Random Thoughts

Great stuff by Thomas Sowell:

Someone once said that a fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him. The implications of that undermine most of the agenda of the political left.

People who say that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror are unaffected by the fact that the terrorists themselves obviously think otherwise, as they converge on Iraq from other countries.

Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas.

For reasons unknown, people on the left seem to take inordinate pride in being able to make verbal parallels -- whether or not there is any parallel in substance.

With vastly more money available around the world as private investment than there is as foreign aid, why do Third World countries want or need foreign aid? Because private investors will seldom put their own money into projects that have no realistic chance of working or into countries too corrupt and unreliable to expect the money to be used responsibly, much less repaid.