Reflections From a Murky Pond

Sometimes referred to as part of Scottish Wisdom and meant with all humor, this blunt statement carries with it a great weight of vastly unpleasant truth.

Help a man when he’s in trouble, and he’ll remember you when he’s in trouble again.

I think that what humor it evokes is of the “you either have to laugh or cry variety.”

It’s true though; more often than not, the result of helping is man is that he’ll first turn to you the next time he believes that he needs help – and so the cycle of irresponsibility and dependance begins.

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“Feeding the Monkeys” is slang for doing something that you know is stupid, unwise, and/or contra-indicated. It almost always has a negative result. It is also a very apt metaphor for America’s ever-expanding entitlement programs.

Feeding The Monkeys Is Not A Wise Choice

The maddening fact that these “safety net” entitlement programs bear greatest resemblance to animal husbandry than anything meant to foster, or even maintain, human dignity just makes the comparison more accurate and pointed.

All we’ll ever get by feeding the monkeys is feeding frenzies, hand-out recipients squabbling and stealing each others’ “Government Manna,” and uncontrolled population increase among the subsidized groups. Worse, after some time being “fed,” neither they nor their progeny are capable of “being released back into the wild.”

This holds equally true for any all corporations that were declared Too Big To Fail and/or those industries that are now or have been receiving copious federal subsidies.

It’s all the same. It doesn’t matter if they’re sagging and wearing Ecko, Sean John, or Apple Bottom, or they’re in Brooks Brothers, Hermes, or Ralph Lauren; the feeding frenzy is fundamentally the same as is the expectancy that the trough will be refilled.

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Thomas Sowell’s A Man of Letters is a book that most people in America should read. It is certainly, without a doubt, a book that every White should read in order to help dispel the Liberals’ long perpetuated myths about race relations in America and how their policies have affected it.

While nowhere near Sowell’s first publication, A Man Of Letters is a particularly great starting point for reading Sowell’s extensive body of work.

To-date Thomas Sowell has written 32 books and many more scholarly papers during the last 39 years on race relations, societal modeling, history, politics, and economics. Many of these books are considered seminal works in their respective fields. A Man Of Letters, however, gives a rare glimpse into the mind of the author and is, therefor, a great starting point for new readers of his works.

A Man of Letters traces the life, career, and commentaries on controversial issues of Thomas Sowell over a period of more than four decades through his letters to and from family, friends, and public figures ranging from Milton Friedman to Clarence Thomas, David Riesman, Arthur Ashe, William Proxmire, Vernon Jordan, Charles Murray, Shelby Steele, and Condoleezza Rice. These letters begin with Sowell as a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1960 and conclude with a reflective letter to his fellow economist and longtime friend Walter Williams in 2005.

It is certainly worth the time it takes to read and is a book I highly recommend for everyone in America.

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