>One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again. Do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes forever?

Two things that seldom seem to go together are genius and common sense. When I try to think of people with both, the first name that comes to mind is Milton Friedman. But it is a struggle to try to come up with more names after that.

The “self-esteem” dogma has triumphed so completely in our educational system that you have all sorts of people spouting off about all sorts of things that they know little or nothing about. Just recently, letters have come to me from people diagnosing individuals they have never laid eyes on — saying that Andrea Yates was insane and that Einstein was autistic — even when there is nothing to indicate that they have any expertise for diagnosing anybody.

Most Americans living below the official poverty line have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck. Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then. … People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent for as long as a decade.