Saturday, May 28, 2016

Thomas Sowell versus Paul Krugman on Commencement Speeches

Thomas Sowell recently wrote a column about commencement speeches.

The wisdom in the article has already caused it to be cited many times in its short life.

In part it says:
[M]any Commencement speakers, besides flattering themselves that they are in morally superior careers, is to flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as “leaders” who can prescribe how other people should live.... 
It might never occur to many Commencement speakers, or to their audiences, that what the speakers are suggesting is that inexperienced young graduates are to prescribe, or help to dictate, to vast numbers of other people who have the real world experience that the graduates themselves lack.
It just so happens that Paul Krugman gave a commencement speech in the Berkshires recently/. This is what Krugman advised that the "inexperienced young graduates" do that he spoke to:
 So go out there, be citizens, and make the world a better place.
 -RW

5 comments:

  1. Sure Paul. Castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful, as Lewis said.

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  2. When I was in college in the early seventies, I longed to learn how to be a hipster leftist. Thanks to working road construction, I finally realized before my senior year that "progressives" hate average people and lust to boss them around. Then I realized that I like average people and I'm too lazy to even think about bossing them around. However, I somehow manage to find lots of energy with which to humiliate no-knowing "progressives".

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    Replies
    1. Some of us are thankful you do manage to find that energy to wipe the floor with them Bob.

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  3. For decades, I have been appalled at all of the “educated” types, lawyers, shrinks etc… (my peers) who really really believe that the therapeutic state (via their “efforts”) can and really does remake, educate and reform their inferiors for the better. Anyone who points out to them Walter Williams explaining that his all-black public housing building in the 40s had zero crime is called a racist.

    After decades of thinking conservative Republicans were potential allies, I came to realize since 9/11 that they are afflicted with the same disease as the “educated” types, except they think that the cops cracking heads and the military bombing Muslims is the route to the magic therapeutic transformation. They don’t want to hear about Afghan girls wearing miniskirts in the 1970s.

    Neither group appears able to even grasp our arguments on the topic. But they hate each other for not adopting the other side’s form state “therapy”.

    Both sides come together the celebrate Hiroshima and the Great Depression as the origin and pinnacle of FDR’s magical state therapy. It’s their religion and they are not about to budge.

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