A sobering sentence from Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite (via Amritas):
The embrace of Chomsky by the mainstream liberal elite in America and the political consensus in Europe -- both Left and Right -- has to be regarded as one of the most unsettling developments in the intellectual world since 9/11; if only because, for the first time since Vietnam, the idea that America is, on a fundamental level, not merely misguided or mistaken but also evil is becoming a part of acceptable discourse.
President Bush got ripped a new one for using the term Axis of Evil because of its biblical and dichotomous overtones. But now we're tossing the word evil around like it means nothing anymore. Amritas and I were laughing over the weekend about the Canadian kids who said the US was a "force for evil." A force for evil, such a strange expression. Who says something like that?
There is true evil out there in the world; those who call the US evil have never seen it.
Posted by Sarah at August 4, 2004 09:38 AMChomsky may have had the last laugh on this one. The Google-sponsored ad on the "Blogspot" banner for the anti-Chomsky diary featured Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent."
Viva la corporacion!!
Posted by: Miss Authoritiva at August 8, 2004 07:24 PMChomsky-Haters
Logic and Reasoning: Inside the Mind of an anti-Chomskyite: The Play (Act 1)
B: Have you read Chomsky?
J: No, but I hate him.
B: How do you know?
J: He hates America, he’s a Pol Pot apologist, he thinks the Holocaust never happened, he hates America, he takes things out of context, his knowledge of history is piss-poor and he doesn’t even have a PhD. in history, he hates America, he never says anything good about the U.S., he always supports communists, he hates America, he’s loose with facts and uses questionable sources, and even his linguistics is shoddy. Oh, and did I mention, he hates America?
B: Oh, really? Forgive me for asking, but if you haven’t read him how do you know all of this?
J: Because….uuhhh……well……I….I…….I did read 15 pages of one book once…….and I can tell piss-poor scholarship when I see it. I don’t need to eat an entire pile of shit to know that it tastes bad after a few nibbles.
B: Really? Hmmm, That’s quite interesting. So you got all of this information from 15 pages of one book? Which book were the 15 pages from? I must have missed this one.
J: The book was called 501.
B: And you got all of this information from the first 15 pages of 501?
J: Well, no, of course, not stupid. I’ve gotten some of my information from others who have studied him more thoroughly.
B: Really? Like who?
J: Like Brian Carnell, Brad DeLong, Keith Windschuttle, David Horowitz, Werner Cohen, and many others. It’s so easy to find really great criticisms of Chomsky’s lame-ass work.
B: But none of the people you’ve named are historians. How would they know if they don’t have a PhD. in history?
J: Uhhhh…..well…….uhh…….Anyone can see! You’re being sarcastic! You’re not being logical or rational! Are you attacking me? You and all of the other Chomsky-lovers always do this. You’re taking what I’ve said out of context, just like your hero Chomsky.
B: Excuse me? What are you talking about? I never said anything about liking Chomsky. When and where were my comments not logical or rational? What am I taking out of context? Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
J: It’s hopeless! I’ve tried and tried to make you understand, but you just don’t get it. You resort to ad hominem attacks and name calling. You and your type, who think they have some high moral authority, always speak condescendingly to those of us who are rational enough to see through Chomsky’s ignorance and his hatred for America. We have the greatest country in the world and everyone wants to come here. They’re all jealous of our way of life and freedoms. The terrorists want to destroy us and all that we stand for in the world. We only help other countries and they don’t even appreciate it. They spit in our faces and we still hold out a helping hand. Chomsky and his ilk are just encouraging the terrorists. He’s a terrorist! He should be kicked out of the country, or better yet, killed! I’m so pissed I can’t even see straight! Where’s my gun? Goddamnit! Barbara! Where’s my fucking gun?
W: I think it’s in the dryer dear……Oh! Here it is. It was next to the bible under your National Review.
J: Shut up woman! Did I tell you to speak?! Just give me the fucking gun!
B: J, are you okay?
J: Shut up you fucking commie! You hate America too, don’t you?
B: How did you come to that conclusion?
J: Well, look! All you’ve been doing is criticizing everything I say. You’ve made countless ad homenim attacks. You’re so blinded by your love of Chomsky that you can’t even be rational or logical. Why don’t you and your friends start your own ‘We Love the Infallible Chomsky’ blog where you can just sit around with each other and talk about how great Chomsky is? This way you don’t have to listen to voices of reason and you can use your sloppy logic to your hearts content. Why am I even talking to you? You don’t make sense.
B: Okay, thanks J. I’ll talk to you later.
J: Barbara! Bring me another beer and those Amazon.com negative Chomsky review prints. I wanna’ study!
END
Projective Test: Therapy with an anti-Chomskyite (Act 1)
T: Good afternoon J.
J: Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get this dumb-ass Chomsky-lover off of my blog.
T: Oh, you have your own blog?
J: Sure do. You should check it out sometime. Maybe you’d get some more insight into my psyche. (chuckles)
T: Well maybe I’ll just do that. What’s it called?
J: ‘Deep Insight: Exposing the Lies of Noam Chomsky’
T: Wow! That’s a pretty impressive name. You must put a lot of work into it?
J: Not really. All I find myself doing is arguing with irrational, illogical, Chomsky-loving commies who like to make ad hominem attacks on me.
T: But I mean you must have had to spend a lot of time reading and studying Chomsky’s ideas so that you could argue with these folks, right?
J: Shall we start our therapy?
T: Uhhh….okay, sure. Today I’d like to give you what’s known as a word association projective test. I’ll just say some words and you say the first thing which comes to your mind. Try to answer with one word or a short phrase.
J: Okay.
T: Are you ready?
J: Fire away.
T: banana
J: Sandanistas
T: book
J: review
T: study
J: Amazon.com
T: gun
J: love….No! Peace, peace.
T: history
J: memory hole
T: ad hominem
J: hobby
T: terrorists
J: everyone else
T: hypocrisy
J: rap
T: Orwell
J: Citizen Kane Wait! Did you say oil well? Uhh...Beverly Hillbillies
T: logic
J: Huh?
T: TV
J: Martha
T: projection
J: What?! Are you accusing me of projection?! That’s what those fucking Chomskyites are always saying to me. Did they put you up to this?! What do you want from me?!
T: No, J. Just relax. It’s okay. No one wants anything from you. I only want you to continue with the test. Okay?
J: Well, okay. How much longer is it going to be?
T: Not too much longer. Shall we proceed?
J: Okay. Sorry.
T: Chomsky
J: WHAT?! What the fuck are you doing?! You American-hating-commie-sympathizing-Jewish-Holocaust-denying-liberal media loving-Dan Ratherite-60’s were good-anti-gun-pro-environmental-pro-affirmative action-Michael Moore idolizer! You mother-fu*”+*#+!+
T: Yes, J! Yes J! Express your feelings! Open up! Open up!
J: You son-of-a-bit*`”*#*”*#*”*………………………………..
(After about 15 more minutes of “expressing himself” J begins to calm down. He sits down and begins to shake. He puts his face in his hands and begins to cry uncontrollably.)
T: It’s okay J. It’s okay to let your feelings go. Would you like to talk about it?
J: (Still crying) I don’t know what happened. It just came out. I couldn’t control it. I’m not even sure I remember what we were talking about.
T: Well, I said Chomsky and…..
J: You fucking said what?! You goddamn son-of-a-*+”*#+!*”+#*!............................................................
(The therapist pushes the button under his desk to alert the orderlies. Two big men bust through the door just as J starts after the therapist. As the orderlies are helping J into his straitjacket he continues to yell and scream obscenities interspersed with comments about Stalin, ad hominem attacks, and Paris Hilton. The orderlies then pick him up and head for the door. As they’re going through the door his head turns toward the therapist’s bookcase. He sees that there are about 30 Chomsky books neatly lined up. He becomes speechless. He glances back at the therapist. The therapist gives him a wink and says….)
T: Take him to room 501!
J: No! No! Noooooooo…………………………………
END
History, Anger, and the Future of Education: An anti-Chomskyite’s Perpective
B: Hey J, how do you like your history class?
J: Well, you know, it’s the same old crap. The professor is the usual liberal type who makes sure to slip in little comments which denigrate the U.S. What happened to all the “real historians?”
B: Like who?
J: Like David Horowitz.
B: Who?
J: You know, that guy who wrote the ‘Anti-Chomsky Reader’. Now he’s a “real historian”. He exposed all of the lies put forth by that damn east coast Jewish commie liberal Noam Chomsky, who’s not even a historian anyway. Why aren’t we using Horowitz’s book in our class?
B: I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your professor?
J: He’ll just give me the same old crap about this not being a very good example of either history or scholarship. This is the same thing I get from all of the Chomsky-lovers.
B: But you can challenge him if you really think that the authors are onto something regarding Chomsky. You should try to show him how accurate the book is and how it should be taken seriously. Perhaps it will be on the required reading list next year.
J: Yeah, right! And I’m supposed to believe that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein during the time he gassed his own people.
B: Well, we did.
J: See! They’ve gotten to you! I can’t believe it! You fell for it, too! Am I the only rational one on this campus?! Am I the only one who knows anything about history?!
B: What do you mean? Are you saying that we didn’t support Saddam during the time of the gassing of the Kurds?
J: Of course we didn’t support him. I mean, yeah, well, we were selling him guns and weapons, and, yeah, we were doing everything possible to keep him in power, and, yeah, after the gassings we didn’t do a damn thing about it, and yeah, we basically liked him, but it doesn’t mean we supported him.
B: It doesn’t?
J: Hell no! Why would we support a murdering dictator like Saddam? He had guns and weapons, all he wanted was to stay in power, and he gassed his own people.
B: But you just got through saying that we sold him guns and weapons, and that we tried to keep him in power, and that he gassed his own people with U.S. complicity, and that we liked him.
J: Are you calling me a liar?! I didn’t say that! You’re putting words in my mouth! I never said complicity! I don’t even know that word! You’re one of them! You’re one of them! Let me see your book bag! What do you have in there?! (J grabs B’s book bag and begins to look for some kind of “evidence”. He doesn’t find anything of interest.) Where are they?! Where are they?! Where are the books you’re using in your history class?!
B: Settle down J. People are beginning to stare.
J: Fuckem’! They’re all commies, too.
B: How do you know this?
J: Look at them! They’re all just sitting around reading and stuff. Look! Look! See that girl over there? She has Howard Zinn’s ‘A Peoples History of the United States’. Pure shit! Nothing but lies! Zinn takes everything out of context! Chomsky does the same! They’re liars, and these professors, who supposedly study history and know what they’re talking about, allow their students to read this vulgar propaganda! See?! Can’t you see?! Are you really that blind?! There are signs all over the place that this country is going to hell. And it’s because these liberal teachers are letting their students read shit like Zinn, Chomsky, Said, and all the others!
B: So where do you get all of your historical information?
J: Everyone knows this! This is just common sense! No sane person has to study what I’m talking about to know what I’m talking about! Are you calling me a liar?! This country is great and I’m damn proud to be an American!
B: Uhhh…..Okay. And what does this have to do with where you get your historical information?
J: There you go again! You really are trying to start a fight! You’re calling my patriotism into question, aren’t you?!
B: Not at all. I was just wondering……..
J: Wondering what?!
B: Wondering where you got your historical information from? That’s all.
J: I’m finished talking to you! You can’t be reasoned with. You really are one of them. You guys should all just go live in North Korea if you think it’s so great there!
B: What are you talking about? Who said anything about North Korea, or thinking it was great?
J: See you’re trying to get out of it now!
B: Trying to get out of what?
J: See, you’re too ignorant to even know what I’m talking about. The education in this country really is going to shit.
END
Preventive War or Preventive Thought?: The Logical Conclusion for an anti-Chomskyite
B: You look deep in thought J. What are you thinking about?
J: I was just thinking about preventive war and how it seems a good logical idea.
B: Really? You think it’s logical?
J: You don’t?! You can’t be that naïve. Of course it’s logical.
B: Please explain yourself.
J: Well, I mean if we just go kill the other people first, it will just save us the trouble of having to do it later after they attack us, and could possibly save many more lives than if we wait. And it’s probably cost efficient. Why would any intelligent person wait? It’s like preventive medicine. You don’t wait until you get the illness before you start taking preventive medicine. Otherwise, it’s not preventive medicine. How much simpler could it be?
B: Hmmm I’m not so sure you can apply the preventive medicine analogy when talking about human affairs and war. It’s a little more complicated than that, don’t you think?
J: Hell no! It’s not complicated! If we know that these folks may eventually do something to us, why shouldn’t we just go after them first? Killem’! Killem’ all!
B: How will we determine who may want to do something to us in the future?
J: See?! This is the perfect example! I can tell by the way you’re questioning me that it’s possible that you’ll probably want to attack me in the future.
B: You can tell that simply by the questions I’ve asked you?
J: There you go again! You’ve just proved my point! You are attacking me! I knew I should’ve kicked your red-ass after you recommended that therapist! You commies are always sneaking up on us just waiting to pounce when our guard is down.
B: Commies?! What are you talking about? I’ve asked you five simple questions and now you’re calling me a commie? You say that I’m attacking you? You say that I’m sneaking up on you? And you say that you should have kicked my red-ass earlier? And you said I’ve proved your point? What are you talking about?
J: Yes, you have proved my point.
B: How have I done that?
J: Well, if I would have just killed you earlier on I wouldn’t have to endure all this pain you’re inflicting on me. See?
B: I’m inflicting pain on you? What have I done?
J: You may as well have stuck a knife into my back you unappreciative, Che T-shirt wearing, traitor.
B: So what if everybody else decides to implement the preventive doctrine? What will keep them from killing you first?
J: Because I believe in God and country and…(BANG!)
(Just then a gun shot went off and J’s head splattered against the wall. Everyone turned around only to see Barbara, his wife, standing there wearing her NRA T-shirt, her Wal-Mart sneakers, holding a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi in one hand and the smoking gun in the other.)
Barb: Sorry, B. I heard what J said and thought he was going to kill you.
(Barbara drops her gun, opens a Pepsi, looks into my eyes and says…..)
Barb: Be sure to vote for Bush!
END
Presidential Debate with an anti-Chomskyite: Plus a Brief Analysis of Media Coverage
M: Okay, gentlemen, we will begin with the topic of national security. How do each of you intend to insure the security of the American people? B, you have 60 seconds.
B: I think….
J: Why does he get to go first?! This debate has been fixed by the liberal media!
M: Well, we flipped a coin and…….
J: I don’t remember flipping a coin! I didn’t even have a chance to look at it! It was probably the same on both sides!
M: But sir you were the one who……
J: There you go again! I knew I shouldn’t get involved in a debate which was engineered to make me look like an incompetent idiot!
(During this exchange the anti-Chomskyites in the audience stand up and begin cheering J. They begin yelling that the debate is fixed, that J’s statements have been taken out of context, that B is making ad hominem attacks on J, and that J’s winning the debate. They are removed from the hall and taken to a padded cell in the back of the auditorium which was constructed in anticipation of the usual outbreaks of angry irrationality which they often display. A few minutes later calm returns to the auditorium.)
M: I must apologize to our audience for the temporary interruption. Perhaps, we can now resume with the debate. Okay, gentlemen, are you ready?
(They both say yes.)
M: Now B, regarding national security, what would you do……..
J: What?! Even after all that’s happened here you’re going to let him go first?! This is the second time tonight I’ve been insulted! What the hell’s going on here?!
B: It’s okay, M. J can go first……………………….
J: Shut the hell up! I don’t need handouts from a welfare commie like you! I’m a self made man! I’ve done everything myself! I’ve never taken anything from anyone, and I’m not going to start now! Just shut the hell up! Both of you! Shut up and let me talk! I think I’d be a good leader because I said I would. That’s all the proof I need. And if you’re like me and my fellow anti-Chomskyites, that’s all the proof you’ll need too. If I’m president I’ll do everything in my power to make every other country in this world hate us. Then we can use preventive war and kill all the bastards. We also won’t have to worry about them invading this great country anymore and trying to take all of the things I’ve built myself, with my own hands. They’re jealous! They’re all fuckin’ jealous!
I’d bomb the U.N. first as it’s the symbol of giving a shit what others think around the world. Nothing could be more dangerous than this!
M: J, I’m afraid your 60 seconds is………
J: Shut the fuck up you Kim Jong Il-loving mother-fu!*#+*$+”*$+!!! I’ll say when 60 seconds is up! Shut the hell up! Just let me speak! You haven’t let me say anything! See, you and your state-controlled liberal media are doing everything you can to censor me! You’re trying to make sure that my dangerous ideas don’t reach the average folks like me.
B: Why don’t we just relax and ………
J: I’ve had just about as much of you as I can take! You and your condescending tone!
You’re always interrupting me, mocking me, laughing at me behind my back, calling me bad names, and worst of all, thinking that you know what Chomsky’s talking about just because you’ve read him and I haven’t. That really pisses me off!
M: Okay, gentlemen. Let’s …………………..
J: I’m leaving! This is ridiculous! This isn’t a debate! This is a lynching! I don’t need this kind of treatment, and I sure as hell don’t deserve it! I’m going home! For those of you who are more objective, and want to hear what I really think, you can check out my anti-Chomsky website tomorrow. ‘The Voice of Reezun: Publicly Spanking My Monkey’. Thank you! God Bless America! And good night!
(The next day B decides to check out how the media has covered the debate. First, he looks at J’s website. Needless to say, the top article was how J smashed B despite B having the media on his side, and how the media had not given him a chance to express his opinions. There was a picture of the anti-Chomskyites being taken to the padded cell which was confirmation that the media and the B people were totalitarian censors. There was a picture of B saying “I think…” and was used as proof that his thoughts were getting more attention. There was a picture of the M putting his hand in his pocket which was proof that he had switched the coins, even though one could tell by looking at the background of the photo that the M was in a night club somewhere and looked about 10 years younger. B then looks at all the other media outlets CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and even PBS. He found that they had all interpreted the events of the debate much the same way J had on his website, with a few minor exceptions. B then leaned back in his big soft recliner, patted his copy of ‘Manufacturing Consent’ as if it were a pet, and burst out into laughter.)
The End
Taking a Test-The anti-Chomskyite’s Dilemma: A Short Story
(It was first period on Friday morning and J was an hour early for class as usual. He despised all of the slacker students who came strolling in just before the bell. He thought of them as lazy, good-for-nothing, communist, hippies who were just at school to take drugs, pick up chicks, and pretend to be radicals by reading Chomsky. True, his classmates were only 14 years of age, but to J this didn’t excuse their lack of discipline. Perhaps his being their senior by at least 25 years had something to do with his frustration. Anyway, he was confident that this test was going to be easy. The test was to cover the works of Noam Chomsky, and J was sure it would be a breeze. Of course, he hadn’t studied for the test because, I mean, what would be the point? After all, all commies think alike, and Chomsky was just another of the leftover flotsam from the terrible 60’s. Plus, J had an allergic reaction just at the thought of opening up one of Chomsky’s books. His body would break out into hives which could only be soothed by a thorough scrubbing with a wire brush and the William Buckley Jr. soap figurine he got from his father for learning to ride a bike two years earlier. Anyway, a few minutes later, the teacher walked in and told the students to clear their desks and take out a pencil. Upon hearing these instructions J took his copy of ‘The Complete Idiots Guide to Being an anti-Chomskyite’ off his desk and slipped it into his backpack. He then reached further down into his pack only to be shocked that his pencil wasn’t where he always kept it. He began searching frantically. He began to sweat profusely as the teacher came nearer. J was still digging as the teacher stopped next to his desk with test in hand…..)
T: So, J, did you forget your pencil again?
J: It was right here a second ago. I know it’s here somewhere. It’s got to be……………
T: Is it really that difficult to keep track of your pencil? And don’t try to blame Skippy for taking it again.
(The week before J had forgotten his pencil too. When confronted by the teacher, he began yelling that Skippy and all the other students were in a conspiracy against him and that Chomsky was behind it. He was sent to the principal’s office where he had to write ‘I will read more than 15 pages of Noam Chomsky before I’m fifty years old’ 200 times on the blackboard. When J finished this assignment two days later he decided to sue the school for excessive punishment. Anyway, back to the story.)
T: Will somebody let J borrow a pencil?
(Nobody offered a pencil. The teacher then looked a B.)
B: Why should I lend him a pencil? Last week when I did he started screaming that he wouldn’t accept handouts and that he wasn’t on welfare. And when he finally did take it he ate the eraser.
(There was a short pause and then B grudgingly gave J a pencil to use. It was the same pencil that he had eaten the eraser off of the last time. J took this as a direct attack. His face turned red, his hands began to shake, and he started mumbling something about Kissinger having a nice butt and saturation bombing. He was stuck. What was he to do? If he attacked B he’d probably have to write the Chomsky sentences 500 times, but if he didn’t kick B’s ass everyone would think he was a wuss. The teacher, seeing that J was about to blow, handed him an eraser hoping to diffuse the situation. It worked, but all that J could think about was kicking B’s ass after school. The teacher finished handing out the tests and the students began.)
The Test: J’s Test to be Precise
1. After having read the 8 Chomsky books you were assigned, do you believe Chomsky:
a. Hates America
b. Is a Pol Pot apologist
c. Is a Holocaust-denier
d. All of the above XXXXXXXXXX
e. None of the above
2. Chomsky’s critics often accuse him of sloppy scholarship and being selective with his sources. Do you think this is:
a. True
b. False
c. Don’t understand the question
d. Both a and c XXXXXXXXXXX
3. Some anti-Chomsky critics feel that it’s not really necessary to have to read his work to know what his thoughts are. Do you think this is:
a. True. There is no reason to read him to know what he thinks.
b. False. In order to understand his thought you should read his works.
c. Are you thinking that if you choose answer (a) to this question it’ll probably be the wrong answer, but to admit that it’s necessary to read Chomsky before you understand his thought and choose answer b would simply be too unbearable and not worth the point?
d. You wish you’re pencil had an eraser to eat.
e. All the above except b XXXXXXXXX
4. What best describes the Faurisson Affair?
a. It was the incident in which a Chomsky statement on the freedom of speech was used by a Holocaust-denier as the forward to his book. This was then interpreted by a few dumb-asses to mean that Chomsky supported the views included in the book.
b. It was the incident where Chomsky knowingly offered his statement on free speech to a Holocaust-denier because he hates Jews too and doesn’t really think the Holocaust happened either.XXXXXXXXXXXXX
c. It was the incident where a gay French fashion designer was caught making love with J’s wife because he thought she was a man.
(J had already circled b to the last question before reading c. Upon reading answer c J jumped from his desk and headed for the teacher, who incidentally is B’s father. T picked up his big thick copy of ‘Deterring Democracy’ and slammed J upside the head with it. A few hours later J began to wake up and realized that he was in the principal’s office. He was still a little dazed, but soon realized that his hands were handcuffed behind his back. He also realized that he was nude. He could turn his head just enough to see that there was a copy of Chomsky’s ‘Keeping the Rabble in Line’ sticking out of his butt. A policeman, the principal, T, B, and Skippy were all standing around laughing and pointing. J thought he had died and gone to hell. He then closed his teary eyes, began trying to click his heels together, though it was difficult because of the book in his butt, and repeating to himself ‘There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.’
(For those anti-Chomskyites of you who thought J scored 100% on the test above because you would have answered the same, sorry, the answers are e,b,b,a)
END
Kropotkin Beard
J the anti-Chomskyite’s Haiku: A Lesson in Emptiness
One fine autumn day J the anti-Chomskyite was sitting alone in the woods burning all seven of the books he had collected over the first 43 years of his life. His new Buddhist teacher had told him that he needed to rid himself of those things he had accumulated as they were no doubt what had led to his ignorance and warped perception of reality, and the subsequent suffering which presented itself as irrational and illogical anti-Chomskyanism. J had no problem with this order as book-burning was a hobby of his anyway. So, there J sat, gazing down into the fire, watching the last little bit of ‘Radical Son’ and a few Oliver Kamm papers go up in smoke. J’s teacher also told him that he should give Haiku a try. This suggestion was quite appealing to J as there need be only 17 syllables in an entire poem, and given the fact that J usually broke out in hives when exposed to any writings longer than this. So, there sat J, pencil in hand, eraser…uhhh….never mind…pencil in hand…..and began his Haiku meditation. What follows are a few of the Haiku which were found in J’s drawers upon his second release from the Boston Mental Hospital. He had initially been admitted to BMH after having been required to clean Chomsky’s toilets for several months as a part of his occupational therapy after finding out that he had inadvertently read a Chomsky book and thought it was great. This time he had been admitted to BMH because after having tried to achieve TRUE emptiness with the help of his Buddhist teacher he had a difficult time adjusting back to his usual reality. But wasn’t this the point? Wasn’t the point that J empty himself of all of his delusions and try to see the true nature of reality more clearly? Anyway, his friend B was a little perplexed by the whole J-Buddhist therapy thing anyway as he thought J’s head was empty most of the time already and wondered if there was really anything left to empty. Here are J’s four controversial Haiku poems:
J’s Haiku: Four Seasons
a winter day spot
had a book but couldn’t read
Chomsky laughs at me
anti- Semite spring
is Chomsky this I ask you
ignorant I am
summer fever cry
holocaust denier nye
why am I dumb I
fall sitting in pond
Pol Pot apologist not
empty my head is
In all fairness to J it should be noted that many Haiku poets, scholars, and psychiatrists, have pondered over the meanings of these great poems for years now. There seem to be many ways to interpret them depending on the perspective from which ones analysis begins. Had J actually recognized his pathetic ignorance and attempted to detach himself from his desire to cling to his irrational anti-Chomskyanism? Was J being sarcastic, actually meaning the opposite of what he posited in the poems? Or, in his unconscious desire not to be released from BMH, was this simply a case of J’s Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy disorder presenting itself again? Only one person really knew, and this was his friend B. B was aware that J’s emptiness was not the emptiness of those seeking to detach themselves from the delusions of the perceived world in order to expand their awareness, and, thereby, rid themselves of their unwanted sufferings. Nor was it an emptiness which brings peace and oneness with all of humanity and the universe. It was an emptiness of the type you find when your assigned to read a Chomsky book, but you can’t, and you have to lie, and lie, and lie, and pretend that you have, all the while knowing deep down that you’re fooling no one but yourself, and you’re not even really doing a good job of that. It’s the emptiness of knowing that your lies are being witnessed by all, especially those who have actually read Chomsky’s work. It’s the emptiness of knowing that every false assertion and out of context reference can be easily exposed by any third grader. This is a different type of emptiness, an artificial emptiness, an emptiness like that found when examining ‘The Anti-Chomsky Reader’, many, many, words and not a shred of truth behind any of them. So, what was B to do? How was he to help J become a semi-well functioning person again?
First, B had to find J, and no one had seen him since his second release from BMH. There had been rumors J had been hit by a truck while chasing a rabbit across Interstate 66 with an empty bowl in his hand. Other rumors had it that J had given up his anti-Chomskyanism, gotten married, had 8 children, and began making porno films and selling contracts for Haliburton. And, yet, still other rumors had it that J had had plastic surgery and had gone back to cleaning toilets at M.I.T. Then, one day, as B was about to give up his search for J, he wandered into the local Taoist cigar club to ask the owner if he had seen J hanging around his club, possibly carrying a bowl, or a rabbit. Just then, to B’s amazement, he looked up and saw J hanging stuffed as a trophy on the wall between a donkey and a pig with a bowl on his head and a rabbit clenched in his teeth. B asked the owner where he had acquired his trophy. The owner assured B that he had not killed J himself, but had bought him at a yard sale which had been held by some Buddhist monks. When asked how they had come into possession of this stuffed J trophy the monks simply replied that one day as they were in a deep contemplative meditation their master approached J from behind as he thought J to be dozing off. The master gave J a good solid whack on the shoulder with his bamboo staff and yelled CHOMSKY as loud as he could to wake him up. They said that at exactly that moment any residue of self which may have remained in J’s being instantly evaporated, and he keeled over and died. But what was even more astonishing to the monks was what happened later when they took him to the taxidermist to be stuffed. The taxidermist said that upon making the first incision into J’s body a tremendous gush of hot air was released and the body collapsed in on itself like a hot air balloon. The taxidermist passed out and had to be admitted to BMH a few hours later. At a loss of what to do with the deflated body, the monks, in their infinite, mysterious, and ironic wisdom, decided to tear the pages from every book Chomsky had ever written, and to stuff the empty shell of J with these pages, so that he could go through eternity filled with that knowledge which he had refused to, or perhaps was unable to, because of his ignorance, accept during his short and miserable anti-Chomskyan life.
THE END
You need a new hobby.
Posted by: John at December 1, 2004 11:20 AMWhy? Ridiculing anti-Chomskyites is pretty fun, though it does border on handicap jokes. I suggest that you read some of Chomsky's material, give us all a good, in depth, critique, and make an argument. If nothing else, I'm sure you'll give me more material for more satires. I can use your name if you wish, or I can just make one up for you. You choose. Oh, if you are an anti-Chomskyite knucklehead here's (below) a little Christmas present for you.KB
Anti-Chomskyites in Group Therapy: 12 Steps
A Force for Good in the World
B: Okay, who would like to go first?
J: I’ll go first.
J2: He always goes first!
J: No, I don’t!
J2: Yes, you do!
J: You’re projecting! You like Chomsky! You’re a Holocaust denier!
J2: You’re in denial! You read a page from one of his books!
J: No, I didn’t!
J2: Yes, you did!
(J and J2 begin fighting on the floor in the middle of the group circle)
B: Boys! Boys! Get back to your seats this minute!
(J and J2 reluctantly return to their seats angry and crying)
B: Would the two of you like to apologize to one another?
J: He can go first.
J2: No! I always apologize first!
J: No, you don’t! You’re an anti-Semite!
J2: Yes, I do! You’re a Pol Pot apologist and wear Sandinista underwear!
(They begin fighting again)
B: Boys! Boys! This violent, irrational, and typical anti-Chomskyite behavior will not be tolerated in this group. Go back to your seats immediately! If there’s another outbreak you’ll both have to recite the 12 Steps to each other 200 times!
(J and J2 run back to their seats as quickly as possible in fear of the possible consequences. Reciting the 12 Steps was worse than their daily 3 hour secession of shock therapy. The 12 Steps are as follows.)
Step 1: I admit that I am powerless over my irrational anti-Chomskyanism and that my life is unmanageable.
Step 2: I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, but was wrong.
Step 3: I’ve made a decision to turn my ignorance, irrationality, and illogicality, over to the care of Chomsky as I understand he recognizes my shortcomings and feels a little sympathy for my pathetic existence.
Step 4: I’ve made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, but came up empty-handed.
Step 5: I’ve admitted to Chomskyans, to myself, and to other anti-Chomskyites the exact nature of my ignorance, though I still don’t understand what it is.
Step 6: I’m entirely ready to have Chomsky add new and accurate information to my pathetically shallow and disinformed mind, hoping that this, in turn, may help my immoral character to be cleansed of any anti-Chomskyan ignorance as well as cured form the ignorance I’ve blindly accepted from Horowitz over the years!
Step 7: I’ve humbly asked Chomsky to educate my dumb ass and to help take away some of the shortcomings I’ve incurred from Horowitz, if this is possible.
Step 8: I’ve made a list of the persons I’ve harmed due to my ignorant and irrational anti-Chomskyanism, and should make amends, but haven’t because I’m too ignorant to know what I’ve done wrong.
Step 9: I would only make direct amends to all intelligent people who know Chomsky’s work and when doing so would harm other anti-Chomskyites.
Step 10: I will continued to take a personal inventory, as pathetic as it is, and when I’m wrong, which is most all of the time, admit it, and say Chomsky was right.
Step 11: I will attempt, through pain and medication, to improve my conscious contact with Chomsky, as I think I understand him, even though I don’t, praying only for any knowledge at all of his understanding of all the lies regarding Horowitz’s, or any other so-called anti-Chomskyite’s work. And perhaps I can use his will and develop the power to shut up when discussing his thought when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
Step 12: Having had my spiritual narcolepsy slightly awakened as a result of these steps, I will try to carry the message of Chomsky’s intelligence and moral character to those who still suffer from anti-Chomskyanism. I will also attempt to cease from further public exhibition of my irrational ignorance and stupidity.
B: Okay, why don’t we let J3 go first today. J3, would you care to begin?
J3: (Wiping the tears from his eyes and blowing his nose) I was really bad this week.
B: Would you care to share with the group what happened?
J3: Well, it all started when I was following this girl who looked like Ann Coulter from the back. She went around a corner and as I came around just behind her I ran into her knocking her books from her arms. She turned around exposing a T-shirt which read ‘Bay Buchanan is an ignorant Bitch’. I pretended not to be insulted. I then leaned down to help her pick up her books. As I did I noticed one of the books lying open and just out of curiosity I read a few passages. They said things like “Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.” And “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” And “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” I mean, the words were in English, but I didn’t understand what they meant. I then looked at the cover of the book, and to my horror, it said ‘Chomsky’ in big letters. (Bursts into tears again and is hardly able to speak)
(The other members of the group all gasped in horror)
J4: What did you do?
J3: I threw up on my new ‘Horowitz can too read’ T-shirt.
(The group gasps, again)
J: Did you get her number?
J2: Shut up you dumbass! This is serious!
J4: Did she say anything?
J3: She smirked and said, “Anti-Chomskyite, huh?” And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, her and her friends all pointed their Chomsky books at me, as if, as if their books were crosses and I was Dracula. After that, all I remember was feeling light-headed, looking up at the lights, and spinning as I began to fall
J2: What happened next?
J3: I woke up a couple of hours later. As I opened my eyes I noticed that my head was resting on a huge pile of shredded paper and the cover of my ‘Anti-Chomsky Reader’ was stuck to my shirt.
(Everyone gasps, again)
J: I thought I smelled something.
J2: I’m gonna’ kick your insensitive ass if you say another word.
B: Now, now, boys. What did I tell you? (pause) Now, J3, how does it make you feel to share your experience with the group?
J3: I feel a little relieved. But I also feel a little angry and embarrassed. I feel like I’ve let down the group.
J2: You shouldn’t feel that you’ve let us down. I remember the first time I......
J: (Interrupting J2) Oh God! Not this story again! You tell this damn story every week.
(J and J2 begin fighting on the floor again)
B: J and J2! What did I tell you! Now go to the corner and read the 12 Steps to each other 200 times and hug each other after each Step.
J4: J3, do you have anything else you’d like to share about your experience?
J3: (Still crying) Not right now. It’s still a little too painful.
J: (Yelling from the corner) You sensitive Chomskyan wuss! You sound like all those whiny commies who like Chomsky!
(J2 gets J in a headlock and they begin to fight again. J3 bursts out into tears again and says it’s his fault that this is happening. J2 screams at J3 not to listen to J. J bites J2 on the arm and they fall to the floor in the corner. B then approaches J and J2 holding a stun gun in each hand and zaps each of them for about 3 minutes. They begin convulsing on the floor. J4 takes out his camera and begins taking pictures of J, J2, J3, and B, and discloses that he’s a reporter for ‘FrontPageMagazine’. He said that exposing the anti-Chomskyites irrational behavior to the world would do wonders for his magazine as all its readers would be able to relate quite well to all of the Js’ behavior. (B raises one eyebrow) B then approaches J3 with his stun gun and tells him to shut the hell up and zaps him for 3 minutes. J4 then sees B coming at him and manages to get one more picture taken before receiving his zap. B, then picks up the camera and takes pictures of the four convulsing anti-Chomskyites. As they begin to regain consciousness B assists each of them back to their seats so they can resume therapy.)
J: What happened? I feel great!
J2: Yeah, me too.
(J and J2 hug each other)
J3: I don’t remember anything, but I’m so happy I could cry. (Begins crying again)
J4: I feel great, too! I should capture this moment on film.
(J4 reaches into his bag, but can’t find his camera. Just then J realizes that B is nowhere to be seen.)
J: Where’s B?
J2: I was going to ask that.
J: You were not! (Slaps J2 on the back of the head)
J2: Was, too! (Slaps J’s head)
(J and J2 begin fighting again)
J3: B’s not like Chomsky at all. He’s a true patriot. He’s like America. He’s a force for good in the world. He’ll be back.
J4: (Talking to himself) I’m sure I put my camera right here.
(Meanwhile B had taken J4’s film to get it developed. He took out the photos of himself actually zapping the four Js for his personal collection, or to make autographed copies to sell on Ebay some day in the future when he was popular, and it was recognized by all that Chomsky was, indeed, right. He then had hundreds of thousands of copies made of the photos of the four anti-Chomskyite Js convulsing on the floor. He had also taken out excerpts from the session he had secretly recorded and used them as captions for the photos. It didn’t really matter much which excerpts he used as they were all equally irrational, illogical, and, well, basically ignorant. The photos went all over the world and soon the irrational behavior of the anti-Chomskyites was recognized by most all peoples. From Missouri to Japan, from France to Irian Jaya, all sane peoples of the world were laughing at the ignorance of the anti-Chomskyites. Anti-Chomskyite jokes became a big hit. All the late night shows were doing skits on the ignorance of the anti-Chomskyites. The photos, along with a dangerously handsome photo of B, made the cover of every magazine and newspaper on the planet. So, in the end, I guess J3 was right. B was “A force for good in the world.”
Look, Chomsky's sympathies and prevarications are not actually all that hard to establish. Nor even his belief in the positive importance of lying.
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at January 8, 2005 12:17 PMWell, That's all the proof I needed. Thanks Aaron. As clear and concise as the usual anti-Chomskyan mud. KB
Posted by: Kropotkin Beard at January 10, 2005 03:35 PMThe person who called Chomsky a commie was right. In New Mandarins, Chomsky supported Stalin's plans for Berlin. In an interview in a college paper called "The Gleaner", he spoke favorably of Lenin. Chomsky expressed sympathy for Kruschev by saying that Nikita had been "humiliated" (poor little tyke!) by Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chomsky described Mao's China as a livable society. His book Toward a New Cold War is a long defence of Brezhnev. If Chomsky can call Teddy Roosevelt a racist, then, with multiple pieces of evidence, we can rightly call Chomsky a commie.
Yes, Greg, you can call Chomsky anything you like, as this is what most anti-Chomskyans are good at. Unfortunately, they are wrong in about 99.9999% of the cases, as you are above. 1) You haven't read Chomsky, or you've only read a sentence or two which conform to your belief system. 2) You're depending on others who either haven't read him, or haven't come close to interpreting what he's written correctly. 3) You don't want to know what his thought is, you just want to attack it because his ideas sound strange to you. But this is understandable given your indoctrination. Can you please tell me which books of his you've read?KB
Posted by: Kropotkin Beard at January 25, 2005 08:59 AMExcellent role plays, especially the first one - so true it is spooky.
Posted by: Andy at February 1, 2005 11:25 PMLikewise, I tend to depend upon debunkers of the Paranormal, instead of rigorously duplicating all of their work for myself. Never the less, do us all a favor, especially yourself, by confronting the proverbial elephant in the room. Because Chomsky's chronic lying, unrepentant Stalinism, Khmer Rouge apologism and Holocaust denial all remain abundantly public record, and with all of the scholarly scrutiny one could ever demand:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Politics/chomsky.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Criticism_of_Chomsky
What is more interesting, though actually the more alarming, is Chomsky's real agenda as tool of inaction, as best illuminated by other Communist/Social ists:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2000-September/014124.html
http://www.wsws.org/public_html/prioriss/iwb9-25/chomsky.htm
Here's a present for Brad and Aaron:
J the anti-Chomskyite’s Haiku: A Lesson in Emptiness
One fine autumn day J the anti-Chomskyite was sitting alone in the woods burning all seven of the books he had collected over the first 43 years of his life. His new Buddhist teacher had told him that he needed to rid himself of those things he had accumulated as they were no doubt what had led to his ignorance and warped perception of reality, and the subsequent suffering which presented itself as irrational and illogical anti-Chomskyanism. J had no problem with this order as book-burning was a hobby of his anyway. So, there J sat, gazing down into the fire, watching the last little bit of ‘Radical Son’ and a few Oliver Kamm papers go up in smoke. J’s teacher also told him that he should give Haiku a try. This suggestion was quite appealing to J as there need be only 17 syllables in an entire poem, and given the fact that J usually broke out in hives when exposed to any writings longer than this. So, there sat J, pencil in hand, eraser…uhhh….never mind…pencil in hand…..and began his Haiku meditation. What follows are a few of the Haiku which were found in J’s drawers upon his second release from the Boston Mental Hospital. He had initially been admitted to BMH after having been required to clean Chomsky’s toilets for several months as a part of his occupational therapy after finding out that he had inadvertently read a Chomsky book and thought it was great. This time he had been admitted to BMH because after having tried to achieve TRUE emptiness with the help of his Buddhist teacher he had a difficult time adjusting back to his usual reality. But wasn’t this the point? Wasn’t the point that J empty himself of all of his delusions and try to see the true nature of reality more clearly? Anyway, his friend B was a little perplexed by the whole J-Buddhist therapy thing anyway as he thought J’s head was empty most of the time already and wondered if there was really anything left to empty. Here are J’s four controversial Haiku poems:
J’s Haiku: Four Seasons
a winter day spot
had a book but couldn’t read
Chomsky laughs at me
anti- Semite spring
is Chomsky this I ask you
ignorant I am
summer fever cry
holocaust denier nye
why am I dumb I
fall sitting in pond
Pol Pot apologist not
empty my head is
In all fairness to J it should be noted that many Haiku poets, scholars, and psychiatrists, have pondered over the meanings of these great poems for years now. There seem to be many ways to interpret them depending on the perspective from which ones analysis begins. Had J actually recognized his pathetic ignorance and attempted to detach himself from his desire to cling to his irrational anti-Chomskyanism? Was J being sarcastic, actually meaning the opposite of what he posited in the poems? Or, in his unconscious desire not to be released from BMH, was this simply a case of J’s Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy disorder presenting itself again? Only one person really knew, and this was his friend B. B was aware that J’s emptiness was not the emptiness of those seeking to detach themselves from the delusions of the perceived world in order to expand their awareness, and, thereby, rid themselves of their unwanted sufferings. Nor was it an emptiness which brings peace and oneness with all of humanity and the universe. It was an emptiness of the type you find when your assigned to read a Chomsky book, but you can’t, and you have to lie, and lie, and lie, and pretend that you have, all the while knowing deep down that you’re fooling no one but yourself, and you’re not even really doing a good job of that. It’s the emptiness of knowing that your lies are being witnessed by all, especially those who have actually read Chomsky’s work. It’s the emptiness of knowing that every false assertion and out of context reference can be easily exposed by any third grader. This is a different type of emptiness, an artificial emptiness, an emptiness like that found when examining ‘The Anti-Chomsky Reader’, many, many, words and not a shred of truth behind any of them. So, what was B to do? How was he to help J become a semi-well functioning person again?
First, B had to find J, and no one had seen him since his second release from BMH. There had been rumors J had been hit by a truck while chasing a rabbit across Interstate 66 with an empty bowl in his hand. Other rumors had it that J had given up his anti-Chomskyanism, gotten married, had 8 children, and began making porno films and selling contracts for Haliburton. And, yet, still other rumors had it that J had had plastic surgery and had gone back to cleaning toilets at M.I.T. Then, one day, as B was about to give up his search for J, he wandered into the local Taoist cigar club to ask the owner if he had seen J hanging around his club, possibly carrying a bowl, or a rabbit. Just then, to B’s amazement, he looked up and saw J hanging stuffed as a trophy on the wall between a donkey and a pig with a bowl on his head and a rabbit clenched in his teeth. B asked the owner where he had acquired his trophy. The owner assured B that he had not killed J himself, but had bought him at a yard sale which had been held by some Buddhist monks. When asked how they had come into possession of this stuffed J trophy the monks simply replied that one day as they were in a deep contemplative meditation their master approached J from behind as he thought J to be dozing off. The master gave J a good solid whack on the shoulder with his bamboo staff and yelled CHOMSKY as loud as he could to wake him up. They said that at exactly that moment any residue of self which may have remained in J’s being instantly evaporated, and he keeled over and died. But what was even more astonishing to the monks was what happened later when they took him to the taxidermist to be stuffed. The taxidermist said that upon making the first incision into J’s body a tremendous gush of hot air was released and the body collapsed in on itself like a hot air balloon. The taxidermist passed out and had to be admitted to BMH a few hours later. At a loss of what to do with the deflated body, the monks, in their infinite, mysterious, and ironic wisdom, decided to tear the pages from every book Chomsky had ever written, and to stuff the empty shell of J with these pages, so that he could go through eternity filled with that knowledge which he had refused to, or perhaps was unable to, because of his ignorance, accept during his short and miserable anti-Chomskyan life.
THE END
Some funny guy said:
"Likewise, I tend to depend upon debunkers of the Paranormal, instead of rigorously duplicating all of their work for myself. Never the less, do us all a favor, especially yourself, by confronting the proverbial elephant in the room. Because Chomsky's chronic lying, unrepentant Stalinism, Khmer Rouge apologism and Holocaust denial all remain abundantly public record, and with all of the scholarly scrutiny one could ever demand"
Well, that's really odd. None of the site you've mentioned have anyone who even comes close to debunking Chomsky. I guess that's the type of scholarly scrutiny to be expected from an anti-Chomskyite totalitarian-minded pseudo-patriot. hey, Aaron, I think you've just made a place in one of my upcoming satires. I'll post it soon. Andy will understand it, but I'm afraid you won't because it just won't fit into anything smaller than a pea.KB "Brad DeLong" AHAHAHAH!!! "Scholar" AHAHAHA!!!!! You probably think Horowitz is a scholar, too. AHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Posted by: Kropotkin Beard at February 12, 2005 02:55 PMDeny, deny, deny, for all the good that will do you. Anyone can browse the URLs provided and learn, in scholarly detail, all about the shameful career of Noam Chomsky. What Bullworth says regarding O.J., I warn of Chomsky.
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at March 13, 2005 04:33 PMPS. Fuck Horowitz too, but at least we see him coming! He does not pretend to be our friend.
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at March 23, 2005 03:02 PMArron tried to say:
"Deny, deny, deny, for all the good that will do you."
Deny What? That anti-Chomskyites are for the most part incompetent idiots? I don't dent this.KB
"Anyone can browse the URLs provided and learn, in scholarly detail, all about the shameful career of Noam Chomsky."
What's funny about your statement here is that it is not schaolarly at all. There are all sorts of things on the internet 99.99999% of which are completely wrong and which idiots like you perpetuate thinking that you have something. You guys are so funny it's almost beyond satire. Passing straw back and forth hardly counts as scholarship. Actually, I don't know if I've ever met an anti-Chomskyite who has even read one of his books. But then again, this is what makes them an anti-Chomskyite.KB
"What Bullworth says regarding O.J., I warn of Chomsky."
You are in no position to warn. You haven't proved that you know anything about his thought. And until you do, you're just another in a LONG line of less than pseudo-intellectuals expressing your warped, mis-informed, pathetically shallow belief system. I have an idea! And it's really radical if you're an anti-C. Read one of his books and try to challenge it. There! Wow! Now that's radical.KB
"PS. Fuck Horowitz too, but at least we see him coming! He does not pretend to be our friend."
You don't "see (Chomsky) coming"? Why not? It's not that difficult. His writings are quite straight forward and easy to understand. Oh, and whether you know it or not, he IS your friend. It's just sad that in your finite wisdom you're unable to appreciate it. Horowitz doesn't deserve a comment as he's not worthy.KB
Chomsky lies ... through indirection. He quotes statements accurately, but absurdly out of context. (And then, as you point out, he tops the whole thing off with offensive hyperbole.)
Between them these assessments capture with economy and exactness the character of Chomsky’s political output. In this post I give three examples that illustrate the consistency of Chomsky’s methods over 35 years.
Example 1 comes, appropriately, from Chomsky’s first political book, American Power and the New Mandarins, published in 1969. The book purports to expose government deceit in the service of state. Chomsky cites, as evidence of the capitalist imperatives underlying the rhetorical ideals of US foreign policy, a speech given by President Truman at Baylor University in 1947. Yet of this passage, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr writes (The Cycles of American History, 1986, pp 135-6):
Noam Chomsky in American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1969) twice claimed that Truman had said: “All freedom is dependent on freedom of enterprise…. The whole world should adopt the American system…. The American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system”…. Truman said nothing of the sort, at Baylor or elsewhere. The quotation is fabricated.
How Chomsky responded to his exposure provides an insight into the methods he has stuck by ever since.
Schlesinger originally exposed the bogus quotation in a review of American Power for a journal called Book World. He summarised the point in a letter published in the December 1969 edition of Commentary magazine, in reply to an article by Chomsky in the magazine’s October issue (both the letter and the article are available, for a fee, from Commentary’s archive):
[Chomsky] seems to feel licensed to forget or distort the truth whenever it suits his polemical convenience. He begins as a preacher to the world and ends as an intellectual crook…. Of course President Truman never spoke the words thus attributed to him, and reviewers quickly caught Dr Chomsky out in his scholarly fakery. But this exposure has evidently not perturbed Dr Chomsky in the slightest. He now concedes that he lifted his “quotations” from [the highly unreliable historian] D.F. Fleming and [the contemporary observer] J.P. Warburg: but he still insists that they are “accurate and perceptive” paraphrases of the Baylor speech, that they “convey the essence of Truman’s speech”. The Baylor speech still seems to him dramatic proof of the American drive for world economic expansion.
Chomsky’s manoeuvre on that occasion is highly significant for his later voluminous political writings. Schlesinger exactly recounted the form that manoeuvre took, as Chomsky demonstrated in a letter replying to Schlesinger, published in the March 1970 edition of Commentary:
As I explained in the October issue of Commentary, in my book I erroneously attributed to Truman two statements that were, in fact, paraphrases of his Baylor speech by D.F. Fleming and James Warburg. In the book I also gave a precise page reference to the source from which I took the quotes (which, to compound the error I mistranscribed). As I stated, this was a careless and inexcusable error, which I am glad to have pointed out, and which is corrected in the second printing…. Schlesinger was quite justified in pointing out this error, though his elaborate pretense that he couldn’t find the quotes, that I had invented them, that this fakery, fabrication, etc., was perhaps somewhat exaggerated.
And then he’s away. He goes on for four pages constructing an elaborate defence of his claim that he has accurately paraphrased the Baylor speech.
What are we to make of this? Two characteristics of Chomsky’s argument stand out. First, having been caught out in a bogus quotation, he shifts to a contention that, because it is about interpretation as well as fact (namely, “two eminent commentators were accurate in their rendition of Truman’s remarks”), is less easy to refute. Secondly, though less easy to refute, his argument is still demonstrably false, as Schlesinger had already demonstrated in his letter:
[I]t is characteristic of Dr Chomsky’s unbeatable instinct for distortion that he can write in the October Commentary: “Truman argued that freedom of enterprise is one of those freedoms to be valued ‘even more than peace’.” What Truman actually said, as the reader will have observed, was that Americans valued freedom even more than peace, and he made it clear that he meant above all intellectual and religious freedom.
Schlesinger sent a further letter to Commentary in response to Chomsky’s letter in the February 1970 issue. In this second letter (published in the March 1970 issue), Schlesinger dealt with Chomsky’s claim about “pretence”:
There is no point in trying to deal with all Dr Chomsky’s misrepresentations; it would make my letter as long and boring as his. His comment, with regard to the exposure of his fake Truman quotations, about Schlesinger’s “elaborate pretense that he couldn’t find the quotes, that I had invented them,” is an easily demonstrable lie. In my review of Chomsky’s book (Book World, March 23, 1969), I traced the quotes to Fleming and Warburg, pointing out that “the first quotation does not appear on the page cited in Fleming and may well have been invented by Chomsky” – a point he has more or less conceded.
The humiliation of having his quotations debunked by a serious historian ought to have been sufficient to damage irreparably Chomsky’s pretensions to be a serious social critic. My contention is that in fact it did, and that paradoxically this has been of immense benefit to Chomsky in his role as a political polemicist. Chomsky doesn’t appear to have realised this. The Schlesinger exchange clearly rankled with him many years later. In an interview with his faithful Boswell, a radio host called David Barsamian, in 1991 (reprinted in Chomsky’s book Chronicles of Dissent, 1992, pp 350-1) Chomsky lamented:
From the first time I opened my mouth the attacks started…. In the first book that I wrote, American Power and the New Mandarins, in the first edition there’s a slight error, namely that I attributed a quote to Truman which was in fact a very close paraphrase, almost verbatim paraphrase of what he said in a secondary source. I got a note mixed up and instead of citing the secondary source I cited Truman. It was corrected within about two months, in the second printing. There isn’t a scholarly monograph that doesn’t have a similar error somewhere. There have been at least a dozen articles, if not more, using this to denounce me, to prove that you can’t believe anything that’s said by anybody on the left, etc. These are very desperate people. A commissar culture is a very desperate culture. They know they cannot withstand criticism, and therefore you’ve got to silence it.
These are deranged and pitiable claims. The spurious quotation was bogus even as a paraphrase; the correction was forced on Chomsky because Schlesinger had exposed his “scholarly fakery”, as Chomsky sees fit not to mention; the criticism was specific to Chomsky’s case (“an intellectual phoney”, as Schlesinger terms him), rather than to “anybody on the left”; and so far from being silenced, Chomsky has since that episode generated an enormous output that has rarely received sustained and serious criticism.
As I say, Chomsky benefited from this early bloodying, in two related ways. First, he learnt to avoid direct falsehood and rely instead on more circuitous means. Demonstrating that a paraphrase is false, or that relevant information has been omitted, is more laborious – because it requires the critic to supply the missing context – than debunking a spurious quotation. Of necessity, a critic must therefore spend time and effort in disinterring and dissecting Chomsky’s factual claims in order to evaluate his work. Secondly, almost no academic historians, economists or political scientists have since considered it worthwhile to do this – not because, as Chomsky claimed of a group of Berkeley professors (Chronicles of Dissent, page 347), “[t]hey know they don’t have either the competence or the knowledge to respond, so the only thing to do is to somehow shut it up”, but because Chomsky’s political writings were early on shown to fall outside the canons of scholarly research.
Example 2 is also from Chomsky’s early role as a polemicist on the subject of Indochina. The New York Review of Books, 26 February 1970, published a letter from Samuel Huntington. It begins:
In the space of three brief paragraphs in your January 1 issue, Noam Chomsky manages to mutilate the truth in a variety of ways with respect to my views and activities on Vietnam. Mr. Chomsky writes as follows:
"Writing in Foreign Affairs, he [Huntington] explains that the Viet Cong is 'a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist.' The conclusion is obvious, and he does not shrink from it. We can ensure that the constituency ceases to exist by 'direct application of mechanical and conventional power…on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city….'"
It would be difficult to conceive of a more blatantly dishonest instance of picking words out of context so as to give them a meaning directly opposite to that which the author stated. For the benefit of your readers, here is the "obvious conclusion" which I drew from my statement about the Viet Cong:
"…the Viet Cong will remain a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist. Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation."
By omitting my next sentence—"Peace in the immediate future must hence be based on accommodation"—and linking my statement about the Viet Cong to two other phrases which appear earlier in the article, Mr. Chomsky completely reversed my argument.
Huntington doesn’t exaggerate: it genuinely is difficult to think of a more blatantly dishonest case of quoting something out of context. It is not possible to do inadvertently what Chomsky has done here. I would encourage readers to follow the link I have given and make their way through Chomsky’s long and convoluted reply to Huntington’s letter, for it has a striking characteristic: it doesn’t even mention the complaint from Huntington that I have just quoted, that Chomsky has taken words out of context and fitted them to other words to yield a meaning opposite to their author's clearly-stated view.
I cite Examples 1 and 2 because they go some way to explaining the poor reputation that Chomsky acquired with his writings on the Vietnam war. It wasn’t – as he and his admirers like to claim – that Chomsky was marginalised by a monolithic establishment; rather, he was marginalised by his own methods. There were good reasons that his political exhortations were conducted in student ‘teach-ins’ – events where, by definition, the answers were already known and all that was required was that they be communicated to a willing audience. Example 3 has a more enduring quality. It concerns an American statesman, politician and academic for whom I have much respect, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But first – for reasons I have explained – I need to put it in context.
In his recent flawed but invigorating attack on modern quackery, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, 2003 (p. 301), Francis Wheen writes of Chomsky:
The professor has an inexhaustible hoard of analogies and precedents that allow him to avoid the immediate issue. Asked in the 1990s why he opposed efforts by the international community to stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, he would reply that genocide in the Balkans was no worse than genocide in East Timor – and then segue into his well-rehearsed speech about Western support for Indonesia, nimbly sidestepping any discussion of Slobodan Milosevic’s thuggery.
Wheen’s example is well-chosen. Chomsky’s mythology trivialises simultaneously East Timor’s brave resistance to Indonesian aggression and the horrors that Chomsky compares it to (Bosnia and Kosovo, and before them Cambodia under Pol Pot).
Now, there is an immediate response that could be made to Chomsky’s “inexhaustible hoard of analogies and precedents”, which is to use the technique back at him. I don’t want to make too much of this, because I think it’s a debased form of argument; but I do want to demonstrate that Chomsky’s technique can be applied more widely than he allows. In a long and merciless review-article (“Chomsky on US Foreign Policy”, Harvard International Review, Dec-Jan 1981, pp 3-31), Stephen Morris did so:
[E]ven if one were to play the game by Chomsky's rules, and judge the human rights record of a regime by referring to its behaviour in foreign wars, then Indonesia's cruelty towards the East Timorese has at least one serious competitor: the Vietnamese invaders of Cambodia. The Vietnamese Communist regime, which had launched a military invasion of its neighbor under the pretext of saving the Cambodian people from Pol Pot, had prevented food and medicines from being delivered to the starving population via a truck convoy from Thailand. According to the Central Intelligence Agency study Kampuchea: A Demographic Catastrophe (recommended to me by Professor Chomsky), the Vietnamese invasion and food embargo caused 700,000 deaths in Cambodia in 1979. This is seven times as many people as had died (in Chomsky's estimate) in East Timor.
Thus it would seem that the Soviet-armed and Soviet-supported Vietnamese had, in one stroke, destroyed the single shred of argument Chomsky had been presenting for the view that the United States is "responsible" for most of the human rights violations in the world. Yet not even that monumental act of inhumanity by Chomsky's and [Chomsky’s collaborator Ed] Herman's comrades in Hanoi was necessary to disprove their thesis. It is an easily calculated fact that either the Maoist regime alone (whose executed and imprisoned victims number in the millions) or the Pol Pot regime alone (whose murder victims are estimated at nearly two million) has killed more than the combined total of all civilians killed by American-armed and aided regimes in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and the Indonesian invaders of East Timor. Even the Idi Amin regime, which according to Amnesty International probably murdered up to 300,000 Ugandans, far outstrips the domestic death toll of all America's third world "clients" combined. Amin at "peace" has probably killed many times more than Indonesia at war. He was not armed and aided by the United States, but by the Soviet Union and Libya. These facts are known to any minimally literate student of international affairs, but they are ignored by Chomsky and Herman.
They are indeed, for Chomsky’s concern is not, and was not then, East Timor; it is the United States, which – as I indicated in my earlier post – Chomsky is concerned to depict as even worse than Nazi Germany. To that end, he has for many years presented a “killer fact” – which is my example no. 3, as I shall now explain.
I have read the argument in question in countless of Chomsky’s books and articles, and I am aware (though I have never heard him speak) that he cites it in interviews and speeches too. Of very many instances of it, this comes from Chomsky’s book A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (2000, pp 79-80):
The guiding principles were well understood from the outset by those responsible for guaranteeing the success of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion [of East Timor]. They were articulated lucidly by [the United States’] UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in words that should be committed to memory by anyone with a serious interest in international affairs, human rights, and the rule of law. The Security Council condemned the invasion and ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. In his 1978 memoirs, Moynihan explains why:
"The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
Success was indeed considerable. Moynihan cites reports that within two months some 60,000 people had been killed, “10 per cent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.” A sign of the success, he adds, is that within a year “the subject disappeared from the press.”
It’s a fair bet that few of Chomsky’s readers who are impressed with the moral clarity of the master’s denunciation will have read the memoirs of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (A Dangerous Place, 1978). Take, for example, Neil Smith, Professor of Linguistics at University College London, the second edition of whose book Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals has just been published. Smith's book contains a useful bibliography of Chomsky’s writings, and I assume – for I’m not competent to judge – that the four chapters that discuss Chomsky’s work in linguistics are a reliable account. The chapter on Chomsky’s political writings is, on the other hand, stupid and disgusting. (On page 208, Smith describes the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson - a charlatan who purports to reveal “the real meaning” of texts - as “a professor of history [wrong – he once was a lecturer in twentieth-century French literature] whose research led him to question the existence of gas chambers in Nazi Germany and to doubt the Holocaust”.) Unsurprisingly for a man who’ll believe anything, Smith (p. 194) merely appends to his quotation of Chomsky’s quotation of Moynihan the judgement, “Comment is superfluous.”
Comment is in fact required. Washington’s stance on Indonesian aggression in the 1970s was shameless, but Chomsky’s account of it is shameless misrepresentation using exactly the technique – quoting out of context, and fitting unrelated passages together – that he used against Samuel Huntington in 1970. In context, the quotation from Moynihan ought to read (it appears on page 247– in all the citations he gives of this book, Chomsky never, ever gives page numbers, for a reason that will shortly become obvious):
[S]uch was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin [a Marxist group that had seized power] in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.
Moynihan is describing a period in the Cold War when the Soviet Union was making advances in the Third World both directly and by proxy, and US policy aimed single-mindedly at thwarting those ambitions. The policy was right in principle; the means to effect it often weren’t, morally and strategically. (One of the reasons I, as a left-winger, favour President Bush’s re-election is that he has overturned the tradition of being prepared to ally with autocratic regimes in the interests of western security, maintaining instead that autocracies foment the totalitarian forces that wish us harm.) But Chomsky’s claim that those means included wishing Indonesia to launch a bloody invasion of East Timor bears no resemblance to what Moynihan wrote. In context, the phrase “the United States wished things to turn out as they did” clearly refers to the failure of Soviet and Chinese clients in, respectively, Spanish Sahara and Timor. Chomsky has taken it out of context in order to insinuate, utterly falsely, that Moynihan is boasting about the successful accomplishment of mass murder by proxy.
In fact, I don’t know why I use the word “insinuate”. Chomsky states his thesis openly. It’s not entirely explicit in the version of his argument that I’ve quoted, so consider instead the version Chomsky gives in Chronicles of Dissent, pp 252-3:
Referring to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, [Moynihan] says that the United States wanted things to turn out as they did and that he had the assignment of making sure that the United Nations could not act in any constructive way to terminate or reverse the Indonesian aggression. He carried out that task with remarkable success. He then in the next sentence goes on to say that he’s aware of the nature of that success. He says that two months later, reports surfaced that the Indonesian invasion had killed off about 10 per cent of the population in East Timor over a period of two months. A proportion of the population which, he then goes on to say, is about the same as the proportion of people in Eastern Europe killed by Hitler. So he’s taking pride in having stopped the United Nations from interfering with an aggression that he himself compares with Hitler’s invasion of Eastern Europe, and he then drops it at that.
Well, I have Moynihan’s book open in front of me. The sentence after the words “carried it forward with no inconsiderable success” reads in full:
It is difficult to say precisely when Luanda fell.
Luanda is not in East Timor: it is the capital of Angola. Moynihan has left the subject of East Timor and has embarked on a new section of the book. The reference to the killing of 10 per cent of the population of East Timor does appear in the book, but not in the context that Chomsky asserts. Chomsky’s claim that Moynihan “in the next sentence goes on to say that he’s aware of the nature of that success” is outright fabrication: no such remark appears anywhere in the book. Nor does Moynihan say that a “sign of success” was that the subject disappeared from the press. He merely reports that fact, along with the estimate of the deputy chairman of the provisional government that 60,000 people had been killed since the outbreak of the civil war. This is on pages 245-6. Incidentally, Moynihan was misquoting the estimate; according to Robert Conquest in the Daily Telegraph, 8 March 1980 (cited in Leopold Labedz, The Uses and Abuses of Sovietology, 1989, p. 119) the figure given by the administrator was that 60,000 people had lost their lives or homes, and that this included 40,000 who had fled from the Communists.
Chomsky misrepresents Moynihan by omission and fabrication; he also doesn’t appear to have read the book he claims to be quoting from. Moynihan himself was appalled by the US stance on the annexation of East Timor and the partition of Western Sahara, but represented the views of the administration. My description of the US position as “shameless” is in fact his description. As he put it in his book Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics, 1993, p. 153:
It happens I was United States representative at the UN when these events occurred. I defended a shameless American policy – Morocco and Indonesia were cold-war allies - with sufficient shamelessness.
He points to the context in which the major powers considered such issues, which were “too often assessed in terms of cold-war advantage/disadvantage”. What is relevant to this discussion of Chomsky is that this was not merely a view that Moynihan came to once the Cold War had ended. In the same book Chomsky so egregiously mis-quotes, Moynihan bemoans the degeneration of the UN because, so he claims, it has become complicit in the annexation of Timor (pp. 244-5):
A theme of our speeches throughout November [1975] had been that to corrupt the language of human rights – the language, that is, of Leo Strauss’s “Modern Project,” the language of “a society consisting of equal nations, each consisting of free and equal men and women” – would soon enough imperil the language of national rights also, and soon enough it did. In December, two fledgling nations were conquered or partitioned by their neighbours, while a third [Angola] was invaded by Communist forces from half a world away. It would be gratifying to report that there were those who made some connection between what we said would happen and what now did happen, but there were none. This perhaps only confirmed our charge that the Charter was being drained of meaning.
There are some who believe that Chomsky has taken a wrong turning since the destruction of the Twin Towers, and that his work before that date includes some valuable social criticism. There are others who date his degeneration from his apologetics for the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. On the contrary, his political output for nearly four decades has been remarkably consistent: base, dishonest and incompetent
It's not that I would ever seek to spare any criticism of American Imperialism or Israeli civil injustice or much anything else. Although, indeed, many agendas can inspire anti-Chomsky sentiment, because Chomsky is such a perfect straw man, never the less, no ulterior agenda is required for revulsion with Chomsky. One only need yearn for all that Chomsky pretends to champion, but actually sabotages, undermines and misdirects at every turn. One need only admit the possible value of progress whatsoever, except as sinister diversionary ploy in forestalling the revolution. One only need value democracy at all, to reject the depraved indifference and brutal paternalism romanticized by Saint Noam the Liar. Chomsky never met a brutal Communist tyrant he didn't like. Chomsky is peace loving in the way that the enemy always is, according to Clausewitz, that is to say, because they generally prefer to advance unopposed. Chomsky is the fanatical tool and running dog of Totalitarianism.
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at May 13, 2005 09:29 AMHairy Beard said a lot. All of it nonsense, secondhand, lies which he's lifted from Oliver Kamm's site so that he wouldn't have to read for himself. What's new in the fairytale world of the anti-Chomsyites? Nothing worth commenting on. Actually, I already have, but "Harry" keeps running and hiding just as all good anti-Chomskyites do who can't make an argument because they haven't studied the subject.KB
And Aaron said:
"It's not that I would ever seek to spare any criticism of American Imperialism or Israeli civil injustice or much anything else."
Nice intro. sentence. It almost gives the reader that you, too, are a critic of U.S. policy, but have a more refined understanding. NOT! All anti-Chomskyites use this tactic. And then when asked about those crimes which the U.S. commits they fumble around and can't give any. Or, they give them followed by the usual apologetics.KB
"Although, indeed, many agendas can inspire anti-Chomsky sentiment,"
This means nothing and is empty of content. What are you talking about specifically?KB
"because Chomsky is such a perfect straw man, never the less, no ulterior agenda is required for revulsion with Chomsky."
Nothing but opinion. No information.KB
"One only need yearn for all that Chomsky pretends to champion, but actually sabotages, undermines and misdirects at every turn."
Nothing but opinion. No evidence.KB
"One need only admit the possible value of progress whatsoever, except as sinister diversionary ploy in forestalling the revolution."
Nothing but opinion. No evidence.KB
"One only need value democracy at all, to reject the depraved indifference and brutal paternalism romanticized by Saint Noam the Liar."
Nothing but lameass opinion. No evidence.KB
"Chomsky never met a brutal Communist tyrant he didn't like."
Opinion. No evidence.KB
"Chomsky is peace loving in the way that the enemy always is, according to Clausewitz, that is to say, because they generally prefer to advance unopposed."
Oh, yes, Clausewitz is the man. "On War"? Anyway, nothing but opinion again. Were you ever going to make an argument, or just scream from the bleachers like a whiny conservative wimp?KB
"Chomsky is the fanatical tool and running dog of Totalitarianism."
Wow! You're tough. Nothing but opinion. No evidence.KB
So, what do we have here? We have Aaron, in typical anti-Chomskyan fashion, offering NO information, NO evidence, the usual lies, NOTHING to learn from, and, well, basically just a bunch of little black scribbles on a page with no meaning. And if anyone thinks they see more than this, they too need help. There are names for folks like Aaron, and charletan is the first one that comes to mind. Come back when you have some information which hasn't been lifted from others like yourself you have lifted it from others like yourself.............KB
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Posted by: blackjack at June 7, 2005 11:51 PMAs to the caution of Clausewitz, as applied to Chomsky, remember the Paris Peace talks? As for evidence supporting the rest, have you been following this thread? I am but offering a summation, As for Chomsky trotted out and thrashed as a straw man, sorry, no citations handy. But I have certainly seen it. Is that actually hard to believe? Now, when I offer statement my own position, which you then call a tactic, do you actually disbelieve me? Where are your citations that I am other than as I represent myself, politically? Can no one disagree with Chomsky without being absolutely rabid villains? If I said I like eating pizza, would you demand a witness? Argue with me if you can, but just as you say I lack evidence, I say you lack argument! And that the little what I've said is reasonable and rational, and supported by the simplest logic. What I say is meaningful, linguistically. But most your tactic has been you pretend that what I said is not linguistically meaningful because it's not footnoted. That it does not mean what it says, or that you lack the wit to see. And that isn't clever, indeed, it amounts to playing stupid. I've put a together few words, simply enough, after all of the annotation of Chomsky's lies continue to pile up. But, when all is said and done, you couldn't smell the stink of your own shit, unless the odor was footnoted and annotated. But not even then. Because, just as on this very page, when you get the evidence you demand, it's sheer volume and the convolutions detailed become unmanageable and you use the sheer confusion you make diversionary tactics long enough to pretend to forget and then demand the evidence all over again! What a colossal waste of time and devotion that might actually ever go to real investigation and analysis. The Paranormalists are not half so devious and dishonest as Chomskyites! You are liars worshipping a liar! And the higher cause served is the worst of lies. I've had to give up on activism, having scarcely started! I despise your crypto fascist Chomsky fifth column worse than the cult of Lyndon Larouche, for the sheer pervasiveness of Chomsky's shadow, and the obstruction not merely of all moderation but worse, of all ingenuity, and for all the endless Chinese fire drills preventing real grass roots political action. Which I submit is actually by design, a) to glorify Chomsky without the distraction of empowering anyone else and b) to undermine any accomplishment of popular uprising, large or small, and preserve Chomsky's sycophantic misanthropic Paternalist ulterior agenda. Honestly, I just can't understand the sheer evil. I wonder if anyone has attempted to psychoanalyze Chomsky's hypocritical utter depraved sociopathy. I beg you, liberate yourself from Chomsky.
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at July 4, 2005 12:38 PMAaron said:
"As to the caution of Clausewitz, as applied to Chomsky, remember the Paris Peace talks?"
Yeah, so?KB
"As for evidence supporting the rest, have you been following this thread?"
Yeah, so?KB
"I am but offering a summation"
That's all anti-Chomskyites ever offer.KB
"As for Chomsky trotted out and thrashed as a straw man, sorry, no citations handy."
Nor would there be. One would have actually have had to read him and know his positions in order to identify when the straw was being harvested. If one does know his positions it takes all of 10 seconds to identify.KB
"But I have certainly seen it. Is that actually hard to believe?"
Not really. It's not hard to believe that folks who are thorougly indoctrinated would hear information which doesn't fit into their belief system and go into convulsions. It's quite predictable.KB
"Now, when I offer statement my own position, which you then call a tactic, do you actually disbelieve me?"
It depaends on what you're saying. If you say that your name is Aaron, I may believe you. If you say something absurd about Chomsky which anyone who had read even a paragraph of one of his books could easily identify as nonsense, then I can assume that you're using a tactic called lying. It's quite common among the fanatical right. But what's really interesting is that they don't even realize they're doing it.KB
"Where are your citations that I am other than as I represent myself, politically?"
Where have you represented yourself? Where have I miss stated your position?KB
"Can no one disagree with Chomsky without being absolutely rabid villains?"
Sure they can. However, they have to know what they're talking about BEFORE they try to do it. You simply don't. Neither do most anti-Chomskyites. I could care less if you disagreed with every position Chomsky has made since birth, but you must know what they are first. It's quite a simple concept. For instance, if you say that he's a Pol Pot apologist, then you simply do not have the correct information. He's not now, nor has ever been anything close. If anything he points out how the U.S. government was the big Khmer Rouge supporter. So, basically, if you even think about making any "argument" which even infers this absurd notion, it simply means that you don't know what you're talking about. May as well talk about UFOs.KB
"If I said I like eating pizza, would you demand a witness?"
Not at all. But if you said that Chomsky disliked pizza, based on nothing but secondhand gossip, you had no proof, you had never asked him, etc....then things may be different.KB
"Argue with me if you can, but just as you say I lack evidence, I say you lack argument!"
You can say whatever you want, but it doesn't mean anything if there's no substance. Just to argue about a topic of which you're not even aware of the position of the subject of the argument is ridiculous. If I knew all there was to know about Einstein, and you were only aware that he was some famous guy, would you try to argue about his positions on everything? An intelligent person wouldn't. They'd keep their mouths shut until they had studied the subject thorougly, knew every position Chomsky held inside and out, and THEN made their argument. I mean, you can take some statement out of context and scream about what you think it means when it rubs you the wrong way, but you should at least be honest enough to say "Well, I really don't know his position because I've never read one of his books, but I find this statement questionable because...." What you don't do is to take a statement, run with it, project all of your indoctrinated mis-perceptions into it, and think you therefore know the subject. You don't.KB
"And that the little what I've said is reasonable and rational, and supported by the simplest logic."
No, it isn't. But if you believe that you have made some sort of "logical" point I'm willing to wait for you to point it out again.KB
"What I say is meaningful, linguistically."
And I'm sure you believe it is.KB
"But most your tactic has been you pretend that what I said is not linguistically meaningful because it's not footnoted."
Listen, I don't expect fiction to be footnoted. But if you're planning on trying to challenge someones views and positions you should at least be honest enough to show how you came to your conclusions. Simply reading the Runes will hardly surfice.KB
"That it does not mean what it says, or that you lack the wit to see."
Yes, you're too witty for me. That's it. Snore...KB
"And that isn't clever, indeed, it amounts to playing stupid."
I don't think you're "playing stupid". I think you're sincere in your stupidity.KB
"I've put a together few words, simply enough, after all of the annotation of Chomsky's lies continue to pile up."
Once again, a charge with nothing to back it up. Now I could easily show the pile of Aaron lies piling up. Actually, I already have.KB
"But, when all is said and done, you couldn't smell the stink of your own shit, unless the odor was footnoted and annotated."
Meaninless evasion. If you can't back up what you say, shut the hell up and quit preaching nonsense. Perhaps you can get a job on any number of the corporate-controlled network stations, as they're always looking for a few 'experts in legitimation'.KB
"But not even then."
It would be a start.KB
"Because, just as on this very page, when you get the evidence you demand, it's sheer volume and the convolutions detailed become unmanageable and you use the sheer confusion you make diversionary tactics long enough to pretend to forget and then demand the evidence all over again!"
That's because there is nothing there. All of the compiled nonsense above is nothing more than a collection of the straw which others have been producing over the years. As a matter of fact, most of the things presented above by "Harry Beard" weren't even up to date strawmen. Nothin in the passage above proved anything. Perhaps it impressed you because of it's length, but I can copy and paste hundreds of pages from people who also say they've sen Big Foot. Would this make my argument about Big Foots non-existence any less valid?KB
"What a colossal waste of time and devotion that might actually ever go to real investigation and analysis."
Not at all. And if there was anything resembling "real investigation and analysis" it hasn't been presented here at all. If there was anything resembling invstigation and analysis the write wouldn't have dedicated himself to many paragraphs of straw with ZERO backing. He would have first been aware of Chomsky's positions and then challenged them. Step one was never even taken. Therefore, everything which follows is nothing more than hot air. It's really not that complicated of a concept, at least for folks who have at least passed kindergarten.KB
"The Paranormalists are not half so devious and dishonest as Chomskyites!"
Well, I guess this is all the evidence and proof I needed. All I needed was YOUR own paranormal assertion. YOU, having made the charges without any backing, and a hostility toward evidence, of course, are the one who is dishonest. But don't worry, this is part of what makes you an anti-Chomskyite.KB
"You are liars worshipping a liar!"
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've surely proven it here. I don't know anyone who worships Chomsky. But that you would make that assertion based on the fact that there are a few people who actually know what his positions are, and can easily identify the real liars when they see them, says a lot about you, charletan.KB
"And the higher cause served is the worst of lies."
Yes, we all know. It's much better just to serve no higher cause and try and be as bad as possible. This is he conservative approach. I mean the new and depraved conservative approach. Not the real ones from earlier days.KB
"I've had to give up on activism, having scarcely started!"
What were you active in? Sending aid to terrorists like the contras? Helping send funds to Saddam for years? Helping the democratic Saudi government?KB
"I despise your crypto fascist Chomsky fifth column worse than the cult of Lyndon Larouche"
Oh, I'm sure you do. Just as when folks first heard some charletan claiming the world was round for the first time. It's understandable. But there's still time for you to be educated before you die. Maybe?KB
"for the sheer pervasiveness of Chomsky's shadow, and the obstruction not merely of all moderation but worse, of all ingenuity, and for all the endless Chinese fire drills preventing real grass roots political action."
Yes, Chomsky's been hostile to grass roots political action his entire career. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Sorry. But you've just proven my point for me again. I mean, your simply not having a clue as to any of his positions. Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable on a UFO Abduction blog, or an Elvis is Alive and Hiding with Big Foot in the White House blog?KB
"Which I submit"
Your first mistake.KB
"is actually by design"
Your second mistake. Sounds a little like some old cold war propaganda paranoia that the Russians are coming.KB
"a) to glorify Chomsky without the distraction of empowering anyone else"
Who cares anything about glorifying Chomsky? Just because someone points out that you don't know what you're talking about regarding his work and someone elase does doesn't mean the person who does is glorifying him. Not at all. And who gives a rats ass about "empowering anyone else". If they want to know what Chomsky's though is so that they can become empowered, at least with the knowledge that they know his positions, then that's their job to read and learn.KB
"b) to undermine any accomplishment of popular uprising, large or small,"
That's odd given that the accomplishments of popular uprisings are some of Chomsky's favorite topics and that he encourages people to become active and make these accomplishes happen. Actually, he's more critical of the folks who don't do anything. So, see, once again you've inferred that you know a position of his when you don't, and this time your inference was diametrically opposed to his actual position. Please save yourself from further public humiliation in the future by studying the topic first.KB
"and preserve Chomsky's sycophantic misanthropic Paternalist ulterior agenda."
Yes, he really has an "ulterior agenda", unlike the rightwing fanatics who are taking over not only the country, but the world it appears. Anyway, this is just more of the residue of the old cold war propaganda which had long infected your mind. Guess what, Aaron? The Russians aren't coming. Never were.KB
"Honestly, I just can't understand the sheer evil."
I'm sure you can't. It's because you have "the truth" on your side, as can be seen in most of your comments thus far.KB
"I wonder if anyone has attempted to psychoanalyze Chomsky's hypocritical utter depraved sociopathy."
Probably not because they recognize that it doesn't exist. On the other hand, your pathology is quite easily identifiable. I would recommend a labotomy, but it seems as though someone has beat me to the punch.KB
"I beg you"
Get off you knees, fool.KB
"liberate yourself from Chomsky."
There's nothing to liberate myself from. You're the one writing nonsense about a topic of which you know nothing. This shows a far more severe pathology than does the simple fact that a person has actually read some of his books and actually knows what his positions are. Quite worrying about my soul and go dip yourself in the river.KB
There is the one point where our disagreement may actually cone as any surprise:
To assert, as you do, that should Chomsky ever be made a straw man, this cannot be ascertained without intimate scholarship, chapter and verse sublime, is rather to suggest that if the Neocons haven't got Chomsky dead to rights, then at least they might be speaking to the point! Astonishing! Eerie! And without being Chomsky scholars. Or are they, perhaps, Chomsky scholars on the sly, in the deep dark secret of their sinister cabal? And why not? Can theirs ever be so much less anal than yours?
Now, frankly, I'd be more impressed if you can spout Homer, all on your own, than Chomsky. And, say, Bucky Fuller might simply be more fun. The truth remains that no one can fulfill the heights of scholarly rigor on everything anyone ever accepted, opines or believes. And if we did, we'd never consult others or learn from experience or ever smell the roses. Your austere demands of all and sundry of immersive involvement with Chomsky specifically and particularly are, indeed, nigh cultic.
Chomsky is well debunked from the public record. I don't seek credit for that. Epistemologically, Methodologically, it matters not one wit that the work is not mine. The evidence stands damning against Chomsky from the aforesaid public record. I need not repeat the work any more than to re-chart the Americas from scratch. That pompous dodge fools no one. I do know what I am talking about, because it's no damn secret! You have not refuted any of it, KB, nor even advanced any counter argument, by what amounts to the particularly silly Ad Hominem that I don't sweat out my own footnotes.
Erich Von Daniken has got nothing on you for sheer denial!
And so, speaking of straw men, I certainly hope that my self knowledge will be scholarly enough for you, for me to hazard such an evaluation, because I find myself cast in the role of straw man by you, KB. Indeed, KB, why are you answering me and not Hairy Beard who actually recited for you double barreled scholarship, incisive and comprehensive chapter and verse, all on his own lonesome, just as you demand it!
Yes, Hairy Beard's response is convincing to a layperson, so to speak, as myself. And why shouldn't it be? You've not rebutted a line of it, KB! Then again, the link lists I've already supplied are sufficiently damning. Chomsky's disgrace is a matter of pubic record. Not one jot of it addressed or rebutted, much less refuted, by the likes of you, KB.
But then your silly lists of supposed anti-Chomsky talking points is as fallacious a straw man as ever danced down the yellow brick rood of sheer wearisome Sophistry!
And so, KB, no more annotation for you, until you've finished what is already on your plate! What are you going to do, complain to the chef and send it back to the kitchen? No stomach for reality? Your turn for diligence, KB. The ball remains in your court, where it has lain moldering all along.
Aaron said:
"There is the one point where our disagreement may actually cone as any surprise"
No.KB
"To assert, as you do, that should Chomsky ever be made a straw man, this cannot be ascertained without intimate scholarship, chapter and verse sublime, is rather to suggest that if the Neocons haven't got Chomsky dead to rights, then at least they might be speaking to the point!"
But they are not speaking to the point. That's the point.KB
"Astonishing! Eerie!"
I agree. Why the hell would they be talking about a subject as if they knew what they were talking about when they obviously don't? If I were to go to some Einstein blog which was filled with a bunch of physicists and began trying to argue, "seriously", about a topic of which I knew little to nothing, what would it say about me? You're correct. This is scary.KB
"And without being Chomsky scholars."
Okay, well, anyone can read a sentence and them make some sort of very uninformed and limited statement based on the one sentence, but it doesn't mean that their statement has anything at al to do with the writer's thesis, opinions, or anything else. It's simply an uninformed statement. The concept is quite simple. If you don't study about something, then it's probably safe to say that you don't know much about it. Are you trying to argue otherwise?KB
"Or are they, perhaps, Chomsky scholars on the sly"
That's an easy one. No, they are not. And it can be seen in most everything they write. That's why I write anti-anti-Chomskyite satires. I take the recurrent pathological themes which they display, such as talking about Chomsky without knowing anything about him, and point them out. It's quite easy to see the responses from those folks who are aware of his works versus those who do not. The points simply fly right by the anti-Chomskyites. It's like trying to have an elementary school child analyze 'Deconstructing Harry', but worse.KB
"in the deep dark secret of their sinister cabal?"
I doubt that there's a cabal. That they're sinister is hardly in question.KB
"And why not? Can theirs ever be so much less anal than yours?"
Yes.KB
"Now, frankly, I'd be more impressed if you can spout Homer, all on your own, than Chomsky"
Yes, well, actually, I can. I can also spout several hundred other folks which may impress my philosophy teachers, or undergrads, and try to sound smart. I'm not talking about Homer, nor do I intend to avoid the topic by doing so now.KB
"And, say, Bucky Fuller might simply be more fun."
I doubt it. But if he were the topic then it would probably be a good idea. Trouble is, he's not.KB
"The truth remains that no one can fulfill the heights of scholarly rigor on everything anyone ever accepted, opines or believes."
Nor should they. They also shouldn't talk about the topic if they don't know what they're talking about, or at least be honest and make some sort of qualifying statement such as "Well, I've only read one or two sentences of his myself, and a few opinions on FrontPage Magazine, but given that this is all I know it seems that what Chomsky might be saying is....." It should also be followed by an "I could be completely wrong about many or most of my statements regarding Chomsky and his positions because my statements have been based on little more than hearsay and reading two sentences." At least I would respect the persons honesty. But when you get frothing at the mouth born-agains, or perhaps, born for-the-first-times, on time and time again screaming that Chomsky's a Stalinist, even though anyone who has studied for more than 10 minutes knows that he's been anti-communist since 11 years old, well, they deserve to be bitchslapped.KB
"And if we did, we'd never consult others or learn from experience or ever smell the roses."
I agree. And that's why the anti-Chomskyites should keep their mouths shut until they know a little about the topic of which they're talking about. Unfortunately, due to their preconceived notions, assumptions, and indoctrination, rational discussion rarely arises. Evidence, not matter how abundant, won't scratch the surface because they're not making arguments from a rational position. They're making arguments from positions of faith.KB
"Your austere demands of all and sundry of immersive involvement with Chomsky specifically and particularly are, indeed, nigh cultic."
So it's cultic, another charge of which I've written satires about the lunacy of, to actually know a topic and point out when someone doesn't? That I know enough of his works to be able to tell within about 15 seconds whether or not this person has ever read a word is cultic? That's odd. I thought it was considered knowing the topic and being intelligent. When I went to school we had to learn topics first and then we knew about them. Channeling wasn't popular then though. Is this your approach? Personally, I think it's cultic that folks would even attempt to keep harping on a subject of which they know little to nothing as if they do when they don't. This shows a far more severe pathology than does ones simply knowing the topic. I mean, if there was a group of guys going around constantly talking about how Einstein was really a black catholic woman, who had never gone to school, and often saw Elvis and Big Foot flying around in a UFO, I would consider this cultic and pathological. So, when I read about 99% of these anti-Chomskyites comments, this is basically what it sounds like. Not only are most of their statements incorrect, but many are the exact opposite of the truth. This is cultic.KB
"Chomsky is well debunked from the public record."
No, he isn't. I've been studying him for twenty years and haven't seen any "debunking" at all. I've seen mostly weak attempts by folks who are the extremists of the cult which I just mentioned, and some of them have actually read a passage or two from maybe one of his books, but their insights are not much different than those who haven't read him at all. In a way they're even more pathetic because they have tried to read him and completely interpret much of what he says incorrectly, as has been demonstrated most every time they've opened their mouths. Why? Simple. Due to their already indoctrinated perceptions when they read they interpret sentences in ways which are incorrect. And it's so extreme in some cases that even when something is pointed out, something so basic and fundamental as, say, Chomsky says that he's never been a communist and has never really cared for Marx, etc...they can read the words and turn around in the next sentence and call him a communist because their indoctrination is so great that they con't even think in any other terms. And then even when this is pointed out, their cognitive dissonance kicks in and they either drop the subject completely, memory hole, or they go on talking as if what you've shown has never existed. I'm afraid that these are serious signs of cultic personalities. So, before you unwittingly propagate your lies, or perhaps ignorance, and make casual comments like the one above, you should have the decency to back up what you say based on a thorough study of the subject, not just a compilation of all of the strawmen, redd herrings, lies, etc...which other true believers have perpetuated. Hey, listen guy, I'm trying to do you a favor by telling you this. I'm trying to keep you from making any more of a fool of yourself. Why? Because if you don't try and extract yourself from the anti-Chomsky cult, what will happen is that you'll move onto the next stage, which my satires also cover, which is that if you actually did decide to study the topic for yourself instead of via secondhand incorrect sources, and start seeing that all of these folks who you had been previously depending on for your information were completely off, you'll be put in the uncomfortable position of having to make two choices. One, is that you'll recognize that most of what you had been saying was nonsense and mere rubbish, and wonder why you had allowed yourself to be suckered in by such charletans like Horowitz, Kamm, DeLong, etc...all jokes, by the way, become honest, and admit that you had been a dumbass. The decision to take this honorable path is rarely taken. Mostly, the second path is taken. This path is that you do see that you've been wrong all along, but given that you've already dug a hole deep enough to reach China with your uninformed and juvenile statements, you have to keep standing by them. Now this is hard to do because most people, even anti-Chomskyites, have enough of a conscience for the continuation of the lying not to bother them. So, what they do is to make themselves believe what they had been saying was true, even though in the back of their minds they know on some level thay're lying. This is a common occurance during the development of belief formation. Perhaps you should study about it sometime. Anyway, when they continue with their "comments" which are being filtered through this mechanism, you get predictable and observable responses, such as the cognitive dissonance, projections right and left, denial, memory hole, and many other symptoms.KB
"I don't seek credit for that."
Nor should you as there is nothing to credit.KB
"Epistemologically, Methodologically, it matters not one wit that the work is not mine."
It absolutely matters if you aren't aware that what you've been saying has nothing to do with reality, unless it doesn't bother you to be factually wrong about the statements which you're making while trying to sound as though you know what you're talking about. Basically, you're doing little more than propagating the Einstein is a black Catholic woman analogy from above. Nothing more. I advise you to read his books for yourself, THEN, if you want to come back and try and make a reasonable argument or challenge then that's fine. You might accidentally get him on something. But you're going to have to know what his positions are in the first place. Rarely does this initial step even take place, another theme of the satires. This is why most arguments I've seen over the years usually go nowhere. You have one person who knows his work thoroughly, can easily identify when mistakes are made by the others, etc...trying to debate guys who have no clue what they're talking about, and often even pride themselves on the fact that they've never read one of his books in a weak attempt at trying to prove their point. What would you think would happen? Those you haven't a clue resort to their usual predictable antics, such as calling the knowledgeable folks "cults", "anti-American", and the rest of the nonsense.KB
"The evidence stands damning against Chomsky from the aforesaid public record."
No, it doesn't. And you have proven nothing other than you know how to copy and paste small out of context passages from others who haven't read him, or have only read him enough to get enough of an impression to jump to their incorrect conclusions. There is no evidence damning against him. On the other hand, there is TONS of evidence to prove that the charletans and liars who put forth such notions are doing just that, lying. Either that or they're so ignorant that they really should demand a tuition refund and start over again. If you think you have evidence based on YOUR readings, then I'm happy to hear it. I'm quite familiar with the anti-Chomsky cult and have been for years. So, when you're lifting items from the various knucklheads and trying to make it seem as though these are your findings based on your research I know immediately. I can even tell you which guy you've taken it from, and probably the exact book, link, etc...Listen, I've been consciously studying this topic for years, and am quite well aware of both sides of the argument. Personally, I don't really care if you prove that every sentence that Chomsky's ever written is false, but you have to prove it in a scholarly way, and not by simply perpetuating mis-quotes, mis-perceptions, etc...made by a few frothing at the mouth folks who still haven't shaken off their paranoid anti-communism indoctrination from years ago. I can tell instantly if the ideas you state are yours based on your readings, or their's. Which do you choose? Learning for yourself, or being an unwitting mouthpiece for some guys who can't tell the difference between an anarchist, a communist, or a rock?KB
"I need not repeat the work any more than to re-chart the Americas from scratch."
Yes, you need not repeat. I've already read all of it. Long ago, I might add. Like I said, it means nothing other than you know how to use your copy and paste functions.KB
"That pompous dodge fools no one."
This is an example of the projection I mentioned earlier. It is neither pompous nor a dodge to make the statements I have. On the contrary, it's quite the opposite. This is also another theme of the satires. It's the old pompous- leftist whine and charge. And nothing I've said was intended to fool anyone. I've simply been pointing out why what you've attempted to do here fools no one, or, perhaps, a few others suffering from the anti-Chomskyan disorder.KB
"I do know what I am talking about, because it's no damn secret!"
I agree. It's no damn secret that what you're saying is about as reliable as the way you came to think it in the first place. You've never read one of his books, as is easy to tell, you've propagated the lies and faulty studies of others, as I predicted, not that a prediction was necessary, you've tried to cover it up by going to the even more extreme of claiming that everyone knows that Chomsky's full of crap, etc...All of these things show that your position is a joke and that you shouldn't be taken any more seriously than some newscaster from FOX TV.KB
"You have not refuted any of it, KB"
Oh, I have refuted every sentence you've lifted a hundred times. These are VERY OLD and VERY DISCREDITED "opinions". Most of the charges you've copied were never taken seriously by most people in the first place as they were so absurd, I mean, to those who actually knows a little about the topic. The statements about Pol Pot apologetics, Holocaustdenial, etc...are simply jokes manufactured by illiterate imbeciles. Nothing more. What's really odd is that some of them, very few, have actually gone through graduate school. On would have thought that given this fact that they'd at least know a little about how to read and interpret simple sentences. I guess the education system really is in decline.KB
"nor even advanced any counter argument"
Mostly there's nothing to argue about since almost everything you've presented doesn't even exist as a topic. Should I respond and give counter arguments to the fact that Einstein isn't a black Catholic woman, too? There is basicall ZERO difference here. The entire premise of the arguments are faulty and don't exist. How can I prove a negative?(Another common theme in the anti-Chomsyan fantasy world) Okay, here you go. I've read everything Chomsky has written, which is true, and nothing you've asserted appears. And given that it isn't there, it's hard for my to copy and paste it." It is easy to point out to the anti-Chomsky cult their lies, but it doesn't go anywhere. That's why I quit trying to be logical, rational, etc...when talking to them. It usually does no good, though I have recently met a chap civilized and honest enough to have actually read some of Chomsky for himeslf, and was honest and intelligent enough to admit that virtually none of the anti-Chomsyites which had been bickering with us knew what they were talking about. And this was only after reading some links from the web, not even any books. So, I guess you guys aren't completely hopeless.KB
"by what amounts to the particularly silly Ad Hominem that I don't sweat out my own footnotes."
There are no footnotes to support your opinions. On the other hand, Chomsky has provided thousands of which you can check if you feel that you want to learn something about the topic.KB
"Erich Von Daniken has got nothing on you for sheer denial!"
And yet another example of the projection previously noted. Were you ever going to read a Chomsky book for yourself, or were just going to assert that the folks who have are in denial for the rest of your life?KB
"And so, speaking of straw men, I certainly hope that my self knowledge will be scholarly enough for you"
Sorry, it's not. You haven't even taken the first step to anything scholarly. Copying and pasting the works of others, while maybe impressive to a high school history teacher, says nothing about your knowledge. It is telling thougfh as to why folks such as yourself pick out the passages that you decide to quote. This is much more interesting. I'm much more interested in why it is that you would choose to attempt to talk about a subject which you obviously haven't even studied. I mean, if I were to write a doctoral dissertation on Chomsky and only used secondhand sources, never quoting Chomsky at all, what do you think the examoners would say? I think not having read Chomsky for myself would probably be a slight oversight. So, while you try pretend, in vain, of course, that it's not necessary to have to study the subject for yourself before you can claim to be knowledgable about it, I think you may want to reconsider your position.KB
"for me to hazard such an evaluation, because I find myself cast in the role of straw man by you, KB."
Yes, well, you have proven that there's much more straw in the world that I had ever imagined.KB
"Indeed, KB, why are you answering me and not Hairy Beard who actually recited for you double barreled scholarship"
He did nothing of the sort. He did exactly what I have just pointed out. He hasn't proven that he's ever read a book. I can get all of the info he posted in about 2 minutes on the web. But I guess you would consider that "double-barreled scholarship" when it's actually not even slingsshot scholarship.(The anti-Chomskyites idea of scholarship is another theme in my satires) Here, maybe I'll leave one for you below.KB
"incisive and comprehensive chapter and verse, all on his own lonesome, just as you demand it!"
Not hardly. Nothing he said was on his own. The only thing on his own was that he copied and pasted. You actually thought that he did this himself? That's funny. You're not even a good anti-Chomskyite. That's sad. Do you REALLY think I was unfamiliar with every sentence he copied? You're really, really, far behind. Guess what, Aaron? Santa doesn't exist.KB
"Yes, Hairy Beard's response is convincing to a layperson, so to speak, as myself."
As it's supposed to be. That's the entire point. That's how these charletans work. They know full well that you are probably not going to read Chomsky for yourself for whatever reason, and that you'll be impressed with what "seems" like well thoughout scholarship, which it doesn't even scratch the surface. They're quite well aware that those who have a rightward tilt will just believe what they say, begin repeating it, etc...without knowing what they're talking about. Their goal is to keep you from reading. Why? Because if you read and studied the subject for yourself you'd instantly see how full of shit they were. Their goal by trying to "appear scholarly" is to keep you from taking that step.(Another theme in the satires) Hey, like I said, I've been doing this for years. I know these guys better than they know themselves, at least regarding this issue. I have a friend who's somehow anti-Chomsky though proudly admits that he's never read a Chomsky book, and would never do so. And yet he writes endlessly about Chomsky's ideas. Do you not see how pathological this is? If this were anyone else would you still think it okay? I don't thinky you're that
far gone.KB
"And why shouldn't it be?"
Oh, it should be. It should be so convincing, in fact, that you won't even find it necessary to read Chomsky for yourself. That's part of the point. Answer me a few questions: Has it worked? Have you actually decided to go out and read a few, or more, of Chomsky's books? Or do you feel that since he's given you this stuff which appears to be "knowledge" that it's not necessary? I will bet you a copy of 'SuperSize ME' on DVD that's it's the latter. Don't be so gullible. And while you may have political leanings to the right it should prevent you from trying to be honest and studying the subject for yourself. As I said, I could care less if you agree with one idea Chomsky has ever stated, but if you're going to talk about him, seriously anyway, you should at least make a good faith attempt at studying the subject for yourself, so that you don't unwittingly propegate lies.KB
"You've not rebutted a line of it, KB!"
That because there's nothing to rebutt. There's nothing there. He's talking about Sants Claus. And there are plently of places to find where these things have been rebutted for years. I'm NOT going to do your work for you. All what will happen, and this is based on years of experience, is nothing. If you want to know for yourself, YOU are going to have to read for yourself. AFTER you have done this, then we can have a conversation.KB
"Then again, the link lists I've already supplied are sufficiently damning."
You've proven my point again. The links are nothing but the nonsense I've already spoken of. Remember, if you haven't read it for yourself, you will never know. And that's their goal. They don't want you to read. And it's working, isn't it? I'm not interested in their propaganda, I'm interested in what you think about the subject. Therefore, I will only respond to what YOU read and share. NOT what they supposedly "read" and lie about.KB
"Chomsky's disgrace is a matter of pubic record."
See? Look at what you're doing right now. You are making an assertion about a person of whom you've never read a book. That the anti-Chomsyites can get you to do this shows at the least that they're at least a little clever. The "public record" you speak of are these guys. The record which they put forth has nothingto do with the real world. But the only way you're going to know for sure is if you study the subject for yourself. As a matter of fact, it should also be noted that another of their goals is to so influence your perception before you actually read, which they know you probably won't, that even if you finally do read you won't be able to be anywhere near objective. You'll interpret things the way they've already trained you to. It's an old propaganda strategy. Keep saying that that a circle is a square long anough and the people will actually start to believe it. This is EXACTLY what is happening here. Tell me that I'm wrong. Tell me that you've read him for yourself, outside of the influence of these liars, or at least idiots, to give them the benefit of the doubt. You haven't. I know it, and you know it. It's always the same. As a matter of fact, I can probably guess how you will respond to every statement I've made because you guys are so predictable. Please try and be a little different. Just read a few books. Don't worry, you don't have to buy them. There are several on the web I believe. Necessary Illusions is a good one. If you're serious and you decide to really educated yourself I'll make some recommendations. Then, after you've studied these, I think you'll be able to make some sort of argument. Until then, you'll be nothing but sputtering out their mis-perceptions.KB
"Not one jot of it addressed or rebutted, much less refuted, by the likes of you, KB."
Been there, done that, 500 times. Here, let's play a little game. You try to find information to rebutt what they say. Pretend you don't automatically believe what they say, and rebutt them. How are you going to go about doing this? I have enough data to squash Harry's fairytale with one click of the button, but I want YOU to find it. THIS is an important part. This is not an evasion, which is one of the things I predicted you would say. This is a vital part of the learning process. I can take on Harry. I've done it with his likes for years, and I know exactly where it goes. And I also know that it prevents you from doing your own work. All you will do is to continue to depend on Harry to do the work for you, all the while not realizing that every other word from his mouth is a lie. YOU have to do the work. Then we can dual.KB
"But then your silly lists of supposed anti-Chomsky talking points is as fallacious a straw man as ever danced down the yellow brick rood of sheer wearisome Sophistry!"
You're funny. You've just proven several ofmy points again and you're completely oblivious as to how. Have you read a Chomsky book yet?KB
"And so, KB, no more annotation for you, until you've finished what is already on your plate!"
There's nothing on my plate. The plate is empty. There's nothing to respond to that I and a thousand others haven't already responded to for years. You can find responses to these fairytales anywhere if you want to actually study them. I have a really radical idea. why don't you ask Chomsky directly. He'll probably write back. I got two mails from him a couple of weeks ago. What's wrong? Are you scared? Why don't you ask Harry, since you're impressed by his copy and pasting, if he has challenged Chomsky instead of screaming "good shot" from the bleachers of a football game? He's a coward. That's why. They're all the same. This is why I no longer get into 400 page debates with these guys. I've already been there and done that, and I could care less if you believe me, or say that this is an evasion. Everything I've mentioned is accurate and the only way foryou to know for sure is if you study it for yourself. I can make you some copies of any number of lectures if you prefer not to read the books. Give me your address and I'll send a box. I should warn you though, that you must really face your indoctrination first and decide whether or not you'll even be able to listen to a tape. Most of the anti-Chomskyans have been so indoctrinated that there's actually a physical aversion to listening to his voice and they can't do it. I know this fist hand. I sent a box of about 20 lectures to my anti-Chomsyite friend, the one who has never read one of his books and yet talks about him all the time, and he returned it un-opened. Talk about a severe case of indoctrination. I'd hate to think that I could ever get to the point where I couldn't listen to even the most absurd drunk off the street, you know, like Rush, Hannity, Coulter Buckley, etc... without going into convulsions. Remember the two options.KB
"What are you going to do, complain to the chef and send it back to the kitchen?"
I never got any food. There's nothing to send back. And the guy who you believe sent it to me from the kitchen is actually in the bathroom creating more of that which he's good at.KB
"No stomach for reality?"
Proving my point again, huh? You know what "reality" is now because of what Harry copied and pasted. That's all it took? You're pretty easy. But then again that's who usually falls hook, line, and sinker, for the propaganda. You probably actually though Saddam was a threat to the U.S., too, huh? Never mind. I know what you'll say. "Reality". AHAHAHAHAHA
"Your turn for diligence, KB."
Oh, my diligence has been around for years. I don't need anymore diligence. You need the diligence to study the topic for yourself instead of allowing Harry's copying and pasting do it for you. What's really funny, and I'm sure you are completely unaware, is that "Harry", whose real name isn't Harry, but he thinks that's a witty take off on my name, is someone who I know quite well. He's changed his name for this blog because I've already smasehed him a dozen times before in other places. His new strategy at impressing the impressionable is to use various names so that when his "ideas" have been debunked, as they have a hundred times, and as I've already done, the novices like yourself who come along won't know of his pathetic background. This is another of the common paths which you, too, will eventually end up taking if you dig the hole oflies deep enough so that you con't get out and are finally exposed. You have to use another name to hide behind. Why don't we ask Harry what the name/names is he usually goes by?KB
"The ball remains in your court, where it has lain moldering all along."
Sorry, but the ball is nowhere near my court. Until you have read the subject for yourself the ball is in your court. Harry offered no balls, as one would have expected. If I feel the urge, or decide you give you the priveledge of a few minutes more of my time, I may take just one of the many lies "Harry" has put forth and smash it into the ground. It still won't mean anything if you haven't studied for yourself. The ball is in your court. After you've studied I'll be more than happy to discuss whatever you want regarding Chomsky. But fisrt, you have to make an effort. And if you're thinking about just lifting more of what these guys have said and pretend you have read I will know in one minute, so don't even think about going there.KB
***Note to readers: Let's see which direction Aaron will choose. Will he take the weak-ass easy way out and say that I'm avoiding Harry. Or will he read for himself, come up with ideas for himself, make arguments for himself, defend his ideas for himself, and prove that he's at least attempting to be a scholar. If he chooses the latter I will respect him. If he chooses the former...well...I'll just have more material for my satires.
KB, we meet again. Dude, are you going through some sort of mid-life crisis or something? You're even more deranged than usual. Your preaching for the Chomsky religion has gotten more aggressive and confrontational in the last few months.
Posted by: andrew at August 2, 2005 06:57 AMAndrew followed me to say:
"KB, we meet again. Dude, are you going through some sort of mid-life crisis or something?"
Why would talking to indoctrinated totalitarian-minded pseudo-patriots be a sign of a mid-life crisis?KB
"You're even more deranged than usual."
Well, if YOU say so it MUST be true.KB
"Your preaching for the Chomsky religion has gotten more aggressive and confrontational in the last few months."
What preaching? What religion? You thinking that you see any preaching or religion is what's interesting. I've never even sai d I liked Chomsky, but you are still unable to tell the difference between my pointing out when someone doesn't know what they're talking about, and thinking this has something to do with whether or not I like it. THIS is another of the MANY signs of totalitarianism which you display. Here, I'll give you yet another analogy which any 4 year old could understand:
Chomsky: I think a,b,c.
Andrew: Chomsky thinks d,e,f.
KB: No, Andrew, Chomsky thinks a,b,c.
Andrew: Chomsky lover! Chomsky lover! You worship him! He's your idol! He never does anything wrong according to you! Aren't people allowed to criticize your master?
KB: First of all, your assertion that he's my master simply because I pointed out that he doesn't believe d.,e,f is just plain, factually, wrong. Secondly, you can challenge his all you want, in fact, I encourage it. But you have to know what his ideas are FIRST. So, if you say that Chomsky thinks d,e,f you simply haven't even taken the first step to be able to make a criticism. That's all. It's really not that difficult, Andrew.
Andrew: See? There you go, saying that he can do no wrong! You love him! He's your master!
And then the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. The same goes with Andrews inability to distinguish between criticism of his own country's crimes and thinking that the critic "hates America" or is "anti-American", also signs of indoctrinated totalitarians. You're funny, Andrew. Why don't you go to a knitting blog where the little old ladies can slap you around for a little while.KB
Posted by: KB at August 5, 2005 04:36 AMI'll take the high road here and use a favorite Chomskyite tactic.
"Nothing worth commenting on."
Andrew said while running for cover:
"I'll take the high road here and use a favorite Chomskyite tactic. "Nothing worth commenting on.""
No, you see, it's just slight different when he says it and when you say it, kind of like that "America is the greatest country in the world" comparison you had made before thinking your ideas were the same when they weren't. When he says it it's because it really is not worth commenting on, say, for instance, someone says that he's a Holocaust denier. THIS kind of ignorance really shouldn't be commented on as it's not worthy. I mean, if you called me Santa Claus I doubt I'd spend a lot of time on it either. On the other hand, when YOU use the "nothing worth commenting on" it's the exact opposite. There is MUCH you 'could' comment on were you able. Bottom line, your not. You can't even make a scratch. All you're good at is throwing a little mud-of-ignorance onto the monitor and then running. Nothing more. Nada. ZERO. Zilch. Anyway, I find most things you say worth commenting on because they're so revealing about the depraved logic and irrationality of the indoctrinated rightwing pseudo-patriots. I mean, you really don't offer anything, but it's fun to watch you spin your wheels in such predictable fashion. Here's a present for you, Andrew.
***Note to reader. The name J or Ben can be replaced with Andrew or Aaron in any of my dialogues.***
J and Ben the anti-Chomskyites on Research and Scholarship: Dismantling the Works of Noam Chomsky: An Existential Crisis and Going to Hell
J: Ben! Ben! Did you hear the news!
Ben: No, what is it?
J: I did a critical analysis of one of Chomsky’s books and I found hundreds and hundreds of errors.
Ben: Oh my God! What kind of errors?
J: You name it! It was poorly written. Most all of the information was completely inaccurate. The writing style sucked. The research was horrible. Basically, it was one of the worst books I’ve ever read.
Ben: Great! I told you that his scholarship sucked.
J: I’ve known this for a long time, but hadn’t actually read anything by him until now.
Ben: We’ve got to get this information to Horowitz. He’ll be so pleased that we’ve helped him with his ambitions of dismantling Chomsky’s work.
J and Ben cut and paste all of the errors found in the Chomsky book, including page numbers, references, footnotes, name-calling, etc… There were literally hundreds of pages of errors in the book. They sent all of their newly found information to Horowitz himself. A few days later they received a long email back from Horowitz thanking them for all of their hard work. He informed them that the information they had provided was “definitely going to be used” in his upcoming book, ‘The Shoddy Scholarship of Noam Chomsky: A Detailed Analysis’, and that J and Ben would get a special mention as contributors. Horowitz even asked J and Ben to send their photos as he wanted to use them on the front page of his updated ‘FrontPageMagazine’ website. J and Ben were ecstatic. They were going to be famous in the anti-Chomsky world. They’d probably even be asked to be on many political talk shows because of the brilliance of their scholarship and insight. J was already having an ‘I Used Kissinger’s Speed Stick in the Green Room’ T-shirt made just in case he was invited to be on TV. They had big plans. Their future looked bright. But the first thing they wanted to do was to go tell B about their soon-to-be-acquired fame. They could hardly wait. They knew that this was really going to piss him off. That they had so thoroughly dissected one of Chomsky’s books, and were going to soon be famous, would surely irk B as they believed him to be a big Chomskyite. First, they went to the library to look for B assuming that given his appreciation of Chomsky he’d probably go someplace stupid that had a lot of books. They were right. They found B at a big table in the back of the library with several hundred books stacked on the table. Of course there were about 40 Chomsky books in one stack, but there were also books by many historians, both conservative and radical. There were dozens of books containing government documents. There were all the great economists, political theorists, and all the classic philosophers. There were books on all of the U.S. Presidents. There were many business journals and magazines. For J and Ben to see a person surrounded by so many books was a surreal experience. Actually, they both felt a little light-headed and nauseous being near so many books, but the excitement and anticipation of telling B about their soon to be realized success was enough to keep them from getting sick. The story continues:
J: Hey B! What are you doing?
B: Not much. I’m just catching up on a little reading and research.
Ben: What are you researching?
B: I doubt you’d be interested.
J: What is it?
B: I’m doing research regarding the works of Noam Chomsky.
Ben: (Looking and J and winking) Really? How interesting. J and I have been, too.
B: Oh, really? That’s interesting.
J: But we’ve never used this many books to do our research, especially the Chomsky ones.
Ben: Yeah. We’ve read a couple of those conservative historians you have there, and we went through the personals in the back of that ‘Business Week’ there, but that’s about it.
B: But you said you were doing research on Chomsky.
J: Yeah, well, we are. (J winking back a Ben)
B: You don’t think it’s necessary to read a little more of his work when doing your research?
J: Not now. I mean, we didn’t really find it necessary to read him before, but now there’s even less reason.
B: Why’s that.
Ben: (J giving Ben the nod to go ahead and let B have it) Because J and I went through one of his books page by page and found hundreds of mistakes. His book sucked!
J: Yeah! Yeah! Almost every assertion made in the book was wrong. All the ideas were stupid. And the scholarship was horrible! He must be one of the most ignorant people I’ve ever read. Only a complete idiot could believe anything said in that book.
Ben: Yeah! Yeah! And we sent our findings to Horowitz and he thought our research was great!
J: Yeah! And he said we were going to be on ‘FrontPageMagazine’ and that this type of scholarship was greatly appreciated by those at the ‘magazine’, and that the information was just the kind of break his webpage had been waiting for.
Ben: Yeah! He said that our analysis of Chomsky was definitely ‘FrontPageMagazine’ material. He said that our comprehensive documentation would be quite useful, though not necessary, as accuracy and documentation were hardly high priorities regarding the acceptance of submissions worthy of publication at ‘FrontPage’.
J: Yeah! But we supplied him with all the documentation one could have hoped for.
B: That’s interesting. Congratulations! If you don’t mind my asking, in what book of Chomsky’s were all of these mistakes?
J: (Looking through his bag) It was that book that your friend P recommended. He said that if we really went through this book carefully that we’d find all sorts of mistakes.
Ben: And he was right!
J: (Pulling the book out of his bag and holding in front of B’s face) Here it is! Here it is! This one! This is the book we’ve shredded! It’s garbage! It’s a piece of crap! It sucks!
Ben: Yeah! Chomsky’s going down! Chomsky’s going down!
B: Uhhhhh But that book isn’t by Chomsky.
J & Ben: Huh?
B: That book was written by Horowitz and Collier. That’s the ‘Anti-Chomsky Reader’. It was written by your heroes.
J & Ben: WAS NOT!!!
B: Sure it was. Look at the cover.
Ben: (Turning to J) You dumbass! You said it was Chomsky’s book!
J: (Looking bewildered and perplexed) I wondered why the book was so easy to understand.
J and Ben begin screaming, crying, and fighting. Seeing that J and Ben’s hopes for anti-Chomskyan fame were being dashed he decided to offer a little solace. He told them that it probably wouldn’t really matter that the book they had shredded had been Horowitz’s own book as Horowitz was too ignorant to even recognize it as such. B told them that it was still very likely that their work would be used by ‘FrontPageMagazine’ and that they may, indeed, still become the new darlings of the anti-Chomskyites. Then B offered to lend J and Ben another book which he thought may make them feel better. He told them that a new Horowitz book had just come out, and that even B himself thought it pretty good for an anti-Chomskyite book. So, B took a copy of ‘Necessary Illusions’ out of his stack and gave it to J and Ben. He told them that this Horowitz book was much better, but that should carefully analyze it regardless. J and Ben thanked B and left the library. A few months later they returned to B in the library.
B: So what did you think of that Horowitz book I lent you? Pretty good stuff, huh?
J: Yeah! It was great! We didn’t find a damn mistake! It was pretty difficult though.
Ben: Yeah! His sentence structure, style, and research were impeccable. And the scholarship was something I’ve never witnessed before. We had to read each sentence about 10 times before we could understand what they meant.
J: Yeah! This book was much better thought out than Horowitz’s other books, by orders of magnitude I should say.
Ben: Yeah, B. Thanks a lot! You’re much cooler than J and I thought. We didn’t know that you could appreciate the work of the anti-Chomskyites.
B: Oh, really? Yes, I’m quite familiar with both. I’m really glad that you took the time to go through the book I lent you.
Just then P approached the table where J, Ben, and B were sitting. J’s first response was to punch out P, but Ben held him back as a courtesy to B for lending them Horowitz’s ‘Necessary Illusions’.
P: Hey guys! What’s up! (Looks at B and receives the green light wink) B do you still have my Chomsky book?
B: (Taking the book from J’s hands) You mean this one?
P: Yeah, that’s it. ‘Necessary Illusions’.
J and Ben: (Screaming at the top of their lungs) “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!”
Then they both passed out. About twenty minutes later, as B and P were helping the paramedics push the gurneys to the ambulance, J and Ben slightly regained consciousness. J then looked up at B.
J: (Barely able to speak) Did we really read a Chomsky book and think it was great?
B: I’m afraid so.
J: Oh, God!
(J slips into a coma)
Ben: P, please don’t tell anyone. Okay?
P: Too late. It will be on the BBC in 20 minutes.
(Ben slips into a coma)
However, being the good and honorable humanitarians they are, B and P managed to find J and Ben the perfect place for them to begin their occupational therapy. They were going to be cleaning the toilets for some professor at M.I.T. Two days later they went to meet the professor. As they walked into the front office they passed dozens of file cabinets. They turned into a short hallway and to their horror they saw a big poster of Bertrand Russell on the wall. The door to the left of the poster was open and as they walked through the door a man wearing glasses stood. And with a toilet brush in each hand, he outstretched his arms and said:
Chomsky: Hello! I’m Noam Chomsky. Get to work!
"I'll take the high road here and use a favorite Chomskyite tactic. "Nothing worth commenting on.""
No, you see, it's just slight different when he says it and when you say it, kind of like that "America is the greatest country in the world" comparison you had made before thinking your ideas were the same when they weren't. When he says it it's because it really is not worth commenting on, say, for instance, someone says that he's a Holocaust denier."
Actually I was quoting you about halfway through this comment section. You were typically evading what someone else was saying.
Andrew has tried to weasel out by saying:
"I'll take the high road here and use a favorite Chomskyite tactic. "Nothing worth commenting on.""
"No, you see, it's just slight different when he says it and when you say it, kind of like that "America is the greatest country in the world" comparison you had made before thinking your ideas were the same when they weren't. When he says it it's because it really is not worth commenting on, say, for instance, someone says that he's a Holocaust denier."
"Actually I was quoting you about halfway through this comment section. You were typically evading what someone else was saying."
You said you were using Chomsky's tactic. You didn't mention mine. And you didn't say where I said it. But if I did, it wasn't worth commenting on. If you said Chomsky's a black Catholic woman who's a pro wrestler, I really don't see any reason to comment on it. It's not worthy of my time. It shouldn't be worthy of your time either. That it is should be a concern for you. Basically, about 85%+ of what you say falls into this category. The other 15% almost resemble having something to do with issues, but you're just wrong about 98% of the time then. I gave you 2% for a marging of error, or in your case, a margin of correctness. Actually, I haven't really seen ANY correct statements, but I'll give you the bebfit of the doubt and just assume that I missed them because I wasn't looking at the computer that day. So, were yo going to respond to anything on here of any substance? How did you like the last dialogue? Can you explain it to me? Thanks!KB
"You said you were using Chomsky's tactic. You didn't mention mine."
Well think for yourself instead of copying someone else. I used your words and you just assumed it was the words of Chomsky.
Posted by: andrew at August 8, 2005 04:40 PMAndrew said:
"Well think for yourself instead of copying someone else."
Prove that I haven't thought for myself. And this is more or less inrrelevant anyway. If Chomsky says the world is round, or I say the world is round, it doesn't really matter too much who's idea it is. They're both correct.KB
"I used your words and you just assumed it was the words of Chomsky."
Not at all. You SAID that it was Chomsky's tactic. I don't need to assume anything. There's nothing to assume. Perhaps you should look back on this fine and important issue which you're trying to use as a method of escaping all the more important issues and see what you yourself said. It's really bad when I have to explain to you what you yourself said.KB
Andrew: John is tall.
KB: You said "John is tall".
Andrew: No, I didn't. That's just your interpretation. You just assumed that I was talking about John.(Begins to shrivel)
KB: You said "John is tall".
Andrew: You're trying to change the subject.
KB: You said "John is tall".
Andrew: Uhhhh....uhhh....(Puts on his running shoes and heads for the hills)
This is what about 90% of our conversations look like, Andrew. You know it. I know it. And any literate person reading this knows it. You are a never ending source for my satires though. Oh, by the way, that's 1-#7, 2,3-#6, and 4-#5.KB
Posted by: KB at August 9, 2005 02:50 AMWhy should I read Chomsky for myself? Frankly, I've read all I can take from that turgid liar and his academic cronies! If Chomsky tells a lie, would Chomsky then tell me so himself? If Chomsky lies, how will that be known? Answer, by analysis, investigation and even scholarship, then to be freely disseminate to all seekers of truth. Now, if another points out Chomsky's lies, then why is that automatically invalid, in and of itself?
You have before you a plethora of citations of lies by Chomsky, both text and hyperlinks, but all you do is to deny what appear right here before you on screen. You claim that there is no citation of lies by Chomsky. Who are you kidding? This very page has filled up with scholarly citations, examples of lies by Chomsky! However, you have not rebutted a single claim, whatsoever, of a lie by Chomsky. Come on, KB, I dare you!
Posted by: Aaron Agassi at September 17, 2005 09:36 PM