Doesn't the headline above capture in a nutshell the basic "research" strategy of the present-day "progressive" left? Assuming it does, doesn't it also make it that much more galling that these "progressives" tout the virtues of diversity when intellectual diversity is not their strong suit?
If the "progressives" do study with due seriousness and care Sowell along with West, then what's the evidence for that? I don't recall ever seeing any evidence that "progressives" do study Sowell. "Black conservative who isn't a token negro" is like a cognitive blank area to these "progs," is it not? If not, have they ever demonstrated otherwise? How else to explain their ridiculous rhetoric and tactics when it comes to issues bearing on race and politics? Their behaving as they do on these issues, combined with "having carefully studied Sowell and other black conservatives or libertarians to get their perspective," is a cognitive blank spot to me, because I simply don't see how these two things could possibly go together.
Leftists/"progs" have come to behave like intellectual thugs and lowlifes on matters of race in America. We could start with their unilateral idea, vetted only among fellow leftists and "progressives" rather than the culture at large, that "racism" must now be redefined to mean "institutional racism with power structures." No, that's institutional racism with power structures. Racism, in the non-bastardized-by-leftist-losers sense, is a broader category than institutional racism with power structures, and pertains to beliefs, attitudes and practices relating to race (whether race is a real thing or a loose social categorization that takes on the reality of race in people's minds).
But that practice of redefining words, such redefinition being vetted by only an "enlightened fellow progressive intellectual elite," is only part of a broader pattern of intellectual lowlife behavior of leftists and "progressives." Same with their widespread practice of giving careful attention and study to leftist/socialist/"progressive" ideas and thinkers while giving off every indication that they're oblivious to so many major non-leftist ideas and thinkers. It's not like Sowell isn't a major thinker particularly in economics; his Knowledge and Decisions was praised by Hayek and Friedman. So either leftists know about such things and refuse to acknowledge them, making them dishonest shits, or they don't know about such things while pretending to know what they need to know, which makes them ignorant shits. So which is it?
(I could draw up such damning either-or alternatives about leftists all day long, especially as it pertains to their absolutely piss-poor failure or outright refusal to know about the ideas of Rand that they so boldly opine about. Case in point: their endless insinuations and assertions that Rand didn't care about the poor. Either they know the facts that demonstrate otherwise and therefore willfully omit mention of them, or they're so pathetically ignorant of those facts as to be culpable in their ignorance. Which is it?)
Why do I bash leftists so? Because they're impostors, traitors to reason and decency, and can rightly be called out as such. Or at the very least, the intellectual culture of leftism is deplorable, encouraging/enabling laziness and dogmatism and whatever other vices. And if they've absorbed and enabled bad habits of thinking in areas like politics and race, in just what other areas have they inculcated intellectual vice? For instance, why do they promote the notion of betting living through big government (at someone's expense) rather than the more powerful solution, better living through philosophy? What vicious habits of thought would lead self-styled "progressives" into being so bad at broadcasting an interest in philosophy while being so good at broadcasting their interest in raising taxes?
(The same might be asked about the "conservatives" who do a piss-poor job of broadcasting an interest in philosophy, but I've learned to cut them more of a break because they do actually care about good habits and virtues beyond a focus on the narrowly political. A really smug conceited "progressive" like Clinton will lecture us about how "it takes a village" to raise a child, but what speaks volumes is what she doesn't broadcast an interest in: virtue or character. Perhaps we shouldn't encourage leftists to tackle the subjects of virtue and character because they'd probably manage to bastardize those concepts as well. "Virtue" would reduce to the twin pillars of "progressive" morality - fairness/equality and "harm," with these concepts already being bastardized enough by leftists as it is. Anyway, "conservatives" actually demonstrate a serious interest in a non-bastardized, traditionally Western-civ worldview, as essential to a proper framing of political talk and disputation. For leftists, it is politics itself which plays a key role in their usually-secular worldview, politics that generates the leftists' sense of meaning and being a part of "something greater than themselves." Aristotelian virtue? When was the last time you ever heard a leftist talk about that? And yet they have the gall to pose as being intellectually progressive and advanced and to depict their opponents as the backwards bigots. Until they clean up their act I will continue to bash them as I deem appropriate.)
As for the latest piece of moral obscenity wafting over from the Left, try out Ocasio-Cortez's proposed return to marginal income taxation of 70%. (If your income is high enough, the state owns 70% of your marginal output under such a scheme. Democrats think this is a perfectly normal and un-bastardized vision of the America's founding principles. (Ignorance of those principles or deliberate bastardization of them - which is it?)) Knowing leftists, that 70% figure could only grow in time if they had their way. Taxes are never high enough for Democrats, haven't you noticed? But hey, if your view of who owns whose income is like Cornel West's, and you ignore Thomas Sowell's views, that sort of thing shouldn't come as much of a surprise. For West, socialism is the political expression of Christianity -- and the left sees this as a perfectly normal, un-bastardized, totally not-perverse invocation of Christian ethics for political ends. (If they were Christians proper, wouldn't they render unto Caesar what he claims as his but not be actively involved in adding to Caesar's claims, since the next world is all that really matters? I'm much more inclined to treat non-theocratic conservatives as more reliable on the subject of Christianity's political implications beyond the rather obvious separation of the aims and functions of church and state, respectively, based on the "render unto..." quote and a common-sense take on Christianity's mission. The non-theocratic conservatives - the distance between these better conservatives and the libertarians tends to dissolve, especially when either are contrasted with leftism - are more likely to have done the relevant homework, and not to display obliviousness to the alternative political interpretations of Christianity. Leftists have lost the benefit of the doubt here.)
What's good about Ocasio's proposal -- well, her making the proposal -- is that fellow Democrats will be called forth to debate its merits, and the mental gymnastics involved won't be pretty (which will be good for political sanity's sake). This is what the Democrat Party has become, a gathering ground for the state-of-the-art leftist lunacy that is far from having been vetted by the American people as a whole. Now they're going to have to debate among themselves and at considerable length the morally insane notion of 70% tax rates in peacetime, while the rest of the country "gets" to watch all the conceptual bastardizations necessarily involved with such insanity. But, hey, what else to expect from a party that studies ideas so selectively and in such insulation from intellectual competition? Of course 70% tax rates in peacetime is a morally shitty notion just on principle, but do Democrats know this? And if they don't know it, what does that say about their pretend-credentials as progressive and forward thinkers?
