Letters from Clay

There's a beat-up copy of 1984 sitting on my desk right now.

It's been there for a few days. I keep looking at it.

Not because of Orwell. Because of the kid who gave it to me.

I was living in Hamilton, Ontario. Found a cell phone on the ledge by my driveway. Picked it up, called a number in the contacts, told them I had their friend's phone.

A few hours later, this kid shows up at my door. Young. Sweet. Maybe autistic, I'm not sure. Had a woman with him. Sister, friend, I don't know.

He was grateful in a way you almost never see. Not polite grateful. The real kind. Like returning his phone was the biggest thing anyone had done for him in a long time.

We talked for a while. One of those random nights where you meet someone and think, "I could be friends with this person."

I never saw him again.

Before he left, he handed me his copy of 1984. Told me he was an anarchist. I said I'd always meant to read it. Inside the front cover he'd written: "To the Angel Sapien who returned my cellular device. Thank you. Andy."

I looked his name up a few years later. I'm pretty sure I found his obituary.

Here's what I keep thinking about:

Andy called himself an anarchist. If he were still around, I think he'd be furious about Trump. Probably would have fallen into the whole Antifa thing. Might have been one of those people I watch clips of and shake my head at.

And I'd still miss him.

That's the thing nobody on our side wants to say out loud. The people we're up against aren't all predators. Some of them are confused kids who fell down a rabbit hole and never found their way out. Some of them are sweet, lost people with terrible ideas and horrible mentors. Some of them are Andy.

I spend a lot of time teaching you how to spot traps. How to stop being prey. How to fight smarter. I mean every word of it.

But every once in a while I look at that book on my desk and I remember that the kid who gave it to me would probably hate everything I post.

And he was one of the kindest people I ever met.

I don't know what to do with that. I just know it's true.

Clay

P.S. If you've got an Andy in your life, someone good who got lost along the way, keep them in your thoughts today.

I don't love selling shirts. In fact, I might even dislike it.

I know that's a weird thing to say from a guy who runs a merch store. But I didn't start my page to sell apparel. I started it because Thomas Sowell says things that need to be heard, and nobody was putting it all in one place in a way that made sense to me.

But here's the reality. Running a page this size costs money. Building a site costs money. A show costs money. Not to mention an enormous amount of time and effort. I'm a capitalist, after all. I believe in building things that sustain themselves. So I make shirts.

Most of the time, I don't even mention them.

But I just made one that I can't stop thinking about. And you're seeing it first because you're on this list. This isn't on my site. It's not on Facebook. You're here, so you get it before anyone else.

Here's the idea:

There's a comedian named Mitch Hedberg. Maybe you've heard of him. Dead now. One of the greatest to ever do it. His most famous joke goes like this:

"I used to do drugs. I still do. But I used to, too."

Simple. Brilliant. The kind of joke that gets funnier every time you hear it.

So I put it on a shirt. But I changed it.

Front: I USED TO BE ANTI-COMMUNIST.
Back: I STILL AM. But I used to be, too.

I haven't even gotten mine yet. I'm ordering one tonight. It might be the thing I'm most excited about right now, which is saying something considering I'm also building a show, a site, and whatever else I've gotten myself into.

First episode, this is what I'm wearing. If you see me on camera in anything else, something went wrong.

It's on a premium blank. It's not cheap. I'm not going to apologize for that. Good shirts cost money and I'm tired of selling thin ones.

If you want it:

here it is

If you don't, that's fine too. All I know is I wanted it to exist, so I made it, and I ordered one for myself. I can't wait to wear this to the next family dinner. I figured some of you might enjoy that sort of thing too.

Clay

For an entire decade I hid behind my Thomas Sowell quotes page on Facebook.

Not because I didn't have my own thoughts. Because his were better. And safer. Nobody argues with you when you're just the messenger.

Last night I posted a picture of Charlie Kirk with a Sowell quote. Someone called him a "low educated hate spreader." Someone else called him a liar and a fraud. Someone else brought up a dolphin meme from a comedian's prop trick to prove he was stupid.

A man who sat in a chair on college campuses with a sign that said "prove me wrong." Open. Anyone could walk up. And someone shot him from a rooftop for it.

So I stopped hiding.

I replied to every single one of them. Not with Sowell quotes. With my own words. My own arguments. Ten years of reading Sowell, Mises, and Hayek will do that to you. At some point the ideas stop being theirs and start being yours.

The post went viral at midnight. I was still in the comments at 1am.

I've been invisible behind this page for a decade. That's over.

A show is coming. More writing is coming. You're on this list, so you'll see it first.

Clay

That guy from yesterday came back. (Missed it? Catch up here.)

His name is John. He asked me who isn't free to speak their mind on Sowell's quote about free speech. I answered him. He did not take it well.

So he came back. New argument this time. A man was killed for speaking freely on a college campus and John's position, three replies deep now, is that this has "nothing to do with freedom of speech."

I'm not making that up. That's what he said. Can you imagine saying something that stupid and not feeling embarrassed?

At some point it stops being about the argument and starts being about the person. John isn't trying to be right. He's trying not to be wrong. Those sound similar. They're not. One is curiosity. The other is ego in a trench.

You've met this guy. He's at your Thanksgiving table. He's in your Facebook comments. He's the one who turns a friendly barbecue into a hostage situation.

The tell is always the same. They never say "good point." They don't even pause to think for a minute. They just reclassify. Move the goalposts. Shrink the evidence until it doesn't count anymore. Anything to avoid the two words that would end the conversation: "you're right."

I get a few Johns a day. Keeps things interesting.

Have you run into your own John lately? Hit reply and tell me about it. I'd love to hear.

Clay

P.S. I'm thinking about starting a live show on Facebook where I go through comment section exchanges like this one on camera. Just me, Sowell's ideas, and the people brave enough to argue with them. Working title: "Sowell vs the Internet." More soon.

I posted a Sowell quote about free speech yesterday. Someone on my page asked, "Who isn't free to speak their mind?"

He thought it was a gotcha.

I said: Charlie Kirk. Went to speak freely on a college campus. Was killed for it.

His reply: "He was killed by some rando. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

Think about that.

He asked who isn't free to speak. I gave him a man who was murdered for speaking. And his first move was to dismiss it. Not engage with it. Not reconsider his question. Just wave it away and pretend it didn't count.

That's the tell. He wasn't asking a question. He was making a statement dressed up as a question. And when someone called his bluff, he couldn't handle the answer.

You see this pattern everywhere once you know what to look for. People who frame their position as a question so they never have to defend it.

"Name one example."
You name one.
"That doesn't count."
You name another.
"That's different."

The game isn't to find the truth. The game is to never be wrong.

"They don't use language to communicate, they use it to manipulate" - Michael Malice

Sowell wrote about this exact mentality as well. These aren't people seeking answers. They're people protecting a vision.

Clay

P.S. Most of the shirts in the shop are built around real Sowell quotes. A few are just for fun.

Someone told me last night that hunger is a form of tyranny.

I'm serious. I posted a Sowell quote about the left wanting to be our shepherds, and this guy fires back, saying that since you can't choose NOT to eat, not to pay rent, not to need health coverage, your freedom is basically a scam. You're not really free. You're just a boot-licker who doesn't know it yet.

His words, not mine.

Now, I find this kind of thing fascinating. Not because it's smart. Because it reveals something.

Think about what he's really saying here.

He looked at the basic conditions of being alive, the fact that survival takes effort, and decided that's oppression. As if nature owes him something. As if the fact that food doesn't fall from the sky means somebody, somewhere, is ruling him.

Hunger is not a ruler. Scarcity is not a boss. Nature doesn't become tyranny just because it refuses to feed you for free.

Free people figured that out thousands of years ago. You trade, you cooperate, you build something. Nobody has to be in charge of everything for it to work. But this guy can't see that. He sees the hard facts of life and immediately demands an administrator.

He can't imagine free men solving problems together. He can only imagine herds managed by shepherds.

Which is precisely what Sowell was talking about.

The guy showed up to argue against the quote and ended up living it.

Clay

P.S. ReadSowell.com keeps growing. 200+ verified Sowell quotes sourced to the actual books, articles, interviews. New stuff all the time. It's a living project. Worth a look if you haven't been by yet.

Yesterday I launched ReadSowell.com.

I've been running the Thomas Sowell Quotes page on Facebook for a while now, but I wanted to build something bigger. A real home for Sowell's words. Sourced quotes, the full context, a place to browse and explore his ideas without algorithmic noise.

So I built it. By myself. No team, no investors, just me and a lot of late nights.

Within hours of launch, 187 people were on the site at the same time. I sat there watching the numbers climb, refreshing like a lunatic.

Then I got an email from a stranger. He said he loved what I was building and wanted to know how he could support it financially. I didn't even have a donation page set up. I scrambled to get one live, sent him the link, and within minutes he'd sent $500.

That's when it hit me. This thing is real. People actually want this to exist.

The site's still growing. I'm adding new features every week. I think you will really love the video section that is coming soon. The foundation is there, and it's free. If you haven't seen it yet:

ReadSowell.com

More coming soon.

Clay

Hey,

It's Clay from Thomas Sowell Quotes.

I've been building something for a while now, and today it's officially live.

ReadSowell.com

A full website dedicated to Thomas Sowell's work. An interactive timeline of his life. Hundreds of verified quotes you can search by topic. A complete bookshelf, with personal recommendations from me. And a store with new gear. Lots more coming soon too, including a video section I think you're really going to like!

I built every piece of it myself. No team, no investors. Just me and this community.

Go check it out and let me know what you think. I read every reply.

Clay