Thomas Sowell -- Dismantling America

welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson be sure to follow us on Twitter if you would at twitter.com slash UNC knowledge twitter.com slash UNC knowledge comment ask questions suggest guests a fellow at the Hoover Institution dr. Thomas soul has taught economics intellectual history and social policy at such institutions as Cornell Amherst and UCLA the author of more than a dozen books dr. Sol has just published a collection of essays dismantling America Tom welcome a good reader segment one decline and fall from dismantling America quote the collapse of a civilization is not just the replacement of rulers or institutions with new rulers and new institutions it is the destruction of a whole way of life and the painful and sometimes pathetic attempts of rebuilding amid the ruins is that where America is headed I believe it is closed quote now whatever troubles we have it's still the richest most powerful nation in the world we're sterile still fundamentally at peace some soldiers in Iraq some soldiers in Afghanistan some in Germany some in South Korea but relatively small Wars by historical standards in Afghanistan and Iraq how can you say such a thing well you know that description would also fit the United States on December 6 1941 it's like the argument was used when I when I used to question what all the Social Security was fiscally sound and I said Social Security has never missed a payment it's there have been a day later a dollar short that's always true right up to the moment of collapse again from dismantling America while the Obama administration is not the root cause of the ominous dangers that face this country at home and abroad it is the embodiment the personification and the culmination of dangerous trends that began decades ago how does the President of the United States and body dangerous trends how do you see this man oh my gosh I see him as someone who all his life has been associated with and part of a group of people who fundamentally don't believe in the principles of this country not only people would the most obvious example obviously is Jeremiah Wright people like Bill Ayers so he's you know try to disavow but people who fundamentally think that we're on the wrong track we have the wrong principles and we need to be changed whether we want to be or not Tom you mentioned Jeremiah Wright his pastor at church in Chicago you mentioned Bill Ayers if it was a former member of the Weather Underground whether terror is exactly what about his formation his intellectual formation at Columbia Harvard Law School what he himself says that he always sought out the most radical people he worked as a community organizer I don't think most people stop and think what is a community organizing do he is an organize a community like sales huh it's not bake sales he's organized no he's not he's not telling people at community how to frost shot better and stuff like that he is mobilizing all the resentments organizing them in order to put them into a battle to get what they want from other people now you talk about Barack Obama as embodying dangerous trends quote that began decades ago yes when this is during your lifetime during your adult yet lifetime yes and perhaps even a little earlier I think what you see and then the most clearly I think in the academic world are people who don't think that this country is a great country one example of a colleague of mine who teaches at Harvard after 9/11 put a an American flag on his car and his colleagues said what is that for when I visited Berkeley in the aftermath of 9/11 when they were you know flags everywhere I did not see one flag on the Berkeley campus on any of those expensive houses you know when I saw I was coming back from Berkeley the first American flag I saw was in a low-income black neighborhood in Elkin these are people who consider themselves citizens of the world and that the rest of us are so lucky to have them here change America so that people like us don't have a voice and of course the whole way that Obama has operated with these enormous bills that no one has ever had time to read that they rush through when they're putting people in power who don't have to go through the confirmation process so that we don't find out what they're like except by if there's an expose on Fox News or someplace evidence the whole thing has been to circumvent the American public in order to put in things that they clearly don't want as shown by the polls as shown by this recent the repudiation in Missouri all right that's that's a question Barack Obama won by about seven percentage points that's the biggest for a Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton won by eight FDR won by big but that's the he's in the top three democratic finishers in the last seven decades Barack Obama is so here's the question you've described him you've described the academic elites to what extent the American people voted for him to what extent do you see a corrosion of values among the American people themselves on the one hand on the other hand to what extent is there just a kind of creeping takeover by an elite that is that fails to share that is opposed to the values that most Americans share this button is both things and I think part of part of the reason so many people voted for him was that what they got through the media was so filtered that the you know they poo pooed this man having been a member of a church run by a ranting racist because they wanted to believe that he was going to be a unified community organizers don't unify they divide they polarized that's how they get what they want you know I never thought of a Kiwanis as a unifying force in American life and then this this man is not but of course if they don't know that then of course they may vote for it so it's the press it's Barack Obama and the administration it's the elites at academic institutions but but it's not it's not just a thing that happened now long before Barack Obama's name became known there was this attitude essentially repudiating the principles of the country I get started I think with Woodrow Wilson who was the first president United States to openly say that the Constitution you know needed to be superseded and he didn't mean that there need to be a minimus to the Constitution which it which you know anybody can be for because but but that the courts should do this in other words to circumvent the public the voting public and put in the things that the judges think ought to be put in irrespective of what the Constitution said segment two dismantling America to throw tations the first comes from your book dismantling America this segment is on marriage justice Oliver Wendell Holmes you write said that the life of the law has not been logic but experience vast numbers of laws have accumulated and evolved over the centuries based on experience with male-female unions there is no reason why all those laws should be transferred willy-nilly to a different kind of Union one with neither the inherent tendency to produce children or the inherent asymmetries of relationships between people of different sexes that's quotation one here's quotation two US District Judge Vaughn Walker ruling in Perry versus Schwarzenegger on August 4th quote gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage close quote I just dropped that in your lap to see what you do with it doctor so long well you know the most important decision is always who makes the decision and so the question is not when is the role of gender for this judge to decide but since we are presumably still for the moment at least a self-governing nation it's for the best for the voting public to decide and so the fact that he feels that way that's wonderful let him vote that way and the privacy of the voting booth but let him not say that this is now the law of the land just because he happens to think that way Tom let me give you just another couple of quotations from Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling the other day Judge Walker the traditional understanding of marriage represents quote nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life close quote that's an artifact well one might say the judge Walker's is an artifact of what goes on in academia in particular in the law schools but again the question is whose decision is that is that a judge is there to decide that the rest of us what we believe is it's just not worth thinking about or is he there to carry out the laws of them been passed by the duly elected representative Tom you know that during this trial he had a long fact-finding phase when which one sociologists and expert after another came in to testify about the roles of genders the state of marriage in the 21st century and so forth you just brush all that aside no none of that is a substitute for the poor we the people which is what the Constitution is about well I I could give you an impressive list of people who have said absurd things in fact if you were to make a list of all the absurd things and by brilliant people it would be longer than the Encyclopedia Britannica all right one more from Judge Walker here quote the evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for the belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite sex couples close quote well it may be conclusive to him but again the question is whose decision that is it obviously it's not conclusive to other people or else the proposition that he was ruling on would never have passed and been passed with the votes of seven million California yeah by the way all right so let me ask you just step back from that a little bit and ask you this question how did we go in the space of a couple of decades maybe three but I think probably closer to two from an America in which the notion of same-sex marriage was literally unthinkable that is to say it was in nobody's head so outlandish that it never occurred to anyone to a sitting judge federal judge a name to the federal bench by the way by George HW Bush Evan Albers uh coming out with an opinion like this what happened to the legal regime to the social more to the mores what what was this right this is why I say that Obama is really the culmination of a trend he didn't do this by himself that there was a notion out there a set of notions really about the country about what was right and about who should make what decisions those what notions were out there you know but before he ever became a public figure but now that he and I think what you saw was an erosion of the confidence in the country and the country's culture his principles and so forth and all of this happened and what is happening now is what was just an erosion sort of almost uncoordinated and so on to a to a deliberate attempt on his part to change the country in fundamental ways now you talked about Woodrow Wilson with a certain kind of rot setting in with Woodrow Wilson progressives the sort of a lead ISM I Woodrow Wilson know far better than that all ya nonentity James Madison who drafted the institution right all right but in more recent times times that you and I can remember we had Ronald Reagan and the sense that somehow the country was coming back how do we go from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama how do you go from a reassertion of what seems to be fundamental faith in the country to a judge Vaughn Walker what happened in the space of just two or three decades well I think it started immediately with Reagan successor George HW Bush I no doubt a decent man an honorable man but one who disdained what he called this vision thing in other words that the overall overarching sense of principles that you'd be fighting for to me I think one of the moments that sort of gave a clue was when during one of the presidential debates when Bush is looking at his watch right I can't imagine Ronald Reagan or any Democrat for that matter looking at his wife's burger I mean you know Bush was weak and I think that the most the first moment that you saw a glimpse of this was when bush first took off at Bush 41 and started talking about a kinder and gentler America that it's kinder and gentler to tax fact the taxpayers in order to make it easier on people who not live up to their responsibilities you see that right now character extremes in this administration where you know people who never took never took out a $700,000 loan in their lives now I have to subsidize people who did take out a $700,000 mortgage loan and couldn't afford it so it is the case that either you have a Ronald Reagan in place fighting for American principles and Ronald Reagan's don't come along that often or even a Republican and temperamentally conservative president such as George HW Bush will come under such cultural and political pressures that the drift to the left oh yes and that will compel will continue yes you know what you generally have had in recent times is people moving to the left rapidly on the democrats and slowly under republicans all right segment three dismantling the culture from your book tom dismantling america quote the great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility close quote what do you mean oh i think that the idea of personal responsibility is more or less off the tables it's a passe in many many good places again going back to the play the housing situation but people took out mortgages that they couldn't afford and that now people who didn't take out mortgages they couldn't afford are now is he expected to pay to but to bail them out it's insane but you don't they were duped by dishonest mortgage brokers oh there was enough dishonesty to go around we need to single out mortgage brokers no that's the narrative the fact of the matter is that speculators took advantage you if you think these things are put in these laws and policies are put into play he's saying this is gonna help the poor the downtrodden is who actually benefits from this speculators Bennett from this benefited from this more than any poor any downtrodden a speculator could come in claim any income he wanted to claim in order to buy three or four houses nobody would verify the income he he would take you to get him a teaser rates like 2% per year and he didn't worry about that going up later because he was going to sell the house beforehand and so a lot of that was in there the other thing is that it's a very complicated financial situation but the cold fact is if the moistures that continued to be paid we wouldn't have had the mortgage crisis so the fundamental reason with the crisis that the Voyageurs weren't paid and the fundamental reason they weren't paid is that they were made under conditions that made it unlikely they would ever be repaid then you knew that going in right right losing a sense of personal responsibility you're right in dismantling America places quote a whole society in jeopardy how is that the case how do you draw a line from the mortgage crisis to the dismantling of the entire country well I think if you don't have a sense of personal responsibility and what you have is the government taking money from people who are personally responsible and giving it the people who what you're responsible or in other cases corrupt that's that's not that's not a viable situation for the long-term you're going to have ever more people being ever more irresponsible as is happening now I mean in the wake of the mortgage crisis they've raised the limit that the Federal Housing Administration will insure from about three hundred sixty thousand to seven hundred twenty seven thousand all so they've got so they double the profit the policy that got us into profit and the problems in the first place Tom you on personal responsibility you know I've talked about this before you spent part of your boyhood in Harlem yes is that correct yes most of it all right tell me a little bit about the Harlem that you knew as a boy was it safe at night yes and when I when I would wake up in the middle of the night I would get up get dressed and go out took corner newsstand where there was a little old man who was white uh selling selling newspapers in Harlem at midnight now today he and I would both be taken in for middle observation yeah how were the schools in the Harlem of your boyhood oh they were they were they were there they were among the best in the country um public schools public schools oh I only went to public schools I have data on the actual test scores of kids in Harlem they were they were almost identically with the kids in the lower Eastside were almost all-white uh and and nobody our trouble was concerned about you know you have to give me school lunches and stuff like that they did they didn't ask me whether my home was broken or not they just told me what I was supposed to do and they made damn sure I did it doing your homework get your assignments in that's it Tom what happened between the Harlem of your boyhood which would be what late 40s to the mid Oh Oh 40s not oh I went my first school I attended hall up with 1939 Oh real all right so you grew up and you were there during the Second World War oh yes all right so the Harlem take me from the Harlem of your boyhood in this theme of personal responsibility to the Harlem of the 70s and 80s oh there there you got the teachers became social workers social theorists they began prop became propagandist for all kinds of new fads and I guess the the test was whether they made the teachers feel I was exciting and made the students feel good about themselves so of course they end up not with me with no education that's worth talking about and what about the crime rates crawl oh my goodness the crime rates are much lower I gave it much lower when you were a boy but yeah so what do you attribute the rise in crime or the rise in the end the idea that we have to look for the root causes of crime rather than put put put the bad guys in jail all right so so there's the dissolution of the sense of personal responsibility that the teacher is to teach the child is to do his homework criminals are to be picked up and put in jail yeah now Harlem today is pretty safe it enjoyed the increase in safety or the drop in crime rates that with the associate with the rest of New York that began under Rudy Giuliani the Harlem economy is pretty robust and Harlem is now home to some two dozen charter schools so what I'm trying to do Tom is cheer you up I'm trying to I made it I'm trying to point to evidence of the possibility of renewal of rebirth and that too suggested that there was possibility for renewal and rebirth so I always said it with in fact even in my book I say you know the one good thing is that nothing is inevitable with what happens but I also point out that there were there were periods of improvement as they as the Roman Empire moved toward its last day right all right segment for dismantling self-government again tom from dismantling America quote nothing so epitomizes President Obama's contempt for American values and traditions as ramming two bills the stimulus package in the health care bill this would be through Congress in his first year each bill more than a thousand pages long too fast for either to be read much less discussed close quote stimulus package the health the health care bill actually looked this up came to more than two thousand pages on the other hand the American people elected Barack Obama they gave him big Democratic majorities in both the house in the Senate why shouldn't Barack Obama and his Democratic allies enact whatever they want as they want oh whatever they want is one thing as they wanted something else as they want means circumventing the whole political system of the country that's meant to safeguard you know a self-governing country if you know if you know if you never learned what kind of laws are being passed then you lost a great deal of your ability to influence what happens to the people who rule I mean the thing that it this whole business with Russia crushing these bills through it reminds me only thing I find in parallel in history is the Norman conquerors who would publish their laws in England in French for an english-speaking nation dismantling America once again what are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending they buying what politicians are most interested in power explain that notion there are things that the government is authorized to do under the Constitution and other things that they're not authorized to do but by simply spending a vast amount of money you acquire the right to do them for example you can you can fire the head of General Motors simply because you spent all that money buying a rescuing General Motors are there all kinds of programs that the federal government imposes on the states which they have no authority to do it but they impose them because they make the receipt of federal money contingent on doing what they tell you in Washington and so the powers that were set out the Constitution and limited become they expanded by this process now I mentioned that we had we've had some questions for you submitted from people who follow the show on Twitter and Facebook here's one from a fellow called Albert Fuchs on Facebook and he points out paraphrase because it's a little bit long here Milton Friedman said a major reason for the growth of government is that special interests are concentrated but the general interest is diffuse and Tocqueville warrant that American democracy would be in danger when the public learned it could use the ballot box to vote itself money yeah now both of these get at what you were talking about just a moment ago but both of these are structural points they have it has been the case since the Constitution was enacted that special interests are concentrated in the general or an interest is diffuse or that politicians could just could could in effect purchase votes yes why do we have the problem now what has happened in recent oh good great questions because because one of the constraints are the values of the public and when the values of the public are constantly eroded by in the schools and in the press elsewhere uh then these these other tendencies can can have a wider field of play mmm so what's a good index for the values of the public would you say would you say for example that it might be federal federal spending or federal debt where for two centuries you get a fairly flat slowly climbing line goes up during the Civil War comes back down and then in this beginning about in the 70s it just takes off yeah so it's not FDR it's not the great deal is not the 30s it's the 70s well when do we get to go catastrophic Allah wrong I I would I would say I was I would say what was the Great Depression most people are unaware that prior to the 1930s the federal government never intervened in the economy to get us out of a recession the economy recovered on its own and kept going but FDR really broke down a great deal of that sense that of Independence I mean there was a time I think most Americans would have felt insulted to have it thought that they wanted somebody else to pay their medical bills they don't feel someone Seldon anymore mmm all right this is what I'm trying to get at this some on the one hand you've got an elite that is effectively engaging in a slow-motion hijacking of America that's a bit crude wave one way of putting it but at the other hand you've got more and more Americans who either like the idea of being hijacked are too worn out to fight it anymore I'm trying to get your sense of the extent to which the public itself is oh yeah is dis spiritually of the ideas of the sixties the idea that if you had a grievance you didn't have to obey the law historian Paul Ray of Hillsdale College he he grants we did a shoot with Paul Ray and he grants a great deal of what you've been saying here Tom but now listen to Paul Ray quote the political moment in which we live is a moment of great great hope close quote how so because by overreaching so dramatically president obama has roused the american people to reclaim their old liberties the Obama administration Paul Ray argues this is a quotation is quote a gift to the Friends of Liberty close quote I hope he is right and that I am wrong and you don't are you encouraged by the tea party by the polls that show that oh yes yes the but there is such a thing as a point of no return I think then the real question is whether he can there and that's why I think that the fall 2002 2010 elections up on my judgement one of the most if not the most important election we've ever held because if he doesn't get stopped and this fall's election I don't know how you'll ever be stopped the one thing people talking about his falling in the polls he's still in the 40s if he can somehow make millions of illegal immigrants legal and voters before 2012 he can get a second term and I doubt if there I see that as a point of no return so getting some substantial portion of the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country the vote yeah that would be a direction step toward the point of no return yeah domestically what what other is Obamacare Obamacare is reversible or at least it's ill effects can be contained it all comes down to November this year if it's not if it's not stopped now it won't be stopped all right so November second fourth I can't remember which is election day you have one specific date in American history which you can name right now that you consider actually absolutely crucial oh absolutely it's almost like the great military battles you know Charles Markel at the Fletcher yeah 7:32 I actually looked that up just yes yes yes for the siege of Vienna and 1532 you know had those things go on the other way it would be a totally different world today we're in the segment 5 which I had in my notes titled the point of no return you mentioned in dismantling America such a point in foreign policy let me quote you Tom Iran is advancing step by step toward nuclear weapons while the Europeans wring their hands and the United Nations engages in leisurely discussion when Osama bin Laden has nuclear weapons the choice will be between knuckling under and watching American cities blasted off the face of the earth that is the point of no return and we are drifting toward it yeah close quote nothing you've seen since you wrote that causes you to reconsider or no get your views no I was appalled earlier this year when the I think was gates or someone else in the Pentagon i elite the fact that there were no contingency help military plans for stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and now recently there been some talk that there that there are now plans now I have no idea whether that means that there really are plans or whether they see an election coming and they better create the impression that they have more client plans because they've covered themselves very well because they have international conferences over Iran you have resolutions in the ua this is these are these are what I call elaborate ways of doing nothing well we've got let me quote you michael barone the journalist you know my this is just from a couple of days ago quote times Time Magazine's joke line and the American interests Walter Russell Mead suggested to me that the moment at bomb administration is seriously considering a military strike against Iran now comes further evidence in an opinion article in The Washington Post by Steven Simon and Ray Takei I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that correctly Simon worked in Bill Clinton's National Security Council and decay is described as a former adviser to the Obama administration their article takes seriously the possibility that the president will order such an attack and your answer to that is that could be nothing but cheap leaking yeah I'll believe it when I see it all right the in fact he does have to do that all he has to do is not interfere if there's really want to do it I've saw some place where Saudi Arabia's indicated that the Israelis could fly over Saudi Arabia to get there and as I running that they would have to go around their rock and fly it with Saudi Arabia because the American planes Petrolia rot and presumably would shoot down the Israeli planes on their way to Iran let me ask you this do you consider it then the duty of the President of the United States to prevent Iran from gaining now that's clear to you Alan II III don't know what earthly chance we have or the Western world has once the arete has those weapons you know it's what it's all well what about this notion of the deterrence it worked during the Cold War yeah literally the Russians did not want us to blast Moscow off the map the Iranians have said themselves going back to Ayatollah Khomeini that their that their top priority is not Iran but Allah and so if they get into a war in which Iran is knocked out but they then strike a blow for Allah they were happy with that and failing any serious signs of the United States would attack would you say that it's the duty of the Prime Minister of Israel and his cabinet to order an attack oh absolutely it's just what they think of how pathetic this is that the the fate of the United States of America would be in the hands of a country smaller than Lake Michigan hmm one final time from dismantling America to follow Rome one of the greatest civilizations of all time as it degenerated and fractured is especially painful and view of the parallels to what is happening in America in our own times close quote what are the parallels that are most striking to you the internal loss of confidence that we're not prepared to stand up and defend ourselves I mean there are all kinds of small signs and large signs but that we have to accommodate people who move here you know the old saying was that when in Rome do as the Romans do the new one is when in Rome tell the Romans what to do and we're going along with it ton let me close this out by getting your kind of a broad civilizational view here fourth century Rome's final century is a great power of course it lingers on in Constantinople for another thousand years but fourth century we have Saint Agustin watching from North Africa as his beloved Rome where he studied he's a great product of classical civilization is sacked and he responds by averting his gaze from this world and writing the City of God he shifts his his attentions to heaven a few decades later we have Saint Benedict of Nursia up in northern Italy and he's the founder of great monasteries attempting to hoard in a certain sense what learning he can and hoping that later they will be regrowth and he adopts a motto which translates from the Latin to pruned it will grow again so his Tom soul and Agustin was insisting on underlying principles and a kind of eternal values but actually four C's believes that what he is observing is total collapse or is he a benedict hoping for preparing for doing what he can to initiate rebirth well I'm in an age where I couldn't play either of those roads haha you look pretty saintly to me Tom you need new glasses but above but no I think it was really but what I meant about the pathetic aspect of the aftermath of the collapse of Rome you know these heroic efforts which which ultimately paid off you know many centuries later but they were centuries to live through oh well Dark Ages were dark yes imagine living in the midst of ruins that you don't even have the knowledge to repair much less to build you know oh that's what you mean in the passage when you talk about the pathetic attempt to use among the ruins yes the sense that there was a civilization here and it was all around you in this is I think this is part of the reason that the Europe or that of that era still thought it was a backward-looking civilization they had good reason to look backwards because the people before them had achieved far more than they were capable of achieving or even sustaining mm-hmm so your fear is that two decades from now Americans will be looking back at wreaths even at the 1950s a time of growth and American self-confidence and standing up to the Soviets in the Cold War assuming a large role in the world that will be gone and we'll have the feeling that we're pygmies by comparison with there's something of this in Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation yeah there's a kind of nostalgia a feeling that those who came just before us were bigger people somehow they were they were you yes all right last question if you could offer one sentence of counsel to the President of the United States what would you say Tom resign haha no I can't end the program on that if you could offer one sentence of counsel to some 20 year old kid who's watching this webcast and by the way when when we put up a notice that you're going to appear on Twitter or face you are a rock star to college kids I want you to know that so there's there's there's there's hope your your your your reaching people so one sentence of advice to some sophomore or junior who's watching this today and and thinks to himself gee dr. Sol just told me the American which I'm going to grow up will be a shrunken place no no it's not over till it's over as Yogi Berra said and I would say this young person if we through some miracle get through this please take the heart the lesson of what happens when you vote on the basis of rhetoric and symbolism and instead of using your mind it doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think dr. Thomas soul the author of dismantling America thank you for joining us thank you I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge and the Hoover Institution thank you

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Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, America, dismantling, collapse, marriage, same-sex, democracy, votes, Constitution, responsibility, accountability, Obama, health care, stimulus, culture, self-government

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Length: 36min 42sec (2202 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2010