Ross Meurant: Smarter Than Most Of Us

By sheer chance, I encountered this fellow recently and he said:

‘One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.’

‘Like, what exactly is your fair share of what someone else has worked for?’

I reached for my notebook.  I needed to record what this fellow had to say.

‘I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.’

Hang on, I said to myself, fumbling to scribe what had been said yet not in a position to tell the fellow to slow down and wait for me.

‘Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.’

At this point I had to look away from my notes and to the face of the fellow who said this.  He was Black.  African negro by family origin I discerned. Then he changed direction slightly.  I had to concentrate.

‘It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than putting these decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.’

When he said this, I thought of the chaos in Auckland’s transport system; the years it has taken to produce a Northern Motorway of 4 lanes yet persistently reducing to two lanes; the delays in Transition Gully; roads contractors paid out for products which erupt in water through the road sealings within a matter of months.  Who pays for what stands out to me as negligence at best (1) (2) somewhere in the systems of national and local governance?

 But what really converted me was his final presentation for the day:

‘The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many conservatives there are in the sociology department.’

Wow! This fellow was emerging to me, a pagan, (3) like the missing God on planet earth.

‘Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children.’

So, who was this fellow?

Thomas Sowell.

Born in 1930 into a poor family in segregated North Carolina. His father died shortly before he was born, leaving behind Sowell's mother, a housemaid who already had four children. He recalls that his first memories were living in a small wooden house in Charlotte, which he stated was typical of most Black neighbourhoods located on an unpaved street and had no electricity or running water.

Later his family moved from the South to the North where he qualified for Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious academic high school in New York City but dropped out by 17 because of financial difficulties before being drafted into the Marine Corp for the Korean War.  Honourably discharged, after leaving military service, Sowell completed high school, took a civil service job in Washington, DC, and attended night classes at Howard University, a historically black college.

His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He earned a master's degree from Columbia University the following year and in 1959, studied for his Doctor of Philosophy degree under George Stigler, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Sowell has supported conservative political positions on race and has argued that systemic racism is an untested, questionable hypothesis, writing:

 ‘I don't think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they're saying, and compared it to propaganda tactics used by Joseph Goebbels because if it is repeated long enough and loud enough, people "cave in" to it.’

Whereas I do not contend that the pedigree of three chaps with some Maori pedigree whom I mentioned in A Step Too Far, (4) emerging from a lower socio eco rural rump of New Zealand to the diverse levels they (Rt Hon Winston Peters, Hon Clem Simich and the author of this missive) achieved, compare in any shape of form with the astonishing career path for of Sowell from the bowels of society, the paradigm is similar.

The paradigm?  No special treatment from government and each has paid high taxation rates all their lives, yet they succeeded. 

As Machiavelli once said: “Virtue et Labor” [Good fortune is hard work].

References: 
(1) https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/scampi-inquiry-damns-fisheries-officials/2GAMGVNN7AZCVO3T2OPBPFBM2E/
(2) https://sfo.govt.nz/media-cases/media-releases/men-guilty-of-corruption-and-bribery-will-spend-time-in-jail/
(3) https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2023/02/ross-meurant-was-it-gods-wrath.html

(4) https://www.nzcpr.com/a-step-too-far-bi-cultural-partnership/

Ross Meurant, graduate in politics both at university and as a Member of Parliament; formerly police inspector in charge of Auckland spies & V.I.P. security; currently Honorary Consul for an African state, Trustee and CEO of Russian owned commercial assets in New Zealand and has international business interests.