The New York Times continues to debase itself with editorials (and not bright ones) posing as news stories. Thomas Sowell rips into the Times for a recent piece implying that think tank writers who have defended Wal-Mart against the silly attacks of leftist politicians and union bosses (c’mon — is there any significant difference between Wal-Mart and any other big retailer?) are being dishonest if they fail to disclose that a small percentage of the funding for their think tank comes from Walton sources. Read his piece here.
Toward the end of the piece, Sowell writes that the problem is not so much the cheap-shot journalism as the fact that the audience for such journalism is less and less able to see through it. Bulls-eye quotation:
“Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence.”
Right. The education establishment keeps saying that its progressive approach will turn kids into “critical thinkers,” but that’s just about the reverse of the truth.
