Summer Readings: Thomas Sowell

To be honest, when I read the assignment of writing a post about a book I’d read this summer, it took me few minutes to think of any of them. I generally read a lot of magazines and journals (I do so love my Economist.) and tend to peruse the offerings of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, “Drudge Report,” and various other websites quite thoroughly each day. It occurred to me that with these distractions in addition to a busy summer schedule, I had not read very many actual books. Nevertheless, a list of what I did read follows:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays by Thomas Sowell
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land by Donna Rosenthal

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Finally, after much thought and frustrated vacillation, I decided to write about Thomas Sowell’s work. Sowell is a less than extraordinary writer. His compilation of essays, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays, is not exactly a masterpiece. He writes (perhaps intentionally) very simply and bluntly. Still, I found myself absorbed by his words. For the most part, I found that the true value of his book is in the provocation it provides for general thought, rather than in the ideas actually expressed. Ever Wonder Why contains dozens of short essays, each only three to five pages long, on various subjects ranging from healthcare and the education system to American foreign policy and free markets. Some of them might be found mildly offensive – hence controversial essays – such as the attack on the liberal ‘obsession’ with political correctness in regard to “race, class, and gender.” As you might have guessed by now, Sowell takes a decidedly conservative viewpoint in his essays though he sometimes expresses libertarian sentiments.

The title essay, “Ever Wonder Why,” is undoubtedly the most insightful of the collection. In it, Sowell outlines the reasons why we, as Americans, should be especially grateful for the comforts we take for granted. Essentially, Sowell asks the question of why we are so privileged over other peoples in the world. Upon pointing out the advantages that we enjoy, he asks the question of why so many people desire so strongly “change” for its own sake. Sowell warns against this blind meddling with established institutions. As Sowell himself wrote, “To be for generic ‘change’ is to say that what we have [now] is so bad that any change is likely to be for the better… The status quo is never sacrosanct but its very existence proves that it is viable, as seductive theoretical alternatives may not turn out to be.”

For me, one of the most interesting thing about this essay is that it was written almost three years ago and still manages to answer quite a few of Barack Obama’s arguments for change. Keep in mind that Obama did not rise to real prominence until approximately eight months ago and has only been viewed as having a realistic shot at the presidency for the last six. He even uses a number of Obama’s buzzwords including: change, idealism, and the status quo. Regardless of whether I agree with Sowell’s opinions, it was these sorts of strange and disconnected thoughts that made Sowell’s work so engrossing.