Posted by dino27 on 11/5/2015 7:59:00 AM (view original):
noam Chomsky lives in his own little world that I want no part of......he thinks he is the iconoclastic synthesis of karl marx and marlon brando from the wild ones but he still sounds to me like Lyndon larouche if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed ....I know his cousin......what does Chomsky have to do with anything anyway.

Eloquently rebutted as always, dino!

Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival" was the number 1 book on all of Amazon worldwide (Amazon is the largest retailer in the world) a few years ago. That book is now a mere number 119 out of all the millions of books in the world on Amazon, after being in print now for 11 years. 

He is considered the father of modern linguistics according to the Wikipedia article about him. 

He was voted the world top public intellectual in a poll in 2005. He has had famous debates with the likes of William F. Buckley, Michael Foucault, and many other top thinkers. 

He works at the most prestigious technological university in the world. 

from the Wikipedia article about him:

Academic achievements, awards, and honors

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the NehruMemorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town,^[210] in 2011, the Rickman Godlee Lecture at University College, London^[211]many others.^[212]

Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following:

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others.^[216] He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).^[217]

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.^[218]

In 2004 Chomsky received the Carl-von-Ossietzky Prize from the city of Oldenburg (Germany) for his life work as political analyst and media critic.^[219] In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society.^[220] In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration ofCarl Linnaeus.^[221] In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.^[222] Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.^[223]

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.^[224] In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.^[225]

Chomsky has an Erdos number of four.^[226]

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls".^[227] In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".^[228]

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called Pandemoniumfromamerica, to Chomsky.^[229]

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT.^[230][231] The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "...unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights."^[232]

In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".^[233][234]

In 2013, a newly described species of bee was named after him: Megachile chomskyi.^[235]

I would say that "he lives in his own little world" is less true of Noam Chomsky given all of this info than of any other person in the world. 

apparently he's sorta like an "intellectual" .................    drum roll here.        

How does merely saying "he lives in his own little world" prove that he lives in his own little world?  

Do you know people who live in their own little world?  If so, in what way do they resemble Noam Chomsky?

Posted by dahsdebater on 11/5/2015 4:31:00 PM (view original):
How does winning awards in any way refute the suggestion that he thinks inwardly instead of outwardly?

being a public intellectual refutes it. Having revolutionized modern linguistic theory - through active research into the practical use of language by people in all sorts of countries refutes it. Debating any comers (and winning) refutes it. Engaging American foreign policy refutes it. 

The awards and membership in important and prestigious associations means he does not LIVE in a little world, the world is big and it recognizes his work as important. 

Compare his work with any neoclassical economist - these are people who instead of engaging in the construction of abstract models of how rational choices and markets are supposed to work. Then, any aspect of the real world that is not in accordance with market theory is called "intervention" or a "distortion" of the market, that is of the little world that most economists live in. 

Posted by dahsdebater on 11/5/2015 7:49:00 PM (view original):
I do think Chomsky's political views are somewhat on par with Italyprof's description of most modern economic theory.  I think he makes substantially too few allowances for human nature and manages to simultaneously ignore the unpredictability of small-scale human activity and the predictability of large-scale human activity.

I have my own critique of Chomsky's politics - I find that he does not take into account the impact of people's struggles, protests, strikes, etc. - political action as a form of agency. He treats those in power as too omnipotent and to some degree as omniscient. This may be what you are saying as well and a discussion when we both have time would be welcome. 

No one is above criticism. I just think arguing that one of the most respected political voices around, and a major thinker in his own professional field is an isolated person thinking he is important when no one is paying attention to him is a hard argument to make, and while I am not Jewish, many of my Jewish friends are also highly critical of a country whose prime minister thinks Hitler did not cause the Holocaust but was talked into it by the Palestinians. 

Yes, he said that, and this article is from an Israeli newspaper reporting on it:

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.681525

So as I noted above, no one, and no country, is above criticism.

I think we interpreted the initial comment differently, and now that I read the whole thing, yours is probably correct.

I took it to mean that his views are without meaningful applicability in the real world.  I can definitely see some validity to that position, and to an extent I can see it being potentially dangerous to actually attempt to implement much of the policy Chomsky promotes.  But if it's just about him seeing himself as more important than society perceives him to be - then I agree, that is clearly not reasonable.  His thinking has certainly informed the positions of modern philosophers of all sorts, especially political and economic, and even those who strongly disagree with his positions.

Fair enough, both interpretations of the original comment on Chomsky are possible. I also think there is a reasonable debate to be had on Chomsky's views of what is possible in foreign policy by people of good will and serious thought, whereas the more personal interpretation is not really as open to discussion.

As to his views, if we are discussing all of his ideas, including his more or less anarcho-syndicalist ideas of society, I am less sympathetic to this viewpoint than I was when I was younger, as I see a need for a strong, coherent public sphere in which self-governed units like cooperative business, credit unions, communes, municipal activities of all sorts would play a role locally, but in which some degree of coordination is badly needed. I think that Occupy Wall Street was a great spontaneous revolt against the way things are, but as a strategy for change was sorely lacking, as we need something more organized than neoliberal capitalism, not less, but also more democratic than any of the socialist experiments of the twentieth century. 

As to foreign policy: there are, I think, two different questions to ask: one is, can a country have a moral or ethical foreign policy and survive or do well in the world of national states? On this one, I think it is fair to criticize Chomsky and much of the left. Not because ethics have no place in foreign policy - indeed sometimes they are very important, but because a country can't live on ethics alone as India told Martin Luther King Jr. when he suggested that they live up to Gandhi's ideas and renounce having a military altogether. I don't think that the US or anyone else can do without a military in the world today, unless they are in very special conditions - like Costa Rica which realized that the military was more of a threat to carry out coups and that the only country likely to invade them was the USA against whom their army would be useless anyway. So they got rid of it. The only country I know of. 

But for the most part this can't be done today, or maybe ever. BUT having said that we can ask whether the US should be playing the role it so often does, of aggressively insisting that other countries change their forms of government or economic policy, to enable US and other Western corporations and banks to dominate them, using the IMF and World Bank (about which Americans hear very little) to enforce debts that were often taken in the past by dictators who robbed the money, forcing elected governments and their people to pay them back and to impose austerity and economic policies that favor global companies and ruin their own economies, and invading one country after another for the past 15 years.  I think Chomsky's criticism is quite important here and that this is the reason he is so well respected around the world. Much of the world's public opinion sees him as a sometimes lone critic of immoral policies that are destructive of other countries. 

As to Israel (the "self-hating Jew" thing I am not even going near, except to mention that both Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, two of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century and both Jewish opposed the creation of Israel. That does not mean I - not Jewish - would have. My sister lived for many years in Israel and we have many Israeli friends. Some very critical of their government): I think on the one hand it is true that Israel's treatment of Palestinians (bombing a captive people who are fenced in in refugee camps with a modern air force for example) is inexcusable, as is its complete ignoring of world opinion on this issue. I think that Israel has as much right to defend itself as any other country, but I don't think we in the US should be subsidizing it to the extent we do - about half of the Israeli government's national budget comes from the US. 

On the other hand, every country should be held to the same standard that critics of Israel hold Israel too, and protest the repression of people's or military aggressiveness of any other country as well. Sometimes this will mean criticizing governments that are unfriendly to Israel or to the US, sometimes the opposite. What is Saudi Arabia doing in Yemen and why are we sending them arms? Why did no one protest the massacre of peaceful democracy protesters in Bahrain by its government and then the invasion by Saudi Arabia of Bahrain to sustain that same government against its people? Why no protests around the world over the massacre of Red Shirt protesters in Thailand by the monarchy and military coup a few years ago? 

The other issue instead is what the effect of US foreign policy is on the US and whether US foreign policy is actually in the interests of the United States as a country and its people (as opposed to political elites that want global dominance, or corporate and financial interests for whom the US is merely a mercenary force to impose capitalist globalization) and what kind of realistic foreign policy is possible instead. 

Here the left occasionally hits the right note on how trade deals for example are not in our interests. It is weaker on exactly why we should not intervene militarily in this or that country and is so far, unfortunately without an alternative foreign policy to propose, Chomsky included. A default anarchism does not help, as foreign policy becomes a meaningless concept. But if the national state is not going away in the next ten years or in our lifetime then this is not a helpful stance. 

This is a discussion that would be too long to have here but here is my Reader's Digest version: 

1) to the extent that US foreign policy for 20-30 years has been "capitalist globalization and free market policies favoring big companies must be imposed everywhere without exception or else" it has destroyed our industrial base and that of some other countries, led to the rise of China, India to a lesser extent and Brazil, and in the case of China therefore presenting us with a potential adversary for world power and leadership in a very dangerous way. I am unaware of any country in history that has done more to provide a potential opponent with the resources it would need to challenge it for power. This policy has also led to growing inequality in every country, including our own. It should be changed and we need a new Bretton Woods conference that could involve negotiations that would enable every country to pursue national development policies that would be fit their own needs and create a decent life for all their people, put global finance back in its place as a servant and not god-like ruler of economies everywhere and still provide for trade without every country being forced to lower living standards merely to compete. 

2) Our alliances are dysfunctional - while Israel should remain one friendly country among others, the cost of alienating much of Middle East by giving Israel a pass on everything it does has been disastrous morally, politically and has led us to be a target for enemies we have only because of this policy in some cases. We should not be close to Saudi Arabia and should punish it for funding Wahabi Sunni movements that are attacking us and our allies and ordinary civilians all over the world including ISIS. We should work together with Russia to negotiate an end to the war in Syria which has led to the worst refugee crisis in decades and stop trying to merely overthrow Assad, but work for a coalition government in which he will leave in a reasonable time. We should stop the TPP which aside from being another horrible free trade pact is an attack on democracy by giving corporations the right to sue governments in private courts for any policy that lowers their profits, something turns government in practice over the private powers in a way that has not happened since feudalism (see Game of Thrones for how well that system works !). But the TPP is also a provocation against China since it sets up a Pacific economy without China - as if someone set up a free trade system in the Americas without the US, and we should stop provoking China over the islands in the South China Sea as the "universal freedom of the seas" as US policy has always been about our domination of the oceans and about access for our corporations. 

3) We should never have betrayed the promises made to Gorbachev and expanded NATO to the Russian borders after the Russians gave up their alliance in the Warsaw Pact. This will eventually lead to world war one day. We should not have provoked the Ukraine crisis by sponsoring the illegal overthrow of an elected government to put in power one that has tried to carry out ethnic cleansing of the Russian speaking population. Putin is a brutal thug, but he is reacting to legitimate greviances and no country with any power would accept a hostile government like the neo-Nazi forces that are part of the new government in the Ukraine right on their borders. The US would never accept a military alliance in Mexico with a hostile government there. 

4) We need a massive infrastructural transformation toward renewable energy, using our fossil fuels to carry us through the transition. We need a military strong enough to protect our country and to intervene if another country puts the world at risk, but not one big enough to intervene all over the world on a constant basis. We need - see the Bretton Woods comment above about creating the international architecture that could sustain this - full employment, development of technology to improve living standards not to undermine labor. We should not accept the most repressive aspects of Russia and China but there are ways of dealing with these are not military provocation - push the EU harder to drop austerity and make major infrastructural energy changes to renewables to make them less dependent on Russia oil, a law that any product produced by prison labor, child labor or slave labor or under conditions where workers are repressed when they try to unionize - no matter what country these products come from - will not be allowed to be sold in the United States and push the EU to do the same. This gives incentive to China and other countries (India, Malaysia etc. ) to provide more rights to workers without provoking war, and also gives an incentive to US companies to return to manufacturing at home to substitute for products that we currently import only to take advantage of cheap labor. 

We should also nationalize the banks and oil companies in the US as well, but that begins to address domestic policy as well which is not disconnected with foreign policy but is another matter. 

For those not familiar with the Trans Pacific Pact - the TPP which I refer to above, its contents have been kept secret (members of Congress could only read them in a close room and were legally bound not to discuss their contents !) until now. 

Here is a fine article summarizing the contents and why it is just awful:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/06/why-the-tpp-must-be-opposed-at-all-costs-its-worse-than-you-think/

Posted by italyprof on 11/7/2015 11:46:00 AM (view original):
For those not familiar with the Trans Pacific Pact - the TPP which I refer to above, its contents have been kept secret (members of Congress could only read them in a close room and were legally bound not to discuss their contents !) until now. 

Here is a fine article summarizing the contents and why it is just awful:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/06/why-the-tpp-must-be-opposed-at-all-costs-its-worse-than-you-think/

Even without reading it, just hearing that fact you mention would be enough to make me against it.

And yes, it is absolutely awful. Nothing more or less than an attempt at corporations to take over our democracy.