A Classic! Sowell & Friedman vs Francis Fox Piven - Granite Grok

A Classic! Sowell & Friedman vs Francis Fox Piven

I had never seen this clip before, so this was fun to watch.  Coming from free market economist Milton Freidman’s PBS Free to Choose series, this featured one of my favorite political pundit / economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell who argues the points as a conservative black commentator when white socialist Dr. Francis Fox Piven (she of the "collapse the system" theory that nearly bankrupted the City of New York) decided to espouse that the black civil rights movement was about equal outcomes.

She fares not well at all:

In this clip from the 1980 Free To Choose, socialist Frances Fox Piven tangles with Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Sowell, in particular, is incisive with his discussion of "process" versus aspiration — concluding that whatever the purported social goals, liberty suffers.

Sowell is right; just as the TEA Party, Conservatives, and Libertarians lament that Big Government under Obama is on a tear to pick economic winners and losers, the Democrat use of Identity Politics actions is also used to pick political winners and losers.

In both cases, Sowell rightly points out, as in the economic sphere, when Government tries to "give" something to one set of people, it must necessarily take something away from others in the area of results, with the result in the diminution of Freedom from the "donor" group in some fashion.  Progressives have no problem with this problem – they are blinded to the ‘side effects’ or collateral damage sustained by others that are not the focus of the direct actions.

Or, as in a practical example using the current Occupy Wall Street movement (versus the 1980s topic of affirmative action), while the "open" desired result is the "re-empowerment" of the 99%, the tearing down of the 1% is the actual aim at the second layer, with the ultimate destruction of capitalism at the next deeper layer.  In this example, the economic freedom to choose and act of the 1% would be curtailed for the freedom of the 99% (a badly worded sentence, but given the lack of conciseness of what the OWSers want, who knows?).  The problem, which OWSers confirm, is that they cannot distinguish which of the 1% have legitimately earned their wealth vs those that have used crony capitalism to illegitimately taken their wealth. 

So, in the grand tradition of Democrats, Socialists, and Communists,…

they simple don’t bother to do the hard work to do that; rather, they use the broad brush of presumed guilt at them all and are trying to evoke negative outcomes for them simply for their own benefit.  Yes, their own benefit, for I would posit that the vast majority of "the 99%" disagree with OWS, given the polls.

In the end, I agree with Sowell and Friedman – the United States, in protecting and then extending Freedom,  must focus on freedom of opportunity rather than equality of results.  Fox-Piven is dead wrong in her implicit "take from some to give to others" to create "equality of opportunity" – in doing so, that necessarily means an abrogation of someone else’s Freedom.  Thus, that is the question to be asked: is using the State to diminish one’s Freedom and property rights for the benefit of individuals of a protected group a legitimate  "means to an end" as she claims ?  From a Freedom standpoint, I posit no – again, Sowell and Friedman are right in this regard.

(H/T: Powerline)

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