"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What’s Wrong with Noam Chomsky
"It always comes down to private property. I respect it, and they don’t. They believe the State protects it, and I believe the State violates it. I’ve been told private property is itself a State because it requires force to defend it."
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It gladdens my heart to finally see some STR contributing editor call bullshit on this hack. Chomsky loves "word games" as the author of the blog post puts it; he was a professor of congnitive linguistics at MIT for thirty years plus afterall. To Chomsky a "democratically-elected", small, and hometown based committee ordering you arround isn't so bad because it's local, and small, and democratically chosen by the stake holders, unlike huge, distant, party bureaucracies! So the boot on your neck is local, which is obviously better, right?
Thanks, Ken. Chomsky has always irritated me. On one hand he is a truly blistering, and effective, critic of US foreign policy-his What Uncle Sam Really Wants lays bare the ugly root of corporatism that fuels US "action" in the third world (and was assigned to me in an undergrad poli-sci course.) For some bizzare reason, though, he then turns about and supports the very domestic government behavior that builds and buttresses the corporate state that he so hates when it is inflicted upon Guatamalans. In all cases, he does it with careful, dense, wording that always allows him some rabbit-hole to escape criticism. Word games, indeed.
Davi Barker-though I don't totally agree with his thesis in this article-is a great writer with strong principles made all the more interesting because they stem from his devout and practicing belief in Islam. He is a Muslim, and a sufficiently boisterous one as to have once drawn the ire of Pamela Geller (he dared point out that "honor-killings" are not part of Islam or of Arab culture, but are propaganda....he is right, by the way-the practice has its roots in the Hindu religion and caste system of India, though it is known to occur in some Pakistani tribal areas....it doesn't happen in Ohio.)
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the piece, I hope that others did as well.
Best,
Mike
I always felt Chomsky was an idiot even back in the 1970's. A linguist by trade turns political specialist just like movie actors!