PARADOXES & OUTRAGE

By THOMAS SOWELL
"Liberals hold us individually responsible for nothing but collectively responsible for everything."

* Sometimes it seems as if everybody is trying to rip off his own little piece of America, until we are all torn apart.

* The last time I saw a Republican express outrage was 1991, when Clarence Thomas told the senators what he thought of the smear tactics used against him. Before that, it was Ronald Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Before that, it was probably Teddy Roosevelt.

* A reader wrote: "Have you ever noticed that opinion polls ask the opinions of people who have no expertise in the subject on which they are being polled and publish these opinions as if they were gospel truth instead of group ignorance?"

* A sign of the times: A full-page ad for an Alaska cruise in the left-wing New York Review of Books says, "See Alaska's Glaciers Before They're Gone!" Shipmates listed include Ralph Nader and the editor of The Nation magazine.

* The people who are scariest to me are the people who don't even realize how little they know.

* A reader sent the following message, quoting his nephew: "Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented worker' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist.' "

* Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

* Is your employer poorer by the amount of money he pays you? Probably not, or you would never have been hired. Why then should we assume that a corporation or its customers are poorer by the amount paid to its chief executive officer?

* A review of one of the many environmentalist books says that even if you can't do all you would like toward "living green," you can at least "congratulate yourself on taking small steps to improve the planet." That is what environmentalism - and much else on the political left's agenda - is really all about, self congratulation.

* Just watching Suze Orman for a few moments while channel surfing is enough to make me feel exhausted.