Thomas Sowell, in Full

Yes. You can go back over the last 100 years. You can go back to eugenics in the early part of the 20th century. You can go back to Keynesian economics. you can come forward to the environmental movement. There always is something which requires them to substitute their wisdom, and virtue for our lack of understanding.

Oh, I suppose I've been accused of so many things, there's no... I don't say all intellectuals.

I guess the best definition I've heard is from Hayek. He says it's a secondhand dealer in ideas, that the vast majority of intellectuals don't really, originate any ideas, but they, they peddle ideas, that other people have originated. and the, that gives them a great deal of freedom because ideas are so malleable. Words are so malleable. reality is not malleable, and so they can believe in all sorts of things, which have no realistic possibility and which have failed time and again in history. but because they know how to rephrase it and repackage it, they can just keep right on going.

Yes.

Oh, gosh. I've been published since 1960

Gosh, not really. I mean, I l- I learn both from reading but, and from experience. And of course, what I believe has changed radically since I was a Marxist in my 20s. I'm surprised, though, when I go back, 'cause I keep old letters and things, I'm surprised how many of the values I had are still the same values. It's just that now I see that they have to be reached by an entirely different math- method.

Well, at one time, for example, I thought that if the government took control of various things, they could do a lot, particularly for people who are poor, less fortunate in one way or another. Over time, I've learned that really does not work. I mean, it sounds better. It doesn't work. just recently I came across one number which should have, should have destroyed the whole notion of central planning, and it was that there were 24 million prices in the Soviet Union. Now, there's no human being capable of setting 24 million prices properly, especially when you realize that each price has to be set properly in relation to the other 24 million prices. So you can't even break it down and have, say, 24,000 people, each one with 1,000 prices, 'cause the point is they all have to mesh relative to one another. But if you have a country of a couple of hundred million people, and each person keeps track of only a relatively few prices that affect that person, then, then it can work.

Hoover Institution's a think tank, established originally just as an archive for all the tons of material that Herbert Hoover collected when he was traveling around Europe after the First World War, during a time of starvation, where he, set up this program to feed millions of people across Europe. And when he came back, he dumped all his stuff here at Stanford, and set up this archive. And then at some point, Glenn Campbell, one of the directors, decided to turn it into a think tank, and he put it on the map as that.

It'll be 25 years in September.

in a sense, I shouldn't even be answering that because, I am here so seldom. I work at home, miles away, but that's part of the great part of the freedom of the place. I mean, right now, if you ask the director of the Hoover Institution, "What is Tom Sowell working on?" He'd say, "Darned if I know." You know, from time to time, they find out what I'm working on, and if they like it, I continue to stay on. I suppose if they-- went a couple of years and I did nothing, they'd say, "Why is he here?" but, it's, it's really a wonderful place, and I've had the most productive years of my life here.

Not that I can think of. mo- most of the stuff I get from readers is really very positive, very reinforcing. Some of it's very touching. occasionally you'll get a, barrage of criticism on something. I had one recently where, there's some internet website that is sticking them on me, because I said there's no such thing as a trickle-down theory. Nobody has ever advocated it. And they-- oh, storms of email came in, not one of which contained one quote from one person who had actually advocated it. It's one of those things that someone says that he objects to in someone else, but we can never find the someone else who's supposed to have said it.

Oh, yes

Oh, that's chilling. It's chilling, yeah. I was having dinner with a man that I had worked for decades earlier in a machine shop in New York at really the low point of my life, and I was,... I didn't have enough money to ride the New York subway, which was five cents in those days. And so I would walk from the Brooklyn Bridge up to Harlem because I didn't have the subway fare. And, when I got paid, they held back a couple of days, which normally doesn't mean anything, but when you're in that position, it means a lot. And so I had to ask him to borrow some money so I'd have something to eat with, and he lent me five bucks, which was real money in those days. and so when I came back there and I was looking out of the hotel window that I was in, and I s- looked over to where I used to work, and I thought about him, and I phoned him. And, he brought his family, and we ate dinner at the top of the World Trade Center, and it was really one of the best, evenings of my life. And, he and I were both on the verge of tears when we, when we parted. It was just a wonderful time.

Oh, my gosh. We will never be the same again. I'm, I'm disappointed in people who seem not to realize that it's not business as usual anymore, that it's really a qu- There are things we have to do that we don't want to do, but the alternative is far worse. And so the, the world will never be the same. I hope that it wakes up some people. It certainly hasn't wa- awakened all of them.

I think there shouldn't be these irresponsible statements that are made about the world situation, things like, you know, we're having a backdoor draft, things to undermine the troops who are out there. I'm appalled that the troops in battle with their lives on the line are being, tried now as criminals for actions they took when they had to make a split-second de- decision with their life at stake. And when I think of all the excuses that are made for common criminals, you know, he had an unhappy childhood, he ate Twinkies, whatever, you know, and these men are out there fighting, putting their lives on the line for us, and we're sitting back here second-guessing.

Well, for some people it's politics, but for other people it is just sheer, unthinking re-reflection, reaction. You know, "Gee, you shouldn't have done this," or, "You shouldn't have done that." it's, it's, it's like the people who second-guess the police when there's a shooting and they say, "Why do the police fire so many shots?" Now you know, I, I taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps. I'm not the least bit surprised that they fired all those shots and so many of 'em missed. That's what happens with pistols. but to think that someone who has never had a gun in his hand is criticizing someone for what he did and is sitting back in air-conditioned comfort someplace, you know, second-guessing this guy who had his life on the line, and who put his life on the line, to protect him.

High marks.

for thinking long term. I mean, take my example with Social Security. whatever you think about his particular plan, and there's arguments you can make back and forth, the fact is he knows Social Security is not gonna run out of b- money while he's president. The easiest thing in the world would be for him to say, "Forget it. It is someone else's problem somewhere down the road." You know, but he understands that the longer we wait, the worse it's gonna get, and therefore, we ought to take it on. I think the same thing with terrorism. You know, he, he coulda stopped in Afghanistan, he coulda done this, he coulda done that, but the fact is he realized that, the fact that we stop doesn't mean that they're gonna stop.

Oh, absolutely, and he was absolutely right.

I thought about it only until I f- talked with the first professionals. I mean, and Senator Hayakawa wanted me to run for the Senate in California, and out of, respect for him, I agreed just... I d- thought it, never crossed my mind before, or since. but, out of respect for him, I talked to p- political professionals, and these people would talk to me about two minutes, and they would say, "Y- y- you're, you're not what politicians are made of." my, late sister, who probably knew me better than anyone in the world, said, "Tommy, I can't even imagine you in politics. Can't even ima-" And o- once,... And my wife was telling a friend, "Tom wouldn't last 20 minutes in Washington." And, he said, "Oh, yes, he would." Now, I'm not saying he'd last an hour, you

Because I say what I mean, and, that doesn't help you a lot in politics. you know, so they tried to get me to become a secretary of, labor when, when Reagan came. There were people who were pushing that, and I told the guy, "Stop pushing it," you know? I said, "You know, the President of the United States has better things to do than having to run around all the time saying, 'Well, what Tom really meant was...' you know, after I make some statement."

I don't really know. I just don't know. It's, it ha- it has to be someone who's either enormously dedicated or who is enormously, concerned with power, prominence, and those kinds of things.

Well, I collect them over a period of time. When I have enough for a column, I publish it.

Yes. I just can't imagine... This is one of a whole series of things she said that, makes you wonder. At first I simply criticized her, and then I wondered, my gosh, may- maybe she really doesn't, ha- have it all.

I don't know. I really don't give it a lot of thought.

Yeah.

Oh, when I have something that's factually wrong, yes. I mean, I even printed a correction, a factual correction, last year, for the first time. but that, that's not, that's really not a big problem.

Yes.

Yeah.

I had quoted some organization as having lamented poaching in Kenya, and they hadn't lamented poaching in Kenya, but I thought, but, you know, I thought la- lamenting poaching is surely not, liable. But they wanted to make an issue of it. They didn't, and then, and they were right on that one point, being wrong on everything else. I, I sent that correction in.

Probably. I haven't kept count.

Really?

actually, I don't stay on a schedule. I write when I have something to say. And, that can be... For example, the book, Basic Economics that I wrote, that took shape over a period of a decade. I wasn't even sure when it would be finished. But as I would see things, written that, or on TV that were actually just so wrong economically, I would then sit down and write something explaining this thing, you know, in plain language. And over the years, the stuff would just collect in the computer. and after, you know, a half a dozen or so years, I began to say, "You know, we have almost enough here for a book." And then I began to organize it and turn it into a book. So I only write... And so I normally will have two or three things going at one time. and, I have no idea which one will ever get finished at all, 'cause there are some that will never get finished, and much less which one's gonna come out first. So right now, for example, I have one book coming out, in a f- few weeks, as you mentioned. I have another one, in press, with Yale University Press, on a totally different subject, essays on classical economics.

I have great, freedom since I, I don't have classes to teach. I don't have any things to... people to meet. if, on a given day, I may do a lot or I may do nothing at all I mean, I can remember once I was, sitting here, and, I said, "You know, I haven't been to Yosemite in a while." I just got up out of the car and got in Yose- got in the car and drove to Yosemite and stayed the rest of the week.

I'm only, my contract calls for one a week. I usually write more than one. I don't get paid any more for the extra ones. If I'm truly, you know, frothing at the mouth, I'll write, maybe three or four.

Again, it's hard to say 'cause I have a whole bunch of them that are half written, and again, that, that will probably never be completely written. And sometimes something will happen in the news that will just jog me, and I'll sit down and do it in a couple of hours. another time it'll just take... Well, the Random Thoughts column can last, you know, it could be a couple of months before I collect enough for one of those. So, you know, it's just very fluid.

Yes.

Not that I know of. -

I'm, I'm in more papers than I was, say, 10 years ago.

lot, lots of feedback from the internet. Lots of feedback from the internet.

hard, it's, it's hard to know wha-s- sometimes they'll just write me about a particular column, and they won't say where they read it. s- so I have no idea where they got it from, the internet or from the newspaper. But, in terms of mail, certainly the emails vastly exceed the postal mail that I get.

Hundreds a week, and I can't answer them all. I was really, really sorry that I can't because some of them really deserve an answer. if I can do 10% of them, I consider I've had a good day.

I read most of them. Sometimes some of these p- people w- write in, and they'll say something in the first paragraph that makes you realize this, you know, this is not worth going any further with, and you just hit the delete button and keep moving.

Oh, I think it's opened up a lot of things. It's made it harder, I guess, for a totalitarian country to seal its people off from the outside world, and that can only be a good thing.

Two consecutive.

it... Yes. Well, it does seem a little ridiculous, but it also shows how desperate they are. They, the Democrat, Democrats get something like 80 to 90% of the Black vote. If that ever falls down to 60 or 70%, they're in deep trouble because they've alienated so many other people that they, they have a hard time winning elections at all. And so therefore, they must try to keep Blacks paranoid. I think of this thing about, remember the m- the dragging death in Texas some years ago, and they used that against Bush because Bush was the, was against hate crimes legislation. And the fact is that these two guys who did this were electrocuted. So whether it was a hate crime or not a hate crime, they're dead, and calling it a hate crime would've changed absolutely nothing. What it would've done was open up the courts to all kinds of litigation because the guy's convicted of a hate crime, and his lawyer would say, "Well, it really wasn't really a hate crime," and they can go through the whole circuit court of appeals and so forth. And so, to me, I agree entirely with Bush on this particular point, that, it doesn't matter what, what your motivation was. If you did it, you should pay the price.

Inertia. Don't forget the Solid South, boy, that followed the Democratic Party for over a century. So Blacks have been into this, what? 67 years now. I'm hoping that Blacks will wake up faster than the, than the Solid South did. But, these things go... The Jewish vote has gone Democratic by overwhelming majority, and it's hard to see why, given the policies and so on. But, once this inertia gets going, it'll go, it'll keep going for a long time.

Oh, McGovern. When I saw what happened to the Democrats under McGovern, I voted, heaven help us, for McGovern in the n- in the primaries in 1972 simply because I was so sick of the Vietnam War. But the more I saw of McGovern and of people around McGovern, the more I realized what a disaster it would be to have this man president. I didn't, I, I was never a Nixon fan. And so in 1972, I didn't vote at all, or in '76 for that matter.

A lot better.

Well, you compare him with, say, Clinton. Nixon was gonna, you know, was threatened, with impeachment. he quit, he spared the country. He wasn't gonna fight it. Even more so if you go back to 1960 when there was an extremely close race between Nixon and... Was it '60? Yes, Nixon and Kennedy. And, there were people saying, "You know, there was all kinds of voter fraud in Chicago." I mean, voter fraud in Chicago is not a new idea. and they were ask- they were saying he should, he should challenge it. He refused to challenge it. He said, "The country should not be put through that." the stuff that went on in Florida in 19- in 2000, you know, that kind of stuff, he spared us all of that.

I like President Ford. I think Ronald Reagan was better. but the thing that, I guess the one thing that, really made me u- upset with, President Ford was pardoning Richard Nixon. I was driving my car on the highway when I heard the news, and I immediately got off the highway because I don't like to drive when I'm angry. and until I calmed down and then went again because of course what it said was there are people out there who don't, you know, who are essentially above the law. I think that is the worst thing you can do. Yes, the country would have... I don't know, I don't know how much the country would have been put through an impeachment of Nixon, because he didn't have that many fans at that point. but the idea that some people can commit th- these crimes, because I suspect that had Nixon been, convicted and served a little jail time, I suspect that, Clinton might have wa- watched his step a lot, a lot more carefully.

President Ford.

they had a vacancy. It was, it was 1976, and they offered it to me, and I agreed to take it on condition that, if there's any opposition, arises, they let me know. I'll withdraw because I don't have time to play Washington games. And, I kept calling there and asking the guy at the White House who's handling this, is there any pro-- I don't hear anything. What's going on? And he said, "Oh, no, it's just taking time." Eventually, I was in Washington, so I went up to the Hill and talked to the, s- the, staffer of this committee that handled this. And, he said, "We've gone over your record with a fine-tooth comb. We can find nothing to object to, and therefore, we're just not gonna hold hearings because this is an election year. We expect our guy's gonna be elected, and he'll appoint his own man." What burned me was that he said-- And I, and I said, "Did you tell the White House this?" He said, "We told the White House this months ago." And I went back to the guy at the White House, and I said, "I just talked to this fellow on the Hill, and either he's lying or you're lying. Which is it?" And he started hemming and hawing, and I turned and walked out. I sent them a one li- one-line, withdrawal letter from the hotel on hotel stationary, and I... that was the end of it.

No. My gosh, no.

Stuff like this is one reason that... You know, Harry Truman said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." And, anyone who's asked my opinion about going to Washington to serve in government, I can't think of anyone I said that they should do it Some people have, credited me with having some, influence with Clarence Thomas. I obviously don't, because I told him when he was at the EEOC and he was looking around what he was gonna do next, I said, "Get out of Washington and stay out of Washington." So he wouldn't even be where he is if he'd listened to me.

No idea. I mean, I know less about Washington politics than I know about anything else.

Oh, there would be the, there would be the usual kind of, cheap shot reruns of the conf- confirmation hearings. I would think he would probably get confirmed, and I... It'll be great for the, for the, for the court. I'm not sure how it will be great for him or not.

Oh, my gosh. I sure must run into a dozen or two.

Born in Gastonia, North Carolina, a little town about 15 miles from Charlotte, which were my earliest memories are of Charlotte. moved up to Harlem and, when I was eight years old. went on the... And went to, down to Washington in 1950, worked as a GS2 clerk for the government. Came back to New York, was drafted into the Marine Corps, couple of years there. off back to Washington, went to Howard University at night on the, GI Bill while I was working for the government at day. And then, decided I would app- I wasn't getting anywhere intellectually. I thought, "This is not gonna make it here." And so I started writing away to places, and the only place that would, give me any money was Harvard, so it was my fallback place. And, I really appreciated the way they, they, they were, the frankness they had, 'cause they wrote to me first that you should not withdraw from where you are, because chances are you will not be admitted. And which is, which is, you know, I was a 24-year-old high school dropout who had a B-minus average at a mediocre college, and so they know. and so, but they said, "But we'll wait to see what the test results were." And so, and a couple of days before I took the SATs, Columbia sent me their rejection. and I took the SATs. I did very well on it. And so the letter came back, and it said, "I'm not sure we're doing you a favor," because by then the scholarship money was gone anyway. "But you're admitted." And in those days you couldn't give a transfer student a scholarship, and so they would simply lend me some money, and I then would have to come up with the rest of it to cover that first year, betting everything that I would do well enough the first year that there would be a second year. And as I look back on it now, I know so much more about the situation and the odds. I realize that was an incredible gamble.

Never. And so what I, what I, when I've taught at some of these expensive places like Cornell and Amherst, I've sometimes told the students, "Do you realize your parents are paying all this money for you to be taught by a dropout?"

Economics.

Columbia in economics.

in economics from the University of Chicago.

Yes.

Well, I guess everything, but, he taught price theory, and,... But I guess it really... Well, what he, what he taught was, rigorous methods of thinking. and that, and that, and that, that's, that's a legacy. That's something I appreciated at the time, and more so as time has gone on. I remember one of the questions he asked on an exam was, "Define marginal revenue." Now, that's a question you would ask in Economics one, you see. And so I thought, "Well, nobody got full credit for the answer." I was lucky to be one of the few that got partial credit because there are all kinds of sloppy ways of defining marginal revenue, which then leads you into all kinds of fallacies. and so you learn, know you define it the way it ought to be, and that way you avoid a whole mess of stuff that you don't want to get into

Yes.

Well, the, m- my point was that all the huge advances in technology really don't make up for, for, for the talent that you either have or don't have. And so, right now, my favorite picture, that I've ever taken, was taken with a Speed Graphic, the last one of which was manufactured 30-some years ago. I took the picture last, last June in Yosemite, and it's on my website if you wanna take a look. It's Half Dome. but here is this camera that n- hasn't been made in 30 years. And, it's not the camera, it's not the equipment, it's the photographer.

My assistant. I have no idea. I have no idea what it costs, how it's done, or anything. I simply turn it over to her.

Well, because so many of them do. I think, just, just to give one example, the, boxers who do all the show-offing and the carrying on. I mean, I'm old enough to remember Joe Louis. I mean, Joe Louis conducted himself with dignity. He came out there, he fought his fight, he spoke like a gentleman, and he left. I, when, you know, when Jim Brown scored a touchdown, he didn't act like a teenager, out there in the end zone. He scored his touchdown, he went on back to the bench. And so the, that kind of thing. And then of course the steroids thing is just, it turns my stomach, because obviously if some people take steroids, other people have to take steroids if they, if they wanna compete. And worse yet, younger people who will never make the major leagues are gonna take steroids, and they'll pay the price and never collect the benefits.

Well, did I say that? I re- It's probably true.

For some people who can do it. I mean, I w- I wish certainly I could have homeschooled my children. I had too m- I, there was no way I could do it, circumstances.

Two.

40 and, 35.

Yes.

I've, I don't, never discuss where they live.

Oh my gosh, yes. - Because, you can imagine how the apprehension and the running to the specialist and the examining for this, examining for that, and all the people who say he's retarded and so on. And, when I wrote that column, people began writing to me around, from around the country with kids who were just like that. and the net result, I ended up, setting up a group of parents of late talking children that grew to about 55 families. and then I studied w- patterns I found in them and wrote a couple of books about that, and now there's a man down at Vanderbilt who's, doing further research on this.

Not that I know of. well, like so many pe- people, you know, a l- lot of the parents years later will say, "Now I can't get him to shut up."

That's right. Teller. All these people that I, that I learned about, by the way, I made no effort, systematic effort to find them. I found out about El- Edward Teller because my assistant went to the fax machine to fax the cover of the b- book Late Talking Children, and Teller's assistant was there, and she said, "Oh my gosh, Dr. Teller did... Talk late." And then we looked it up and found out that he was four years old before he said anything.

I've only done it once. it was to Dan Rather, and it was the forged documents. But, it goes back long before the forged documents. earlier, Dan Rather had a broadcast in '93, if I remember correctly, wh- where he said that one out of eight children in America was going to bed hungry tonight. And I went back and looked up the original study. I mean, there's, there's few things more disillusioning than looking up original studies. And it was utter nonsense from that, from that study. The study wasn't that great itself, but the, to conclude that one out of eight kids in this country are going to bed hungry at night, when in fact obesity is higher in the lower income brackets than in the higher brackets, was just a madness.

I don't.

No.

mean, I was, I've, I've probably been interviewed on s- on some of them, but, no, I've had no connection with

I guess they do too much spinning and too little reporting, and they're too one-sided. For example, the feeding frenzy about George Bush's, National Guard service during last year's election. Absolutely nothing about, the fact that John Kerry's, honorable discharge is da- is, dated years after his service was over, and it was dated during the Carter administration when there was a program which upgraded thousands of less than honorable discharges. I don't know what his discharge was like because he has never signed the same form that Bush signed, so we will ne- probably never know. But at, at the very least, it's worth asking why doesn't he le- open up the records? But they were on Bush all the time. He said, "Here's the record." you know, it's that kind of thing that, troubles me.

Yes.

there are very few programs on which you can say anything at a, at a length and in a way, that will get across what you're saying, and there are too many where you come on for... And they tape you for half an hour, and they put you on for three minutes, and then they put other people on after you saying things against you that you never have a chance to answer. And it just is not a forum in which to really, get across what you want to say.

Not that I know of, but of course, we'll never know. however, I do recall one book of mine that was, on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list when I was in Russia. I came back and went on a book tour, and it fell off the list

I have no idea. Everything will probably depend on who the people are who, succeed the big three. But the general trend towards giving the, giving the three big networks less and less of the market I think is a good trend because I don't think they've used their monopoly, responsibly.

hmm. Yes. I hear people say, "I don't understand why, you know, this c- company, CEO makes all this money. The government should do something about it." or they say, you know, "The pharmaceutical companies spend more on re- on re- on advertising than on research, and the government should stop that." And I, I remember writing back to one of these guys and say, "Well, what n- what facts do you have? What expertise do you have? What anything do you have that enables you to say how much advertising and how much research somebody else should be doing in a field that you have n- no knowledge of?" But I think it's, it's one of the sad signs, I think, of our educational system. We have people who really don't know very much about anything, who nevertheless feel entitled to, as they say, "I have, I have a right to my opinion." Well, hey, I wouldn't deny them that. It's just that they think that the government has, a duty to make their opinion law.

The judges were already involved in it. The only question is, which judges, and which law, and how well were they carrying out their duties. And that, I think, I think that when the state judges are doing things that, it seems to me go against the state law, there's, there's an argument for having the federal judges take a look at it.

involvement." That's right. What do you think of that? And I think they, I think they did that, ignoring the... 'cause I got a copy of the law that Congress passed, and it says they should look at this de novo. They should not simply review this, as appellate courts do, just to see if the trial judge behaved legally. They should look at it de novo to see whether the merits of the case are what they are. And they never looked at it de novo. As one of the dissenting judges pointed out, that this case, the merits have never been litigated in a federal court. and so all these people who count how many judges were involved are totally misleading.

No.

Oh, gosh. - All kinds of alternatives, cer- certainly, limited terms. And I think the judges who clearly disobey the explicit words that are quite well, easily understood should be impeached and removed a few ti- Let that happen a few times and people... I think, I think for example of the, of the, the Weber case back in 1979, where Brennan rendered the decision that was just directly the opposite of what the law said, and, Rehnquist in his dissent said, you know, this reminds him of the great escapes of Houdini. I think that someone like that should be impeached and removed. That, you know, you don't pass laws to have somebody else do the opposite of what the law says.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That we're, that we've reached the point where, there are great numbers of people who don't argue in terms of what your facts are. They argue, "Well, then your motivation must be wrong. You lack compassion, for the poor," et cetera, et cetera.

hmm.

Probably, it may be the most important, because there are so many misconceptions about racial and ethnic issues that, just straightening out the misconceptions is a major task in itself. I don't e- I don't reach any kind of policy conclusions in this book because, as I say, that it's just a, it's a full-time job to get the facts straightened out.

Well, I've found that, people do an awful lot of twisting of what you say, when you, what, when what you have actually said goes completely against what they've believed for a long time and wanna continue to believe. And so they, they go off on all kinds of tangents. and, what I find is that happens with intellectuals much more so than with the general public. Whereas I can write a column in a newspaper aimed at the general public, and there'll be extremely few misunderstandings of what I said. I can say the same things in a book that's aimed at intellectuals, and there'll be incredible twists and turning. "Well, you seem to say this further than that." I remember one huge, review, trying to figure out the implications of ethnic America. and, what made it a farce was that the last chapter of the book is titled Implications, so you don't have to guess what the implications I drew. They're right there. But I strongly suspect the person who wrote the review never got that far.

Yes. Because, again, I've seen that the, the clever people will do that. And, so I write for the people who are, the general public, and for those intellectuals who are honest. And the rest of them, I write them off

These would be Blacks who came out of the Southern culture and who carried that culture with them, north into the, into the urban ghettos and into the ghettos of the South for that matter. and who have not moved out of that culture since. Over the, over the years, both Blacks and whites have moved away from that culture. But in the poorest and worst of the ghetto areas, there are lots of people who have not. And these kinds... it's a, it's a culture which didn't do whites any good, and it's certainly not doing Blacks any good today. And the tragedy is that people regard this culture as somehow the authentic Black culture, and therefore you're not to interfere with it. It's to be allowed to... And so they're cheering people on. It reminds me of a scene in The Blue Max where this general is encouraging this daredevil pilot to do all kinds of wild stunts, you see, knowing that the guy's gonna kill himself if he keeps doing this, and therefore the general will be rid of a, of a political problem. now I don't think that the white liberals are doing this deliberately, but I think the net result's the same. They are cheering Blacks on in doing things that are absolutely self-destructive.

Color

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. and same kind of results. one of the things I point out in this book is that, you know, as late as the First World War, when, mental tests were given in the army, there were whites from any number of southern states who scored lower on those tests than Blacks from northern states. So that anyone who comes out of that culture is likely to score lower on mental tests, to do less well in intellectual areas, whether they're Black or white.

having... Well, I was 50 years old when I came to the Hoover Institution, so it was not I was a, a young lad, fresh out of school. And, I grew up in far worse poverty than most people, today, who are considered to be in poverty.

Those kinds of people who have the kinds of attitudes that are called liberal in the United States, although the word is misused. but, you know, Ted Kennedy, in politics, any number of people in the, in the, in the media among the intel-intellect-intelligentsia, Larry Tribe in the law and so on. and, those people have created an atmosphere in which, these counterproductive cultures are to be celebrated, perpetuated, and the consequences overlooked.

Color

Yes.

Yes.

hmm.

Well, this book is really about ethnic and cultural issues in general. So there's a chapter on the Jews, there's a chapter on the Germans, and then there's a chapter on history in general. So that's, they're, they're lumped together because they're all cultural, ethnic issues. and, we move on to the Jews simply because it's, it's, it's a fascinating story because among the, the middleman minorities, of which the Jews are the most prominent, the hostility to these people in countries around the world is out of all proportion to that, to any other kind of group I can think of. in terms of violence, the vi- the number of, Black... the number of Chinese killed, let's say, in one year, and by mob action exceeds all the Blacks lynched in the entire history of the United States. And the number of Armenians killed in, r- in Turkey, you know, during the First World War is greater than that. And of course, the number of Jews slaughtered on a number of occasions in history, even before the Holocaust, is greater than that. So the question is, why this particular kind of people are the targets of so much, s- venomous hatred? And I think the answer is that, they s- not, they just not only succeed, they succeed in a way which is a threat to the egos of other people. That is n- now, you can envy a Rockefeller, but he's no threat to your ego because you say, "Listen, anybody can be rich if he's born a Rockefeller." But the guy who c- comes here, let's say from Vietnam or Korea, and arrives here with little more than the clothes on his back and a few word broken, words of broken English, and a decade later, he has his own little business, and you see his son a few years after that getting ready to go off to Harvard or MIT, you gotta ask yourself, you either gotta, you know, you, you've gotta hate yourself for saying, "My God, I've s- I've been stagnating. This guy was nothing, and now he's risen up," or you're gonna have to hate him. And most people, when they have a choice between hating others and hating themselves, they hate others.

Number of places, but, they are people who, who have be- who have succeeded an awful lot in the midst of other people who have not. Years ago, one, official of one of the Jewish organizations in New York asked me, "Well, what can Jews themselves do, in order to minimize the hostility they face?" I gave him a one-word answer, "Fail," because as long as you succeed, you're gonna be hated.

It's not only the success Starting in poverty, as the Jews did in the United States and in other, many other countries. and so they, you not only see them succeed, you see them rise up, from the bottom past other people, and the people they pass don't like it. But there's also the fact that the role they play economically is, has never been understood. it's, it, you know, they're middlemen or they're money lenders, and the argument is they're really not producing anything. You can't see anything tangible that they s- they don't stand at a production line churning out widgets. and so the argument is that they are, they're not producing anything, they're simply gratuitously inserting themselves between the producer and the consumer, and they're parasites, essentially. And this argument has been made, again, not only about the Jews, but about similar groups around the world. And a number of places they have, expelled those people or forced them out by mob actions, forced them to flee. And after they've left, the economy has collapsed. But it never teaches the lesson that no, they were doing something.

Yes.

it'll be in the footnote. I've read so much stuff, I can't pinpoint it. But what it means to me is that, among other things, that there, it's one of many examples of groups that are wholly disproportionately represented in particular areas. And it shows what a farce it is that, intellectuals and even the courts think it is something remarkable when there's ex- some group is X percent of the population, but Y percent of the people in this profession or that institution. That's true all around the world, and it's not just Jews, it's Germans, it's Japanese, it's you name it. You turn on television, there's Blacks in basketball. You know, you just run everywhere. And yet despite this empirical reality that you simply can't escape, people are determined to believe that any time the groups aren't represented in proportion to the population, something s- strange must be going on.

you found? Oh my gosh, I don't know. That's the, that's the only re- really answer I can give you. I wrote a book about p- the assumptions from which people start, about assumptions about human beings in general. This is in a book called Conflict of Visions. And once you start with a certain conception of human beings, an awful lot of other things follow when you talk about justice, about power, about equality, about all sorts of other things, depending on what your, f- assumption about the nature of man.

Oh, wow. Wow.

It could go, it could go either way. I- If the current trends continue, it's gonna be a disaster. but there's evidences that the current trends are not unchallenged. people from time to time ask me to mention some Black conservative writers. And I tell them, "You know, 30 years ago, I could have told you, Walter Williams and me." and today, I can't even keep track of them all. They're all over the place. They're in the media. They have their own, shows. They write columns. They write books. And I learn about them, you know, from nowhere they suddenly appear. So there is this, counter-trend going on, and everything depends upon which wins out in the end.

I have no way of knowing. You'd have to ask them. most of the people who,... Sometimes I'm credited with having influenced this person or that person. But, Walter Williams, for example, had arrived at the same conclusion that I had before I ever met him, and in fact, that was his wh- whole reason for wanting to meet me. so that you, you know, it's so easy to re- reconstruct these things to fit some notion. but it's, it's what I call putting two and two together and getting seven, that, yeah, Wa- Walt had his own ideas before I ever came along.

Not really. the biggest change... Well, I guess at one time, Marx, y- if you'd asked me in my 20s, it would've been Mar- Karl Marx. But the change from that was not brought about by reading someone else, it was about from experiences that I had and things that I learned as time went on.

Oh, working for the Labor Department in the summer of 1960 and discovering, one, that there was plenty of evidence that the minimum wage was in fact costing people their jobs, and more than that, discovering that the people in the Labor Department really were not interested in that. Because the minimum wage, m- administration of the minimum wage was taking, supplying one-third of the money that was keeping the Labor Department going. So for me, the question was it helpful or not? And for th- them the question was, are we gonna really,... I can remember the s- the sense of consternation when I suggested an empirical test of this. that a- as if, you know, "My God, this man has stumbled upon something that could ruin us all," you know? And I, once I realized that, I realized that institutions have their own agendas and their own incentives, and they, and what they were set up to do really do- is not controlling.

Yes. '

Yes.

No, because I couldn't get... I was supposed to write a doctoral dissertation on this, and I tried to get the data, and the data simply are not there. I mean, it's... To get data that are, that are truly relevant, i- i- is, is, very hard in many cases. I mean, you can always get some numbers, throw them together, and come up with a conclusion. But if you're serious, you'll find that there are very few sources that have, gonna have good data.

Oh, you would, you would see a, first of all, a mess in the office. -

Home. And you'd see me at the computer with my Windows 95, and, just struggling with stuff, that's all.

I have no schedule because I have no classes, I have no office hours, and so on. And so it's whenever. And so, around, oh, I guess around 2:00 this morning I was working. But at, 8:30 this morning I was fast asleep.

Often, there really is no schedule

I watch television, selectively. I watch, news and public affairs programs, some of them. and I watch sports. I haven't, I haven't watched ABC News, for example, in decades.

not a lot since then, in those same decades. I mean, ev- ever since, ever since the invasion of Grenada, and, ABC News featured a f- a story about how American soldiers landing in Grenada were wearing the wrong kind of uniforms. I thought that was really not the significance of the Grenada invasion

Yes.

slavery? That slavery was much bigger and involved infinitely more people than the people have realized. It was not confined by race. It was not defined by race or created by race. It existed for thousands of years. a history professor, w- had a student come up to him and ask him, "Well, when did slavery begin?" And he said, "You're asking the wrong question. The question is when did freedom begin?" Because slavery existed as long as we have any records. And i- and from archeolo- archeological finds, we f- we realize that people were enslaving other people before they could read and write. So i- that's always existed, and it's existed all over the world. The number of white people enslaved by pirates in North Africa was greater than the number of Africans brought to the United States. You know, and yet, that's not, that's n- that, that's not e- even mentioned in my, most of the discussions. So I try to look at slavery as a worldwide phenomenon, and it's something that's lasted for thousands of years. And I also try to ask the question: Why did it end? It ended here because of a civil war, but it didn't end anywhere else because of that. i- it took over 100 years to, to root it out. And again, the literature, there's tons you can find. There's sh- shelves groaning with books about the United States, the Western Hemisphere and Africans, but v- virtually nothing about the rest of it. This book about the, Europeans enslaved by North African pirates came out in 2003. By 2004, you couldn't find a copy. It had, for all practical purposes, gone out of print. There was just no interest in it.

Well, I guess I want them to understand what the facts are, which, you know, is a m- is a, is a major undertaking in itself. and also realize that, racism in the United States grew out of slavery, but slavery didn't grow out of racism. That Europeans enslaved other s- Europeans for centuries before the first African was ever brought to the West Hemisphere. That wherever there were people who were vulnerable for whatever reason, those were the people that were preyed upon, even though in m- for most of history, the, those who enslaved and those who, were slaves were the same race.

Not really. i- no.

No, I, I guess, I don't know even the names of my grandparents.

On both, on both sides. partly it's because I, I'm an, I'm an orphan, and, so that there was... That link was cut. But I, but I really don't know the names of the, of the grandpa- who, people who would be my grandparents in the adoptive pa- family either.

No, I have no... No, I, my father died before I was born. and, I, my, I, my mother, heavens, I was so young that I have no memory whatever of her

Yes.

No, the Germans were not more racist than other people. All the evidence that I was able to find was that in general, they tended to be less racist, not only towards Jews, but towards Blacks in the United States, towards the American Indians, and towards the Aborigines in Australia. And what, so that, the, the really chilling conclusion I draw from that is, if what happened in Ger- in Germany could happen among Germans, it could happen anywhere, and none of us should feel safe.

Yes. I guess the crucial fact in that is that, in 1899, there was a Black high school in Washington which scored higher on mental tests than two of the three white high schools.

Dunbar. And, 100 years later, it would be considered utopian to even set that as a goal. And the question is, how did this happen? Why did it happen? And why is there so little interest in it? And, the latter especially just is very troubling because, I first began writing about Dunbar 30 some years ago, because people were saying how terrible the, you know, the education of Black kids was. And the question is, "Well, what can we do?" And the answer, I said, "Well, Black kids have already been educated successfully. We don't have to speculate and come up with esoteric theories and so on." and I published this, and I found that there was virtually no interest among edu- among educators or politicians or intellectuals, and the few who had any, took any interest at all were concerned to discredit what was said because it went so completely counter to what they already believed.

It was destroyed almost overnight academically by a reorganization of the school system.

One, you get rid of the things that are dragging them down. You stop saying that speaking Black English, you know, is just as valid and all that kind of stuff. It may be just as valid to linguists and so forth, but the fact is, if you talk that way, you're not likely to get into med school. You're not likely to do very much in your life.

Well, I ke- I keep saying that I'm going to, slack it off, but, this only brings, howls of derision from my friends and family.

They claim I can't do it, but, I'm, I'm gonna see if I can slack it off.

No. heavens, I mean, I mean, there are days I wake up thinking, feel- feeling this, like I'm 19 again, but, usually by the end of the day, something has happened to remind me that I am not 19 again.

Thank you for having me.