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The Threat People Like Obama and Neil deGrasse Tyson Pose to America __ Thomas Sowell · Gil I Am

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Speaker 1: The vision of the annoying it self. Congratulations is a
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Speaker 1: basic for social policy. I mean you positive here that
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Speaker 1: they're a group of self annointed elitists who are responsible
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Speaker 1: for what in America.
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Speaker 2: Well, for much of the social policy of the past
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Speaker 2: thirty years, and for the disastrous consequences that have followed
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Speaker 2: from those policies.
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Speaker 3: And who are these people, Well.
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Speaker 2: There'd be people in the media, in the academic world,
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Speaker 2: and in politics, particularly those who believe that third parties
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Speaker 2: can make better decisions than people can make for themselves,
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Speaker 2: and particularly when they are those third parties. I think
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Speaker 2: most people who have not been in the academic world
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Speaker 2: would have to see the academics in action to realize
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Speaker 2: how deeply they believe this. I can remember a conference
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Speaker 2: at Middlebury College some years ago in which they were
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Speaker 2: laying out these plans for how they would manipulate the
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Speaker 2: poor in order to get them to do this, to
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Speaker 2: do that to the other than I said, who are
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Speaker 2: we to be running these people's lives? And they looked
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Speaker 2: at me as if I were a man from Mars
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Speaker 2: speaking the language they had never heard before.
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Speaker 1: Do you therefore believe I mean this is almost you know,
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Speaker 1: university kind of debate. Do you therefore believe that the
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Speaker 1: government has no responsibility for those less fortunate than ourselves.
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Speaker 1: If free enterprise they cannot find a place in the
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Speaker 1: market economy.
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Speaker 2: Well, there are many things the government can do. I
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Speaker 2: think the most important thing they can do is maintain
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Speaker 2: a framework of law in which people do, in fact find.
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Speaker 3: Jobs and find progress.
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Speaker 2: After all, this is not a hypothetical question, is if
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Speaker 2: this situation has never come up before. I mean, you
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Speaker 2: look at the entire history of the United States, I
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Speaker 2: mean the United States that I've become a prosperous country
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Speaker 2: only after the New Deal. I mean history didn't begin
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Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties or even in the nineteen thirties.
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Speaker 3: And you look at the history of.
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Speaker 2: Blocks, for that matter, you know that the blocks have
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Speaker 2: come a very long way long before the first civil
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Speaker 2: rights law was past in.
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Speaker 3: Nineteen in the nineteen sixties.
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Speaker 2: In fact, in the five years prior to the Civil
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Speaker 2: Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, blocks rose into professional
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Speaker 2: and similar occupations to a greater extent than in the
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Speaker 2: five years afterwards.
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Speaker 1: So you would have even if you were if you
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Speaker 1: look back now m as an economist and then and
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Speaker 1: in some ways as a historian at the civil rights
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Speaker 1: legislation that was passed in sixty four sixty five. Uh,
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Speaker 1: and through the Great Society you and in terms of
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Speaker 1: voting rights as well, you would say those laws, those
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Speaker 1: civil rights laws were unnecessary, a counterproductive.
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Speaker 2: Oh no, no, and oh had you had to get
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Speaker 2: rid of the gym crow system, you had to have
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Speaker 2: throw a vote, had to have voting rights, and so on.
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Speaker 2: But I remember back in nineteen sixty four writing to
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Speaker 2: a friend, as the Civil Rights Act of sixty four
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Speaker 2: was being bought out in Congress, that I hope this
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Speaker 2: law would pass with absolutely no crippling amendments exactly as
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Speaker 2: it was written, because, among other some good things in it.
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Speaker 3: But one was one reason.
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Speaker 2: But the other reason was that I was convinced that
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Speaker 2: they would not have the effect that they thought it
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Speaker 2: would have. And that one and where what I assumed,
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Speaker 2: very incorrectly was that once people saw that, yes, this
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Speaker 2: would break down the gym crow system, it would not
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Speaker 2: cause any traumatic improvement in the economic condition of black people,
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Speaker 2: that you know, and that people would then say, no,
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Speaker 2: now we have to turn to something else in order
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Speaker 2: to do that. And I was completely wrong about that.
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Speaker 2: That when when when it didn't produce that result, they said, well,
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Speaker 2: it just shows we need more of the same, which
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Speaker 2: is which is the old argument. You know, we try
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Speaker 2: policy X and it absolutely goes nowhere. We need stronger
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Speaker 2: policy X.
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Speaker 1: This argument has been I'm sure voice to you before
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Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas benefited from affirmative acts. He said so, Clarence
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Speaker 1: Thomas says, so, I bet no, he doesn't.
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Speaker 3: No, he does not.
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Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas does not say that that affirmative action programs
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Speaker 1: helped him in terms of the educational opportunity.
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Speaker 3: He never said to me.
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Speaker 1: You believe he do you think he would say no.
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Speaker 3: To that question? He might.
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Speaker 2: Well, for one thing, I for one thing. My understanding,
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Speaker 2: and I haven't researched it. My understanding is that he
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Speaker 2: was admitted to college the year before they began their
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Speaker 2: affirmative action program. I don't know and what and what
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Speaker 2: and I'm what the program did was to delegitimize what
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Speaker 2: he had done. That he had he was a man
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Speaker 2: with outstanding the academic record.
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Speaker 1: Uh.
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Speaker 2: And he and he goes out into the job market
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Speaker 2: and people and despite this.
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Speaker 1: And the look at him and they say, you got
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Speaker 1: there only because they're from the because of your own mariage.
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Speaker 2: Where ordinarily someone with that kind of record you'd look
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Speaker 2: at it and say, this guy is really a world beater.
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Speaker 2: But no, and I've seen that in my own life.
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Speaker 2: I'm old enough that I can ive going through the
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Speaker 2: whole metamorphous and what have you seen in your own life?
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Speaker 3: All right?
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Speaker 2: When I was in the in the Marine Corps and
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Speaker 2: then this during the Korean War, I was trained as
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Speaker 2: a photographer, and I was signed to Campus U in
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Speaker 2: North Carolina, where a great many of Southerners. When in
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Speaker 2: the Marine Corps, white Southerners, and in that barracks, whenever
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Speaker 2: somebody had a photographic problem, this camera wasn't working, his
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Speaker 2: pictures didn't come out right, and so forth they would
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Speaker 2: come to me. I was astonished. The most biggest redneck
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Speaker 2: in the barricks.
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Speaker 3: Would come to me.
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Speaker 2: They asked me, and there were all these white photographers
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Speaker 2: in my camera. Yeah, you say, why is this? And
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Speaker 2: I finally figured it out. They said, you know, if
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Speaker 2: this guy is black and he's a photographer, he must
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Speaker 2: be some photographer.
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Speaker 3: You Now.
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Speaker 2: When I started teaching in the night early nineteen sixties
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Speaker 2: at the Douglas College, I read up on all this
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Speaker 2: stuff about new teachers, you seeing how it's hard to
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Speaker 2: get the respect of the students, particularly if you're not
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Speaker 2: much older than they are. And I look younger than
5:13
Speaker 2: I was, and so I worried about that, you see.
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Speaker 2: And I walked in that room the first day and
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Speaker 2: it was instant respect, and you know, it sort of
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Speaker 2: took me aback and I realized, no, no, they're there.
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Speaker 2: They're saying, look this guy, I was the first black
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Speaker 2: male to teach there. This guy must be something else.
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Speaker 3: You know.
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Speaker 2: Go forward now ten years. By this time, I've completed
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Speaker 2: my degree, I've written my books, journal life, all the
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Speaker 2: whole thing. I'm now teaching at UCLA, and students will
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Speaker 2: come up to me at the end of the term.
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Speaker 2: They'll say how much they like the course and all that,
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Speaker 2: and somewhere in the course of that, they'll be a
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Speaker 2: slip up and they'll let it, let it out that
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Speaker 2: they were quite surprised that the course was as good
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Speaker 2: as it was. And one of the things that struck
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Speaker 2: me even before the end of the term, one kid
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Speaker 2: came to me one day and he had a passage
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Speaker 2: in the book he was having trouble with, and he said,
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Speaker 2: can you tell me what this means.
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Speaker 3: And I had explained to him what that past. He said,
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Speaker 3: are you sure? And I said yes, I wrote the
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Speaker 3: textbook and he.
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Speaker 2: Looked in the front. He's really embarrassed. But this is
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Speaker 2: what affirmative action has done, you see.
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Speaker 1: So you can't see any positive I'm sure contributed out
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Speaker 1: affirmative action that in fact, it increased the pool as
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Speaker 1: you know, as frequently used the expression of what affirmative
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Speaker 1: action can do is increase the pool of I don't know.
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Speaker 2: What that means, and I've never had anybody explain it
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Speaker 2: to me. I've studied afirmative action in this country, in
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Speaker 2: India and Malaysia, you know, in Sri Lanka, in Nigeria
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Speaker 2: they have they have some version of it in Israel.
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Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna explain it as we explained to me.
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Speaker 1: It is the notion of it. Let's a manualand missions
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Speaker 1: committee at Harvard, and you're going to choose so many people.
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Speaker 1: You're going to let people in for a variety of reasons.
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Speaker 1: One is sheer academic merit. They scored sixteen hundred on
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Speaker 1: their college boards. That's a good entry. They've got a
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Speaker 1: brilliant academic and athletic background, and they happen to be
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Speaker 1: a virtue so violent player and the violent player helps.
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Speaker 1: Or let's say they come from Nevada. They don't have
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Speaker 1: a lot of Nevada at Harvard. And let's also say
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Speaker 1: that they are come from Sri Lanka. They don't have
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Speaker 1: many people from Sri Lanka there. And let's also say
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Speaker 1: that that they also are African American and that that
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Speaker 1: ought to be a factor.
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Speaker 3: In choosing from that pool.
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Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the colorations.
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Speaker 3: Because what.
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Speaker 1: Because diversity of a student body, it is a healthy factor.
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Speaker 2: I'm fascinated with the extent of which words were conditioned
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Speaker 2: to react like Pavlov's dog to words.
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Speaker 3: I hear diversity. Someone was asking that, don't make me look.
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Speaker 3: Someone today who was.
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Speaker 2: A trustee of a college was saying that they were
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Speaker 2: going to pick a new college. Professor I said, what
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Speaker 2: you should do is have a stop watch there and
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Speaker 2: just count how long it is till each of the
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Speaker 2: contestants says the word diversity. And the guy who says that,
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Speaker 2: you know, he's thirty five minutes into the interview, and
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Speaker 2: the other guy who says that, you know, the first sentence,
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Speaker 2: the guy who said takes thirty five minutes. He should
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Speaker 2: be at the top of the list. The guy who
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Speaker 2: said at the first should be at the bottom.
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Speaker 1: Because the question what's wrong with diversity?
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Speaker 3: I don't get the point. My point is that this
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Speaker 3: is a word that has become magic.
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Speaker 2: What does it mean? If anything? Are you saying to
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Speaker 2: me that all black people are alike? Therefore you've got
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Speaker 2: to mix and match by race. It's not diverse unless
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Speaker 2: it's diverse along behacen.
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Speaker 1: See what I'm saying. I'm saying that I think there
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Speaker 1: would be different to have people of different kinds of experiences.
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Speaker 1: And me mentioned Sri Lanka, didn't we and you know,
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Speaker 1: and they'd be interesting to have some people.
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Speaker 3: With an Asian back.
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Speaker 1: Wait, wait, an Asian back in African American people that.
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Speaker 3: Come from.
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Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue as well as from Henderson,
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Speaker 1: North Carolina, all of that would make a healthy student body.
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Speaker 1: You mean, I don't think everybody ought to come from
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Speaker 1: the sons of.
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Speaker 3: Harvard graduates.
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Speaker 2: All right, my daughters, Butler, they're not always the best student,
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Speaker 2: But all right, that all even I think that that
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Speaker 2: doesn't make it.
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Speaker 3: I have slipped my point there for for a minute.
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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you have thought long and hard about
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Speaker 1: this and much longer than I have, and.
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Speaker 3: You bring it. But that's the theory.
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Speaker 2: That's the theory, and unfortunately, unfortunately the facts are quite different.
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Speaker 3: It places like Harvard and Stanford and Cornell. What you have.
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Speaker 2: What you have is the black son of the black
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Speaker 2: doctor who lived in the same neighborhood with the white
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Speaker 2: son of the white doctor. And now you're giving me
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Speaker 2: diversity because these two people it's.
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Speaker 1: Not necessarily they have scholarships that they offered to kids.
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Speaker 2: But now we're gonna wait from the whole racial thing.
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Speaker 2: I'm saying, the racial thing has been used as a
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Speaker 2: proxy for something that is not a proxy for because
9:47
Speaker 2: the vast majority of blacks who go to places like
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Speaker 2: Harvard and Cornell and Stanford are not blacks from the ghetto.
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Speaker 2: Those are blacks from out there. You know, they're from Malibu.
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Speaker 2: You know, they're from Pacific Palisades. Uh, they're from good and.
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Speaker 3: Then they're from the very same neighborhoods.
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Speaker 2: They're from the very same neighborhoods as the whites are
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Speaker 2: there and so and so, now you call it diversely
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Speaker 2: because you see something with the naked.
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Speaker 1: All right, let me make a couple of the points
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Speaker 1: because I'm gonna wave ahead of myself here. Uh do
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Speaker 1: you think that the era of these uh social engineers
10:19
Speaker 1: from whatever establishment they come from, media, academia, government is over?
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Speaker 3: No?
10:24
Speaker 2: I wish it were. I think they're going to go
10:27
Speaker 2: under ground. They're gonna hunk it down. And and when
10:29
Speaker 2: when and then wait, wait.
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Speaker 1: Out the absolutely.
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Speaker 2: And we have people in the area and there among
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Speaker 2: among the Republicans, for example, who were I said, these
10:36
Speaker 2: things like this are like crab grass. You've got to
10:38
Speaker 2: root it out, not cut back on the appropriations for
10:40
Speaker 2: the national endownward.
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Speaker 3: If you're not gonna get.
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Speaker 1: Rid of it, you don't want to gut Come on,
10:44
Speaker 1: I mean you clearly don't want to gut.
10:46
Speaker 3: The do not. I want to destroy it entirely.
10:49
Speaker 2: If you I don't want to gut it, that's right,
10:52
Speaker 2: because it's liked to get public television as well.
10:55
Speaker 3: You got it.
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Speaker 1: But uh, well, you'll never appear on the jail again,
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Speaker 1: thank you very much.
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Speaker 3: I never have anyway. Oh no, But it's like crab grass.
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Speaker 2: These people are gonna hunker down and then they'll they'll
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Speaker 2: wait for the change the political thing and I say,
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Speaker 2: these guys are like somebody who's putting the lawn more
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Speaker 2: over crabs.
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Speaker 1: But these guys, you seem to be saying, are everywhere.
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Speaker 1: I mean these guys, I mean, I mean a minute,
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Speaker 1: but you're not talking about just bureaucrass you were saying.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you're saying it's the New York Times, it's CBO,
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Speaker 1: it's Harvard University, and the Yale faculty and U c
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Speaker 1: l A faculty, the Stanford faculty, all of them.
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Speaker 3: Oh. Absolutely.
11:36
Speaker 1: You know what amazes me is that you buy into
11:39
Speaker 1: these conspiracies like this.
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Speaker 3: It's conspiracy, not conspirs at all.
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Speaker 1: No people, these people, people somehow have come to a
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Speaker 1: power in the establishment and come to this like minded
11:54
Speaker 1: idea about.
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Speaker 2: Well that's happening many times, it's appointed and I don't
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Speaker 2: believe from And I think if people have harbored me
12:02
Speaker 2: wholly independently and sealed off from people from Stanford and
12:05
Speaker 2: they go into those committee rooms, they will come out
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Speaker 2: with the same kinds of policies because they went in
12:09
Speaker 2: with the same assumption.
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Speaker 1: And because their experiences you suggest, are essentially the same.
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Speaker 3: Probably, well, I don't know about that. I don't know
12:18
Speaker 3: about that.
12:18
Speaker 1: Then why do they come to the same conclusion.
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Speaker 3: Oh, because they operate under the same assumptions.
12:22
Speaker 1: And why do they have the same assumptions.
12:23
Speaker 3: For reasons which you can go back into history?
12:25
Speaker 1: Come on, why do they have the same asuming woman
12:27
Speaker 1: even go back in history?
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Speaker 2: Uh, this has been a set of assumptions that's been
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Speaker 2: very popular among intellectuals. What has happened in our time
12:33
Speaker 2: is that intellectuals have been taken much more seriously since
12:36
Speaker 2: the sixties than they were before. I think we're suffering
12:38
Speaker 2: the consequences of it. It's not the first time in
12:40
Speaker 2: history the intellectuals have been taken seriously and disasters have follow.
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Speaker 1: So we shouldn't have taken Milton Friedman seriously.
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Speaker 3: Milton Friedman as a very.
12:50
Speaker 1: Game and say, well, no, we shouldn't take intellectuals seriously then,
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Speaker 1: except those to think.
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Speaker 2: By seriously, I mean in the sense I should have
12:58
Speaker 2: clarified this and that they are exempted from the test
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Speaker 2: of facts.
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Speaker 3: Did it work?
13:03
Speaker 2: When I hear people come on the end and say
13:05
Speaker 2: these lofty things, I say to myself, show me where
13:08
Speaker 2: we've ever gotten better off listening to people like this?
13:11
Speaker 3: All right?
13:12
Speaker 2: I see these psychologists coming on too, how you raise
13:14
Speaker 2: your children? I said, how are children better today? Now
13:17
Speaker 2: that we've been listening to these people for thirty years?
13:20
Speaker 3: Are they happier? Are they more learned?
13:23
Speaker 2: You know, test goes go down, for neural disease goes up,
13:26
Speaker 2: suicide rates go up.
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Speaker 3: And what way are we better off for having listened
13:29
Speaker 3: to them?
13:29
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that you do engage a
13:32
Speaker 1: little bit in group dismissal, that you in a sense
13:35
Speaker 1: wave your hand and anybody saying that that each of
13:40
Speaker 1: these kinds of institutions or that there is not a
13:42
Speaker 1: group think in the institution.
13:46
Speaker 2: You tell me that that the group think someone that
13:49
Speaker 2: did a surveyed standard a couple of years ago, they
13:52
Speaker 2: found whole departments in which there was not one Republican.
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Speaker 1: Why then, why is it that on the Washington I mean,
13:58
Speaker 1: look at the editorial write the editorials, and under the
14:02
Speaker 1: bylines or for the paper of the Washington Post, you've
14:04
Speaker 1: got George Will there. And certainly what George Will says
14:07
Speaker 1: is different what David brother says. Certainly what Bill Sapphire
14:11
Speaker 1: says is quite different from what Tom Friedman says.
14:13
Speaker 3: From what absolutely Marine Dowd thinks.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, but there all of the New York Times.
14:19
Speaker 3: That's that's very true.
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Speaker 2: But the fact is that they are the exceptions. They
14:24
Speaker 2: are the exceptions, as Milton Freeman is.
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Speaker 1: Exceptions and only good guys are the exceptions and meaning
14:31
Speaker 1: gender free.
14:34
Speaker 2: But you use the word dismissal, that's not That's one
14:36
Speaker 2: of the words I latch you onto in the chapter
14:39
Speaker 2: about the vocabulary of the Anointed that whenever you reach
14:41
Speaker 2: a conclusion that is different from what from what they have,
14:44
Speaker 2: they say you've dismissed it.
14:46
Speaker 3: You can spend three volumes analyzing it, and at the
14:48
Speaker 3: end you're come up, the thing is wrong. Oh, you
14:50
Speaker 3: dismissed it. Many of the things the government and intellectuals
14:57
Speaker 3: call the crisis are not objectively worse than and other
15:00
Speaker 3: human conditions, and more often than not, the so called
15:03
Speaker 3: crisis has been improving on its own without government intervention,
15:08
Speaker 3: but of course has clearly pointed out any effort to
15:11
Speaker 3: point to the evidence that the situation is actually getting
15:13
Speaker 3: better and doesn't need government intervention. Although magically earns you
15:18
Speaker 3: the level of a denier or accused of being in
15:21
Speaker 3: dismissal if.
15:22
Speaker 2: You try to point out that the level of carbon
15:24
Speaker 2: dioxide is not as critical as the fearmongers make it appear.
15:28
Speaker 3: You're called the climate denier. If you simply point out
15:32
Speaker 3: that your own white blood cells are more than capable
15:35
Speaker 3: of fighting the flu, well you're called a v denier.
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Speaker 3: So in fact, as far as intellectuals or particularly the left,
15:43
Speaker 3: are concerned, you cannot think differently because to think differently,
15:47
Speaker 3: it's not exactly thinking differently, but it's denying the gospel
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Speaker 3: of the group. So it's either you go with the
15:54
Speaker 3: flu or you're an infidel. You let me know what
15:57
Speaker 3: you think about this in the comments below.
15:59
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16:03
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