Thomas Sowell: 'Is Thinking Now Obsolete?'

“Well, this is the 21st century, you know,” to grimly re-purpose an Insta-phrase. But then, thinking sort of went out the window sometime around the mid-19th century, at least in Europe. Which is why, as Thomas Sowell writes, “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:”

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.” [QED — Ed]

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.”

As Sowell notes, “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?” When Sowell writes, “The attack against Matt Drudge has been in the classic tradition of demagogues. It turns questions of fact into questions of motive,” he’s paraphrasing Hannah Arendt.

“Arendt had it right,” the late Sen. Pat Moynihan once told an interviewer. “She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

And Rivera is defending — tacitly or otherwise — 21st century totalitarians who, like their predecessors in the ’20s and ’30s, wished to go back to the dark ages, while shouting “Heil Hitler” and “I’d like to shoot those bastard Zionists,” knowing that media is likely not to report it, or downplay its chilling significance if they do.

Which is yet another reminder that “the 1937 Game” is still a very worthwhile exercise, as Peter Himmelman writes at Jewish Journal:

As a grown man I still play 1937. In fact, these days, when reading reports from Europe and from several cities in America with tidbits like: Hitler was right, Gas the Jews, the Jews are the new Nazis, and simply: Die Jew die, it’s hard not to play. Let’s put aside the neo Nazis and the Arabs and the somewhere-on-the anti-Semitic-spectrum- Euro-Jew-haters for the time being. We know where they stand. Today, one day before Tisha B’av, the Jewish national day of mourning, let’s play the game with just the Jews.

You’ve heard by now that there are many Jews who play important roles in entertainment, government, science, and literature and in the media (that’s sardonic by the way.) If you haven’t, I suggest you go online and find a quaint little site called Jew Watch. It’s basically an endless list of Jews and all the prominent roles they play in society. Since Jew Watch is a creation of a Neo Nazi-like, white supremacist organization, you can pretty well rest assured that those folks don’t mean it as flattery. They mean it as – “these f^&ing Jews are taking over the world!” Although, Jew Watch is also like some strange Rorschach test, where you can see two totally different perspectives at once, you will also see the enormity of the Jewish contributions to – everything — and so it’s pretty hard not to be just a little flattered.

The “1937 Game,” and Geraldo’s meltdown are both reminders that when confronted by a mob shouting “Heil Hitler” and “Death to the Jews” –whether it’s 1937 or 2014 — to be this guy: