He is obviously ADVOCATING the idea, since he says it would "save" the country. He could have said something more neutral, such as "there might be a military coup", but he did not.

Further, he isn't saying this might be necessary because of terrorism or a Fifth Column or a strong communist underground movement, or anything like that which threatens our liberties, safety, etc.

He's saying it might be the only solution because we're becoming too degenerate! Which to him means we're having too much sex, allowing women to choose reproductive freedom, or whatever...

In other words, he might advocate a military coup because most Americans don't share his social values.

He's saying that if we exercise our freedoms too much, to his distaste, the only thing left to do would be to take our liberties away.

Come on people, that's disgraceful.

Mr.Joyner; Well done again!

He's an observer of history. If you read his article, the "degeneracy" he laments is the way in which our domestic political factions have lost the ability to engage in dialogue, negotiation, and compromise. Instead we are presented with a list of irresoluble issues over which two highly polarized groups shout slogans at each other. Taking the place of dialogue about real issues is the politics of personal destruction, in which the minutiae of a politician's life, whether public or private, are raked through by those who oppose him, with the aim of finding some occasion to discredit him and remove him from office. The archetye of this was the attack of the Puritans upon Strafford and Laud, culminating in the passage of attainders against them and their subsequent executions in the period preceding the English civil war. In recent years, both of our political parties have used such tactics against their opponents; we saw it during the Clinton administration, and we see it in this one.

If I take Sowell's meaning correctly, he fears that our domestic politics now approach the point that Athenian politics did in the time of Demosthenes and Eubulus; the point that Roman politics did in the days of Marius and Sulla; or the point that English politics did late in the reign of Charles I. In other words, irresoluble political differences between highly polarized factions precede the collapse of the old order. Then the time is right for an Alexander, a Sulla, or a Cromwell to take charge.

Such events never really "save" a country, but do impose order for the time being, and the lesson of history is that ordinary people acquiesce in authoritarianism because it is preferable to anarchy and disorder. Sowell is warning that we may be on the path towards having to choose between these disagreeable alternatives. This is hardly the same as wishing that it happen.

We had a war for independence--we never had military rule.

Yes I know, but it shows that your statement was inaccurate.

And, I agree with Edgardo,

Reading again the title of your post I think you're wrong. Sowell is not pining for a military coup. He's frustrated that one day there will be no choice but to ask the military to take power.

That is exactly the right way to read that statement, IMO. Not that he sees it as a good thing, but that it is the only possible hope after things get really, really bad. That there isn't much hope there highlights the frustration and dismay that Sowell is expressing.

First they don't and second we didn't kill them - it must be tough when you can't get beyond ignorant hatred.

I'm sorry Bandit but I trust the well respected studies over your personal opinion of how many deaths have occured. I'm funny that way.

As for your second contention, We certainly killed a lot of them, though not all by any means. But that doesn't matter. Hussein didn't personally kill the people in that mass grave either. We created the conditions under which some 600,000+ people have died.

I find it ironic that you accuse the person relying upon hard data of "not getting beyond ignorant hatred" while you base your own views on unfounded optimism. It makes me giggle.

Building a 3 mile wall - running a totalitarian concentration camp for 30 years - same diff -

Note that those mass graves from 30 years of totalitarian rule hold less people than have been killed in our little four year experiment in freedom in Iraq.

Again, comment sections and complex debates do not necessarily mix. I do understand that Allende may not have been able to actually finish the term, but bombing the presidential palace wasn't the right solution, either. Even if we want to argue that Pinochet had to take over (an issue I would contest), the fact that Pinochet governed, and brutally at times, for 16 years, underscores the notion that military coups don't save democracies.

I question, by the way, the notion that rhetoric in partisan papers would necessarily be good measures of what would have happened.

Go Freer-dom!

Building a 3 mile wall - running a totalitarian concentration camp for 30 years - same diff -

I find the varied reactions reactions to Sowell's comment... when tracked to their sources, (And the worldview of the speakers, particularly,) to be interesting.

Yglesias, for example, seems all worried about the loss of rights, never considering the loss of rights imposed routinely by the government such a coup would replace.

We all have our blind spots, I guess... and I suppose we've just been witness to the exposure of that of Yglesias, and other leftists.