Thomas Sowell has a suggestion for young people heading off to college: Get an education while you’re there.

He’s even put together a reading list.

Sowell’s introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments.

The economist and author, now 96, launched Facts Against Rhetoric last year to help people find arguments they might otherwise go through their entire schooling without encountering. It’s an extensive collection of books, essays, interviews, lectures, and online courses, organized by subject and available to anyone with the curiosity to start clicking.

Introducing the project in an April 2025 interview with Peter Robinson, Sowell described his purpose as “enabling students to get an education despite being in college.”

Parents paying the tuition may find something useful here too.

The site is a meticulously curated collection of educational resources on subjects ranging from “Intellectuals and Ideologies” and “Italians Around the World” to economics, education, and race. Alongside direct links to interviews, lectures, articles, and courses, Sowell provides extensive bibliographies pointing readers to books, specific chapters, and articles, often noting where and in what formats they’re available. You can click through to watch Sowell challenge claims about the “wage gap” for blacks and women on William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” in 1981 or listen to Edward R. Murrow’s 1943 account of a brush with death on an RAF bombing run over Berlin.

Although 96, Sowell is hardly taking a victory lap here. He is on a mission, the urgency of which he explains in his introductory statement. A college graduate has decades of life ahead of him, during which he will encounter questions his professors never anticipated. Even if everything they taught him were correct, memorizing their answers would leave him poorly prepared to think through those new problems.

He will need some practice disagreeing with people. Preferably before his livelihood depends on it.

A former Marxist’s reading list

In his long life, Sowell has had to revise a few convictions of his own.

Born in North Carolina in 1930 and raised partly in Harlem, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School, worked a succession of jobs, and served in the Marine Corps. Eventually he earned degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. He went on to teach at Cornell, Amherst, and UCLA, among other institutions.

Along the way, he was a Marxist. Studying under legendary free-market economist Milton Friedman did not immediately cure him. In Sowell’s telling, a summer working at the Department of Labor in 1960 proved more effective. Investigating unemployment in Puerto Rico’s sugar industry, he wanted to test whether minimum-wage requirements were contributing to the problem. His colleagues’ lack of enthusiasm for an inquiry that might undermine their own department’s policy helped change his understanding of government.

Decades later, Facts Against Rhetoric gives readers plenty of opportunities to examine the conclusions he reached. His own books appear throughout, alongside work by economists, historians, journalists, and other scholars.

The selections plainly reflect his sympathies. Under socialism, for example, you’ll find Friedman’s 1993 talk “The Rise of Socialism Is Absurd” as well as a reading list, including Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism” and Paul Hollander’s “From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship.” Anyone hoping for encouragement to join the revolution will have to look elsewhere.

But there is considerably more here than a collection of arguments to deploy against your liberal brother-in-law.

Start anywhere

For a first visit, try the capitalism section, which links to Friedman’s 1979 appearance on “The Phil Donahue Show” and his lecture “Is Capitalism Humane?” Both offer a manageable introduction before you commit to the books listed below them, including Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.”

Readers who prefer a more structured approach can follow the economics page to Hillsdale College’s online “Economics 101: Principles of Free Market Economics.” The same page points to Sowell’s “Basic Economics” and Walter E. Williams’ “Race and Economics,” along with shorter selections on subjects including affordability and unions.

Parents may want to begin with education. Here Sowell assembles material on schools, colleges, admissions, and academic performance. There’s an interview about his “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” a discussion with Robert Pondiscio about Success Academy, and a link to Stanford’s 2023 National Charter School Study for readers who want to examine the research.

The college section also includes psychologist Steven Pinker’s interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie, “What Went Wrong at Harvard.” Pinker discusses academic freedom, the policing of acceptable opinion, and why universities get into trouble when they pronounce on controversies their students and faculty should be free to debate.

For a longer excursion, the biographies page points to videos and articles on figures including Calvin Coolidge, Albert Einstein, and Frederick Douglass. Among a list of recommended books on John D. Rockefeller sits Ron Chernow’s “Titan”; readers considering Stephen Kotkin’s multivolume biography of Stalin — recommended here — can sample his work in the lecture “Stalin at War.”

RELATED: The left doesn’t like it when minorities think for themselves

Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn

The library card

One of the site’s biographical recommendations is an extended interview with Sowell himself, “Thomas Sowell: A Free Man.”

In it, he recalls arriving in Harlem as a child and being taken to a public library by another boy. Sowell had never seen so many books. He also couldn’t afford to buy one, which made the purpose of the visit somewhat mysterious.

His young guide persuaded him to get a library card. Sowell borrowed two books and began acquiring the reading habit that would occupy much of the rest of his life.

Now he has some suggestions for the rest of us. His introductory statement makes clear that he expects readers to question what they find, including his own arguments: “Whether you end up agreeing with me or with them is beside the point.”

Pick a subject, follow a link, track down a book. You can disagree with Professor Sowell — or not — after you’ve done the reading.

​Capitalism, College, Culture, Economics, Education, Free market, History, Lifestyle, Milton friedman, Socialism, Thomas sowell, Continuing education 

Two Ohio adults were arrested for subjecting nine children to “horrific, disgusting” living conditions at their home in Licking County, police said.

Jonathan Parr and Jacquelyn Coleman were arrested on Oct. 14 after police reported finding the children living among hundreds of insects, including cockroaches.

‘I can tell you from being out there that the living conditions were horrific, disgusting.’

The children, ages 1 to 13 years old, were also allegedly subjected to abuse involving lack of food and water and insufficient living space.

The children were taken into emergency custody after someone at a Licking County school called Child Protective Services.

That CPS worker interviewed the children, who allegedly detailed the abuse at the home.

After police obtained a search warrant, about a dozen Licking County SWAT team members raided the home and found the horrific living conditions.

“I can tell you from being out there that the living conditions were horrific, disgusting,” said Licking County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jay Cook.

Police called the bathroom an “abomination” and reported finding several firearms at the home within view of the beds where some children slept.

Parr admitted that he made the children stand for five to 10 minutes as a punishment but denied other allegations, according to police.

Coleman was arrested during a traffic stop and allegedly claimed she ignored the abuse because she had nowhere else to stay.

The two were not married but had four children together. It’s unclear which of the children were Parr’s and which ones belonged to Coleman.

Deputies confiscated an iPhone, a tablet/iPad, and multiple weapons from the home.

RELATED: Texas cops investigating odor at home believed someone died inside — they found 2 children living in horrific conditions

Coleman and Parr were each being held on $150,000 bonds at the Licking County Jail. They each face one charge of endangering children, but other charges may be added in the future.

Parr’s mother also lived at the home, but she was not charged.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Child abuse, Child protective services, Ohio, Crime 

I was scrolling in bed when a clip of James Hetfield at the Sphere in Las Vegas came across my feed. I watched it three times.

He thanked the crowd for traveling to see Metallica, then said the band wasn’t there, like some other entertainers, to influence anybody. “Metallica’s agenda is love, energy, and heavy music, baby!”

The second you make half your audience feel unwelcome, you have a problem. Nobody buys a ticket to see a spokesperson.

The place went nuts. I might have cheered a little myself.

Hetfield has never been one for political sermons. Lars Ulrich, who leans left, has said the two hardly ever talk politics. They’ve spent more than 40 years in a band together and somehow managed. Their fans have too.

I spent my early 20s singing in a band on the road, including five summers on Warped Tour, so I’m not going to pretend music and politics never mix. Warped had plenty of both. Bands railed against the government between songs every day. But it was anti-establishment stuff: kids sticking it to whoever was in charge. I don’t remember anyone telling half the parking lot they were bad people because of how their parents voted. We were all in it together, sweaty, sunburned, and broke.

That’s what has changed. Too often, what comes from the stage isn’t rebellion. It’s a lecture aimed at the people who paid to be there.

Look at what happened to Macklemore. He was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour in September after saying “Free Palestine” onstage. Stadium operators objected; other performers quit in protest. Suddenly the tour itself was a political fight, and the music was an afterthought.

Here’s the part that gets me. On Warped Tour, the bands were the ones pushing back against people in power. Sure, the whole thing was sponsored by Vans. But the feeling was rebellion, not a lecture dressed up as a concert.

Now some of the biggest artists are among the richest, most-followed voices in the culture. They wield plenty of power themselves, and they use the stage to tell regular people what to think. It feels corporate and ridiculous.

RELATED: GUITAR HERO: Metallica front man puts music before political ‘bulls**t’

Mike Lewis Photography/Redferns

That’s not punk. That’s a sermon with a light show.

Which means a 63-year-old guy at the most high-tech venue on the planet, refusing to join in, might be the most rebellious thing I’ve seen from a stage in years.

I’ve worked in PR a long time, and I’d tell any client the same thing: The second you make half your audience feel unwelcome, you have a problem. Nobody buys a ticket to see a spokesperson.

Write the political song if you’ve got one in you. Metallica has. But when the lights go down, that room belongs to the people who paid to be in it. Hetfield is one of the few who still acts like it.

Love, energy, and heavy music. That’s the whole agenda, and it’s the right one.

​Ed sheeran, Entertainment, Free palestine, Government, Macklemore, Metallica, Music, Politics, Punk, Opinion & analysis 

U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told an audience at the University of Chicago that she wants future investigations of Trump administration officials to send a deterrent message. Young people considering jobs in a Republican administration, she said, should wonder whether joining it might buy them “a ton of problems.”

Slotkin describes her proposal as accountability for corruption. But listen to the threat embedded in her political strategy: Make public service under the wrong president so frightening that talented young conservatives never enter government. She said the quiet part out loud, and conservatives would be fools to ignore it.

If the system is fraying, the worst response is to abandon every position of legitimate authority while the other side organizes.

The peaceful transfer of power depends on losers believing they can survive defeat and return to fight another election. That assumption is eroding.

From the Bush-Gore recount to birtherism, Russiagate, and the battles over COVID-era voting rules, every disputed election has taught Americans to question the legitimacy of the next result. A political system cannot endure indefinitely when losing means permanent exclusion, financial ruin, or the threat of prosecution.

Eventually, the incentive to win at any cost overwhelms the willingness to accept defeat. The ballot is supposed to decide who holds office, not which faction gets to use the state to erase its rivals.

Donald Trump accelerated that deterioration because he inspires a peculiar derangement in his enemies. Progressives convinced themselves that Trump was a fascist dictator preparing a thousand-year Reich. They portrayed ordinary political disagreements as existential emergencies and justified extraordinary tactics as necessary resistance.

The campaign to stop Trump continued after he left office. His opponents pursued lawsuits, criminal cases, and ballot challenges designed to prevent his return. Conservatives watched the machinery of politics become an instrument for destroying the opposition. The law may permit a particular lawsuit or prosecution. That does not mean Americans should be comfortable watching every political contest turn into a criminal investigation.

Trump also survived two assassination attempts in 2024. The atmosphere of political hatred should disturb anyone who expects elections to settle disputes without bloodshed. Instead, much of the left treats Trump’s second administration as an even more terrifying prospect because he has learned something from the first: Personnel determine whether a president can govern. The specter of Cheeto Hitler now excuses an endless war against anyone who might help him.

Trump entered Washington in 2017 without understanding how thoroughly permanent bureaucracies could frustrate his agenda. Officials who considered themselves guardians of the government against its elected leader resisted him from within. This time he has pursued loyal appointments and executive action aggressively.

RELATED: The global meritocracy myth sells Americans’ inheritance cheap

Blaze Media Illustration

Progressives understand that a Republican administration staffed by people committed to its program is harder to neutralize than one staffed by its enemies. So the fight has shifted from Trump himself to the Americans willing to serve him.

That is what makes Slotkin’s remarks so revealing. Young graduates already face a difficult choice between a prosperous private career and the headaches of federal service. Now imagine telling them that four years at the Department of Justice or Homeland Security could lead to crippling legal bills once Democrats regain power. You need not imprison every conservative official. Ruin a few careers, and the next generation will learn to stay away. An opposition that cannot recruit competent personnel cannot govern, however many elections it wins.

Trump’s greatest failure may be his refusal to impose meaningful costs on those who abused power against his movement. Anthony Fauci is not in prison. Officials who conservatives believe weaponized investigations have escaped accountability. Radical activists continue to operate, while prosecutions of political violence remain uneven at best. In repeated games, cooperation survives only when defection carries a price. Tit for tat is not a pleasant rule, but one side cannot endlessly punish the other while expecting restraint in return. Without consequences, bad conduct becomes a winning strategy.

The danger reaches beyond staffing.

Researcher Jennica Pounds, known online as DataRepublican, has published recordings and documents she says reveal preparations for a constitutional crisis involving a network called the United Democracy Alliance. According to her account, former military, intelligence, and diplomatic figures have discussed scenarios in which contested elections, executive branch action against protests, and defiance by Democrat governors could trigger a challenge to federal authority.

DataRepublican interprets those preparations as the groundwork for a seizure of power. Her account describes proposed political red lines, including a federal response to mass protests, that could become triggers for a confrontation between governors and Washington.

RELATED: This is what existential politics looks like

Blaze Media Illustration

One can chalk up the recordings as contingency planning, but the distinction grows thin when political operatives begin gaming out how governors might seize power amid a constitutional crisis. Elections are supposed to settle who governs. Planning to declare Washington illegitimate when an election or federal response goes the wrong way raises the stakes beyond ordinary opposition politics. Conservatives cannot afford to treat that possibility as an abstraction. They should examine the recordings, demand public answers, and prepare to defend their institutions.

No sane person should welcome domestic unrest. A country in which each election threatens imprisonment, confiscation, and violence would become unrecognizable. Americans have spent generations assuming that partisan combat ends when the ballots are counted. That bargain cannot survive if each party views the other as an enemy to be destroyed. Conservatives should demand lawful accountability for genuine wrongdoing, defend constitutional procedures, and refuse the comforting fantasy that decorum alone will restore the old rules.

None of this is permission to withdraw from politics. It is a reason to become harder to exclude. Vote. Recruit candidates. Build institutions. Win local offices. Know your sheriff, your neighbors, and the people responsible for keeping order. Cultivate lawyers, administrators, and young professionals willing to serve despite intimidation.

If the system is fraying, the worst response is to abandon every position of legitimate authority while the other side organizes. Democracy may not survive in the form Americans remember. The power conservatives build now will determine whether they have any say in what follows.

​Democracy, University of chicago, Elissa slotkin, Covid, Russiagate, Trump, Political hatred, Bloodshed, 2024, Progressives, Dhs, Datarepublican, Elections, Voting, Vote, Domestic unrest, Conservatives, Opinion & analysis 

France has spent centuries defending its independence, but BlazeTV host Nick Freitas warns that the country now faces a different kind of battle: one over the future of Western civilization itself.

This battle is being waged by a very unlikely team: the left and Islam.

While the pair has very “different ultimate objectives” and very “different worldviews,” that isn’t stopping them from “using each other to achieve their objectives.”

“The left is arrogant enough to believe that Islamists just really want to be woke leftists, they just need to experience a more elaborate welfare system. And then Islam recognizes that look, they do not have the military or economic power to achieve the sort of conquest that they used to,” Freitas explains.

Rather than give up on their conquests, Islam changes “to more asymmetric strategies,” of which Freitas says there are many.

“They talk about ‘taqiyya,’ it’s the idea that you can lie to your enemies. Now again, they will say, ‘Well, no, no, no. This is only like if you’re in a position of extreme, you know, potential harm and you have to lie to be able to save yourself. It’s not just that we can lie in general,’” he says.

“Except that when you see it interpreted by different imams, you get different interpretations, you get different applications for it,” he adds.

And in this case, Islam is using the left as a way to get in on “decolonizing” the West and creating a moral legitimacy for its strategy.

“Now, I’m trying to come up with a moral framework, which provides the left the ability to commit aggressive acts of violence or looting or destruction. And it’s not aggression. It’s just defense,” Freitas says.

“This is decolonization. This is taking back what’s rightfully ours. Because after all, you’re on stolen land, right? This is just taking back what belongs to us because after all, the only reason you have it is not a result of your own efforts,” he continues.

“No, it’s because of oppressive systems that you put in place, which exploited one people in order to enrich yourselves,” he adds.

And the decolonization message echoing through France was founded by a man who claimed that violence was necessary.

“Their argument was colonization was violence. Decolonization has to be violent,” Freitas says, pointing out that their attention has shifted to “decolonizing France.”

“Decolonize it of what?” Freitas asks. “You have to decolonize it of this Western ideology, of Christianity, of capitalism, of property rights, of markets. That’s what has to be decolonized now.”

“If that’s what decolonization is, then what you really mean is you need to uproot, supplant, and destroy the culture that you believe is guilty of the original colonization. That is what has to be destroyed, and that’s what the left wants,” he adds.

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Nick freitas, France, Islam, Leftism, Decolonization, Blazetv show 

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, announced a military operation to rescue four hostages in Haiti and threatened the gangs involved.

In a statement on social media, Bukele issued a statement to the gang leaders and gang members that said if the hostages were not safely returned, he would mount a larger operation.

‘We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too.’

Bukele said in the post translated by X from Haitian Creole that the four hostages were “cowardly” taken after they went to a market.

“Our kidnapped men are not combatants,” he wrote. “They are aviation technicians who are part of our mission in Haiti, within the framework of an international mission. Our mission consists only of pilots and technical personnel, whose primary job is to carry out medical evacuations and save lives, not to wage war.”

He went on to say that if the hostages were not returned alive, the Haitian gangs would face a far greater military operation.

“We have a single objective: to bring our four compatriots back home alive, without any harm,” the president wrote.

“However, I want you, the gang leaders, to understand one thing very clearly: Today’s attack is nothing compared to what is coming if we do not get all four hostages back alive. And do not take our word for empty threats,” he added.

“We have already finished with the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish with you too,” Bukele added.

The president has been praised for taking a hard line against organized crime in El Salvador by sending criminals to an infamous prison for terrorists. Crime has dropped in the country, but humanitarian groups have accused Bukele of violating human rights and implementing an authoritarian state.

He added a video in the post that appeared to show military trucks in the operation in Haiti.

RELATED: Two Texans allegedly plotted to kill men on island with homeless mercenary force and take women and children as sex slaves

The operation was in retaliation for gang attacks on a gang suppression force with over 2,000 troops from El Salvador, Chad, Jamaica, and Guatemala.

“To the gang bosses terrorizing Haiti: Your days of operating with impunity are numbered,” said Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Monday. “You can burn vehicles, erect barricades, terrorize the local police, terrorize civilians, but the Gang Suppression Force is coming for you. The international community will not tolerate it.”

“We still have time to avoid this,’ Bukele added in his statement Wednesday.

“Return our four compatriots to us alive, without any harm, and everything will go back to how it was before the kidnapping. The decision is in your hands,” he concluded.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Gang members, Nayib bukele, United nations, Haiti, Hostages, Politics 

“Saturday Night Live” veteran Kenan Thompson appears to be the only current cast member publicly scolding Shane Gillis over his controversial opening monologue.

And Thompson is prepared to treat the 38-year-old comedian like a naughty child.

‘I think you need to educate yourself on how things might impact people.’

Performance review

Speaking at Axios’ Media Trends Live event in New York City on Tuesday, Thompson said he would have to sit Gillis down for a little talk if he returned to host “SNL.”

“I’m sure we would have a conversation of, like, ‘How do you think that went?’ … Like a little kid,” Thompson told host Sara Fischer.

“I would just sit him down and be like, ‘So what do you think we could change there, pal?’ And just figure it out.”

Thompson’s remarks stand out among reactions from Gillis’ “SNL” colleagues. The current cast has largely avoided publicly criticizing the comedian, while prominent alumni Dana Carvey and David Spade have come to his defense.

Even Michael Che, who co-hosts the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, declined to condemn Gillis when pressed during an appearance on “Today.”

“That’s comedy,” Che said, explaining that he couldn’t criticize Gillis for a joke that didn’t land.

Carvey was less reserved.

“I just didn’t understand the kerfuffle — only because to me, I just saw it as what we call, I’ll just say it, a joke!” Carvey said on his “Fly on the Wall” podcast with Spade.

Not every former cast member has been supportive. Ego Nwodim and Cecily Strong have both mocked Gillis’ joke about women dressing like “whores” at the gym.

But Thompson, now in his 23rd season on “SNL,” has offered perhaps the most patronizing response yet.

RELATED: Joe Rogan pounces on uproar over Shane Gillis joke about women dressing like ‘whores’ at gyms

‘Harmful’ ha-has

Thompson said he didn’t necessarily consider Gillis a mean person, but suggested the comedian needed to learn that his jokes could hurt people.

“I don’t think jokes are necessarily harmless just because they’re jokes and you didn’t intend it to be a certain kind of way,” Thompson said. “I think you need to educate yourself on how things might impact people.”

He also warned that comedians must balance their “creative liberties” with “watching your step as far as harmful words are concerned.”

The remarks came more than a week after Gillis’ third hosting appearance on “SNL,” during which he joked that women at his gym were dressing like “whores.”

RELATED: ‘I say worse things than that every day’: Jimmy Carr issues hilarious defense of Shane Gillis

Rosalind O’Connor/NBC via Getty Images

Stealing the spotlight

Thompson also seemed annoyed that the controversy had drawn attention away from the rest of the episode.

“Everybody’s focusing in on this one specific word,” he complained, adding that other parts of the monologue and the show were getting “overshadowed.”

The actor pointed to new cast member Grace Reiter’s performance and musical guest Rosalía, saying both deserved more attention than the debate over Gillis’ remarks.

“It’s sad, because nobody is even talking about it,” Thompson said.

He went on to complain that the discussion had become a “back-and-forth on what’s offensive and what’s not.”

When asked whether Gillis would be invited back, Thompson acknowledged that the decision wasn’t his to make.

But he insisted that a return would require a “real chat” about avoiding behavior that creates a “wave pool” for the rest of the cast.

For now, Gillis has not publicly responded to Thompson’s proposed fatherly intervention.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Shane gillis, Saturday night live, Entertainment, Kenan thompson