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Noam Chomsky

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Poll Question: Noam Chomsky
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3 [21.43%]
4 [28.57%]
3 [21.43%]
1 [7.14%]
3 [21.43%]
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  Quote Toltec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Noam Chomsky
    Posted: 02-Apr-2012 at 01:59
The most respected American intellectual and philosopher in the world. He's uncovered historical incidents from the past and done research to depth that shames the best historians.  But instead of me explaining I'll let him talk for himself.
 
Chomsky explains the lie of the free market and how democracy really works
From about 1 hour point he talks about the future of the internet
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Apr-2012 at 02:32
Chomsky is really great, not only as a social philosopher, but as a linguist; he is one of the most important, /not to say the most important/ philosopher of the late 20th century and our time.
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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 05:05
I voted for "weak", he seems to be abnormal, especially on his political views.
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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 14:10
Though I am only generaly aware of his linguistics achievements,  I voted for "good".  I am suspiscious of leftist academics and my bias  probably kept me from checking "great". 
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  Quote Centrix Vigilis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 14:33
An anarchist-libertarian socialists-anti-Semite's intellectuals (feigned or others) best friend. He is master linguist no doubt.....should have stayed there. Because in the end, his attempt to shadow Russell and Dewey have merely id' him the failure he is international realpolitik. The Mullahs of Iran adore the guy...that says it all.
 
'Bad' isn't there...so he doesn't get a rating.


Edited by Centrix Vigilis - 03-Apr-2012 at 14:34
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Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 19:24
I have to admit I know his linguistic works and his subsequent influence of psychology of cognition best, since this is my lane; I know his works on "political lingo" and find it very fitting and true for the communist political world I was raised in.

Anyway, his basic political stance is very close to that of my beloved Russian anarchists, and as such carries little practical value, since anarchism was never fit to be a practical system, but more of an idealistic corrective to what realities are - something to keep the boat from turning over, not to row with. I may disagree with many things he states, because they are too idealistic, and if put in practice would be total disaster, but I enjoy reading him anyway. He is far from original in his political stance though, while in his linguistic/psychological work he really broke ground on many levels.

I suspect  that in time, say 50-100 years from now whatever political stuff he was into will be forgotten, while his works or linguistic, grammar and psychology will be still important. Time has a way of weeding out what it's of real value, and what can be used later.


Edited by Don Quixote - 03-Apr-2012 at 19:36
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  Quote lirelou Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 23:36
Whatever his contribution to linguistics, and it is presently under attack from some quarters, I must judge him as a polemicist rather than a serious historian. He denied the Cambodian holocaust while it was on-going, then denied that he ever denied it. So, as Don Q had noted, any chance he has for his reputation surviving into the future will depend upon how well his work on linguistics stands the test of time. Even if overturned, he will be remembered for having stood out in his era.
Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2012 at 23:52
I don't see him as a historian at all, but as a social studies mixed-bag author - linguist, psychologist and analytical philosopher.
"Polemicist" is a good definition when it comes to his articles like the ones on the Gaza problems, collected in "Gaza in Crisis" - he is not striving for lack of emotions and cold objectivity as a historian would, be writes more like a lawyer in a trial - emotionally charged and making parallels that may be too shallow and with a certain orientation.

I know that he is seen here as leftist - I don't understand enough  the right-left dichotomy here, so I cannot come up with a relatively sane opinion on that; but what he writes about the US and the political lingo fits exactly for the political lingo in communist countries - and since communism is supposed to be "left" I can't see him as a leftist....I suppose this is some kind of irony or cultural myopia on my side, I'm not sure.


Edited by Don Quixote - 04-Apr-2012 at 00:09
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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Apr-2012 at 10:32
Originally posted by Don Quixote


I suspect  that in time, say 50-100 years from now whatever political stuff he was into will be forgotten, while his works or linguistic, grammar and psychology will be still important. Time has a way of weeding out what it's of real value, and what can be used later.
Very well said.
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  Quote Toltec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Apr-2012 at 11:49
Originally posted by lirelou

He denied the Cambodian holocaust while it was on-going, then denied that he ever denied it.
 
Originally posted by Centrix Vigilis

anti-Semite's
 
 
Only if you're both advocating Conservapedia as a ligitimate academic source.
 
On Cambodia he published everything he ever wrote on Cambodia on his website, read through and find a single thing you mention, then get back to me.
 
As for anti-semitism, he backs absolute freedom of speech, the price of this is racist people getting to say racist things, French people saying French things, tolerating cats meowing and fascists getting to dis Jews. Believing the benefits of freedom of speech outweight the negatives isn't antisemitism. In Germany they jail holocaust deniers, in the UK we don't, we refute them with evidence. Why do you hate freedom of speech so much?


Edited by Toltec - 15-Apr-2012 at 23:52
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?

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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Apr-2012 at 13:51
It was interesting or me what Chomsky said about Iran's Green Movement, I searched and found it from Iranian website: http://www.iranian.com/main/2011/mar/chomsky-irans-green-movement
 
Read comments:
 
Chomsky is not a shrwed scientist or anything that honorable. He is an anti American; far left wing ideologue. He wants a result {always anti American} then uses his abilities justify it. 
Unfortunately these guys get a lot of attention. Otherwise a dog barking has more logic in it than Chomsky. He has no regard for lives of people. Just wants to see USA fail. A real face of the so called "peace" movement.
 
Mr. Chomsky, do you have difficulty recalling that since coming to power the regime of the Islamic Republic has repressed Iranians with or without any "external threat?" Is it your age or your prejudice against Iranians which disallows you to see things clearly? Blaming things on "external threats" may be used to curtail political activities of all kinds, how do you justify lack of social and cultural freedoms under the brutal rule of IR for the past three decades? Shame on you, Mr. Chomsky! This is not about your bankrupt linguistic theories where you accuse your critics of misunderstanding them. We are talking about tens of millions of human beings here!
 
The man is really an idiot!
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Apr-2012 at 14:54
Originally posted by Toltec

 
As for anti-semitism, he backs absolute freedom of speech, the price of this is racist people getting to say racist things, French people saying French things, tolerating cats meowing and fascists ran getting to diz Jews. Believing the benefits of freedom of speech outweight the negatives isn't antisemitism. In Germany they deny holocaust deniers, in the UK we don't, we refute them with evidence. Why do you hate freedom of speech so much?

There cannot be an absolute freedom of anything, speech included, because freedom without responsibility is very dangerous. I don't see letting Neo-Nazis doing their "thang" as freedom of speech, this is propagadation of a merciless ideology, and denying of the Holocaust is taking away the lessons of history and possibly setting the scene for another Holocaust.

Whoever wants freedom of speech has to have the utmost responcibility toward what he/she is saying, ig one doesn't have this responcibility, he/she doesn't deserve this freedom. If I come to your home and start burning mummies of your wife and kids in your yard, and threaten your family, etc, and shout slogans full with hate, this wouldn't be freedom of speech, but abuse of it - and every abuse is to be stopped, this is only the responsible way.

In other words, Neo-Nazism and refuting any Holocaust has as much to do with freedom of speech as rape has to do with love - rape is to be forbidden, not allowed on some excuse that it's "freedom of expression" - the same thing with hate speech, and with refuting the deaths of millions of human beings - if it exists, its abuse, not freedom, and doesn't deserve toleration.

Besides, I know what lack of freedom of speech is - I was raised in a communist country. Whoever thinks that there isn't enough freedom of speech here, didn't really live in a highly centralised censored society, to really compare both.


Edited by Don Quixote - 15-Apr-2012 at 15:02
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  Quote Centrix Vigilis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Apr-2012 at 16:52
Truth remains as far as I am concerned, Toltec's rejection of the obvious aside..Chomsky, like Alinsky were and remain anti-semitic in the classicist interpretation and were defacto neo-communists...bewildered and dismayed when that system devolved into a strongman and subsequent oligarchy of power driven by and for sought self gain... and did what was necessary to perp and maintain it.
 
Such is.. and will remain the delusion of the socialist. As they fall to the fascist.....look at Sweden for a current executive example...and Amerika as well.
 
The socialist remains the dupe of the totalitarianistic. period. an honest and object review of the historical developement and record, unless willingly denied and obsfucated, can not be refuted.
 
But alas..... covert or overt..feigned intellectualist or other... they all seek their comfort zone.Wink


Edited by Centrix Vigilis - 15-Apr-2012 at 16:53
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Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'

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  Quote Toltec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Apr-2012 at 23:57
Originally posted by Cyrus Shahmiri

 
 
Chomsky is not a shrwed scientist or anything that honorable. He is an anti American; far left wing ideologue. He wants a result {always anti American} then uses his abilities justify it. 
Unfortunately these guys get a lot of attention. Otherwise a dog barking has more logic in it than Chomsky. He has no regard for lives of people. Just wants to see USA fail. A real face of the so called "peace" movement.
 
Mr. Chomsky, do you have difficulty recalling that since coming to power the regime of the Islamic Republic has repressed Iranians with or without any "external threat?" Is it your age or your prejudice against Iranians which disallows you to see things clearly? Blaming things on "external threats" may be used to curtail political activities of all kinds, how do you justify lack of social and cultural freedoms under the brutal rule of IR for the past three decades? Shame on you, Mr. Chomsky! This is not about your bankrupt linguistic theories where you accuse your critics of misunderstanding them. We are talking about tens of millions of human beings here!
 
 
Quoting a couple of idiots making stuff up about what he says isn't an argument against him, it's a misunderstanding at best and laziness to bother to learn what he really says at worst.
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?

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  Quote okamido Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 00:47
Put up some of his wonderful works, Toltec. I might be interested in ripping them to shreds.Smile 
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 00:49
There is no need to use labels, they usually don't improve the character of a discussion.

I have to admit though that I listened to the videos twice and didn't understand why Chomsky received the said commentsConfused . I didn't see anything anti-Green-Iranian-Movement, what he said is that the Us can erase Iran is they want so, and that it would be lunacy - how is that anti-Green-Iranian-Movements? How is a possible US attack on Iran going to improve the lives of the people there? Do the Iranian people want a war with US, thinking that this will give them liberty? Chomsky is saying that if pressure be applied on Iran, the regime will stagnate even more, and this will not help the democratic movements. He says "if we really want to help the democratic movement, as we should, we should be trying to relax the international tension".

Btw, I think there is reason in that - all totalitarian regimes uses external threat to mobilize their own  people, that why the Cold War was godsend for USSR in keeping the Eastern Europe under the curtain; in the absence of such a threat such regimes can invent one just for propaganda uses. I don't think though that relaxing external pressure will help at all - it probably will give Iran the feeling that they have card blanche for what they want to do. Anyway, repressive regimes tend to fall at some point - it took the communist system 45 years to fail economically and break down naturally, but finally this did happen; Chomsky is right when he said that sooner or later repressive regimes fall down because of popular uprising of their own people, and showed deep admiration for whoever is leading and participating in the Green Movement - how is that anti-itConfused?


Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Apr-2012 at 01:19
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  Quote Toltec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 01:51
Originally posted by Centrix Vigilis

Truth remains as far as I am concerned, Toltec's rejection of the obvious aside..Chomsky, like Alinsky were and remain anti-semitic in the classicist interpretation and were defacto neo-communists...bewildered and dismayed when that system devolved into a strongman and subsequent oligarchy of power driven by and for sought self gain... and did what was necessary to perp and maintain it.
 
Such is.. and will remain the delusion of the socialist. As they fall to the fascist.....look at Sweden for a current executive example...and Amerika as well.
 
The socialist remains the dupe of the totalitarianistic. period. an honest and object review of the historical developement and record, unless willingly denied and obsfucated, can not be refuted.
 
But alas..... covert or overt..feigned intellectualist or other... they all seek their comfort zone.Wink
 
Chomsky is an anarchist (in your right wing definition, a libertarian that supports the minimal state) so putting up an example of an authoritarian state as an example seems to be a misunderstanding or a strawman... If you wish to oppose his arguments please tell me why ayou support a large state?
 
As for fascism, this is a political label, the economics term for this is the corperate state. Fascism is when the corperations and government join together to rule a country. Think of a country where the politicians receive funds from corperations? Where the parties are funded by corperations, where the news on politics is reported by corperations, where 90% of the wealth is owned by corperations, where the foriegn policy is to promote the interests of corperations, where the central bank is a corperation, where the monitary system is controlled by corperations, there wars are conducted for corperate gain and where almost all decisions made by the corperate funded politicians are in the interest of corperations........ This is a corperate state, fascism.
 
As for antisemitism, let alone providding an example you haven't even given a definiton.
 
 
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?

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  Quote Toltec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 02:01
Originally posted by Don Quixote

Originally posted by Toltec

 
As for anti-semitism, he backs absolute freedom of speech, the price of this is racist people getting to say racist things, French people saying French things, tolerating cats meowing and fascists ran getting to diz Jews. Believing the benefits of freedom of speech outweight the negatives isn't antisemitism. In Germany they deny holocaust deniers, in the UK we don't, we refute them with evidence. Why do you hate freedom of speech so much?

There cannot be an absolute freedom of anything, speech included, because freedom without responsibility is very dangerous. I don't see letting Neo-Nazis doing their "thang" as freedom of speech, this is propagadation of a merciless ideology, and denying of the Holocaust is taking away the lessons of history and possibly setting the scene for another Holocaust.

Whoever wants freedom of speech has to have the utmost responcibility toward what he/she is saying, ig one doesn't have this responcibility, he/she doesn't deserve this freedom. If I come to your home and start burning mummies of your wife and kids in your yard, and threaten your family, etc, and shout slogans full with hate, this wouldn't be freedom of speech, but abuse of it - and every abuse is to be stopped, this is only the responsible way.

In other words, Neo-Nazism and refuting any Holocaust has as much to do with freedom of speech as rape has to do with love - rape is to be forbidden, not allowed on some excuse that it's "freedom of expression" - the same thing with hate speech, and with refuting the deaths of millions of human beings - if it exists, its abuse, not freedom, and doesn't deserve toleration.

Besides, I know what lack of freedom of speech is - I was raised in a communist country. Whoever thinks that there isn't enough freedom of speech here, didn't really live in a highly centralised censored society, to really compare both.
 
John Stuart Mill in on Liberty gives supports absolute freedom of speech, notes all your objections and answers them. If you suppress unpaleatable views you may allow them to fester and grow. One thing about these views is they always contains grains of truth, this then allows the people advocating these views to ignore the false bits, point to the truth bits and gains support by showing the truth is being suppressed. If you bring them into the public you can address them, seprate the truth from the falsity.
 
An example would be rightwing groups say blacks are more likely to commit crimes because of their race, the proof is the disproportinate number of blacks in prison. If I suppress this opinion, the right wingers could simply say I am suppressing them from saying more black are criminals, and their view will gain creedence. If I allow them to say their view I can then address it, say it's true more blacks are in prison but your racist views are wrong, the reason behind this is because they grow up in deprived areas where the rate of white criminality is the same.
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?

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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 02:23
Ok, I agree with that - taking all kinds of views to discuss them, that's good; what I was talking against is not discussions, but hate speech, act and slogans, because with them you can't converse, then just come on you like waves.
I have Mill somewhere but I haven't read him yet, most lamentably, thanks for the reference.
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  Quote Don Quixote Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Apr-2012 at 02:29
Originally posted by Toltec

Chomsky is an anarchist (in your right wing definition, a libertarian that supports the minimal state)
 

That's right, that's why don't see his as a leftist at all, I wrote on that.
As for antisemitist - I don't see him like this either, he is disagreeing with the methods with which Israel suppresses a possibly viable Palestinian state, with the settlements that cantonize the so called "Palestinian territory", not that he opposes the right of Israel to exist.


Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Apr-2012 at 02:36
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