|
Thomas Sowell blindly misses the irony in his attack on statistics. He cites Mark Twain’s famous remark about “ ...lies, dammed lies and statistics”. But at least Mark Twain equated statistics with lies. Sowell is using statistics (his own) to refute statistics. If statistics are not a reliable method to find what he calls the truth, why does he use them himself as a means to an end?
After he rattles off long-winded examples of data everyone knows, we discover his game. He cherry-picks only that which supports his thesis that not everyone makes truth their highest priority — implying, of course, that he does, as if that exempts him from being partisan or even illogical.
It’s axiomatic that you can prove anything with statistics. So he shouldn’t present his case as the equivalent of the quest for the Holy Grail. We are all partisan in our own way in an attempt to win an argument. It’s just an argument. His is no loftier than others. He is no Atlas holding up the sky. He is just one of us in the trenches trying to cross no man’s land. His cause is no more than grist for his assault on his proper enemies on the left: the media, academia and too much government. It's pretentious of him to think otherwise. Yet truth in this case is neither relative nor absolute; it’s merely relevant to the matter at hand.
Then he descends into farce when he offers his own book as a source to support his own argument.
"Steve McMurray"
|