I have been a harsh critic of Thomas Sowell. I fully understand that he has done some great things for liberty, and that on some issues of economics, he writes clearly and concisely.
Still, I know a lot of libertarians who like, or at least sympathize, with Sowell. I do not. I think he is a statist. He wants to inject your children with vaccines. He is generally a militarist.
I agree with Sowell on some economic issues. So what? I agree with some leftists on the drug war and foreign policy. Even on some important economic issues, I am not with Sowell. He is largely silent on the damages of the Federal Reserve.
Sowell recently wrote a column effectively endorsing Ted Cruz. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but it is as close as you can get to an endorsement without actually uttering the words.
Sowell cites the importance of the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. I recently wrote a piece on why libertarians should not be so quick to revere Scalia.
Sowell comes across as the typical conservative, saying that the vacancy on the Supreme Court “makes painfully clear the huge stakes involved when we choose a President of the United States, just one of whose many powers is the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court.”
The Supreme Court is used to divide the nation politically. Both sides will come out and tell us how important this election is because of the nomination of Supreme Court justices. We are always told that this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. It is left unsaid on what has gone wrong that 9 justices are deciding on policy for over 300 million Americans.
Sowell concludes his article saying that he has criticized Cruz before and will undoubtedly criticize him again. But, “As someone who once clerked for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he will know how important choosing Justice Scalia’s replacement will be. And he has the intellect to understand much more.”
Ted Cruz is a politician. His wife is part of Goldman Sachs. He has a reputation of being outside of the establishment. I have to admit that he is far from the establishment’s first choice as a nominee. But they prefer him over Trump.
Cruz says he wants to bomb ISIS to see if sand can glow in the dark, meaning he wants to nuke the Middle East. He occasionally questions U.S. foreign policy in subtle ways, but we can be sure he will be terribly pro war in office.
Even when it comes to economics, Cruz is not that great. He is not preaching a major cutback in the federal budget. I don’t hear him making constant calls to abolish the Department of Education or any other major departments or programs.
Sowell has gone from endorsing Newt Gingrich to Ted Cruz. Meanwhile, he has little nice to say about Ron Paul. And some people want to associate Sowell with being a libertarian, or even sympathetic to libertarianism?
In his article, Sowell talks about the extreme dangers in our world “where our adversaries’ military power and aggressiveness are increasing, while our military forces are being cut back.”
Sowell is a conservative. He is preaching the line about our military being cut back as the U.S. government occupies most of the world in some form or another. He thinks others are being more aggressive, yet he can’t bring himself to question U.S. foreign policy at all.
If you read an article by Sowell that helps explain an economic issue clearly, then by all means share it with your friends. Just please don’t delude yourself into thinking that Thomas Sowell has anything to do with libertarianism. He is a conservative and a statist. Occasionally his thoughts overlap with libertarians.