Is Thinking Now Obsolete?
By Thomas Sowell
WND.com
Some have said that we are living in a
post-industrial era, while others have said that we
are living in a post-racial era. But growing
evidence suggests that we are living in a
post-thinking era.
Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are
staging angry protests against Israel’s military
action in Gaza. One of the talking points against
Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have
been killed by Israeli military attacks than the
number of Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas
rocket attacks on Israel that started this latest
military conflict.
Are these protesters aware that vastly more German
civilians were killed by American bombers attacking
Nazi Germany during World War II than American
civilians killed in the United States by Hitler’s
forces?
Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera says that there is no
way Israel is winning the battle for world opinion.
But Israel is trying to win the battle for survival,
while surrounded by enemies. Might that not be more
important?
Has any other country, in any other war, been
expected to keep the enemy’s civilian casualties no
higher than its own civilian casualties? The idea
that Israel should do so did not originate among the
masses but among the educated intelligentsia.
In an age when scientists are creating artificial
intelligence, too many of our educational
institutions seem to be creating artificial
stupidity.
It is much the same story in our domestic
controversies. We have gotten so intimidated by
political correctness that our major media outlets
dare not call people who immigrate to this country
illegally “illegal immigrants.”
Geraldo Rivera has denounced the Drudge Report for
carrying news stories that show some of the negative
consequences and dangers from allowing vast numbers
of youngsters to enter the country illegally and be
spread across the country by the Obama
administration.
Some of these youngsters are already known to be
carrying lice and suffering from disease. Since
there have been no thorough medical examinations of
most of them, we have no way of knowing whether, or
how many, are carrying deadly diseases that will
spread to American children when these unexamined
young immigrants enter schools across the country.
The attack against Matt Drudge has been in the
classic tradition of demagogues. It turns questions
of fact into questions of motive. Geraldo accuses
Drudge of trying to start a “civil war.”
Back when masses of immigrants from Europe were
entering this country, those with dangerous diseases
were turned back from Ellis Island. Nobody thought
they had a legal or a moral “right” to be in America
or that it was mean or racist not to want our
children to catch their diseases.
Even on the less contentious issue of minimum wage
laws, there are the same unthinking reactions.
Although liberals are usually gung ho for increasing
the minimum wage, there was a sympathetic front-page
story in the July 29 San Francisco Chronicle about
the plight of a local nonprofit organization that
will not be able to serve as many low-income
minority youths if it has to pay a higher minimum
wage. They are seeking some kind of exemption.
Does it not occur to these people that the very same
thing happens when a minimum wage increase applies
to profit-based employers? They, too, tend to hire
fewer inexperienced young people when there is a
minimum wage law.
This is not breaking news. This is what has been
happening for generations in the United States and
in other countries around the world.
One of the few countries without a minimum wage
law is Switzerland, where the unemployment rate has
been consistently less than 4 percent for years.
Back in 2003, The Economist magazine reported that
“Switzerland’s unemployment neared a five-year high
of 3.9 percent in February.” The most recent issue
shows the Swiss unemployment rate back to a more
normal 3.2 percent.
Does anyone think that having minimum wage laws and
high youth unemployment is better? In fact, does
anyone think at all these days?