Consulting with Thomas Sowell on Rocky Mount’s City Government

Do you ever think about your ‘unlived lives?” When I do, it is more with curiosity than with regret. What would my life have been if I had pursued other avenues? We’ve come a long way from wanting to be a fireman or a professional baseball player; a ballerina, or a doctor with our plastic doctor’s bag and stethoscope. Now, if I had the money to do so, I would take myself off to SCAD in Savannah and enroll in their courses on historic preservation.  Short of that, like you, I am self-educated in ……you fill in the blank. My list would include gardener, flower arranger, and, and, and. Now I would like to be a writer with a keen enough intellect to add my voice to the political fray on Main Street in Rocky Mount, NC.

Therefore, I have been revisiting by reading Thomas Sowell (/soʊl/; born June 30, 1930) an American economist and social theorist who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. I couldn’t pick a better mind with my self-educated approach to local politics, joining all the others who want to Save Mainstreet and surrounding Edgemont Place and Villa Place, the neighborhoods that are waiting to play their part in affordable housing.

Mr. Sowell was born in North Carolina but grew up in Harlem, New York. Ultimately, he received a bachelor’s degree, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked for think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He writes from a libertarian conservative perspective, advocating supply-side economics. Sowell has written more than thirty books. He is a National Humanities Medal recipient for an innovative scholarship that incorporated history, economics, and political science.  I have deep admiration and respect for Thomas Sowell, the reason I have been consulting with him. I state my case again that until we have the results of the investigations, the current leadership must be put on hold in any major decisions and that the low-income housing on Tarboro street is the wrong answer in the wrong place. I put forth these three Sowell quotations as justification for my position in the matter.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them. Thomas Sowell