A Tribute to Walter Williams

The world lost a great man Wednesday morning, December 2: economist Walter E. Williams. He was 84. His death was sudden and unexpected; he had taught class, as usual, the day before. He'd always hoped to go that way.

Walter Williams, March 31, 1936 – December 2, 2020
Photo: The Heritage Foundation, found here

Next to Thomas Sowell, he is the economist I read and quote most. Thomas Sowell wrote a tribute to him today, mentioning even in the title that they were best friends. Sowell is now 90. He didn’t expect Williams to go first. He said,

He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more.

Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone. But his death at age 84 is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.

Sowell mentions two of the books Walter Williams wrote (he wrote ten), which will always be worth reading:

·         Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?

·         South Africa’s War Against Capitalism

Walter Williams, along with Thomas Sowell, is both black and conservative. Both grew up poor, Williams in the projects of Philadelphia, and then gained credibility through sheer genius combined with excellent research and communication skills. They have both street cred and scholastic credentials to say what their conclusions are, based on research, when it goes against the current political script. I have always thought of both of these men as great economists, great writers, and then notice they happen to be black. It’s handy that their skin color would give them the ability to challenge race assumptions that others would be called racist for stating.

I first discovered Walter Williams, I believe, when he substituted for Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and then started seeking his weekly column at Townhall or The Daily Signal.

In my tribute today, I’ll share what I’ve collected of his words. First come the quotes; I give sources where I have them. After that are the articles. There are places to find the entire archive of his weekly columns. The ones I’m listing are those I saved to my personal files because I wanted to keep them.

 

Walter Williams Quotes

I don't think that stupidity, ignorance or insanity explains the love that many Americans hold for government; it's far more sinister and perhaps hopeless.

I'll give a few examples to make my case. Many Americans want money they don't personally own to be used for what they see as good causes such as handouts to farmers, poor people, college students, senior citizens and businesses. If they privately took someone's earnings to give to a farmer, college student or senior citizen, they would be hunted down as thieves and carted off to jail. However, they get Congress to do the identical thing, through its taxing power, and they are seen as compassionate and caring. In other words, people love government because government, while having neither moral nor constitutional authority, has the legal and physical might to take the property of one American and give it to another.—"Americans Love Government” June 10, 2009

 

Political decision-making and allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market decision-making and allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict…. Interestingly enough, the very people in our society who protest the loudest against human conflict and violence are the very ones calling for increased government resource allocation.—“How Government Creates Conflict” March 31, 2010

 

If European governments and the U.S. Congress ceased the practice of giving people what they have not earned, budgets would be more than balanced. For government to guarantee a person a right to goods and services he has not earned, it must diminish someone else's right to what he has earned, simply because governments have no resources of their very own.—“Blame Government Handouts for the Financial Mess in U.S. and Europe” September 27, 2011

 

The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.—“Blacks and Obama” December 4, 2013

 

People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.—“Tyrants Trying to Subvert Free Markets” July 18, 2007

 

What goes unappreciated is just why America's leftists' movement attacks the Founders. If they can delegitimize the Founders themselves, it goes a long way toward their agenda of delegitimizing the founding principles of our nation. If the leftists can convince the nation that men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were good-for-nothing slave-owning racists, then their ideas can be more easily trashed.—“Undermining America” October 28, 2017

 

For the most part, white bigots are no longer respected among whites and I look forward to the day when black bigots are no longer respected among blacks.—“Nonsense to Think Discontent with Obama is Racist” September 30, 2009

 

One does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy of the state over individual rights.—“Liberals, Progressives and Socialists,” August 8, 2012

 

Let me offer you my definition of social justice. I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you—and why?

Image from Bastiat Institute, found on Facebook

 

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; Apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the Talisman of moral people.

 

Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.

 

Walter Williams Columns

·         “Why We Are a Republic, Not a Democracy” January 19, 2018 

·         “Scientists: Dishonest or Afraid?” Nov. 23, 2019 

·         “Minimum Wage Cruelty” July 12, 2017 

·         “Culture and Social Pathology” July 17, 2015 

·         “Global Warming” March 11, 2015 

·         “What Egyptians Need” July 17, 2013 

·         “True or False: Global Warming, Manufacturing Decline” January 5, 2011 

·         “Getting Beyond Race” November 12, 2008 

·         “Lessons from the Bailout” October 8, 2008 

·         “Liberty Versus Socialism” March 5, 2008 

·         “Our Irreconcilable Differences” January 2, 2014