I tried to give my readers some tools against the accusation, but received mostly a lot of whining and more silence.

I haven’t listened to the interview yet, but scanned the comments – all of them complimentary – and thought these were particularly astute. Dates in () are my calculations from YouTube’s inane dating paradigm, that thinks we can’t figure out how long ago something occurred if they just give us the date it was posted.

Favorite quote by a large margin:
“It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”

“And now, 10 years later (2020), we understand exactly the end game that these early moves were designed to create.”

“4 months ago (in 2019) I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Then I found Thomas Sowell.”

“Imagine a person so dangerous to the left that it’s better to totally ignore their entire existence than to criticize them, because the mere mention of his name might cause someone to look him up and have their entire ideology destroyed in an instant. That’s how dangerous Thomas Sowell is to the left.” (2021)

” “People moving to the left rapidly under Democrats, and slowly under Republicans.” America in a nutshell.” (2017)

“I regret I haven’t found this video before voting for Obama, which I regret to these days. By the time of the first term of Obama, I wasn’t a registered voter. To me was very strange that he was awarded with the Peace Nobel Prize without any merit. Then, he started to drone civilians, women and children in the Middle-East. Such was exposed by Wikileaks and Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning), so it’s a fact. When I became I registered voter, I chose to remain independent, but voted for Obama instead of Mitt Romney, a sort of the least worse choice. In 2016 I voted for Trump and am pleased with the results he brought to the country. I could see that most people benefit from his achievements, lower taxes, jobs, lower cost of living. |’m still an independent voter, but can tell, will never join the democrat party.” (2021)

“5 years after the this interview (2015), Obama has placed America in Hell.”

“(age) 24 here, heard your message loud and clear Dr Sowell, it ain’t over ’till it’s over” (2014)

I’ll grant that you didn’t make an outright assertion that I’m a Godless Materialist. Possibly your insertion of comments on implication of existence of Souls into the broader debate on what Man does to Man (Politics) prompted my retort that I do factor such things into my admittedly sophomoric cogitations even if I do not always refer directly to them.

IIRC I stated that Tokugawa Japan was a nearly or almost perfect society — implying some location along an asymptote rather than outside the entrance of Plato’s Cave. I’m not sure that I’d fare too well if transplanted magically back into Edo Period Tokyo myself. But that’s neither here nor there. You had to be born into it, no? It was 200 years of peace, stability, with occasional excitements like the 47 Ronin to spice things up.

It was such an idyll that the Japanese couldn’t help spending the subsequent 90 years punishing the world for dragging them out of their paradise and into Sordid Reality. Yeah… I’ve read too much Chesterton or something 🙂

To this day, the Japanese while far from perfect and being only human know how to give more dignity and self-respect to a Janitor or a Road Worker than any other race/nation/culture — provided he puts his heart and soul into it. So much for Equality. It’s a distraction. Great Chain of Being, anyone?

We’re not really here to debate the finer points of Japanese history and culture… let’s remember that we got here because I was disputing the standard assumptions that freedom and self-actualisation are anywhere near remotely close to Absolute Goods. I disagree. Your Christian Ideals cannot hope to flourish without the occasional burnings and brandings, because without them it’s just a hop and a skip to Blue Haired Trannies defecating on your altars. Which they are now doing with Gay Abandon.

I can’t recall ever asserting you to be a materialist. Did I imply it somehow or is that a strawman deflection?

As you no doubt know, a deist believes there is a God, just thinks it likely that he/she/it is too elevated/busy to be concerned with mankind’s affairs.

Yet a belief in deism in no way precludes the belief in an afterlife with an accounting for one’s behavior in life or in God being mankind’s creator with whom God has certain expectations.

Nor does it preclude the existence of ideals being summerizational encapsulations of actual operative principles, rather than simply romantic fantasies. Certainly Greek philosophic geniuses did not think so. Nor do baby’s strong preference for facial symmetry argue against ideals having actual substance.

We appear to be in agreement about merit based opportunity. However you didn’t answer my question; “Was there equality of opportunity based in merit in that perfect society?”

If not, Tokugawa Japan may have excelled in some areas but
was far from a “perfect” society. Which as far as the historical record shows, has never existed.

I’m all for equality of opportunity — filtered through the sand trap of multi-generational social mobility — both upward and downward.

I’m OK for the Peasant’s gifted son to become a Kulak and the Kulak’s gifted and relatively privileged son to become a Merchant and the Merchant’s expensively educated second son to become a Professor of Greek. And so on.

I am not OK for the Peasant to get too many ideas all at once and strap on the Icarus Wings. Too many people get hurt when it happens. Thomas Hardy wrote a novel about that: Jude the Obscure.

And this from myself being pretty low born.

I’m also more than OK for the Merchant’s stupid son to go semi-bankrupt and retire from trade and be a Loser Kulak. In fact genetic research shows that most people alive today including people of low social status are the descendants of people who were wealthy and successful many generations back. Obvious when you think about it. Too much infant mortality and malnutrition for the hopeless loser poor to have succeeded in reproducing generation to generation over a thousand years — at least in the West where cold winters and disease could knock off the poor at the drop of a hat.

Ideals are nice up to a point. Beyond that they get too many people killed.

Female emancipation another topic. Prefer we don’t discuss as said before. But to get idea of where I’m coming from could read Sir John Glubb on cycles of civs.

Have you considered I might be a Deist like many of your sainted Founders? A kind of very debased Cod Jefferson, lacking in slaves (alas) and deficient in Latin and Greek. Not even good at architecture or interior design. But never short of an opinion – so something aligns.

Never said I was a Materialist. Just said I was a Realist.