Gratitude, not guilt

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views December 17, 2001]

Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime, and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves. But for these efforts, we might well be on welfare or in the penitentiary.

We owe gratitude for those efforts, not guilt for those who didn't get them. We certainly cannot make it up to those without values by easing standards and letting them become a burden and a threat to others. That is buying a good conscience or a good image with an I.O.U. to be paid by somebody else.

Those who want to share their good fortune can share the sources of that good fortune--the skills, values, and discipline that mean productivity. Those who want to ease their burden of guilt should seek professional help, at their own expense--not make policy at everyone else's expense.

-- Thomas Sowell, from Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (Morrow). Sowell is an economist and author of many books, including Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (Morrow), Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (Free Press/Macmillan) and Migrations and Cultures: A World View (Basic Books).

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