place of the "systemic racism" canard when looking at black male overrepresentation in police killings. It's exactly what you would expect when people who seek power instead of truth are dominating the conversation.

And since you are defending activists willfully misrepresenting data to feed emotional narratives, let's talk about the fact that BLM's hyperbolic language around police killings of black men has caused a large percentage of the population to think that police are a statistically significant threat to the lives of black men in America. The other impression left on the minds of the public is that black men are exclusively the victims of police violence, when the data says otherwise.

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

Here, you see that 76% of the people killed by police are non-black in the US. And yes, black men are overrepresented, and so are latinos. Asians are underrepresented. Activists have SUCCEEDED in manipulating the public on this, and have created social pressure that academics are yielding to.

Ask yourself why you have to use Google to find the name of a Latino who was unjustly killed by police in the last 5 years, but you (if you are like me) can list the names of multiple black men unjustly killed by police in the same time frame? Do you think that discrepancy in knowledge is natural, fair, or just?

The ethno-centric activists have taken the very real issue of police violence, and turned it into a race specific one, needlessly. Racial issues are easy to weaponize, and that's probably the motivation, but it comes at the cost of actual truth. Police kill citizens of all colors with impunity. George Floyd's murderers were arrested a day later. The killer of Daniel Shaver (the second most egregious police killing video I've seen after George Floyd) was given early retirement with a full pension.

[Woberto]

I think you make some good points toward the end, which is why I wanted to say that, as a member of the general public, I don't feel like activists manipulated me. They brought up the issue, and some of them may have more extreme views than I, but I think it's clear that some examples of police violence are unnecessary, regardless of whom they're perpetrated against.

[RoboticWater]

> Physics isn't used as a catch-all to explain things that haven't been researched.

Has systemic racism not been researched?

I feel like you're just grasping at semantic straws here. Systemic racism is a theory, like any other scientific theory. Believe it or not, it's a framework that informs research.

> Systemic racism is used just like God was when I, growing up in the south

God is a theory too, just an increasingly tenuous one. Systemic racism seems to bear out in studies.

I don't know why scientifically minded people seem to act like science is just a done deal, and that any theory they instinctively don't like is somehow newfangled. This is just not how science has ever been conducted. Every theory starts out new and strange, and we just have to see how it comports to the data.

> Every discrepancy between two arbitrarily separated groups is termed evidence of some non-specific, internal bigotry that absolutely must exist.

Except the term "systemic racism" literally means that this bigotry is externalized—it exists within the systems of rules we created.

It also seems weird to use "absolutely must exist" sarcastically when you agreed to that 10% statistic earlier. That's just one stat. No, not everything is systemic racism, but as we established earlier, that's not what anyone's saying. Research suggests that the problem is pervasive enough to validate the phenomenon of "systemic racism" is quite real.

> The fact that various cultural groups behave and raise children differently is ignored.

It isn't? Culture, much like individual action, is determined heavily by institutions. People can complain about rap music glorifying a distrust of the law, but when there are actual stats showing a 10% disparity in sentencing, I can't really be too harsh on the rapper here.

Frankly, I never understand this vector of attack. Like, let's assume that all this was actually 100% culture. How do we fix anything? How do you change culture? You can't just tell Black people "be better, and stop that rap music." It seems to me that the answer is still institutional change.

> There must be systemic bigotry towards men by police.

This is actually true. The justice system is disproportionately harsher on men, but that's because we perceive men as being stronger and more in control of their actions. Indeed, we do need to have a cultural shift towards the perception of men, but that shift starts by making our institutions more willing to consider men as vulnerable so we can address it.

> women are underrepresented in police killings because they are dramatically less likely to be in confrontations with police.

But why is that the case. It's not random.

> And since you are defending activists willfully misrepresenting data to feed emotional narratives

You can be dismissive of activists, just make sure it's universal. No side has ownership of "calm rational discourse." I just see a lot of people focus on the temperament of activists rather than the actual policy being considered. It's just a pointless ad hominem. Everyone can point to some group of the unwashed masses and say "look at all those dumb people supporting you, don't you look silly now!"

> The other impression left on the minds of the public is that black men are exclusively the victims of police violence, when the data says otherwise.

Sure, I also think "defund the police" is a misguided slogan. Fortunately, laws aren't written by slogans, they're written by experts.

> Ask yourself why you have to use Google to find the name of a Latino who was unjustly killed by police in the last 5 years, but you (if you are like me) can list the names of multiple black men unjustly killed by police in the same time frame? Do you think that discrepancy in knowledge is natural, fair, or just?

No, but the reforms that BLM protesters are asking for would also help Latino people. I agree that it would be great that the discourse could be on all police violence, because it certainly is pervasive, but I'm not really going to blame Black people, who have an incredibly unique history in this country to focus on their own community's strife.

I also wouldn't expect an organization called Black Lives Matter to be advocating for Latinos (though, I think the work that they do conveniently does). No one is suppressing a Latino Lives Matter movement, it's just that the Latino experience in this country doesn't seem to coalesce in that way. I'm sure there's a very interesting investigation one could perform to figure out why.

> The ethno-centric activists have taken the very real issue of police violence, and turned it into a race specific one, needlessly.

I don't see why that's a problem when the goal is the same. Proposed police reforms aren't race-specific.

[dnautics]

Redlining and sentencing disparities are institutionalized racism, not systemic racism.

[RoboticWater]

I was honestly unaware of the difference. Upon looking up the term on Wikipedia, the first line is "Institutional racism (also known as systemic racism)." Every subsequent article I looked at under the google search "systemic racism vs institutional racism" seemed to make roughly the same equality.

[dnautics]

I'm under the impression that institutional refers to specific formal institutions, like policing, jobs markets, etc. Systemic refers to that plus informal cultural biases, that is institutional is a subset of systemic.

[AQuantized]

Do you not think the institutions of justice are systems? Not sure I get what you're trying to communicate.

[deadgunslinger]

> If it were immeasurable and undefinable, then we wouldn't have studies showing disproportionate sentencing of Black people

By the same standard, do you agree that there is systemic sexism against men?

[RoboticWater]

Of course, patriarch theory completely accounts for this. The common view that men are more powerful and autonomous, and therefore dangerous, can probably account for some degree of their harsher treatment under the justice system, just like this view probably helps them in acquiring positions of power in the workplace.

[deadgunslinger]

Patriarchy theory is contradicting itself on that issue. It's the pinnacle of doublethink.

[RoboticWater]

I don't see how. If men are perceived as being stronger and more rational, that will help them in acquiring jobs, but hurt them when being found culpable of a crime.

I'm not sure where you learned feminist theory, but it's fairly resolute about the fact that Patriarchy is deleterious to both men and women.

[deiznof]

Something being difficult to precisely measure does not make it a Nazi tactic. This is just an attempt to reframe the argument to be more charitable to Sowell, but no, his argument is bad.

[philwelch]

Sowell has some well-thought-out views on these issues, and he’s been expressing many of them for decades, but he has a curmudgeonly side as well. And I think if you understand his more well-thought-out views on these issues, I think you’ll also at least understand his curmudgeonly attitude.

Oddly enough, what you’re doing now—if it were done to dismiss the thoughts of a “progressive” black person—would probably be characterized as “tone policing”, and to whatever extent that’s a legitimate concept I think it applies to someone who makes his fair share of curmudgeonly remarks in the context of many decades of otherwise thoughtful and reasoned argument.

[niyikiza]

I cannot agree more. I think he's brilliant, and I've learned a lot from his ideas. However, I've seen him in multiple interviews putting forth evidence-free ideas aligned with Republican talk points.

[GaryNumanVevo]

Sowell has been criticized widely for his reductionist take on economics. Not sure what "tone policing" has to do with anything...

[philwelch]

Did you mean to reply to a different thread? This was about Sowell’s conservative social views and the sometimes intemperate way he expresses them, not about his economics (which the person I’m replying to expressed an appreciation for).

[chmod600]

Looking at his claim isolated from his evidence is hard to discuss. I think that also came from a TV interview, which is not the ideal forum for him to present evidence.

(When discussing "systemic racism", let's set aside specific racism, which can (and should) be specifically called out and changed.)

To explore systemic racism in more detail, we'd want to look at some measure (not necessarily a single number) of systemic racism. Once we have a way of measuring it (even crudely), we could compare across various races, countries, states, and regions. Importantly, we could compare it within a given race -- if systemic racism varies within a race, then clearly we need to revisit the definition because there are other factors at work. We could also look for other signs that something is awry, like areas that are "systemically racist" against the most politically powerful group.

Dr. Sowell has been performing this kind of research and analysis for decades, and documents it extensively in his many books.

From the quotation above, it seems that he believes that he believes that the term "systemic racism" has no useful definition remaining after this analysis, and that it's being used as propaganda to undermine institutions that stand in the way of political goals.

If you believe that systemic racism is a useful construct that leads to solutions for a better world, then by all means follow where it leads. But please focus on offering alternative policies that lead to good results, and adapt (or revert) those policies if they lead to bad results. Don't just turn it into a never-ending "discussion" that divides people with no solution.

[mac01021]

Do you have any examples not related to race relations?

What do you mean by "reductionist"?

[ralusek]

His social commentary is some of his most important work. If you had to isolate Sowell's most repeated, potent point, it would be that disparities in population outcomes are nowhere near sufficient to infer discrimination as a primary contributor. If people better understood this single fact, it would go a long way to disentangling the absolute mess of a concept that is systemic racism.

[spopejoy]

If you're a little older and were reading papers in the late 80s and 90s, Thomas Sowell was a fixture of the Op-Ed as a reliable apologist for capitalism and white supremacy.

It's definitely _why_ he was so prolific at that time because back then papers published hardly any Black views in editorials, much less left/liberal Black ones. Concepts that are common now (slavery's legacy is still with us; criminal justice is a huge problem for minorities; etc) would get you banned from pretty much anywhere then. But cheerily offering views like "Stop helping Black people" and "people are poor because they're lazy" with a Black writer was positively applauded.

There was kind of a moment around then, you had Ward Connerly on the UC board of directors busily dismantling affirmative action, Clarence Thomas' appointment, and Sowell blowing up the op-ed pages. There was no question that if you were a conservative Black you would be amplified and supported all over the place.

Needless to say, this led me to dismiss him intellectually then, as his political arguments are threadbare paleoconservativism. I haven't looked at his economic work, but given the appaling history of arch-conservative economics from "giants" like Friedman, I can't imagine I'd find anything very persuasive.

[viburnum]

There’s a link between his social views and his economics.

[TheOtherHobbes]

There's a link between his social views and economics as a mainstream discipline.

[mac01021]

Invoking similarity to Nazi propaganda is almost always a strategic error, and Thomas Sowell should know better. The actions of the third reich were so heinous that they are mostly recognized as precluding any comparison with the thoughts or actions of any normal, nonheinous people, and when you try to articulate such a comparison you come off in many or most people's eyes as totally hyperbolic.

Still, if you're willing to remain cool headed and entertain the most reasonable interpretation of what's being said, you'll have to admit that claims about 21st-century sociopolitical rhetoric having features in common with Nazi propaganda does not need to imply any kind of moral equivalence between the relevant 21st century activists and the Nazis.

The rhetoric of the third reich is probably the most famous example of a particular strategy, in which particular bugs of human psychology are exploited using scapegoating and the cultivation of a sense of victimhood. One could very reasonably believe that either (or both) of Donald Trump and lefty-social-justice-warrior types have been using such strategies to garner support WITHOUT thinking even with a few brain cells that either is morally comparable to the Nazis.

I have to think that this is how Mr. Sowell expects you to interpret what he's saying. It would be nice if he had an example other than the Nazis to use, since the holocaust carries so much emotional baggage, but there's just no other historical example of this rhetorical strategy that is so well known or so universally recognized as being in the wrong.

[tshaddox]

It’s really remarkable for one’s takeaway from the Nazis to be that accusations of racism might be false.

[alanaut24]

What exactly do you disagree with?

[deiznof]

The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear. Like, somehow it's not the government snatching people up in vans that is Nazi-like, it's actually the anti-racist protesters that are Nazi's to the genius brain of Thomas Sowell. How do people idolize this guy?

[ghufran_syed]

if you define “conservative” as “wrong”, then I understand your point, but then your statement is trivial - it’s a statement of opinion, “sowell is wrong”, masquerading as evidence and using 12 times as many words as needed.

[deiznof]

Yes, I am giving my opinion on Thomas Sowell in a post about Thomas Sowell. My post is very short, like a third of it is a quote from him. And I didn't define conservative as wrong, I said he is a standard, non-special conservative AND wrong. What are your actual disagreements?

[whatshisface]

Well, the problem with opinions is that they are not that helpful. For example, I could say the following:

Sowell is a classical liberal and right. Sowell is a neoconservative and wrong. Sowell is a traditional conservative and right. Sowell is a neoliberal and wrong. Sowell is a classical liberal and wrong. Sowell is a neoconservative and right. Sowell is a traditional conservative and wrong.

Without some way to separate the true sentences from the false sentences none of them are very helpful, even if one in the pile happens to be true.

[s4n1ty]

You're offering commentary, not a counterargument. What specifically is Sowell wrong about?

[SantalBlush]

What specifically is he right about? Why do we require evidence when someone says he is wrong, but we do not require evidence for the numerous times in this thread where people say his book is “required reading”?

First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees.

[rukittenme]

> How do people idolize this guy?

Read his books and find out. You'll be supporting a black author if you do.

[justin66]

> The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear.

With regard to the Fox News-watching American conservative base and bad Nazi analogies, it's useful to keep in mind what you're dealing with. Grover Norquist said in an interview in 2003 that the estate tax is equivalent to the Holocaust. When Terry Gross politely allowed him to walk that statement back, he said that it's just morally equivalent to the Holocaust. [2] Of course all the thinking involved is total bullshit and the man is batshit crazy, but the interview is not without interest.

Such a lunatic must be the object of widespread derision on the right, right? Nope. Almost all Republican lawmakers sign his bizarre loyalty oath upon taking office, pledging they're not going to raise taxes. [3]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/01/06/o...

[2] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145298...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-grover-norquist-pledg...

[BurningFrog]

Maybe Sowell wrote this before the internet - the man is 90 - but today I mentally turn the page whenever something is compared to Nazis.

Both the left and right do this, and it's almost never meaningful. More a lazy way to call your opponents poopheads.

[deiznof]

Unfortunately he said it in an interview about 3 weeks ago on Fox News.

[tux1968]

Well in fairness he didn't actually compare anything to Nazis. He compared something to one single precept that was espoused and made well-known by them. Unlike say the "Punch a Nazi" movement from last year that literally claimed modern day Nazis are numerous and living amongst us.

[lawnchair_larry]

> I just can't take this sort of person seriously in regards to social issues. I just can't do it.

Unfortunate, but it’s your loss. I definitely understand where you’re coming from, as I thought the same a few years ago. Challenge yourself to objectively listen to people who you think you disagree with. You might find that things you were certain about have serious flaws.

There are many reasons why terms like “systemic racism” are not constructive, and frankly, he’s not at all wrong on that point.

[mtraven]

Spurious comparisons to Nazis are a favorite tactic of his -- he famously compared Obama to Hitler because they both had enthusiastic crowds for their speeches. It's a mystery to me why anybody takes this man seriously.

[JungleGymSam]

Everything you've said has demonstrated that you're _choosing_ not to understand, or agree with, his arguments rather than disagreeing with them through counter arguments and evidence.