The Ricochet Podcast - A Little Bit O' Sowell

Episode Date: September 9, 2016

This week, we’re lucky to be joined by the great Dr. Thomas Sowell, (buy his newly revised classic book Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective). The good doctor schools us on economics, school choice, and a particularly vivid metaphor for the current election cycle. Spoiler alert: those who fear flying may want to have their thumb on the 30 second skip button for that part of... Source

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Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. So you want to go up this road here and get to the roundabout. You take a left and then you go past Murphy's house. Do you know the Murphys? They're young lads, Sean. I think he's over in London now.

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and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. That's funny. I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Gabriel sitting in for Rob Long. Our guest today, Tom Sowell.

We needn't say anything else except let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 319. How did we get that far? Well, thanks to great sponsors like Trunk Club. Dress better, why don't you? Make it easy to look your best in clothes that fit you perfectly. Hand-picked by your own personal stylist. Go to trunkclub.com slash ricochet and look sharp. And we're brought to you by Casper Mattresses. Try Casper for 100 nights risk-free in your own personal stylist. Go to trunkclub.com slash ricochet and look sharp. And we're brought to you by Casper Mattresses.

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For a great shave like that at an even greater price, go to harrys.com and enter the coupon code Ricochet. And speaking of which, we are brought to you by that very entity itself. Usually, this is where Rob Logg intercedes and tells you all the things you should do to make Ricochet keep going. Since he's not here today, I'm going to tell you, you know the drill. You do because you've heard Rob say it. Basically, it's this. If you want to continue enjoying the nation's best center-right civil home for conversation, then go to Roche and sign up. Join. We're on a membership drive. We need to hit 1,500 members.

And there's all kind of coupon codes and stuff and deals and the rest of it that you'll find in the text of the post, which I'm sure Blue Yeti will add. But do Rob a favor and sign up. But do Rob a favor and sign up. And do Peter a favor and sign up. And me and everybody else, including John Gabriel, who's sitting in here for Rob today. Hey, John, how are you doing? Doing well. Doing well.

Excellent. Yes, Peter. Peter's joined. We're almost a third of the way to our goal. So check it out. Peter, you are there as well. I am here. I just unmuted myself.

I had a Hillary-esque coughing fit. Oh, no. We don't want that to happen. Are you worried about that in particular? Worried? About her health. Oh, no. I worry about my health incessantly.

Hypochondriac that I am. Worried about her health. Okay. So I had a conversation. This would be sometime within the last week with a friend of mine who is a medical doctor, a wonderful person. I've known him for 20 years. He's a Ricochet member. So he has a certain political outlook on things.

But I said, George, just absent politics, knowing what we know about her, what do you think? And his view was actually he'd like to see the medical records. There are some aspects of her thyroid problem. They're treating it with an unusual drug. That period a few years ago when she wore those very thick special prism glasses, I think they're called, for several months. Anyway, he said you add that to her age, add it all up, and yeah, actually, he thinks there are legitimate reasons to be concerned. So I guess I'm concerned. John, how about you?

Would you rather see tax returns or her health records? Oh, my gosh. What a dilemma. I am somewhat concerned, I guess, in that we've been hearing every four years about how these presidential candidates really need to fess up about their medical history. Why look at how old McCain is or Bob Dole is or Ronald Reagan is now that it's a Democrat who happens to be a very, very old candidate, not that the GOP candidate isn't. No, no, no. We can't talk about that. I've seen a few articles saying it's sexist to ask about her.

It's sexist. Of course it is. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's obviously a concern and it wouldn't be as much of a concern if Hillary was known and famed for her forthrightness and always giving us the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But since it always seems like she's hiding something, even when she has nothing to hide, she has to kind of lie and parse her language and so forth. I think that's why people are concerned and questions will continue.

Well, she had the most convenient brain clot ever. Remember, she fell down, hit her head and then had a brain clot that made it difficult for her to remember exactly which security briefing information sessions she had attended. And then it was – And then it was healed. James, James. And then it was the only thing – The only thing I can –

Go ahead. I said you just sit there in the middle of the country rubbing your hands like kind of crabby apples and think, what is she up to now? This is very unlike you, James. You usually have this sunny, usually you take people at their face value usually, I think. Well, more like Simon Barr Sinister of the underdog cartoons. I think the convenience of the blood clot to me,

I'm not one for conspiratorial theories, but the fact that it was so well-timed leads me to believe that an emergency team of the Consolidated Miniaturization Defense Forces sent in the tiny little ship, the Proteus, with Donald Pleasance and Raquel Welch and all the rest of them to use their laser rifles to burn out the closet. I've seen that movie. I know we have the technology. And they had to do it, of course, because unless it was fixed, she would not be suitable

to be our commanderess-in-chief. So let's take a look at who is the one person that you believe makes you feel the best about America's defense posture in the future. Everybody on our side loves what Trump is saying about the military. But on the other hand, they're not so great about what he says about Putin. John, describe your emotions because that's what this is, is an emotional election. Yeah. About his Putinism. Yeah, watching the commander-in-chief forum was just kind of depressing all around.

I started off with, to Matt Lauer's credit, he's being really just thrashed by both partisans of both sides, which I kind of like. It's like, okay, he was tough on both of them. But just the nagging realization that I think it's 133 days from now, one of these people will be the commander-in-chief, it's a little bit concerning. Neither one of them had a great grasp of the facts. Hillary was great at inventing new facts,

but mostly just to cover her own tracks. But when she had said that the Libya intervention that I created, we didn't lose any lives. I could just hear hands hitting faces all over the country. It's like really you want to brag about the Benghazi record? It's a little concerning. It's almost daring people to bring it up. Daring them to bring up Benghazi and sound like absolute lunatics.

I mean that's the beauty of the Clinton strategy is that when you bring up something from the past that they did, you sound like a lunatic simply because it's been brought up for years. I mean it's like cattle futures? Really? But you did – really? I mean – so Peter, you're a Trump guy. Did you – I'm not a Trump guy. so Peter, you're a Trump guy. Did you – I'm not a Trump guy. I refuse to be labeled a Trump guy.

I view you – A Trump fanatic. OK. I'm giving you the needle as they say in the business. The ISIS strategy. I am responding. Do you believe that he has in the back of his head an ISIS strategy which he is then going to measure against what the generals say is their ISIS strategy. I mean, he has a plan.

I don't believe he has any strategy in the back of his head, in the back or in the front of his head. This is he's just making this up as he goes along. I mean, I'm still struck by what Bill McGurn said when he was on the podcast. What was that two weeks ago now that Donald Trump, he has I may be mischaracterized. So this is the way I understood what Bill was saying. Look, he's a fundamentally is temperamentally conservative. He thinks the country is broken on every time you hear him thinking through an issue.

He seems to come out on the more conservative rather than less conservative side. But do I believe that Donald Trump has a deep understanding of foreign policy? Of course he doesn't. My hope here, my sense is he's – as opposed to Hillary Clinton who is now deeply committed to the foreign policy of Barack Obama because she's forced to defend it and that's really her bit in the commander-in-chief briefing, questioning session the other evening. She got stuck talking about her – she could barely talk about what she would do. She could only talk about what she would do, framing it in terms of what she had already done. And the Barack Obama record is one of weakness and retreat and vacillation.

I don't want anything to do with that. My sense is that Donald Trump doesn't either. He's smart. He's not, in some ways, for me personally, he's not ideological enough. But as best I can tell, he seems to be listening to people in regard to foreign policy who have this nation's interest at heart, want to rebuild the military, and want to reassert the American role in the world. All that seems to me pretty good. But do I believe this man is a deep strategic thinker? I don't even think he's a shallow strategic thinker.

I think he's making it up as he goes along. And by and large, he seems to be coming down in the right place. Putin is a special problem that I have to admit. He does. He won't quit saying that he sees something in Putin. I mean he hasn't come out and said – of course we should give him the eastern half of Ukraine. He hasn't said anything like that. But it is troublesome that he sort of – there is an argument to be made that over the long term, years to come, the United States and Russia should be able to make common cause in a number of

places, the Middle East and against Islamic terrorism in particular. But that's a very different matter from seeming to say you're not particularly troubled by Putin's designs on Europe. So, I mean, this guy is newsflash. Donald Trump is far from perfect. Well, in his defense, as people will say, that maybe his instincts will lead him to take the right advice from the right people. And in that respect, we have a post by John Gabriel on Ricochet today. I think it's today.

Talking about the Donald's new proposal for public education or namely not so much public education but the fact that the dollar should follow the kid and there should be choice. I hate this. He said if we can put a man on the moon, we can give private school choice to every disadvantaged child in America. I like the idea, but I hate that if we can put a man on the moon. That's a specific technical objective, right? They knew how far away the moon was. They knew the mechanics required to get there and get back.

This is not so simple. But it's possible. And you like the idea of breaking up the public school monopoly. And if there's anybody probably who's going to say, I don't care that I'm being called a mean racist for wanting to break up the Detroit public school system, you'd like to think it's Donald Trump with his elephant thick hide. I don't know. We'll see. But it's a good idea. And is that one of the reasons you think, guys, that the polls seem to be tightened?

Hillary is revealed to be an astonishing prevaricator. The Donald reveals himself to be not the scary guy with saying the loud things that he was three months ago and things tighten. Does this look possible, John? Well, I think – I believe that's possible. He has been giving a lot more specifics. And again, I don't think he's ideological at his core, but he is having good people advise him on these things. When he talked about school choice is a big issue for me in part because my kids have been in both traditional public schools and now they're in public charter schools, and I've always followed the issue.

And also too, not only is it a good policy, it's a good electoral strategy because it's something that polls really well with pretty much everyone, including a lot of democratic constituencies. And so I think you've seen that. I believe that Trump also won the Mexico slash Phoenix speeches. I wasn't impressed that Trump was mild-mannered and meek in Mexico City and that, ah, they're going to pay for it and they don't know it yet in Phoenix. However, it played very well for him. And I think the criticisms he got from the mainstream press played right into his hand. It was kind of the typical traditional liberal media complaints about the Republican where no matter what the Republican says, whether it's some

fundamentally decent man like Mitt Romney or a moderate like McCain, they're all crazy racists trying to attack the other. So I think that he won that battle in the media pretty overwhelmingly, I think. And now he just keeps coming out with specifics. And once again, I thought since the beginning that he would have a very, very difficult time winning in November. However, if any candidate could mess this up, it's Hillary Clinton, who is the worst campaigner of modern times. Is she a bad campaigner because she lacks certain basic instincts or just because that she's just really that unlikable? I mean, you'd think that after observing campaigns at the side of her husband for an

awful long time, she would have a little bit of understanding as to how to do these things. But there's just something so unlovable about her. And that's not a feeling shared by everybody. I mean, if you listen to if you look at some of the pictures of the press pool on the plane these people glow as though they've been buffed with you know with uh with with tanning lotion when they when they're in her presence there's there are people who find her spectacularly fabulous but uh the general public not so much do you think what's's her problem? Is it her personality?

Is it her voice? Yes, yes, keep going. You just put up the checkbox and I'll check them in for you, James. By the way, could I just say, I know that Rob is traveling. Excuse me. I know Rob tells us he's traveling.

And I love having John join us. But I would like the record to show that on the podcast in which we discuss the tightening of the polls, Mr. Robert Long is absent, denying me the chance to gloat and chortle, which I would certainly take if he were here. So this has been Robinson's theory of the election. I think a lot of people share it, and I think James shares it too. I think Rob. Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambition.

With over 450 partner organizations worldwide, we bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit EEN-Ireland.com and take your business global today. Evan shares it, although he doesn't like to admit it. The theory of the election is very simple. After eight years of Barack Obama, the country wants a change. Hillary Clinton promises more of the same, not change.

She promises more of the same, but in a more corrupt. Barack Obama at least had his inspirational aspects. She has no such thing. And all Donald Trump has to do is achieve a certain plausibility, enabling people to picture him as president without having their hearts sink or an adrenaline surge of fear, just enabling them to picture him as president, making himself plausible, acceptable, while keeping pressure on Hillary Clinton. All he has to do is run a competent campaign. Now, is that theory correct? I don't know.

But for about two weeks now, Donald Trump has been running a competent campaign. And lo and behold, those polls have tightened right up. Looks pretty good to me, actually. You may be right in the sense that people want change. Yes. But after two terms of sense that people want change. Yes. But after two terms of Reagan, people put in a bush. And it may be that it takes some time. Of course, there are people who believe that the United States will not survive four years of Hillary Clinton and that a change is needed now.

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Peter, you're looking very sharp today, aren't you? Actually, yes. Well, a brief personal testimonial. Actually, I don't look sharp, James. I look as unsharp as I always look. However, I had a brief conversation with a Trunk Club stylist, and I thought to myself, you know, there is a member of my family who could use this. My oldest son, Pedro Robinson, who is in the sartorial department, having a little trouble making the transition from college kid to young professional. So I put him on the line and he now has a box full of wonderful clothes that he's sorting through. And it looks as though it's going to work. This trunk club, box number one has already got him a third of the way where he needs to be to be able to dress decently now that he's in the working world.

So I just put this to you. If there's a young man in your life, trunk club is for women as well. What I have experience with is a young man. If there's a young man in your life who's making the transition from college to becoming a young professional and having a little trouble getting over the shorts, the cutoffs and flip-flops, Trunk Club, give it a try. It's working in our household. Interesting. John, you live in Arizona, right? I certainly do.

All right. So Arizona, as most people understand it, is sort of a barren and arid desert. I know that's wrong. I know it's quite diverse in terms of its environment. But a lot of people just sort of see it as a blasted nuclear hellscape. That's the part I live in. Okay. Which brings us to North Korea.

There's new thoughts on North Korea which say that this nuclear bomb thing they got going is not actually a bargaining chip at all. They're trying to become a serious nuclear power. They're trying to get – they're trying to perfect their weaponry and their delivery system so they can use them or sell them. What do you think? I think what concerns me most and how I always approach it, election is my number one issue is defense. I think without defense, we don't have anything else. So arguments about SCOTUS and things, extremely important. But my perspective is always defense.

What concerns me even more than them wanting to lash out at their neighbors or even US troops is I believe every one of their tests is a little advertising mechanism, which is odd for a socialist country like themselves who hates advertising. But I think they are advertising to all the bad actors around the world. Hey, we can hook you up. They're the guy in the alley opening his trench coat saying, hey, I want to buy some watches. And that's what concerns me even more. You could have a massive proliferation.

They obviously don't abide by any agreements whatsoever. You even have China using for them insanely harsh rhetoric. I hope it's eventually followed by actual actions since they're the ones who seem to have the slightest leverage on the hermit kingdom. But I think they are just such a proliferation risk because they aren't only looking to initiate payback against their perceived enemies themselves, but anybody who can sow dissent, they're in favor for it. Well, payback is what we deserve, don't we? Peter, you may have seen the story where the far right, far right, yeah, party in Austria, I believe, got in trouble for using government funds to memorialize the 333rd anniversary, I think, of the defeat of the Turks at the gates of Vienna. People are –

1683. 1683. It was a big year. It was insulting to Turkey, especially at this difficult time when the relations with Ankara are strained over. Why do we really want to go out of our way to insult Turkey? And I thought, you know, it's a good point because it really is. I mean, Turkey was just responding essentially to centuries of Western Islamophobia. I mean, what were the crusades?

But Islamophobic violence dedicated to take the land of people who were just peacefully sitting around inventing algebra. And now when the Turks, the Islam fought back and went to Vienna. That was justified. That was completely justified. They had it coming. They should have opened their gates at that date and enjoyed the vibrant multicultural society that inevitably would have resulted, which leads us then perhaps to consider the other problems that we have today. We're not abasing ourselves sufficiently for this anniversary of 9-11.

I'm reading a story here in the College Fix. This is your neck of the woods, Peter. Conservative students attending a community college in Southern California say campus leaders worked to cancel their September 11th memorial and what's not a history professor tore down their quote, never forget remembrance posters because

of course they didn't have permission in a free speech zone. When you add that to the Seattle football team, considering maybe we're going to sit down for the national anthem. Oh, is that 9-11? That's probably not going to look so good. How much of the culture is actually looking at 9-11 with the same steel that it had in 2001, 2002, 2003? And how many of the culture is just ready to really wish that that never happened because it's so annoying when people bring it up again wow john jump in here i really that is a question

that had not even occurred to me i'd know to me until i started asking i just yeah and i missed this story about austria and so forth which is i mean you can write that off as those ridiculous western europeans but if there are large segments of the American public that just wants to wish it away, that is attempting to reinterpret what happened 15 years ago, that would really – the entire Seattle football team wants to follow the Colin Kaepernick example and sit down during the national anthem or just one or two players? Well, it was the whole team and then I think they had the possibility of it being the whole team led by the QB and then I think they thought better of it. The story has been fluid. I'm not getting this off World Net Daily, but the variety of sources that I've got led me to believe it. Got it.

Well, no, I know you – the way you lead your life is reading news sources. So I'm sure if you tell me it's a story, it's for sure a story. So what is there to say about that? I can tell you in my reading on the Cold War, in my own judgment, one of the terrible mistakes that the George H.W. Bush administration made was not saying that we had won the Cold War. Their view was that when the Soviet Union collapsed during the revolutions of 1989 and when the Soviet Union collapsed, if the president of the United States had given a speech saying in effect that we had won the Cold War, that it would provoke all the bad elements in the Soviet – in my judgment, that's nonsense.

What went through my head, I was in a car one day when the Berlin Wall came down and the State Department had a spokesman release an item to the press. had received a telephone call from the foreign minister of Germany, Hans Dietrich Genscher, to thank the American people for 40 years of steadfastness during the Cold War and that earlier that day, the president had received a telephone call from Helmut Kohl to thank him again, asking him to thank the American people. And of course, the Bush administration buried this thing, not even having it being released from the White House, but from the State Department. What immediately flashed through my mind was if we were, if we speechwriters, if Ronald Reagan had still been in office, he would have been on the air that evening with a very gracious speech. He wouldn't have gloated over the Soviet Union, but he would have said, I just heard from the president of the United States to reassert the historical,

the correct historical understanding of what happened. And if Barack Obama won't do it, then I'm sorry to mix crass politics with this. Donald Trump has an enormous opening. By the way, speaking of speeches and the campaign, Mike Pence gave what I thought was a very good speech just yesterday at the Reagan Library. There's somebody else. He's not getting as much press. He shouldn't. He's the vice presidential candidate. But there's someone else who can reassert the importance of what happened 15 years ago. Yeah. And I think it's something that we have to continually remind people of. It has to be an active process and it seems like politicians today

and especially since it's so dominated by the left coming out of the Washington, they do want to forget it. It's inconvenient and I think you see the current generation, especially the more left-leaning they are, the more like this they are, but it's like the lotus eaters from Greek myth.

We just want to lie back and forget the bad and watch Netflix or the Kardashians or whatever we might like and just forget about the bad people out there. And we see how ignoring the bad people, what that gets us. It gets us nothing but terror attacks. For Bush's mistakes and maybe over-eagerness, at least he took it seriously and I think there's a sense in the country and it is one of Trump's advantages, although I'm not a fan of his, is just that he's actually. However, he's talking about them. He's not burying them under the need for increased diversity and how gauche it is to celebrate defending the gates of Vienna. No, Western civilization needs to defend itself, and it is considered in our day and age almost gauche to say that, you know what? Some cultures are better than other cultures, and we have a lot to be proud of. I would have no problem with Norwegians saying, hey, I like my country. I think it's great.

That is not rude jingoism or anything like that. But to have some measure of just basic self-respect, I see that's lacking now, and we really need to get it back, and it needs to really be a cultural shift coming from our leaders in Washington and also in business too and sort of just the constant critique as the left likes to issue. It depends. I agree, John. Nicely put. It depends on what you're grateful for and proud of though, isn't it?

Sweden isn't proud of a heritage of pillaging, sending blonde men in long ships with sharp sticks to go take things. They're proud of their tolerance. They're proud of the fact that they welcome everyone and that they have redefined Swedishness to mean that, just a series of open arms and checks that they will write. Now they're finding themselves actually confronted with the consequences of that over time and finding that their culture means more than that to them and there isn't a sort of essential Swedishness. But the people who are saying that are outside of the lane of civilized thought.

So when you have Western societies that are indeed proud of themselves, the things that they are proud of are the very elements that eventually dissolve the social contracts within those societies that allow for social cohesion. But you're right. To say that I like my culture, that Western civilization has really accomplished some miraculous things. I was just reading this piece the other day about why the recording industry should pay reparations to black jazz musicians and hip-hop artists of the 70s. The reason is because a lot of house music guys were sampling these people. They were taking their – they're lifting this and that and making an amalgam of dance music and calling it their own, et cetera. I mean this is the way music is.

It's very protean. It gathers things up. It changes them. But the article making the point for reparations said, quoting a early 20th century Marxist of some sort, that Western civilization ruins everything it comes in contact with. And the guy was repeating this as if – I'm quoting this guy you know who's saying this obvious thing. And how deep exactly do you think the self-hatred of the west runs in this country in the west period i'm rephrasing what i said before but it's i just it's something that i just want to because i'm fascinated by people sitting at a desk in a peaceful place in a house with a microwave and an iphone and a computer spending all of their time castigating the very

civilization that made all of these things possible. And the answer to your question is I don't know. I would not even have taken the question seriously something like 18 months ago. Of course, my reading on it, which I now view as terribly naive, was that the hatred of Western civilization is very deeply embedded in the academy, but that it doesn't affect too much more than about – well, than the faculty, of course, and about one-fifth of the students. Other students, in my observation, watching kids that go through Stanford, watching kids go through Dartmouth, two institutions that I know pretty well, simply shrug it off and don't pay too much attention to it.

And I thought that was really the way it was going. That furthermore, I used to think that this – the really hard left anti-American ideology was going to die off, that it was an artifact of the 60s generation, that as they moved into control in universities and colleges, we'd see it. But then they'd start to retire and frankly die off and something more sane and normal of an ordinary kind of common sense view that the United States might not be such a bad place would begin to reassert itself. And you know what? I think I was wrong about almost all of that. Bernie Sanders had the support according to poll after poll after poll and a self-avowed socialist had the support of more than half of voters in the 18 to 25 cohort. That is to say the youngest voters, those who are closest to having come out of the university and college system. My observation is that the particular anti-American hard left view, which is so ingrained in certain – particularly certain departments, is replicating itself. It's not dying out. It's replicating itself. In some ways, it's moving farther to the left. And so how bad is this? How deeply ingrained is it? Strikes me as a much, much better question now than I would have thought it was 18 months ago.

I still can't answer it. But boy, does it strike me as a good question. John, you're in Arizona, as we've noted before. Is there still that frontier spirit that exists as we like to think in places that have cactuses and bleached skulls with horns and sitting in the sand or has urbanization and the usual and the rise of the usual suspects led to the culture becoming indistinguishable from an eastern one or a california burg i think uh that feeling still runs through arizona is kind of odd being a sunbelt state too um you have to look at the general population where we have a lot of people moving in from California, of course, and then

other places around the country, kind of diluting that almost a libertarian kind of Goldwater spirit. But we have such a great amount of people who are a transient population. They don't get involved. They don't get involved in certainly the local races, but they don't even vote as much for Senate races like McCain has a tough challenge going on. They aren't as active in the party as the people who have been here a long time. And you still see that. I look at my dad. He moved here from Michigan originally, but he kind of is the perfect classic.

One thing that attracted him to Arizona was the politics. He loved Barry Goldwater. And it's just kind of, we don't want change, just leave us alone. If he did not hear from a politician in the news, whether they're Democrat or Republican, he would often vote for them. And I'd be like, why are you voting for a Democrat? He's like, well, I don't hear about them, so they must not be messing it up. So it's like beyond Republican conservatism, just this conservative instinct they have, which is still strong. I think McCain, he has the state wired, so he easily won his primary, as I knew, and a lot of national commentators like, no, they must be tired of him. But he has a lot of strength

here. He does have a challenge coming up. I think nobody should just be relaxed and say once you're a red state, you're always a red state. And Kirkpatrick is running fairly well about him. Has been a great deal of polling though. He's up by 11 in the last poll but that was done about a month ago. Well, that's a good look at wealth, poverty and politics in a statewide perspective. But when you really want something larger like an international perspective, why wouldn't you go to the man himself, Tom Sowell? He's a Rosenbilt and Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

And he writes on economics, history, social policy, ethnicity, and the history of ideas. His latest book is Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, an International Perspective. And with honor, we welcome him back to the podcast. Good day, sir. Good day. Tom, Peter Robinson here. You argue in wealth, in wealth, poverty and politics, that it's a mistake to focus on why countries are poor, and why people and groups are poor. What really requires explanation, you argue,

is why some countries and some groups and some individuals get rich. Now, could you explain that? That just isn't the way we ordinarily think about the question. That's true. I think that people living in affluent countries tend to take affluence for granted as something that more or less happens automatically. But because we're used to something does not mean that it's either common or natural. For example, you know, 100 years ago in the United States, only 10% of American homes had flush toilets, and only 3% of American homes had electric lights. So there's nothing natural about it.

If you want to know why high standards of living exist some places, not others, you have to find out how were those things produced. And rather than simply regarding that as a question that can be kept in the background, while you focus on why some people have more than others. When they give speech after speech in which the underlying presumption is that somebody did something dirty, that poor people are poor because of Wall Street greed or because somehow the system has been rigged in Washington, tax cuts for the rich and so forth. What are we to make of all that? Are they wrong? Are they simply misdirecting our attention and wasting our time and energies? What do we make of it? Oh, it's worse than that.

They're not just wasting our time. They're creating a narrative that will get them votes because that means that if you're poor because the state system is rigged against you, then you have to turn to them as your saviors who will protect you from Wall Street. I'm always fascinated by people with this kind of argument. I think, you know, are people in high crime areas sitting there with multiple locks on their door because someone is going to sell them bad stock? You know, as for the system being rigged, it's a farce. In last year, 2015, the 400 richest people in the world had a net loss of $15 billion. Now, if they rigged the system, they must have done a very incompetent job of it.

Tom, one more question. I know John Gabriel, who's on the line here with me, wants to ask you about charter schools, which is something close to your heart. But if I may, one more question here. Black Lives Matter. This movement is very important right now. I shouldn't say important. Let me say it's prominent. It's getting a lot of attention. It's getting a lot of attention. It's getting a lot of press. And the argument is, I believe in brief, if this is a fair summary, that all these years after the Civil War, after the 14th Amendment, after the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the United States remains a racist country and racist in such a way that it is – it's not – it's racism in a way that is actually holding back the ability of African-Americans to advance economically, to achieve even rudimentary equality and freedom. And how does Tom Sowell respond to that?

I guess there are two questions. One, is there racism? And two, is it sufficient to hold back blacks? And especially, is it sufficient to explain the violence and whatnot in the black ghetto? And we may never know how much racism there is, but what we do know is that there was a lot more of it half a century ago than there is today. And there was nothing like the kind of depravity that has become commonplace in the black community today. So whatever it was, if it hasn't gotten stronger, I don't see how we can be held responsible

for all the other things that have gotten so much worse. But what's much more plausible is that the welfare state's consequences have led to these other things. Well, hold on. When you say these other things and you use the word depravity, what are you talking about? Family breakdown? Crime? Yes, and frequently murders. organized black-on-white violence in cities and towns across the country,

which I document in the book. I have the longest footnote in the book goes two full pages by itself on this. And the attacks on the police, the attacks on all sorts of people within the black community. And your argument, this one, I still want to make sure, I know you and I had a long talk yesterday. We recorded an episode of Uncommon Knowledge. But I want to come back to this because it's so striking. Every time, it's like huge push in the mid-1960s, which combined civil rights legislation with an expansion of various kinds of welfare programs, principal beneficiaries of which were African-Americans. Your argument is that all that made matters worse, not better.

Is that correct? Absolutely. Not so much the civil rights laws, but the welfare state. And also, you can see the very same thing happening in England, right down to riots in 2011 in London, Manchester, and other places, which read just like the descriptions of riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, right down to the police cars being set on fire. And you have no legacy of slavery. You have no racism because most of the people involved in England are white. But they have the same welfare state and the same consequences from it, including the unwed mother with children by multiple fathers,

none of whom do anything for the children. So I keep saying this is my last question. This really is because John gave – I know John wants to ask questions. But Tom, when you survey the African-American scene, political scene, where – I think back to Dr. King and the black church, which 40 and 50 years ago had real moral authority, real standing and produced leaders. Many of the leaders, we think of Dr. King because he was, of course, by far the most famous, by far the most compelling. But there were leaders in the black community who would argue on behalf of African-Americans but their message was deeply moored in a moral and religious understanding of life which would for example have militated against family breakdown and in favor of education and in favor of schools. In other words, against the social pathologies that we see today.

Where are those voices? What has happened there? Well, it's a story of what happens to all kinds... movement over a long period of time that as new as an inflation movement becomes successful it attracts people who want to know who want to make money or power get power off that success you could name any number of of uh... movement to both here and other countries in an ancient time uh... the mafia for example grew out of a little bit uh... defend the oppressed and so forth.

And I think it's fitting in my mind that the NAACP, for example, has now completed that cycle when they're now opposing charter schools simply because the teachers' unions are paying a lot of money into the NAACP. And Dr. Sewell, this is John Gabriel editor in chief at Ricochet and before I ask a question about charter schools I want to thank you my brother my older brother used to be a very hard left basically a socialist until he and I don't recall the title but once he bought one of your books and read through it he turned more limited government than myself I believe so I want to thank you for making Thanksgiving's that much more enjoyable. So I appreciate it.

But on charter schools, my kids attend charter schools here in Arizona. Arizona has been very much out front like a handful of other states. To his credit, and I've been never Trump since he announced, but he did unveil some specific policy specifics on educational choice and reform when he was in Cleveland yesterday. And there was some kind of placeholder things in his recommendations that you see all the time, kind of vague promises. Like he mentioned, redirecting $20 billion of federal education dollars to promoting school choice. What I thought was most interesting and I think isn't talked about enough

is establishing a national goal of providing school choice to every American child below the poverty line. In that, he wants to make sure that dollars follow the student rather than the federal government dumping dollars into school districts. And as millions of dollars fall into the school districts, students might see dimes.

What do you think about that proposal? I think it's wonderful. I once suggested something like that in my guide about 50 years ago. As regards colleges, that the money that they give should not go to the college. It should go to the student who then selects the college, which is the way it happened, for example, under the GI Bill after World War II, that the individual student decided what college to go to, and the government then paid the tuition.

Yeah, that really is excellent. And seeing as well, we've had the number of school districts have dropped precipitously, but school district administrative staff has tripled basically. We've seen students, the number of students increased by about 100 percent, and then you have the support staff going up by over 500 percent. How do you stop this administrative bloat outside of promoting school choice and letting parents decide, letting dollars follow the students? I don't know if there is any way, because once you let a government bureaucracy get in charge, they're to some extent going to create a necessity for a growing bureaucracy to deal with all the red tape that the federal bureaucracy is going to impose on the schools. But if, in fact, you simply make the money available to pay for the students' costs of going to school, then you don't have that same problem. Tom, Peter here.

I want to repeat, the book is Wealth, Poverty, and Politics. It's a reissue of a book that I thought was just great in the first place. Well, it's a revised edition. It's not the same book. I'm sorry, revised edition. That's right. That's right. You've added... Enlarged edition. Revised and enlarged. Right. Tom, if you were... I want to ask about the current campaign in a moment, but let's set aside the individual. let's set aside Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Just set that aside.

Take my wife, please. Take the candidates, please. Helping African-Americans, bearing in mind the lessons of wealth, poverty and politics, which are substantially develop human capital, develop an education, focus on productivity in the marketplace and not attempt to use politics to achieve redistribution. That's the argument. Where is the point of attack? You're more than realistic in saying that once a government bureaucracy gets established, once there are interest groups that have specific interests in perpetuating the welfare state, it becomes very, very difficult. Are charter schools the point of attack? Is that the likeliest place to begin a kind of counter-revolution? How would you start?

That's the place with the biggest track record of success. I think we ought to go on track records on empirical evidence rather than on wonderful rhetoric that's not worth anything. And early especially, this nonsense of having affirmative action at the college level. By the time you're at the college level, it's too late. You have to start off at the elementary school level, make very sure they get an outstanding foundation

on which to build everything else. Otherwise, it's like trying to, you know, build the Empire State Building on quicksand. And also, I would have the money follow the student rather than have the money go directly to institutions. Now, the institutions will raise a tremendous howl. I once testified before a congressional committee on this, and the chairman had to slam his gavel down repeatedly because of the outcry in the room against what I was saying.

But that's the way it should go. And it's not like this is a speculation. We have a track record here, and we have a record going back even further into history of successful black schools, which most of the people on the left have no interest in whatsoever. They're interested in black failure and how they can use that failure to increase government bureaucratic empires. Another question about the schools.

We hear this over and over and over again from the teachers unions that we don't pay the teachers enough. We don't put enough money into the schools. What was it? And by the way, you know, I have to say that makes intuitive sense to me. Teaching is a really hard job. And with these cultural difficulties, kids coming from family, broken families, I imagine it's a harder job than it used to be. It makes a certain intuitive sense. How do you respond to that? And if I may ask you in particular, when you went to schools, when you were growing up in Harlem, I've heard you say this, that those schools were very important to you and that you got a good education.

What motivated – and that was a low-paying job being a teacher in those days for goodness sake. What motivated – and that was a low-paying job being a teacher in those days for goodness sake. What motivated the teachers? How do we understand how to call forth the teachers who are willing to go into the classroom and do a good job, change kids' lives, change the culture by doing a good job in the classroom? What motivates people to take on that work? I think there are – let's not forget the private schools pay less than the public schools. Right. And they get better teachers. Back in the day when I was going to school, school teaching was not a bad job at all.

It was a highly sought job. Oh, I see. And I think what we have is the first thing I would do would be to retire every single professor of education in the country. There will never be another education school again. These schools are Darwinism in reverse. They repel people of any intelligence because of the unbelievably bad intellectual levels of the courses taught

in these places. And so you have the survival of the unfittest, and that goes right on into the beginning of the teacher's career. That is, those teachers who do manage to go through the education school and get appointed, the ones who have ability, those are the first ones to quit. And the ones who have nothing, they're the ones who stay there and get automatic raises

just for longevity. And they don't leave because there's no place else that wants them. Tom, the campaign. We started speaking yesterday after the camera stopped rolling, after we had finished recording on Common Knowledge, about the current campaign. And you said you were thinking about it as if you were a pilot in a plane over the South Pacific. Would you please explain to us what you meant? Well, I imagine a pilot in World War II flying over the Pacific, and his plane is hit, and it's going to go down.

And he can bail out, of course. If he bails out, there's one, there's no guarantee that the parachute will open. If the parachute does open, he's allowed to land in the Pacific Ocean and he has a good chance of being eaten by sharks. And if he manages somehow to get to land, he's likely to be captured by the Japanese,

tortured and or killed. And yet his only choice is to stay in that plane or to jump out the window. And I think that that's the way the voter is this year, given the candidates that we have, that I think it's a very risky thing for Donald Trump to become president, but it's a virtual guarantee of disaster if Hillary Clinton becomes the president. And so she's the equivalent of staying in that plane and going down to a certain death.

And Donald Trump is the equivalent of jumping out and hoping for the best. Donald Trump, the ejector button. There's an endorsement for you. Tom, thank you. James? Thank you. Thank you for you. Tom, thank you. James? Thank you. Thank you for being with us today, sir.

And I – you know, somebody who's not in the cockpit but back in the passenger seat, it's that moment on a flight you hate when the pilot comes out strapped with a parachute in their back and gives you all a wave and jumps out. But anyway, well, thank you. We'll have you on again after the election perhaps and see where the plane is headed then. Thank you for coming on the podcast today, sir. Well, yeah, this whole flight thing, you know, yesterday was – everybody was talking about this Flight 93. Where did that start? How did that happen? Claremont Institute and Rush read it and all the rest of it.

And included in that Flight 93 piece was not the Tom Sowell option of jumping out of the plane. And while it's true that you might want to jump out of the plane and your parachute might not open, maybe you could sort of steer yourself like you had a flight suit toward one of those houses that had a Casper mattress box sitting outside because if they did and you could manage to land on a Casper, you would find that your jump from the plane had a happy ending because a Casper mattress is just so comfortable. Rob, somewhere, I know you heard that and you couldn't do anything about it. Just wanted to say that, that the mattress industry, as we all know, has forced you, the consumer, to pay notoriously high markups. Now, Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry.

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and using the coupon code RicochetCasper. You will absolutely love it. I do. Let's go to the member feed because it's just been popping. There's so much great stuff there. And it's really a delight and really one of the things that makes Ricochet stand apart aside from the general civility, although there are moments. What did we have this week? We had Hercules Rockefeller talking about NATO in the 21st century.

The most important question is does the NATO alliance still serve a purpose? If Russians invade one of the Baltic nations, what will happen? I believe the U.S. will dutifully try to defend the tiny nations, but I'm not convinced that any of the other nations will heed the call. Is NATO dead?

John? I don't believe it's dead, but it is getting a bit long in the tooth, especially since we have a president who doesn't seem to want to support our allies in even small ways. He seems so eager to impress the potentates in Iran, let's say, and he forgets about the tiny Baltic states. There has to be a lot of continuing maintenance and if nothing else, just kind words towards these people instead of bending over backwards to support those who hate NATO, hate it completely. What they really need to do is as soon as the Cold War was over, what is our mission?

And it seemed like it was basically let's bring people in the former Warsaw Pact into our sphere. So we would get people involved with NATO on some level and try to reach out to it. But when you look at that, we made all these promises to Ukraine, for instance. You give up your nuclear weapons and don't you worry. The West will protect you. They get in trouble and you know what? Ukraine has kind of always been in the Russian sphere historically.

Do we really need to do that? You can make the same argument about all sorts of countries if you're willing to just look the other way on that. So it just has to be reinforced. Look, we are in NATO and we take this pack seriously or we don't. Otherwise, it really is a paper tiger and I think that's what one of Putin's main goals is, to prove that, no, they won't protect you. When I come calling, they aren't going to protect you. Well, what is Estonia anyway? Practically a suburb of St. Petersburg.

Can you imagine a conservative saying that in days gone past? Can you imagine a conservative saying that in days gone past? Absolutely. Can you imagine? And does that not – is that not your April Glaspie moment there where supposedly she gave Saddam Hussein the green light by saying, we don't have an opinion about this particular dispute you got going here, at which point Saddam – Wait, wait, wait. I'm not following this. Who said that? Who's that a quotation from? What is this?

Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich. Yeah. He said it's basically a suburb of St. Petersburg when you get down to it. Newt. And Newt of all people. Consummate cold warrior. Yeah.

It's just – it's very disappointing. I know one of my – I didn't say that. Was that yesterday? When did he say that? No, within the last month or so. Oh, you're asking me to remember something even beyond – OK, fine. Yes, Peter.

72 hours and I just dumped the stuff out of my cerebral cortex just to clear up space, you know, James. All right. Got it. I had no idea actually you had that much limited random access memory. You might want to upgrade a little bit because – or as a matter of fact, perhaps not because one of the things that has made it difficult for me to get on board the old train is my mulish refusal to forget what he has said before. It's very easy to – No, no, no.

You really do have to forget. You have to stand forget, James. Yeah. I mean I had something about this on. It was about the Flight 93 thing. That was it. And I think it was in a member post or something. I posted this in Ricochet yesterday. And it was the idea that Donald Trump is the

guy to storm the cockpit. And I was saying, well, you know, maybe, perhaps he's the guy who stops the man who says, let's roll and says, you know, this pilot, he's really a good guy. I've given him money. He was at my wedding.

I actually think he'd make a really good pilot or a co-pilot. I mean, in other words, taking what Trump has said about the positive things that he has said about Hillary and ascribing them to him. But we're supposed to forget that. The fact that he said he thought that Hillary Clinton would make a good president is something we are supposed to just conveniently forget. Memory, hold a lot of it. And that's – it's difficult to do. There was a piece in the member feed again about Dennis Prager having to not readjust his principles but find one that abides at a higher plane in order to justify what he's doing and it requires forgetting a lot of the things. I don't think so.

Well, OK. Look, I take the point. I don't think it does require forgetting. I grant every bit of what you're – to me, again, it's very simple. It's Tom Sowell. If Hillary Clinton is going down to certain death and Donald Trump is pressing the ejector button and hoping for the best, the guy is learning as he goes. He's frankly, at some level, he's making stuff up as he goes. By and large, he seems to be coming down in far better places, sometimes only

somewhat better places, but by and large, in my judgment, far better places than where Hillary Clinton is dug in and has been for a quarter of a century. But be realistic. Remember it all. You just have to weigh this stuff and say where – this is a guy who's in motion. I agree. I have to say this because it needs to be said. I will never vote for Hillary Clinton. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. I will

not vote for Hillary Clinton. You're never Hillary. All right. Right. So knowing that, let me pose this. Let's say that we are faced with a situation where it seems as if Russia is going to take a Balkan state prior to taking the rest of it. Balkan or Baltic? Baltic, I'm sorry. All right, sure.

Who do you believe actually would stand up to them, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? And I ask that because – do you think that Hillary Clinton wants to be the one who goes down in history as somebody who lost a Baltic state? And do you think that Donald Trump would care? Oh, my reading of it? lost a Baltic state? And do you think that Donald Trump would care? Oh, my reading of it? First of all, I stipulate that my reading of it bears no more validity than anybody else's reading of it. But I believe that what would unfold in the Situation Room is that Donald Trump would receive briefings from very good people because the people with whom he's surrounding himself tend to be pretty good people. And they would say, Mr. President, the NATO alliance has its faults. And those faults include faults that you identified during the campaign, including that our European allies

tend to underspend and free ride on us. That said, it is vital. It's kept the peace for some six decades now. And if we don't stand up for this Baltic country, the unraveling could prove catastrophic and not just for the Europeans, but for us. The interests of the United States of America are directly implicated here. We need to stand up. And Donald Trump would say, what's it going to take? Let's do it. That's my judgment. In the Hillary Clinton situation room, the conversation would resemble much more closely that in a faculty lounge. Well, you know, Estonia, the history here, can we rely on the Germans? In my judgment, and with Hillary being Hillary, there would be much more reference to who can we count on in Congress? What's this interest group saying?

What's the Council on Foreign Relations saying? The politics of it would play a much larger role in her mind. We know that. Gates wrote in his memorandum – I beg your pardon, his memoir that Hillary Clinton supported certain measures purely for political reasons and was quite open about saying so in conversations again in the Situation Room. So that's my – my instinct is that Donald Trump's instinct would be better. So put Peter down for nuclear confrontation going toe-to-toe with the Ruskies. Great.

Fabulous. That's an interesting take. You're right. John, hold on. Just turn to John because he an interesting take. You're right. John, hold on. Just turn to John because he's going to say Peter's right. Aren't you, John? Yes, boss. Brilliant insights. Really appreciate it. I've never heard it put quite like that. Back to you, James. Well, you know what I should say here before we leave? And that is something about the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, right? Absolutely. I'm sorry.

That little pause there was for Peter to make a long sigh. In some other parallel universe, there exists bearded Peter who is fascinated by Star Trek and just won't talk about it. No, I like the old Star Trek. I liked it. What I'm unable to do is follow you and Rob. And for all I know, John is about to join you in the detailed analysis of the permutations of all the Star Trek since. Is Chris Pine as good as James Kirk? Well, in this scene, that scene.

What about Wrath of Khan? I like the old TV series in which Captain Kirk was Captain Kirk and Scotty was Scotty. I love that stuff. Sure. Well, yes. And in a bearded Peter alternate universe, then Peter would know exactly all the permutations and what they meant.

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Star Trek because I love it. Very much so. And now there's a new television show that is going to be doing another iteration of it 50 years on and they're still making it. None of us would have thought that when we were sitting on the sofa in our footie jammies watching the first show and really being terrified

by everything. So I'm happy about it. And Peter, I think it's touching that you love the old show with its cardboard sets and its garish lighting and its gravity-defying female gowns. But have you ever been tempted to go see the new movies on the big screen and subject yourself to what entertainment as Mata has morphed into? I went during the 80s when they were still using the original cast. I went – what was the last one? But I did – the reviews of this latest Chris Pine one were so bad that I stayed –

No, they weren't. Weren't they? No. Wasn't there a Star Trek where the reviews were just said, what a stinker? What was that? Yeah, Star Trek. You got Star Trek 5. I mean there are people who didn't like the previous movie.

OK. People generally praise this one as a throwback to the, the old series. Oh really? And it's energy and it's enthusiasm and it's, it's, it's, it's ensemble character acting because the joy of Star Trek has to come down to the characters and whether you like them as much as the ships and

the hardware and the futurism and the rest of it. I loved it. Okay. If you loved it, I'll go see it. I have to say, so it was one movie or two movies ago where the reviews were so bad that I just switched off. If you're switching me back on, James, your cultural recommendation is my command.

I will go or I'll download it or whatever, wherever it's available now. Yeah, go torrent it somewhere, Peter. Here's the thing. And when it comes to certain things in life that I like, when I go to experience a new iteration of it, I lean into it saying not I hope I like this, but I want to like this. Let's make it easy for myself to like this. Yes. And not sit there and pick nits and arch my eyebrow and be – That's the way you should be toward Donald Trump in my opinion. But go ahead,

go ahead. The Hillary. I'm allergic to logical leaps like that. Fascinating. I just had to do my Hillary impersonation there. Well, listen folks, sometimes people cough and they're not well rested and you don't want to be

that person, which is why you should get a Casper and you'll sleep better. And you should also go to Harry's and you'll shave better and go to thetrunkclub.com and you'll dress better. You've listened to Tom Sowell and now you can think better. You listen to Peter and John and now you can regard the news of the world with a new perspective. Everything's better now, isn't it? Everything's better now that you've listened to the podcast, which is why you should become one of the 1,500 members who are making Ricochet vault into the next decade and make sure that we're here in the future. Hold on. Is this the wrap?

Is this the wrap? Are you wrapping the show? Channeling the spirit of Rob Long, Peter Robinson. No, because I have a cultural observation to make and this is, as best I can recall, the first time in history, the history of this – the long and storied history of this podcast in which I am about to launch a cultural topic and see what James – Yeah, I know. And see if I'm correct about it. I know. Next after this, I'll be talking sports.

Go on, Peter. sports go on peter i just stumbled across made in america the espn five-part documentary on oj simpson which i know james i know i know i know i'm i'm a year out of date the thing first aired a year ago i can only say that the thing is totally engrossing. Oh, I hear it. Absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking and disturbing on every – it really – the sense of the weight of the tragedy is – it's just a staggering piece of work in my judgment. And you haven't seen it? No. haven't seen it no i'm currently i'm watching the televised the 12 part televised version the miniseries they made about it which is pretty good um i haven't had a lot of time for tell i haven't had a lot of time for i've got series stacked up like planes like flight 93 and 640

and all the rest of them and tom soul's pacific jet all circling over my head these shows that i have to get to the only reason I started this was because I assumed that this being a good piece of work, you would already have seen it and have all sorts of perceptive, witty things to say. Blue Yeti, you can cut the whole segment. I'm sorry. Unless John has seen it. I'm sorry. I now retract. Go back to the

rap, James. No, I don't want to do that. I think it should be noted that Peter had lapped me on this one and what's more, just to show that. I think it should be noted that Peter had lapped me on this one and what's more, just to show you people who think he just lives in an ivory tower and does nothing but read Harry and James novels. He's out there among us

like the rest of us. So if you would like to discuss O.J. or you would like to discuss Tom Sowell or you would like to discuss anything that we blathered about in this interminable series of palabras, you can go to Ricochet 3.0 where we will see you in the comments. John, Peter, thanks. We'll see you next week.

Thank you, boys. Next week. Thank you. Now when you're feeling low and the fish won't bite You need a little bit of soul to put you right. You gotta make like you wanna be a friend. And then a little bit of soul will come your way. Now when your girl is gone and you're broken too You need a little bit of soul to see it through

And when you rise from the, you're running cold. You'll get a lot more kids with a little bit of soul. And when your body is full, there's nobody proving. A little bit of soul and it really starts moving, yeah. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Now when you're in a mess and you feel like crying, just remember this little song of mine As you go through life, try to reach your goal

Just remember I'm a little out of this world A little bit so, yeah, a little bit so Thank you.