From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Dec 09 2002 - 20:50:12 MST
Ron writes
> [Lee Daniel Crocker writes]
> > There's nothing particularly inflammatory or even unusual about
> > calling Chomsky's political views nonsense
>
> Samantha,
> I didn't even say that all his views were nonsense.
> I only said the one sample I read once upon a time
> struck me that way. I indicated I was still willing
> to remain open minded enough to read further if you
> will give me a reference that is readily available.
This thread needs M E A T .
> I did indicate that given how I regarded the one
> sample I have read that I am not willing to put
> myself out to search out his work.
Fair, enough. It only took me 3 minutes with
the help of St. Google to find something
interesting. I got it from
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
and the whole site is devoted to his
writings.
The paragraphs that began to get my interest were
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The comparison between the Soviet and U.S. domains is a commonplace outside of culturally deprived sectors of the West, as
illustrated in earlier Z articles. Guatemalan journalist Julio Godoy, who fled when his newspaper, La Epoca, was blown up by state
terrorists (an operation that aroused no interest in the United States; it was not reported, though well-known), writes that Eastern
Europeans are, "in a way, luckier than Central Americans": "while the Moscow-imposed government in Prague would degrade and
humiliate reformers, the Washington-made government in Guatemala would kill them. It still does, in a virtual genocide that has
taken more than 150,000 victims... [in what Amnesty International calls] a `government program of political murder'." That, he
suggested, is "the main explanation for the fearless character of the students' recent uprising in Prague: the Czechoslovak Army
doesn't shoot to kill.... In Guatemala, not to mention El Salvador, random terror is used to keep unions and peasant associations
from seeking their own way" -- and to ensure that the press conforms, or disappears, so that Western liberals need not fret over
censorship in the "fledgling democracies" they applaud.
Godoy quotes a European diplomat who says, "as long as the Americans don't change their attitude towards the region, there's no
space here for the truth or for hope." Surely no space for nonviolence and love.
One will search far to find such truisms in U.S. commentary, or the West in general, which much prefers largely meaningless (though
self-flattering) comparisons between Eastern and Western Europe. Nor is the hideous catastrophe of capitalism in the past years a
major theme of contemporary discourse, a catastrophe that is dramatic in Latin America and other domains of the industrial West, in
the "internal Third World" of the United States, and the "exported slums" of Europe. Nor are we likely to find much attention to the
fact, hard to ignore, that the economic success stories typically involve coordination of the state and financial-industrial
conglomerates, another sign of the collapse of capitalism in the past 60 years. It is only the Third World that is to be subjected
to the destructive forces of free market capitalism, so that it can be more efficiently robbed and exploited by the powerful.
Central America represents the historical norm, not Eastern Europe. Hume's observation requires this correction. Recognizing that,
it remains true, and important, that government is typically founded on modes of submission short of force, even where force is
available as a last resort.
The Bewildered Herd And Its Shepherds
In the contemporary period, Hume's insight has been revived and elaborated, but with a crucial innovation: control of thought is
more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward. A
despotic state can control its domestic enemy by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent
the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business. These prominent features of modern
political and intellectual culture merit a closer look.
The problem of "putting the public in its place" came to the fore with what one historian calls "the first great outburst of
democratic thought in history," the English revolution of the 17th century. This awakening of the general populace raised the
problem of how to contain the threat.
The libertarian ideas of the radical democrats were considered outrageous by respectable people. They favored universal education,
guaranteed health care, and democratization of the law, which one described as a fox, with poor men the geese: "he pulls off their
feathers and feeds upon them." They developed a kind of "liberation theology" which, as one critic ominously observed, preached
"seditious doctrine to the people" and aimed "to raise the rascal multitude...against all men of best quality in the kingdom, to
draw them into associations and combinations with one another...against all lords, gentry, ministers, lawyers, rich and peaceable
men" (historian Clement Walker). Particularly frightening were the itinerant workers and preachers calling for freedom and
democracy, the agitators stirring up the rascal multitude, and the printers putting out pamphlets questioning authority and its
mysteries. "There can be no form of government without its proper mysteries," Walker warned, mysteries that must be "concealed" from
the common folk: "Ignorance, and admiration arising from ignorance, are the parents of civil devotion and obedience," a thought
echoed by Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. The radical democrats had "cast all the mysteries and secrets of government...before the
vulgar (like pearls before swine)," he continued, and have "made the people thereby so curious and so arrogant that they will never
find humility enough to submit to a civil rule." It is dangerous, another commentator ominously observed, to "have a people know
their own strength." The rabble did not want to be ruled by King or Parliament, but "by countrymen like ourselves, that know our
wants." Their pamphlets explained further that "It will never be a good world while knights and gentlemen make us laws, that are
chosen for fear and do but oppress us, and do not know the people's sores."
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Well, I wouldn't exactly call that nonsense, reserving
that term for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky or the poetry
of T.S. Eliot and several others I could name. What we
have here is (1) a typical denounciation of the U.S. for
everything that happens in its "domain", i.e., the part
of the world directly under U.S. rule, and (2) some
description of the "hideous catastrophe" of capitalism
in recent decades---well, okay, I guess that he verges
into nonsense here after all---, and (3) a rather good
description of the dangers (as seen from the point of
view of elites) of common people getting too much power
(i.e., government losing too much of it).
You could discuss that, or other things at
that site. Chomsky is not short of words ;-)
---nor are they at all hard to find.
Lee Corbin
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