Thomas Sowell: Is truth irrelevant?
THOMAS SOWELL JAN 15, 2021 9:18 AM It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong — when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.
For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically. Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars.
Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well.
One of the most grotesque distortions growing out of this carelessness with the facts has been a removal of Abraham Lincoln’s name and statues from various places, on grounds that he saw Black people only as property.
Such criticisms betray an incredible ignorance of history — or else a complete disregard of truth.
As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln knew that there was nothing in the Constitution which authorized him or any other president to free slaves. But he also knew that a military commander in wartime can legally seize the property of an enemy nation. Defining slaves as property gave President Lincoln the only legal authority he had to seize them during the Civil War. And once they were seized as property, he could then free them as human beings.
But, if the Emancipation Proclamation had based its action on defining the slaves as human beings, with a right to be free, the Supreme Court of that era would undoubtedly have declared it unconstitutional.
Millions of human beings would have remained slaves. Would ringing rhetoric be worth that price?
As for the claim that Lincoln did not regard Black people as human, he invited Frederick Douglass to the White House!
Gross distortions of history, in order to get Abraham Lincoln’s name removed from schools, tells us a lot about what is wrong with American education today.
Many schools are closed because of the coronavirus and the teachers unions. And many schools in minority neighborhoods failed to teach children enough math and English, back when they were still open. So it is incredible that school authorities have time to spend on ideological crusades like removing names and statues from schools.
Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — have become indoctrination centers. The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people’s rights that accompanied those riots.
At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes — which are automatically called “privileges” and never called “achievements,” regardless of what the actual facts are.
Facts don’t matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing Lincoln.
Any “under-representation” of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias. But those who argue this way cannot show us any society — anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history — that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors.
In America’s National Hockey League, for example, there are more players from Canada than there are players from the United States. There are also more players from Sweden than from California, even though California’s population is nearly four times the population of Sweden.
Californians are more “under-represented” in the NHL than women are in Silicon Valley. But no one can claim that this is due to discriminatory bias by the NHL. It is far more obviously due to people growing up in cold climates being more likely to have ice-skating experience.
This is one of many factors that produce skewed statistics in many endeavors. Discriminatory bias is among those factors. But it has no monopoly.
Yet who cares about facts any more, in this age of indoctrination?
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. This piece was distributed by Creators Syndicate.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0160
John Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 July 1775
Philadelphia July1 7. 1775 My Dear
I have received your very agreable Favours of June 22d. and 25th. They contain more particulars than any Letters I had before received from any Body.
It is not at all surprizing to me that the wanton, cruel, and infamous Conflagration of Charlestown, the Place of your Fathers Nativity, should afflict him. Let him know that I sincerely condole with him, on that melancholly Event. It is a Method of conducting War long since become disreputable among civilized Nations: But every Year brings us fresh Evidence, that We have nothing to hope for from our loving Mother Country, but Cruelties more abominable than those which are practiced by the Savage Indians.
The account you give me of the Numbers slain on the side of our Enemies, is affecting to Humanity, altho it is a glorious Proof of the Bravery of our Worthy Countrymen. Considering all the Disadvantages under which they fought, they really exhibited Prodigies of Valour.
Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.
The Loss of Mr. Mathers Library, which was a Collection, of Books and Manuscripts made by himself, his Father, his Grandfather, and Greatgrandfather, and was really very curious and valuable, is irreparable.2
The Family picture you draw is charming indeed. My dear Nabby, Johnny, Charly and Tommy, I long to see you, and to share with your Mamma the Pleasures of your Conversation.
I feel myself much obliged to Mr. Bowdoin, Mr. Wibirt, and the two Families you mention, for their Civilities to you. My Compliments to them. Does Mr. Wibirt preach against Oppression, and the other Cardinal Vices of the Times? Tell him the Clergy here, of every Denomination, not excepting the Episcopalian, thunder and lighten every sabbath. They pray for Boston and the Massachusetts—they thank God most explicitly and fervently for our remarkable Successes—they pray for the American Army. They seem to feel as if they were among you.
You ask if every Member feels for Us? Every Member says he does—and most of them really do. But most of them feel more for themselves. In every Society of Men, in every Clubb, I ever yet saw, you find some who are timid, their Fears hurry them away upon every Alarm—some who are selfish and avaricious, on whose callous Hearts nothing but Interest and Money can make Impression. There are some Persons in New York and Philadelphia, to whom a ship is dearer than a City, and a few Barrells of flower, than a thousand Lives—other Mens Lives I mean.
You ask, can they reallize what We suffer? I answer No. They cant, they dont—and to excuse them as well as I can, I must confess I should not be able to do it, myself, if I was not more acquainted with it by Experience than they are.
I am grieved for Dr. Tufts’s ill Health: but rejoiced exceedingly at his virtuous Exertions in the Cause of his Country.
I am happy to hear that my Brothers were at Grape Island and behaved well. My Love to them, and Duty to my Mother.
It gives me more Pleasure than I can express to learn that you sustain with so much Fortitude, the Shocks and Terrors of the Times. You are really brave, my dear, you are an Heroine. And you have Reason to be. For the worst that can happen, can do you no Harm. A soul, as pure, as benevolent, as virtuous and pious as yours has nothing to fear, but every Thing to hope and expect from the last of human Evils.
Am glad you have secured an Assylum, tho I hope you will not have occasion for it.
Love to Brother Cranch and sister and the Children.
There is an amiable, ingenious Hussy, named Betcy Smith, for whom I have a very great Regard. Be pleased to make my Love acceptable to her, and let her know, that her elegant Pen cannot be more usefully employed than in Writing Letters to her Brother at Phyladelphia, tho it may more agreably in writing Billet doux to young Gentlemen.
The other Day, after I had received a Letter of yours, with one or two others, Mr. William Barrell desired to read them. I put them into his Hand, and the next Morning had them returned in a large Bundle packed up with two great Heaps of Pins, with a very polite Card requesting Portias Acceptance of them.3 I shall bring them with me [when]4 I return: But when that will be is uncertain.—I hope not more than a Month hence.
I have really had a very disagreable Time of it. My Health and especialy my Eyes have been so very bad, that I have not been so fit for Business as I ought, and if I had been in perfect Health, I should have had in the present Condition of my Country and my Friends, no Taste for Pleasure. But Dr. Young has made a kind of Cure of my Health and Dr. Church of my Eyes.
Have received two kind Letters from your Unkle Smith5—do thank him for them—I shall forever love him for them. I love every Body that writes to me.
I am forever yours—
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “To Mrs. Abigail Adams Braintree”; endorsed: “C No 14.”
Corrected from “June” by overwriting.
The Mather family books and MSS largely survived and now form “the greatest treasure of the American Antiquarian Society” (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates, 7:236). JA’s knowledge of this famous collection derived from direct use of it; see his Diary and Autobiography, 3:302.
See AA’s request in her letter to JA of 16? June, above. Barrell’s “Card” has not been found, William Barrell (d.1776) was “a worthy Bostonian transmuted into a worthy Philadelphian” (JA to James Warren, 30 July 1775, Warren-Adams Letters, 1:95). A collection of Barrell’s papers is in MHi, including a long and important series of letters written to him by his brother-in-law John Andrews, 1772–1776, printed in MHS, Procs., 1st ser., 8 (1864–1865): 316–412.
MS torn by seal.
Only one has been found, that of 24 June–1 July, above.