Fellow thomas soul who recently ended his syndicated column which he had for 25 years and he talks about his life and career and his love of photography. Dr. Thomas sowell, you wrote this at the end of 2016, age 86 is well past the usual retirement age. The question is why i kept at it so long. Why did you . Theres a lot of things i thought should be explained in a different way. I enjoyed doing it and hearing back from people. I have your last column. We had cold water which many other black families do not have. It says were a came from. You moved to harlem. I live with family and some members who were in new york but fortunately, they ran into a boy he named eddie who was quite unusual for those days. He came from a highly educated family was obviously very cultured. Before i ever arrived in new york, they had decided this was someone i needed to meet. If this could help me in life. He could tell me things that they did not have the education to tell me. At the time, i myself by any means was not looking that way, but thank heavens, others were. Where was eddie today and what did he do in his life. Ironically, i received a card from him on my birthday. Hes a year older than i am. He went on to become one of the deans of the colleges. Hes now retired living in a very nice area, so it was quite a pleasant surprise. But my life really could have been very different had i not been introduced to him, and i would never have been introduced to him except members of my family were older and saw immediately that this was someone who could be helpful to me. He and i never lived within a quarter mile of each other, and he was a year older, so i would never have been in the same class with him in school, but he was able to tell me things that i didnt know, for example, he took me to a Public Library for the first time in my life and at the time, i didnt know what a Public Library was and i didnt have the money to buy one of them. I was dubious when i saw those books and i didnt have the money to buy one of them. And he patiently explained it all to me, and somewhat reluctantly, took out a library card and bought a couple of books. And borrow a couple of books. And that was important to me because i had began to acquire the habit of reading on my own, years before i ever would have acquired it in the normal course of events. What kind of books were you interested in in those early days . Oh, heavens. I remember reading the childrens editions of dr. Doolittle, alice and wonderland, things like that, but i got into the habit of reading. Other kids in the same neighborhood where i grew up, odds were against meeting someone like that, as they were for me, except others saw the significance of introducing it. How long did you live in harlem . Until 19 oh, i was 20 years old the first time i moved out of harlem, and then i came back for a couple of years. So i grew up there from the age of 9 years old. Besides eddie, what impact did harlem and your Family Experience have on you other than the library . Oh, i think a tremendous effect. I didnt realize it at the time. For example, when i was much older, and had a son of my own, like most firsttime parents, i wanted to know when he was supposed to do these various things so i asked one of the surviving members of the family how old was i when i first began to walk . And she said, oh, tommy, nobody knows when you could walk. Somebody was always carrying you. I was raised as an only child in a family of four adults. When i got to be too much for one of them, she could always hand me off to somebody else. And i remember one episode in particular that was recounted many times in many years, that a member of the family took me to a movie, and everything went fine. It was in a different part of town. It was only when we got back and i saw the house where we lived, i picked up some rocks and started throwing them at birdie. I must have 4 years old at the most. And later on, she would tell that story and just laugh, you know, i was a little angel until i got back there. And in much later years i thought, you know, you could take that attitude when theres one child and four adults. If its the other way around, one mother and four children, it wouldnt have been nearly as funny. You know, we talked about, and you always mentioned that you liked to think things through before you write a book or a column and youre not in any hurry to have it published. How about this final column. How long did you think that through and what kind of message did you leave at the end . Mr. Sowell i had two final ones. I dont think i took any longer than the other ones. I had thoughts of not renewing my contract in previous years, but my wife always told me, you know, at the very least, you can blow off steam when things happened in the world that you dont like. But at this particular time, i was taking pictures at yosemite with buddies of mine for four days and i had not watched a Television Program or read a newspaper. And i thought this was the way to live. Only way to live this way was to stop writing the column so i dont have to be uptodate on all the news and thats the biggest benefit. When im watching a Television Program and silly programs come on the air, i can switch the program or turner classics, i can turn it off because i feel no obligation to keep track of things like that and those things certainly dont do my Blood Pressure any good. Mr. Lamb i know sitting on the stanford campus in palo alto, do you remember having your First Political thought or idea . Mr. Sowell oh, heavens, yes. I was 10 years old. It wasnt really my idea but i had heard that one was for the that wilkie was for the rich and fdr was the poor. I went around tearing down wilke posters in harlem. Fortunately, there wasnt very many so i didnt waste much time on that. Mr. Sowell did you consider yourself a democrat . Mr. Sowell i was a registered democrat in the spring of 1972 for the last time and since then, ive never been a registered member of any party and at that particular time, i was so disgust wide both candidates i didnt vote at all and neither of those candidates seemed to be as bad in retrospect as the two candidates we had last year. Mr. Lamb let me go back to the column and ask buthis paragraph. Desk ask you about this paragraph. Years of lying president s. Youre talking about could any president do anything like that today, meaning it was john f. Kennedy youd been writing about and the soviet union and the trust people had in the president but you say after years of lying, democrat richard nixon, Lyndon Johnson, especially destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility which the office itself once conferred. Why did you consider the johnson and nixon presidencies as lying presidencies . Mr. Sowell nixon is obviously the easy one. He lied about watergate. But in retrospect, the fact that nixon was so obviously lying i regard as a virtue. When you saw him on television, the same things that turned out proved to be false, you could see him sweating and so forth. Didnt take any great insight to know he was lying even before the evidence came out. With Lyndon Johnson, my josh, my gosh there were so many , things. He got us into the gulf of tonkin resolution and it turned out to be something that was completely overblown in order to give him power to go to war. But at the crucial time in that war after the offensive in 1968, the media all said this was the uprising of communist guerrillas in vietnam in 1961, and would show that our policies failed and the commoners one. It so happened that later evidence including statements by communist leaders themselves after they had conquered vietnam, was that the americans had wiped out the guerrillas andviate kong. In south vietnam. There were never a serious force thereafter. But what came through the media was the viet kong guerrillas were succeeded against the americans and the war was unwinnable. If the public thinks the war is unwinnable, it will make it unwinnable and Lyndon Johnson came on the air, perhaps told the truth, a rare thing for him, and yet he was not believed and all those in the media were putting forth what turned out to be completely false stories were believed and, therefore, all 50,000 americans who had lost their lives in vietnam, winning victory after victory, all of that went down the tube because the president didnt have credibility when he needed it. Mr. Lamb whats been the impact of vietnam and watergate all of these years on the country . Mr. Sowell no question, great cynicism by the public. If i may go back to kennedy in 1962 and the missile crisis. I was never a big fan of president kennedy, and he won very narrowly in 1960. But when he came on the air and told us that the russians were going to put nuclear missiles, 90 miles from the United States, and he was taking us to the brink of nuclear war to stop them, i thought, you know, hes president. Hes got to do what hes got to do. And it was a very tense time. I was teaching at the time and i remember i was giving out the assignment to the students in class, i said, you know, the assignments are next week and i have to bite my tongue to keep from saying there was a next week. There was that confidence and i dont recall anybody raising any fuss for this man for taking this step that could have been the death for millions, as he well knew. Today, i dont think any president of the United States in the last 3040 years, could go on the air and do that and have the public behind them. And thats not a problem for him. Thats a problem for the country, if you have a president , he has to have the public support, not for his sake, but for the publics sake. Mr. Lamb do you remember how you felt about watergate in the middle of it all in. Mr. Sowell yes. Someone was trying to get me to accept a president ial appointment in the Nixon Administration and they asked me to tend send in my vita. And i have to tell you, im very disturbed about whats coming out about watergate and at some point, i may find it necessary to criticize the president of the United States, and the guy at the white house said to me, tom, if we let that stop us, we never will get these jobs filled. Send us your resume. Mr. Lamb and whatd you do . Mr. Sowell no, i decided i didnt want the job anyway. Mr. Lamb while youre on that, weve got some video of you back in our talk in 2005, talking about an offer you had in the ford administration. And as people listen to this, they have to keep in mind when youre telling the story that there was a Democratic Senate at that time. Lets listen to this, and youll see what you said back in 2005. [video clip] which president offered you the federal trade commissioners job. Mr. Sowell president ford. Mr. Lamb what were the circumstances . Mr. Sowell had a vacancy. It was 1976 when they offered it to me and i agreed to take it on condition if there was any opposition that arises, i dont have time to play washington games and i kept poll thering and asking and the guys at the white house, i dont hear anything, whats going on. Oh, no, its taking time and eventually, i was in washington so i went up to the hill and talked to a staffer, this committee that handled this, and he said, going over your record with a finetoothed comb. We could find nothing to object to, and therefore, were not going to hold a hearing. This is an election year, and our guys will be elected and appoint our own man. And i said did you tell the white house this . Said we told the white house this months ago. Mr. Lamb and would you have taken that job had they cleared you in the senate . Mr. Sowell you mean after learning this . Mr. Lamb well, no. If the process had moved federal, had you agreed to go to the federal trade commission . Mr. Lamb yes, i would have reluctantly the first time it was offered to me, i said no, and in the meantime, someone i knew said, tom, youre always criticizing the federal trade commission. Heres your chance to be a commissioner. I thought, i really should then. So i would have taken it. So its not something i looked forward to. It meant moving. It did not mean any increase in pay but it meant an increase in the cost of living so it downsized me personally. Living up to what i was just saying, i would have are gone and tried it. Mr. Lamb your first job in government though was considerably early than that, and what was it . Mr. Sowell oh, i was a g s2 clerk in the General Accounting Office back in 1950, and that was a big step upward for me at the time. Mr. Lamb that means that you were a g s2. They start at g s1 and go up to g s18. What did you do in the government and what impact did that have on your thinking today in. Mr. Sowell you mean the years before or afterwards . Mr. Lamb afterwards. After youd had the experience of working in the government . Mr. Sowell it was not habit forming. There was a lot of double dealing and stuff going on. But by the time this is before i was drafted and went into the marine corps. But after i came out, i went back eventually to that job and now, i realize i had the gi bill to back me up and i would now try to go to college. So i never regarded that as a career thing. It was just something i would do. And it gave me a great deal of freedom because for one thing, there was a great example of freedom. Back in those days, the attorney General Office had a unit that the General Accounting Office had a unit that was is essentially all black and it was presided over a white woman from georgia and they had different rules, another unit, if you were late, you signed a t for tardy, but in the unit that i was in, if you were late, they docked you an hours annual leave, and you signed for it. But i was planning to leave when the time was right and i was going to turn in my annual leave for money. I was not about to sign for that and i told them, quite frankly, not only was i not going to sign but if they took the leave without my signing, i would take my case up to the Civil Service commission. They immediately realized they knew they were wrong to begin with but they realized if they did that, all hell would break loose and it was a political compromise. Everybody else had to sign a t for tardy and i had to sign for political leave. I had to sign a t for tardy and they had to sign for political leave. I told the others, but many t didnt believe me, that i must have some secret in or know somebody. But that was the way it was. The other thing it was, the other people were career civil servants, so they knew not to make waves. I really didnt care because i didnt plan to be there that long. Mr. Lamb did you ever ask anybody why in the world they would have two separate ideas about why somebody was late, why they would do one with the whites and one with the black . Mr. Sowell no. I think if you put a white woman from georgia in the 1950s in charge of a black unit, thats what you would expect to happen. Mr. Lamb talking about your last words that you wrote at least in your columns for was it Creative Services . Mr. Sowell creative syndicate. Mr. Lamb syndicate. You say the first column you wrote 30 years ago, at the end of 16, the first column i ever wrote, 39 years ago, was titled the profits of doom. This was long before al gore made millions of dollars promoting Global Warming hysteria, back in 1970, the prevailing hysteria was the threat of a new ice age. I tried to find that column on the internet. Its not there that i could find. Is it available for any of us to read . Mr. Sowell yes. It was published in the Old Washington star which as you know went out of business years ago, which i hope was not result of my column. Theres a book called pink and brown people which is the first collection of my column that was published by the hoofer institution back in the early though Hoover Institution back in the early 1980s, and its in there. Whether its still in print, i dont know. Mr. Lamb when you wrote your last column, did you go back and read it . Mr. Sowell i did not. But i remember it because it was not my first comment and i did because it was my first column and i did not know i would be writing it regularly. The washington star had a feature where ordinary readers could write in and send in a column and that was the first time i ever tried it and they published it as i wrote it, so that was the beginning. Mr. Lamb your undergraduate degree was from what school . Mr. Sowell harvard. Mr. Lamb you started at howard and then went to harvard . Mr. Sowell thats right. Mr. Lamb your masters degree was from columbia . Mr. Sowell yes. Mr. Lamb and your ph. D. At chicago. What was your dissertation about . Mr. Sowell it was called hays law, a statistical analysis. I wrote it as a book published by Princeton University press. Mr. Lamb i got on amazon and counted the number of opportunities to buy something with your name on it, and i think i stopped at 57. But i know those are all kinds of things, including essays, but how many actual books have you completed since you started writing them . Mr. Sowell oh, my goodness. Ive been asked that question. Ive never actually counted them. Partly because it depends on what you mean there, books that are original books. Theyre books that are collections of previous writings and so on and mono graphed and so forth. But ive never really tried to keep track but its a few dozen. Mr. Lamb at this point, which one of all of those books sold the most . Mr. Sowell basic economics. Not only sells the most but in english, and translated into seven or eight languages. Mr. Lamb what would you say would be the most important thing or things that people who read that book will learn . Mr. Sowell oh, my gosh. That is tough. I guess theyll learn what economics is all about, which is more than the sum of the topics, and in the first chapter i point out that economics really i elaborate on a definition from the London School of economics. Economics is the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses. In other words, there was no economics in the garden of eden because everything was available in unlimited quantities. But i think in thinking generally, economics or otherwise, too many people do not begin by saying, what are the inherent constraints of the situation were talking about, and they act as if theyre god on the first day of creation and can follow whatever policy schem