Chomsky Think

"You couldn't even predict that the plane would hit the World Trade Center.  I'm happy that it did, but it could easily have missed" -- minutes 2:52 to 3:00 in the video below:

 

Noam Chomsky was turned back by Israeli guards recently while on his way to speak at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah on the West Bank.  For once, he had no similar engagement to get to in Israel, which may turn out a great thing, for his playing for a symbolic boycott and his effort to further the demonization of Israel helps bring to light a single and simple principle: because somebody appears to be on your side doesn't mean that he's good.

Some friends we don't want.

Some friends, and this for their disingenuous character, no one should want.

"The argument moves very quickly to another position, namely that a state has the right to defend itself by force from attack from the outside, and nobody believes that.  If that's supposed to be the principle, I think it's universally rejected" -- minutes 3:00 to 3:26 in "Noam Chomsky: The United States - Israel's Godfather", YouTube poster "Phubb", January 26, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30X2tYUGK_8&feature=related

Think about an intellectual's discussion of "defense" and taking exception to "by force" in light of the very notion of, say, "the common defense": would that it would suffice to pay for cheerleaders and lawyers to shout it out from soapboxes in the public squares and cut the soldiers, tanks, and planes out of it altogether.

There is one thing on which Chomsky and I would almost agree:  "Language is the core property that defines human beings"--minutes 0:17-0:25, "ali g interviews noam chomsky," YouTube poster "monkeysalud", April 5, 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro&feature=related

I'd go a little further and suggest that language is not a "property" but rather, perhaps, a central social technology encompassing two dimensional parts, a tool set and a medium, i.e., both a grammar and lexicon as well as an environmental suspension within the Mind in which cultures exist.

Now here is the good part, imho, as long as we're stuck with language: no grammar need be frozen, no lexicon fixed, no metonymy made immoveable, for languages would seem as alive, evolving, and flexible as well as practical and imaginative as the humans who own and struggle along with so many of them, for there is no separating customs and manners in speech from those owned and promoted by their speakers.

Faith, language, reason, and progress travel together.

Chomsky as phenomenon -- what is a nice Jewish boy like Noam doing subverting language to drive a wedge more deeply between good people? -- may be worth a great deal more research, but keep this in mind while Googling "Chomsky Israel", "Chomsky Gaza", "Chomsky Left", and "Chomsky Right": as much as one's perceived friend may not be such a good person, one's perceived enemy may not be such a bad one after all.

The test for determining one state from the other must not be superficial loyalty (and grandstanding) but plain spoken honesty in thought and deed.

Now in the above video from which I've excised a political aside, a provocative remark made on the way to some other point, most would agree, I think, with the debunking of the "9/11 Truth" movement, itself a demonstration of the human capacity for invention -- the greater the event, the more wild the conspiracy theories about it -- and the difficulty faced by some in the process of personally receiving vetted adverse data, but where "good : honest" have been paired, the good must necessarily rise to meet their criticism.

# # #

Comments

[Oliver]

"Some friends we don't want." ?

You know an important difference between totalitarian and democratic states? In democracies you get the good guys AND the bad guys - in totalitarian regimes it's EITHER the good ones OR the bad ones you have to cope with. And, here, for certain it's hardly ever the good ones you get.

Living with unwanted friends means living with dissent. Dissent has been and will always be the elixir of every democracy, of democracy as such.

What comes first - (superficial) security or the very values democratic entities like Israel or the USA are built on?

[tammy swofford]

The comment on the right to self defense seems a bit strange, and certainly illogical. Moving from the castle doctrine which we have strengthened in Texas, it seems an easy enough step to then agree that the right to protect the home extends to the right of the community for self-defense. From the community, the right of national defense.

America is a nation, but also a nation of many communities. Following the line of thought of Mr. Chomsky, the attempted perpetration of a violent act of carnage against citizens in Times Square by a Pakistani "American" did not warrant the force of defense.

Perhaps Mr. Chomsky is of the crowd which prefers to deliver the bouquet of flowers to the memorial site post-attack? As for me, I prefer that an active denial system function properly, and should it require pre-emptive force as a deterrent component of the security package, so be it.

More simply stated: Your ass or mine?

Tammy Swofford