Thomas Sowell takes a look at political rhetoric. Part 1 includes the words “greed” and “compassion”:  

In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be “greedy,” while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show “compassion.”

And so we see people who don’t regard themselves as greedy or selfish demanding a “fair share” – i.e., more – of someone else’s earnings. But who’s the more greedy and selfish – Michael Caine or these people? And what about this guy? Which of them is the exploiter and which the exploited? 

Part 2, on “access”: 

Making a distinction between external and internal reasons for failing to reach one’s goal would clarify the meaning of the word “access.” But clarification would destroy the political usefulness of the word, along with the government programmes that this word is used to justify.

Parts 3 and 4 tackle “welfare,” “choice” and of course “social justice.”

Bill Whittle on the higher education bubble:  

Total student loan debt in America has passed the trillion dollar mark – more than total credit card debt and more than total auto loan debt. But as prices have been going up, learning seems to have been going down. A recent book, Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found that 45% of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning during the first two years of college, and 36% of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college. The primary reason, according to the study, is that courses aren’t very rigorous… Simply put, the cost of higher education has far outpaced its actual value. The bubble is going to burst.

And yes, we have a similar problem here. In the UK there are currently around 20,000 students of fine art, 10,000 philosophy students and 27,000 enthusiasts of media studies. But is there a corresponding economic need? If the investment of time, effort and (other people’s) money doesn’t pay off with a lucrative and fascinating career in the private sector and a return via taxation, then how is the process justified in its present form? Is it sustainable?

Finally, via Kate, some lovely racial brotherhood from our leftist betters.

As always, feel free to add your own.

John Ellis on cultivated victimhood and the Angry Studies racket: 

Just as Pinocchio went off to school with high hopes, only to be waylaid by J. Worthington Foulfellow, minority students are met on the way to campus by hard-left radicals who claim to have the interests of the newcomers at heart but in reality prey on them to advance their own selfish interests. Of course, what black students need is the same solid traditional education that had raised Irish, Italians, and Jews to full equality. But that would not serve the campus radicals’ purpose. Disaffected radicals wanted to swell the ranks of the disaffected, not the ranks of the cheerfully upward mobile. Genuine progress for minority students would mean their joining and thus strengthening the mainstream of American society – the mainstream that campus radicals loathe… 

As thinkers, campus radicals are poor role models for students. Their ideas are simple and rigid, and they rely heavily on conspiracy thinking that infers far too much from too little. They are powered by emotional commitments that are highly resistant to the lessons of experience. As a result, their cherished ideas are now virtually obsolete, and strike any reasonably well-informed observer as downright silly. The minority students that they attract into their orbit are dragged down to this low intellectual level.

Which may explain why disagreeing with Obama is, for some, always, always racist. 

And I’m sure it’s purely coincidental that Laurie Penny rails against the “small, ugly ambitions” of bourgeois advancement, and shrieks “fuck social mobility,” while so many of her leftist colleagues want to block off escape routes on ideological grounds. Because they care so very, very much.

For more on cultivated grievance and its degrading effects, see this lecture by David Horowitz.

Kay Hymowitz on social mobility and feedback loops: 

You can’t grasp what’s happening at the lower end of the income scale without talking about family breakdown. In fact, the single-mother revolution, as I’ll call it, takes us a long way toward understanding the socioeconomic problems on everyone’s mind these days: poverty, inequality, and the inability of those at the bottom to move up… As of 1970, 11 percent of births were to unmarried mothers; by 1990, that number had risen to 28 percent. Today, 41 percent of all births are non-marital. And for mothers under 30, the number is 53 percent… 

The single-mother revolution has left us with the following reality. At the top of the social order is a positive feedback loop, with kids raised in stable, high-investment and relatively affluent homes going to college, finding similar mates, and raising their own children in stable, high-investment and relatively affluent homes. At the bottom is a negative feedback loop, with kids raised by single mothers in unstable, low-investment homes finding themselves unable to adapt to today’s economy and going on to create more unstable, single-mother homes.

See also Heather Mac Donald on poverty and behaviour. 

And Fabian Tassano on being labelled right-wing:  

I do not think of this blog as right-wing, though others may. If I had to file it under anything, it would be under {critique, genuine}. This in contrast with {critique, phoney}, meaning the kind of critique you currently get from the cultural establishment (e.g. Britart is “challenging,” literary theory is “deeply questioning,” contemporary sociology “analyses prejudices”), in which the original sense of the word critique has become inverted. […] To pretend the cultural landscape is not at present utterly dominated by leftist sentiment (pro-state, pseudo-egalitarian, anti-capitalist) is just silly. The fact that such sentiment tends no longer to be referred to as leftist is merely a sign of how hegemonic it has become. 

See, for instance, these intellectuals of tomorrow, their educators, and almost anything here tagged ‘academia.’ And then of course there’s “our” artistic and cultural establishment, whose “debates,” “critiques” and “interrogations” have entertained us no end. 

By all means add your own.

Further to my exchange with TimT in the comments, I thought I’d post this 2009 lecture by David Horowitz. 

See also this. 

Charlotte Allen and George Leef on why sociology is disreputable: 

In examining those courses, we found very few indications that students were introduced to ideas about the causes of inequality or policies to deal with it that reflect free-market or public-choice perspectives. (Public-choice theory proposes that the bureaucrats who administer social programs are motivated largely by their own self-interest). Overwhelmingly, the courses take an approach perfectly in keeping with left/progressive beliefs about the causes of and cures for inequality. The textbooks and assigned readings are almost invariably by leftist authors. Students almost never encounter well-known conservative critics of leftist conceptions about inequality such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Martin Anderson, or Charles Murray.

Students are, however, likely to encounter the Communist Manifesto and books by devout socialists Barbara Ehrenreich and Frances Fox Piven, of whom more here, here and here. 

Thomas Sowell on the big lies of politics: 

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them; it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth catches up with both the politicians and the people in the long run. Among the biggest lies of the welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic is the notion that the government can supply the people with things they want but cannot afford. Since the government gets its resources from the people, if the people as a whole cannot afford something, neither can the government. There is, of course, the perennial fallacy that the government can simply raise taxes on “the rich” and use that additional revenue to pay for things that most people cannot afford. What is amazing is the implicit assumption that “the rich” are all such complete fools that they will do nothing to prevent their money from being taxed away. History shows otherwise. 

And maths shows that even if the left could take everything those terrible rich people have, this still wouldn’t balance the books. 

Sowell again, on class war rhetoric versus tax revenue: 

After [Secretary of the Treasury Andrew] Mellon finally succeeded in getting Congress to lower the top tax rate from 73 percent to 24 percent, the government actually received more tax revenues at the lower rate than it had at the higher rate. Moreover, it received a higher proportion of all income taxes from the top income earners than before. Something similar happened in later years, after tax rates were cut under Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and G.W. Bush. The record is clear. Barack Obama admitted during the 2008 election campaign that he understood that raising tax rates does not necessarily mean raising tax revenues. Why then is he pushing so hard for higher tax rates on “the rich” this election year? Because class warfare politics can increase votes for his re-election, even if it raises no more tax revenues for the government. 

And relevant to the above: How to optimise your class war rhetoric. 

As always, feel free to add your own. 

I was doing some research on Detroit and its decline. They kept raising income tax and every time they raised the tax rate, the tax revenues went down. In 2008, Charles Gibson put this to Obama when he was a candidate. He said, “Why are you for raising the tax rate on the rich? Because you often get more revenue at lower tax rates than at the higher tax rates.” And Obama said, “Well, it’s a question of social justice.” In other words, he doesn’t really care about whether the government raises more revenue. If he can get people mad at the rich and they vote for him, then it’s a success.

Further to this, Thomas Sowell discusses the second, expanded edition of his book Intellectuals and Society. Subjects touched on include solutions versus trade-offs, Marxism versus reality, Obama’s hubris, and how to deal with mountain lions lurking near school gates.

And remember, the “anointed” vision Sowell is talking about is embraced by people like this. And by these “enlightened leaders.”