I've read thousands upon thousands of Sowell's words over the years, but this one sentence below sticks out in my mind more than any of them.
“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
~ Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
The more I think about it, the more I realize this is the base layer of the "Stop Being Prey" framework I'm developing. Sowell is saying, your ideas don't really matter. Power decides what ideas matter.
And the tragedy of it all? Sowell lost. His ideas were better, but they lost anyway. Power decided that Paul Krugman gets the Nobel Prize. Megan Rapinoe gets the Medal of Freedom. The progressives and the Keynesians decide monetary policy. There are literal Marxists still teaching in the universities. The people that Sowell spent decades analyzing, dissecting, and destroying with precision won. He lost.
I know that's painful to hear, but is it wrong? Reply and let me know.
I'm going to let you sit with that tonight. I'll be writing something about Sowell over the next week.
~ Clay
p.s. Tonight I'm going to keep building. If you like my writing, and my predator/prey framework in particular, you're really going to like how I'm reorganizing my website. I'm getting serious about the doctrine, and about building something that is going to help you win.
p.p.s. If you want to give me a little inspiration while I work through the weekend... put a tip in my jar. This whole thing is reader-supported. It's just you and me.