A respected author and educator, Sowell is a magna cum laude graduate of
Harvard with a Masters in Economics from Columbia and a Doctorate in
Economics from the University of Chicago...............
....... here is his personal perspective.

Thomas Sowell is black and a highly regarded essayist.

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An Old Newness By Thomas Sowell Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his
long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits -- one hit away from the
landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which
relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official
scorer called it a hit, making it Waner's 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent
word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit
to be
the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself
and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number
3,000.
What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel
over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president,
just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th
hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that
we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.
Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a
President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball
record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet
unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and
ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president --
especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists
with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions,
like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.
The three leading candidates for their party's nomination are being
discussed in terms of their demographics -- race, sex and age -- as if
that is what the job is about.
One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is
discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the
presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of
responsibility that office carries.

Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate
courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, can have an
enormous impact for decades to come. There is no point feeling outraged
by things done by federal judges, if you vote on the basis of emotion
for those who appoint them. Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law.
He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried
as adults.
Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new
things -- using the mantra of 'change' endlessly -- the cold fact is
that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending,
promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are
productive and subsidizing those who are not -- all this is a re-run of the
1960s. We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that
followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation and
double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the
greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal
politicians, promoting grievances and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes -- including the
media magic of meetings between heads of state -- was tried during the
1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most
catastrophic war in human history.
Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too
ignorant of history to have heard about it.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of
Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.