Look of all people who Henry Jeffrey quotes

Feb 09, 2014 Letters

Dear Editor,
In my long years of disagreement with Dr, Henry Jeffrey, I have never uttered one word of disparagement about his intellectual capacity. In many letters and columns in which I wrote critically on many inelegant arguments, naïve positions and wrong policies (as Minister in the PPP Government for 18 years), of Henry Jeffrey, I never insulted his academic ability.
In one of his replies to me many years ago, in the Stabroek News, he resorted to a political position that was extremely distasteful and that particular view I still find odious and egregious. I honestly believe as an academic he should withdraw it. But even though I was disgusted at that concept (for want of a better word) and I made a vexed reply, I did not touch on his academic ability.
Before I move on let me inform readers about that episode. Jeffrey wrote that he does not believe that the PNC administration or the PPP Government ever implemented a policy that was deliberately done with personal malice or mischief. Of course I am using my own description. Surely, Jeffrey must have been distracted by a predatory bee when his hand was on the keyboard for him to make that statement.
There is a popular Guyanese saying- “who feels it knows it.” President Ramotar’s daughter, Lisa once told me her father struggled long and hard for Guyana and deserves what he has. One of these days my daughter may tell Lisa Ramotar and many others like her that her father too struggled longer than Ramotar and suffered more than Ramotar and did not deserve to have two attacks on his life, jailed for three days for a minor traffic offence and dismissed from his job and had her mother too dismissed from her job. But let’s get back to Dr. Jeffrey.
In response to me in a KN letter of January 24, captioned, “Kissoon’s arguments rife with assumptions,” Dr. Jeffrey has done an amazing thing. He quoted from Thomas Sowell, American professor and commentator. But it is not Sowell himself that is intriguing but the quote that was actually selected by Jeffrey. Here is what Sowell said as quoted by Dr. Jeffrey in his letter’ “The list of top-ranked intellectuals who made utterly irresponsible statements…could be extended indefinitely.”
The fact is if there is any intellectual who has made nauseatingly irresponsible statements, it is Sowell himself. So irresponsible is Sowell in what comes out of his mouth and from his pen that one is inclined to see him as an attention-seeker. Readers could on the internet and research the following article, “Is US Now on a Slippery Road to Tyranny?” by Sowell in which he made a subtle reference to President Obama being like Adolf Hitler.
Now, not only is that reference moronic, asinine, sick and irresponsible, but it betrays the Freudian ghost that has haunted Sowell all his life. He, like VS Naipaul, hates the race he was born into and has been running away his whole life from his origins. Quite a large percentage of African-Americans, American feminists and democratically thinking people find Sowell’s academic and political positions despicable.
It boggles the mind to know that Jeffrey actually saw that quote from Sowell useful to publish. But let us leave aside Sowell and the quote. The actual reflection by Sowell is meaningless and has no intellectual value. Do you know how many top ranked judges, doctors, lawyers, presidents, prime ministers, priests, novelists, artists, journalists etc have made utterly irresponsible statements? Why was Sowell specific in identifying intellectuals only? And what did Jeffrey find useful in that inane, arid, jejune, useless and silly reflection of Sowell to offer it to readers?
In a follow up letter, I will further respond to Jeffrey, not on the concept of sovereignty itself, but in which quarter or section of society it resides, and who has the authority in a country to speak on the defence of sovereignty. I find that Dr. Jeffrey has astutely avoided those answers in his reply to me.
I close with the reassertion that given the results of the 20111 elections, Parliament embodies the sovereignty of Guyana. It was an atrocious mistake made by Speaker Trotman when he advised that the Guyana Government and the US Embassy should negotiate the democracy project. As Speaker of the House he virtually reduced it to a subordinate of a minority government. It was an unforgivable mistake in the context of the PPP’s post-election tyranny and for that the AFC and APNU should ask him to resign.
Frederick Kissoon

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