Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the unexpected alliances that contributed to the abolition of slavery, contrasting it with contemporary ideological narratives.
Thomas Sowell's quote challenges prevailing narratives among modern intellectuals by pointing out that it was a combination of businessmen, religious leaders, and imperialists who played crucial roles in ending slavery globally. This observation critiques how historical events are often interpreted through the lens of present-day ideologies, suggesting that inconvenient truths are frequently disregarded if they do not fit the current understanding of morality and progress.
Themes
SlaveryAbolitionBusinessReligionHistoryIntellectualismNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on the history of social justice, this quote can be used to provoke thought about the complexities of abolition.
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All quotes →Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
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One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
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You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
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The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
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Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
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