Sowell: If Biden Is Elected He Could Push the US Past 'Point of No Return,' Like Roman Empire
Renowned academic and author Thomas Sowell contends if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden were to win the presidency, it may well push the United States past the “point of no return.”
On his Fox News program “Life, Liberty & Levin” Sunday night, host Mark Levin asked Sowell, a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, to speak about the current unrest and general direction of the country.
“I must say even though I’m regarded as pessimistic, I was never pessimistic enough to think that things would degenerate to the point where they are now, where adult human beings are talking about getting rid of the police … at a time when murder rates have been skyrocketing over what they were just a year ago,” Sowell responded.
“It just seems such utter madness,” he continued, “and what is frightening is how many people in responsible positions are caving in to every demand that is made, repeating any kind of nonsense that you’re supposed to repeat.”
“I do believe that we may well reach a point of no return,” Sowell said. “I hope of course that will never happen, but there is such a thing as a point of no return.
“The Roman Empire overcame many problems in its long history, but eventually it reached a point where it simply could no longer continue on. And much of that was from within, not just the barbarians attacking from outside.”
The comparison to the Roman Empire appeared to resonate with Levin, who pointed to an exchange of letters between former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1819, in which they discussed the fall of Rome.
The Roman Empire lasted for approximately 500 years.
Levin paraphrased Jefferson’s argument to Adams that what ultimately caused Rome to fall was that the people lost their virtue.
“[No] government can continue good but under the controul of the people: and their people were so demoralised and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholsome controul,” Jefferson wrote in December 1819.
The drafter of the Declaration of Independence believed Rome could have been saved by reforming the people’s way of thinking, but confessed he did not think even Cicero or Cato could have pulled off the necessary instruction.
Levin argued that the lawless conduct happening in the streets offers proof at least some Americans lack virtue, but few in places of influence are willing to address it.
“And what we hear in the academia, what we see on media, and what we hear from the Democrats and so forth, there’s no kind of government that can protect us from ourselves. Isn’t that correct?” asked the conservative commentator.
Sowell agreed, replying, “There are so many people who are just caving in.”
No nation ever protested its way from poverty to prosperity or got there through rhetoric or bureaucracies.
— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) July 13, 2020
Levin next questioned Sowell on what he thought about the charge from Black Lives Matter and others that the United States is systemically racist.
“It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses,” the former college professor answered, adding the phrase reminds him of propaganda tactics employed by Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40s.
“People will believe any lie, if it’s repeated long enough and loud enough, and that’s what we’re getting,” said Sowell, who just released his latest book, “Charter Schools and Their Enemies.”
Levin then turned to the subject of this November’s election, likening it in importance to the 1860 and 1864 elections during the Civil War.
“We’re talking about the 1776 project versus the 1619 Project, and you can see where the Democrats have tied into the 1619 Project and many of the Republicans are trying to defend the founding and 1776 project,” Levin said.
The 1776 initiative, led by African-Americans scholars, supports the United States’ founding ideals as right and true. They contend — as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did — that racism is contrary to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”
The 1619 Project holds that America was founded in racism and a main reason the colonies declared independence from Great Britain was to protect slavery, though the institution was not outlawed in England until over a half-century later in 1833.
Also working against that narrative was most of the states north of the Mason-Dixon line voted to abolish slavery by the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, and all northern states did by 1804.
Sowell agreed with Levin that the upcoming election is very consequential to the future of the United States.
“If the election goes to [Joe] Biden,” he said, “there’s a good chance that the Democrats will then control the two branches of Congress and the White House, and considering the kinds of things that they’re proposing, that could well be the point of no return for this country.”
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