It is time for me to pick on Thomas Sowell again. I know he is old and has a good legacy. He has had a productive life with a lot of writing. I will even say he is a pretty good economist, at least on some issues.
He is somewhat similar to Milton Friedman. Sowell is not good when it comes to the Fed or monetary policy in general. Unfortunately, it is a big piece of economics for an economist to be weak on. Sowell is good when it comes to things like the minimum wage and tax disincentives. He is also a really good writer.
I still think Sowell is a statist though. He wants to force you to stick your kids with needles. He believes in an interventionist foreign policy. He dislikes Ron Paul and supported Newt Gingrich. Is that enough?
Yet many libertarians love the guy. Maybe they are just trying to find a black person who they can claim as a libertarian. If they want that, they should at least go with Walter Williams instead. Williams is not too good on foreign policy, but he mainly sticks to economics and the law, where he is very strong on particular issues.
Sowell’s latest article published on LewRockwell.com discusses the opportunity Republicans now have that John Boehner is stepping down as Speaker of the House. This in itself is rather naive. Does he really think the Republican politicians want to reduce government in any way?
Sowell then goes on to talk about the Reagan revolution. Every respected Republican has to pay homage to Ronald Reagan.
Sowell praises Reagan for his accomplishments, despite not having a majority in the House or Senate. Reagan did manage to lower income tax rates. This was his big accomplishment. This must be what Sowell is referring to.
Other than things Reagan didn’t do, what other major accomplishments did he have? He didn’t get us into a really major war and he kept things peaceful with the Soviet Union. After that, Reagan’s actual record is not very good from a libertarian perspective. He increased spending, increased deficits, increased payroll taxes, and did not shut down any major agencies.
Sowell is right in the fact that Reagan went over the Democrats’ heads in reducing income tax rates. He brought his message directly to the people.
Sowell says: “Contrary to the thinking — or lack of thinking — among today’s Republican leaders, Reagan did not go to these Democratic voters and pander to them by offering them a watered-down version of what the Democrats were offering. He took his case to them and talked — yes, TALKED — to let them know what his own agenda offered to them and to the country.”
In other words, it wasn’t Reagan talking to Democratic politicians that made a difference. It was Reagan talking directly to the American people. The people then overwhelmingly demanded that the Democrats in Congress support Reagan’s tax cut proposals. Unless a politician was in a heavily Democratic state or district, he felt threatened with his job. They listened to their constituents because the public opinion was so overwhelming.
You don’t reduce the size and scope of government by convincing politicians of the merits of your philosophy. You do it by convincing politicians that their jobs are at stake if they don’t go along with you.
The only way to convince politicians is to get public opinion strongly on your side. If you want to get rid of the Department of Education or end U.S. foreign interventions, you aren’t going to do it by speaking logically to politicians. You are going to do it by speaking logically to the American people and getting them on your side. Only then will politicians listen.
Luckily, I think Sowell got this last point correct. He understands the need to get the American people on the side of liberty (or whatever side he is on) in order to convince Democrat politicians to go along with it. Unfortunately, Sowell needs to realize that the American people need to put that same pressure on the Republican politicians because most of them are not really interested in reducing government either. They will do it if they have to do it in order to keep their jobs.