Background Image
As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.
-Noam Chomsky
Please Wait....
Translating....

As Long As People

Noam Chomsky
As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.
Views: 5
Topic
Crazy
Thinking
Oddities
More From Noam Chomsky
It [the Internet] Should Be Publicly Controlled But Washington Is Not A System Of Public Control, It's Mainly A System Of Corporate Control. We Ought To Have A Free Internet, But That Means Having A Free Society, And There Is Fundamental Questions There.
Mean
Fundamentals
Internet
Human Language Is Nothing Like The Signalling Systems Of Other Animals.
Animal
Language
Humans
You Don't Have Any Other Society Where The Educated Classes Are So Effectively Indoctrinated And Controlled By A Subtle Propaganda System - A Private System Including Media, Intellectual Opinion Forming Magazines And The Participation Of The Most Highly Educated Sections Of The Population. Such People Ought To Be Referred To As "commissars - For That Is What Their Essential Function Is - To Set Up And Maintain A System Of Doctrines And Beliefs Which Will Undermine Independent Thought And Prevent A Proper Understanding And Analysis Of National And Global Institutions, Issues, And Policies".
Truth
Independent
Issues
State Propaganda, When Supported By The Educated Classes And When No Deviation Is Permitted From It, Can Have A Big Effect. It Was A Lesson Learned By Hitler And Many Others, And It Has Been Pursued To This Day.
Class
Lesson Learned
Lessons
U.s. Analysts Estimate That Russian Military Expenditures Have Tripled During The Bush-putin Years, In Large Measure A Predicted Reaction To The Bush Administration's Militancy And Aggressiveness.
Military
Years
Administration
The United States Has Done Some Very Good Things In The World, And That Does Not Change The Fact That The World Court Was Quite Correct In Condemning The United States As An International Terrorist State.
United States
Doe
Done
Violence Can Succeed, As Americans Know Well From The Conquest Of The National Territory. But At Terrible Cost. It Can Also Provoke Violence In Response, And Often Does.
Doe
Cost
Territory
As International Support For Obama's Decision To Attack Syria Has Collapsed, Along With The Credibility Of Government Claims, The Administration Has Fallen Back On A Standard Pretext For War Crimes When All Else Fails: The Credibility Of The Threats Of The Self-designated Policeman Of The World.
War
Government
Self
Suppose That I See A Hungry Child In The Street, And I Am Able To Offer The Child Some Food. Am I Morally Culpable If I Refuse To Do So? Am I Morally Culpable If I Choose Not To Do What I Easily Can About The Fact That 1000 Children Die Every Hour From Easily Preventable Disease, According To Unicef? Or The Fact That The Government Of My Own "free And Open Society" Is Engaged In Monstrous Crimes That Can Easily Be Mitigated Or Terminated? Is It Even Possible To Debate These Questions?
Children
Government
Disease
Goebbels Was In Favor Of Free Speech For Views He Liked. So Was Stalin. If You’re Really In Favor Of Free Speech, Then You’re In Favor Of Freedom Of Speech For Precisely The Views You Despise. Otherwise, You’re Not In Favor Of Free Speech.
Views
Freedom Of Speech
Favors
I Think The Activism Of The 1960s Had A Very Definite Civilizing Effect On The Whole Society In All Kinds Of Ways. So Lots Of Things That By Now Are Almost Taken For Granted Were Heretical In The 1960s. We Had Anti-sodomy Laws Until Not Many Years Ago.
Taken
Thinking
Years
I Haven't Seen Any Claim That Piraha Lacks Recursion, That Is, That There Are A Finite Number Of Sentences Or Sentence Frames. If That's So, It Would Mean That The Speakers Of This Language Aren't Making Use Of A Capacity That They Surely Have, A Normal Situation; Plenty Of People Throughout History Would Drown If They Fall Into Water.
Fall
Mean
Finite Number
When I Was A Boy, We Were The Only Jewish Family In A Terribly Anti-semitic Neighborhood. Those Streets Weren't Any Fun For Us But Our Parents Never Found That Out. In A Way, You Avoid Telling Your Parents What Happened To You During Those Days.
Fun
Boys
Parent
It Is An Astonishing Fact About The Current Era That In The Most Powerful Country In World History, With A High Level Of Education And Privilege, One Of The Two Political Parties Virtually Denies The Well-established Facts About Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Country
Powerful
Party
Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.
Independent
Violation Of Human Rights
Government
Reagan Was Extreme. Beginning Of His Administration, One Of The First Things Was To Call In Scabs - Hadn't Been Done For A Long Time, And It's Illegal In Most Countries - In The Air Controller Strike.
Country
Air
Long
A Property Of An Organism Enters Into Its Life (and Survival) In Many Different Ways, Some More Salient Than Others. But There Is No Simple Notion Of Its Being "for" Some Function.
Simple
Survival
Different
The United States In Many Ways Resembles A Third World Country - Far More Elevated, But It Has Many Of Those Structural Characteristics: The Extreme Inequality Of Wealth, The Deterioration Of Infrastructure Because It Only Serves Poor People, Predatory Operations, Huge Corruption, And So On.
Country
People
United States
Amusing And Perfectly Self-conscious Charlatans.
Self
Amusing
Conscious
To Live A Life Of Honesty And Integrity Is A Responsibility Of Every Decent Person.
Honesty
Integrity
Responsibility
People Have No Human Rights, Only The Rights That They Can Gain On The Labour Market. Above All, Wealth And Power Have To Be Protected.
Rights
People
Gains
Those Lucky Enough To Qualify As "intellectuals" Have Their Own Special Responsibilities, Deriving From Their Good Fortune. Among These Is The Task That [edward] Said Describes, Surely An Important One.
Responsibility
Special
Important
It's Quite Extraordinary To Hear A Supposedly Learned Person Call The United States A Leading Terrorist Nation, One Of The Leading Terrorist Nations In The World. It's False And Very Treacherous Teaching.
Teaching
Learned Person
United States
About Specific Social Issues, There Is A Great Deal To Say That Departs Very Far From Truism And Is, Accordingly, Significant And Controversial.
Issues
Controversial
Significant
Work Can Be Undertaken To Create An Authentic Independent Political Party, A Real Party, Based On Popular Participation From The Ground Up, Not A Top-down Candidate Producing Organization Like The Two Official Parties, Working From School Boards To State Legislatures And Beyond. Not Easy In The Regressive U.s. Political System, But Not Impossible.
Real
Party
School
Concision Is A Technique Of Propaganda. It Ensures You Cannot Do Anything Except Repeat Clichés, The Standard Doctrine, Or Sound Like A Lunatic.
Technique
Sound
Doctrine
... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.
Media
Supportive
Analysis
Every Book That Comes Out, Every Article That Comes Out, Talks About How - While It May Have Been A "mistake" Or An "unwise Effort" - The United States Was Defending South Vietnam From North Vietnamese Aggression. And They Portray Those Who Opposed The War As Apologists For North Vietnam. That's Standard To Say. The Purpose Is Obvious: To Obscure The Fact That The United States Did Attack South Vietnam And The Major War Was Fought Against South Vietnam.
War
Mistake
Book
When I Wrote About The Spanish Civil War Many Years Later, I Used Documents That I Picked Up When I Was A Child, As A Lot Hadn't Been Published (a Lot More Resources Are Available Now).
Children
War
Years
Parts Of The United States Are Taking On A Third World Look.
United States
Looks
World
They, Students Have A Degree Of Freedom That Nobody Else Has.
Degrees
Students
I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.
Use
Littles
Eating
In General I Don't Think The Image Of The State As A Divinity Is Very Helpful.
Thinking
Divinity
Helpful
People Who Don't Accept That Doctrinal System, They May Try To Survive In The Media, But They Are Unlikely To.
Media
People
Trying
Technology Can Be Used That Way And It Can Also Be Used In Other Ways.
Technology
Way
Used
Melting Of The Huge Antarctic Glaciers, Proceeding More Rapidly Than Anticipated, Threatens A Rise In Sea Level That Will Drive Tens Of Millions From The Low-lying Plains Of Bangladesh Alone, With Disastrous Consequences Elsewhere.
Lying
Sea
Melting
There Are Massive Efforts On The Part Of The Internet's Corporate Owners To Try To Direct It To Become A Technique Of Marginalisation And Control.
Effort
Trying
Technique
I Had Two Spinster Aunts Who Were Seamstresses, And Of Course Unemployed In The 1930s, But The Union Gave Them A Life. They Had A Couple Of Weeks In The Country For A Union Installation And They Had Educational Programs And All Sorts Of Things. There Was A Life, You Know, A Real Community.
Country
Couple
Real
When Something Isn't Constantly Drummed-up By The Media, [people] Just Don't Know About It.
Media
People
Knows
They [the Union] Were Members Of The Communist Party - They Didn't Care One Way Or Another About Russia, They Just Cared About The United States.
Party
Russia
United States
When [bill] Clinton Came Along, It Sort Of Moderated A Little Bit, But Clinton Had A Different Device For Breaking Unions Called Nafta [north America Free Trade Agreement]. Because The Government Was Entirely Lawless, Employers Could Exploit Nafta To Threaten Union Organizers With Transfer. It's Illegal, But When You've Got A Lawless Government, It Doesn't Matter If It's Illegal. I Think The Number Of Union Drives Blocked Increased By About 50 Percent.
Thinking
Government
Agreement
There Are Many Concepts Of Spirituality, Among Them, Various Notions Of Divinity Developed In The Judaeo-christian-islamic Religions. Within These The Concepts Vary Greatly.
Christian
Islamic
Divinity
I Don't Really See What Can Be Said About The Role Of Faculty Members, Or Universities, Beyond The Truisms Voiced Earlier, And Their Elaboration In Various Domains, Ranging From Focused Intellectual Pursuits To The Concerns Of The Larger Society And Future Generations.
Faculty Members
Intellectual
Generations
Allowing An Independent And Sovereign Iraq Could Be A Nightmare For The United States. It Would Mean That It Would Be Shi'ite-dominated, At Least If It's Minimally Democratic. It Would Continue To Improve Relations With Iran, Just What The United States Doesn't Want To See. And Beyond That, Right Across The Border In Saudi Arabia Where Most Of Saudi Oil Is, There Happens To Be A Large Shi'ite Population, Probably A Majority.
Mean
Independent
Iran
For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.
Couple
Struggle
Rights
One Of The Truths About The World Is That There Are Two Superpowers, One A Huge Power Which Happens To Have Its Boot On Your Neck; Another, A Smaller Power Which Happens To Have Its Boot On Other People's Necks. I Think That Anyone In The Third World Would Be Making A Grave Error If They Succumbed To Illusions About These Matters
Thinking
Errors
Two
The Government Of Rwanda, Which Is A Us Client, Is Intervening Massively, And Uganda To An Extent. It's Almost An International War In Africa. Well, How Many People Know About This?
War
Uganda
Government
Take Pandemics. There Could Easily Be A Severe Pandemic. A Lot Of That Comes From Something We Don't Pay Much Attention To: Eating Meat. The Meat Production Industry, The Industrial Production Of Meat, Uses An Immense Amount Of Antibiotics.we're Now Running Out Of Antibiotics That Deal With The Threat Of Rapidly Mutating Bacteria. A Lot Of That Just Comes From The Meat Production Industry. Well, Do We Worry About It? Well, We Ought To Be.
Running
Worry
Meat
If You Look At Us Internal Documents, They Explain Very Clearly What The Threat Of Cuba Was. So, Back In The Early 1960s The State Department Described The Threat Of Cuba As Castro's Successful Defiance Of Us Policy, Going Back To The Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine Established The Us Claim To Dominate The Western Hemisphere And Castro Was Successfully Defying That. That's Not Tolerable. It Is Like Somebody Saying "let's Have Democracy In Greece," And We Just Can't Tolerate That So We Have To Destroy The Threat At Its Roots.
Successful
Roots
Democracy
Humans Have Certain Properties And Characteristics Which Are Intrinsic To Them, Just As Every Other Organism Does. That's Human Nature.
Doe
Human Nature
Characteristics
Concentration Of Ownership In The Media Is High And Increasing. Furthermore, Those Who Occupy Managerial Positions In The Media, Or Gain Status Within Them As Commentators, Belong To The Same Privileged Elites, And Might Be Expected To Share The Perceptions, Aspirations And Attitudes Of Their Associates, Reflecting Their Own Class Interests As Well.
Attitude
Media
Class
The Russians Were Doing A Lot Of Rotten Things, You Can Point To Them. But The Idea That If You Consider What Hans Morgenthau Called "i Called Abuse Of Reality," The Picture Of The World Was Almost The Opposite Of What They Presented. But Somehow This Sells And Is Continually Repeated, At Least In This Kind Of Situation.
Reality
Opposites
Ideas
Sectors Of Power Are Not Going To Favor The Flourishing Of Dissidence.
Favors
Flourishing
Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.
Nice
People
Nice People
There Was A Hemispheric Conference In Colombia. It Couldn't Reach A Consensus, So There Was No Declaration That Came Out, [but] On The Crucial Issues, Canada And The Us Were Totally Isolated. The Rest Of The Hemisphere Voted One Way, And The Us And Canada Rejected It. So There Couldn't Be A Consensus.
Issues
Hemisphere
Canada
The Costs Of The Bush-obama Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan Are Now Estimated To Run As High As $4.4 Trillion - A Major Victory For Osama Bin Laden, Whose Announced Goal Was To Bankrupt America By Drawing It Into A Trap. The 2011 Military Budget - Almost Matching That Of The Rest Of The World Combined - Is Higher In Real Terms Than At Any Time Since World War Ii And Is Slated To Go Even Higher .
Running
Military
Real
The General Principle Is That The Victors Don't Look At Themselves Or Concede Anything. The Defeated Typically Have To, Except When It's Beneficial To The Powerful For Them Not To.
Powerful
Principles
Looks
I Think There Was An Overemphasis In The Early Stage On Militarization Rather Than Directly Providing Relief. I Don't Think It Has Any Long-term Significance.
Thinking
Long
Relief
The United States Is A Very Insular Society. Most People Know Very Little About The Outside World And Don't Care That Much. They're Concerned With Their Own Affairs.
People
Care
Littles
State Formation Has Been A Brutal Project, With Many Hideous Consequences. But The Results Exist, And Their Pernicious Aspects Should Be Overcome.
Overcoming
States
Projects
Policy Is Largely Set By Economic Elites And Organized Groups Representing Business Interests With Little Concern For Public Attitudes Or Public Safety, As Long As The Public Remains Passive And Obedient.
Attitude
Long
Safety
The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.
Machines
World
Destroying
Us Government Policies Are Continuing To Do Exactly The Same Thing [produce Terrorism]. Two Days After The Boston Marathon Bombings, There Was A Drone Strike In Yemen Attacking A Peaceful Village, Which Killed A Target Who Could Very Easily Have Been Apprehended. But Of Course It Is Just Easier To Terrorise People.
Government
Boston
Two
There Was Very Little International Support, Even England Wouldn't Support [bombing Of Syria], Which Is Amazing.
Support
Littles
England
There Could Be An Independent Labor-based Party, Which Might Over Time Become An Important Force The Way The Labor Party Did In England. To All Of These Things There Are Plenty Of Barriers, In The Culture And In The Social And Political Institutions, The Concentration Of Economic Power. But These Are Not Insuperable Barriers, I Think. They Can Be Overcome. And It Is Urgent That This Be Done, Because There Are Really Incredible Problems That Are Simply Not Being Addressed.
Party
Independent
Thinking
The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.
Democracy
Needs
Democratic
One Should Be Cautious About "general Conceptions." I Think A Strong Case Can Be Made That Activism Today Is As High As Ever, Perhaps More So, And Is Also Taking New And Significant Forms. There Has Never Been Anything Like The International Solidarity Movements That Began To Take Shape In The 1980s, Right In The Mainstream, Or The Global Justice Movements That Have Become A Very Powerful Force In Later Years. It's True That The Society Is Highly Atomized, Which Does Induce A Sense Of Hopelessness Often - Quite Mistakenly I Think.
Strong
Powerful
Thinking
What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.
Historical
Done
Agents
People Who Call Themselves Supporters Of Israel Are Actually Supporters Of Its Moral Degeneration And Ultimate Destruction.
Israel
People
Moral
Technology Can Also Be Used So That Private Individuals Will Have Access To The Way Centralized Decisions Are Being Made.
Technology
Decision
Way
So If You Look At The Writings Of Intellectuals, There Are Two Kinds. One Said, L"look, If We Fought Harder We Could Have Won.but The Others, Who Were Way At The Left, People Like Anthony Lewis Of The New York Times, Way Out In Left Stream, His View In 1975 Was The Vietnam War Began With Blundering Efforts To Do Good. But By 1969, It Was Clear That It Was A Disaster, That Was Too Costly To Us.
New York
War
Writing
My Feeling Is That If Any Republican Was Elected It Would Be Almost A Death Knell For The Species Literally, Just Because Of Their Attitude On Climate Change.
Attitude
Feelings
Climate
Britain Kept Its Position As The Dominant World Power Well Into The 20th Century Despite Steady Decline. By The End Of World War Ii, Dominance Had Shifted Decisively Into The Hands Of The Upstart Across The Sea, The United States, By Far The Most Powerful And Wealthy Society In World History.
Powerful
War
Hands
The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.
Real
Political
Proposal
There Are People On The Left Who Say, Look, We Can't Let These Atrocities Go On, So Let's Enter The War And Get Rid Of Bashar Assad. The Problem With That Is You Get Into A Nuclear War With Russia. And Syria Gets Wiped Out Along With Everything Else. So, It's Fine To Say, Ok, Let's Stop The Crimes, But How Exactly?
War
People
Problem
The Andes Region Is Not Stable. So We Can Expect To See More Us Intervention. It Could Be Under Any Kind Of Pretext. We Can No Longer Use The Russians As An Excuse, As We Did In Central America In The 1980's, So Drugs Will Have To Do.
America
Drug
Use
I Just Don't Care About Popular Culture. It Looks To Me Pointless And Superficial. If I Had Free Time I'd Rather Read A 19th Century Novel.
Culture
Looks
Care
I Was Told By Journalists Who Can't Publish It That There Are In Mexico, Close To The U.s. Border, Big Areas That Used To Be Devoted To Agriculture That Are Now Devoted To Poppies. They Say You Can't Get In There Because They're Guarded, First By The Cartels, But Also By The Army, Which Goes Hand In Hand With The Cartels.
Army
Hands
Agriculture
Death And Genitals Are Things That Frighten People, And When People Are Frightened, They Develop Means Of Concealment And Aggression. It Is Common Sense.
Mean
People
Common Sense
In The Early 50s In The Us, There Was What Was Called Mccarthyism And The Only Reason It Succeeded Was That There Was No Resistance To It. When They Tried The Same Thing In The 60s It Instantly Collapsed Because People Simply Laughed At It So They Couldn't Do It. Even A Dictatorship Can't Do Everything It Wants. It's Got To Have Some Degree Of Popular Support.
People
Support
Atheism
Even Stalin Proclaimed His Love For Democracy. We Do Not Learn About The Nature Of Systems Of Power By Listening To Their Rhetoric.
Listening
Democracy
His Love
There Is A Kind Of Nonlinguistic Thought Going On Which We Are Trying To Represent In Language, And We Know That Sometimes We Fail.
Trying
Language
Kind
Nicaragua Dealt With The Problem Of Terrorism In Exactly The Right Way. It Followed International Law And Treaty Obligations. It Collected Evidence, Brought The Evidence To The Highest Existing Tribunal, The International Court Of Justice, And Received A Verdict - Which, Of Course, The U.s. Dismissed With Contempt.
Law
Justice
Nicaragua
You Never Know How [donald Trump] Is Going To React. When He Learned For Example That He'd Lost The Election By About Three Million Votes, His Instant Reaction Was Insanity; You Know, Three To Five Million Illegal Immigrants Somehow Were Organized In Some Incredible Fashion To Vote.
Fashion
Insanity
Example
You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.
People
Magic
Sometimes
The Threat And Use Of Violence Is Stimulating Nuclear Proliferation Along With Jihadi Terrorism.
Use
Nuclear Proliferation
Violence
If You Want To End Terrorism Stop Participating In It.
Want
Terrorism
Ends
Labor Has Been Severely Undermined, But That's Happened Before. In The 1920s, The Labor Movement Was Virtually Crushed, In Large Part By Wilson's Red Scare, But It Dramatically Revived In The 1930s. It Spearheaded The Social-democratic New-deal Style Changes Which Were Beneficial To The Country - Not Sufficient, But Beneficial. That Could Happen Again.
Country
Style
Scare
The U.s. Has The Most Dysfunctional Healthcare System In The Industrial World, Has About Twice The Per Capita Costs, And Some Of The Worst Outcomes. It's Also The Only Privatized System.
Cost
World
Outcomes
There Are Big, Extremely Irrational Parts Of The Society, And They Have Now Been Mobilized Politically By The Republican Establishment, Hoping That These People Could Be An Electoral Base To Keep Them In Power.
People
Republican
Bigs
That's A Large Part Of The Source Of The Gun Culture. You Have To Have A Gun When You Go Into Starbucks, Because Who Knows What's Going To Happen. It Just Doesn't Happen In Other Countries.
Country
Gun
Culture
If You Ask The Ceo Of Some Major Corporation What He Does, He Will Say, In All Honesty, That He Is Slaving 20 Hours A Day To Provide His Customers With The Best Goods Or Services He Can And Creating The Best Possible Working Conditions For His Employees.
Honesty
Creating
Corporations
Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation With India).
India
Pakistan
Confrontation
There's A War Crimes Act In The United States Passed By A Republican Congress In 1996, Which Says That Grave Breaches Of The Geneva Convention Are Subject To The Death Penalty. And That Doesn't Mean The Soldier That Committed Them - That Means The Commanders.
War
Mean
Soldier
The Main Purpose Of Advertising Is To Undermine Markets. If You Go To Graduate School And You Take A Course In Economics, You Learn That Markets Are Systems In Which Informed Consumers Make Rational Choices. That's What's So Wonderful About It. But That's The Last Thing That The State Corporate System Wants. It Is Spending Huge Sums To Prevent That.
School
Choices
Purpose
Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.
Why Not
Facts
Action
Now, The Libertarian Party, Is A *capitalist* Party. It's In Favor Of What *i* Would Regard A *particular Form* Of Authoritarian Control. Namely, The Kind That Comes Through Private Ownership And Control, Which Is An *extremely* Rigid System Of Domination - People Have To... People Can Survive, By Renting Themselves To It, And Basically In No Other Way... I Do Disagree With Them *very* Sharply, And I Think That They Are Not..understanding The *fundamental* Doctrine, That You Should Be Free From Domination And Control, Including The Control Of The Manager And The Owner.
Party
Thinking
People
John Lewis Gaddis Is Not Only The Favorite Historian Of The Reagan Administration, But He's Regarded As The Dean Of Cold War Scholarship, The Leading Figure In The American Cold War Scholarship, A Professor At Yale.
War
Yale
Administration
The United States Is A Violent Military State. It's Been Involved In Military Action All Over The Place.
Military
United States
Action
Going Back To Why People Don't Vote, I Presume The Main Reason Is Because They Understand Without Reading Political Science Texts That It Doesn't Make Any Difference How They Vote. It's Not Going To Affect Policy, So Why Bother?
Reading
People
Political
We're Human Beings; We're Not Robots. And Face-to-face Contact Is Something Totally Different Than Typing A Text Message And Then Forgetting About It.
Robots
Different
Faces
In This Possibly Terminal Phase Of Human Existence, Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Just Ideals To Be Valued - They May Be Essential To Survival.
Freedom
Hero
Democracies Have
The Human Digestive And Visual Systems Did Clearly Evolve Over A Very Long Period.
Long
Periods
Evolve
Anything Feasible And Potentially Effective Should Be Explored.
Should
Private Sector Unionization Is Down To Practically Seven Percent. Meanwhile The Public Sector Unions Have Kind Of Sustained Themselves [even] Under Attack, But In The Last Few Years, There's Been A Sharp [increase In The] Attack On Public Sector Unions, Which Barack Obama Has Participated In, In Fact. When You Freeze Salaries Of Federal Workers, That's Equivalent To Taxing Public Sector People.
Years
People
Salary
In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.
War
America
Years
If We Don't Believe In Free Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.
Inspirational
Relationship
Freedom
There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.
Public Opinion
Gaps
Policy
Right Now, Huge Numbers Of People Cannot Obtain Even Drinking Water, And The Situation Is Likely To Become Worse With Predicted Climate Change And Failure To Take The Actions That Are Necessary.
Drinking
People
Water
If You Want Information About Sports, I Can Tell You Things From The 1940's, And The Couple Years That My Grandson Was Kind Of A Jock, But Nothing In Between.
Sports
Couple
Years
I Also Learned From Reading The Left-wing Press About The [franklin] Roosevelt Administration's Indirect Support For Francisco Franco, Which Was Not Well Known, And Still Isn't.
Reading
Wings
Support
How Many Educated Americans Can Even Remember The Names Of The Assassinated Jesuit Intellectuals Of El Salvador, Or Would Know Where To Find A Word They Wrote? The Answers Are Revealing, Particularly When We Draw The Striking - And Historically Typical - Contrast To The Attitudes Towards Their Counterparts In Enemy Domains.
Attitude
Names
Enemy
Its Minority Rule And Majority Limited Rights. In Fact It's Set Up That Way. If You Read The Framers Of The Constitution, Including James Madison, He Was Pretty Clear About It.
Rights
Majority
Minorities
A Democracy Barely Functions Under The Neoliberal System.
Democracy
Function
As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.
Crazy
Thinking
Oddities
It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.
Terrorism
Ifs
It Takes One Minute To Tell A Lie, And An Hour To Refute It.
Lying
Hours
Minutes
The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.
Creativity
May
Bears
The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.
Thinking
People
Indoctrination
The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.
Responsibility
Opportunity
Privilege
A Fundamental Element Of Human Nature Is The Need For Creative Work, For Creative Inquiry, For Free Creation Without The Arbitrary Limiting Effects Of Coercive Institutions. A Decent Society Should Maximize The Possibilities For This Fundamental Human Characteristic To Be Realized.
Creative
Needs
Arbitrary
We Could Not Bring Democracy To South Vietnam At A Cost That We Were Willing To Accept. So It Was A Disaster. That' Is The Left Extreme.
Democracy
Cost
Vietnam
Labor #‎ Unions Are The Leading Force For #‎ Democratization And #‎ Progress .
Progress
Unions
Force
Social And Political Issues In General Seem To Me Fairly Simple; The Effort To Obfuscate Them In Esoteric And Generally Vacuous Theory Is One Of The Contributions Of The Intelligentsia To Enhancing Their Own Power And The Power Of Those They Serve.
Simple
Issues
Effort
I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.
Communication
Thinking
Important
Jamie Kilstein And Allison Kilkenny Have Created An Important Political Radio Show That Balances Humor And Unreported News. At A Time When Media Conglomerates Dominate The Airwaves, Independent Media Like Citizen Radio Is Vital To National Discourse.
Independent
Media
Political
The Major Advances In Speed Of Communication And Ability To Interact Took Place More Than A Century Ago. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Was Far More Radical Than That From Telephone To Email!
Inspirational
Funny
Communication
The Neoliberal Programs Of The Last Generation Have In Fact Been, And Were Intended To Be, A Pretty Serious Attack On Democracy, But Also They've Led To Stagnation Or Decline For Large Parts Of The Population - The Working Class, The Lower Middle Class, These People Have Essentially Been Cast Aside.
Class
People
Democracy
What Happened In The Missile Crisis In October 1962 Has Been Prettified To Make It Look As If Acts Of Courage And Thoughtfulness Abounded. The Truth Is That The Whole Episode Was Almost Insane.
Insane
Looks
October
If You Claim To Have A Theory That Deduces Unexpected Consequences From Nontrivial Principles, Let's See It.
Principles
Unexpected
Theory
The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.
Advertising
Travel From What Is Called Pakistan To Afghanistan Has Been Made Increasingly Difficult And People Are Often Labelled Terrorists, Even Those Who Might Be Just Visiting Families.
People
Pakistan
Might
We Should Recall That During The Second World War And The Great Depression There Was An Upsurge In Popular, Radical Democracy. In All Over The World. It Took Different Forms, But It Was There, Everywhere. In Greece It Was In The Greek Revolution, And So On. And It Had To Be Crushed. In Countries Like Greece, It Was Crushed By Violence. In Countries Like Italy, Where The Us Forces Entered In 1943, It Was Crushed By Attacking And Destroying The Anti-german Partisans And Restoring The Traditional Order.
Country
War
Order
Activism Spawned By Sanders Campaign Is Beginning To Make Inroads Into Electoral Politics. Under Barack Obama, The Democratic Party Pretty Much Collapsed At The Crucial Local And State Levels, But It Can Be Rebuilt And Turned Into A Progressive Force. That Would Mean Reviving The New Deal Legacy And Moving Well Beyond, Instead Of Abandoning, The Working Class And Turning Into Clintonite New Democrats, Which More Or Less Resemble What Used To Be Called Moderate Republicans, A Category That Has Largely Disappeared With The Shift Of Both Parties To The Right During The Neoliberal Period.
Party
Moving
Mean
Venezuela Is Independent. It's Diversifying Its Exports To A Limited Extent, Instead Of Just Being Dependent On Exports To The United States. And It's Initiating Moves Toward Latin American Integration And Independence. It's What They Call A Bolivarian Alternative And The United States Doesn't Like Any Of That.
Latin
Moving
Independent
The Rise Of What's Called Islamic Fundamentalism Is To A Significant Extent A Result Of The Collapse Of Secular Nationalist Alternatives Which Were Either Discredited Internally Or Destroyed, Leaving Few Other Options. Something Like That May Be True Of American Society.
Islamic
Leaving
Alternatives
We're Looking At The Dawn Of A New Arms Race. For Example, Germany Technically Opposes The Us Space Militarization Program, But Is Bound To Get Involved. Otherwise It Will Be Left Behind In The Development Of Advanced Technology. Germany Understands That Very Well. The Us Understands It Too, And They Fully Expect That Germany And Other Countries That They Want On Board Will Go Along With The Program.
Country
Technology
Space
Women Didn't Have Rights. Under British Common Law, Women Were Property.
Rights
Law
Common
There Is A Narrow Class Of Uses Of Language Where You Intend To Communicate. Communication Refers To An Effort To Get People To Understand What One Means. And That, Certainly, Is One Use Of Language And A Social Use Of It. But I Don't Think It Is The Only Social Use Of Language. Nor Are Social Uses The Only Uses Of Language.
Communication
Mean
Thinking
Radical Activists Can't Ignore The Fact That We Live In This World, Like It Or Not, And Have To Make Difficult Decisions About Which Paths Are The Best - Or Sometimes, The Least Harmful. There Are No Abstract Formulas. Have To Think Through Each Case On Its Own.
Thinking
Decision
World
In My Own Professional Work I Have Touched On A Variety Of Different Fields. I've Done Work In Mathematical Linguistics, For Example, Without Any Professional Credentials In Mathematics; In This Subject I Am Completely Self-taught, And Not Very Well Taught.
Self
Done
Fields
Marx's Early Manuscripts, With Their Roots In The Enlightenment And Romanticism, Derived Fundamental Concepts Such As Alienation From A Conception Of Human Nature - What We Would Call Genetically Determined.
Roots
Enlightenment
Fundamentals
If You Want To Make Changes In The World, You're Going To Have To Be There Day After Day Doing The Boring, Straightforward Work Of Getting A Couple Of People Interested And Building A Slightly Bigger Organization And Carrying Out The Next Move And Suffering Frustration And Finally Getting Somewhere. That's How The World Changes.
Couple
Moving
Frustration
We Must Present A National Persona Of Being Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Terrify People. And Then, They'll Back Off. And This Is Not [donald] Trump, This Is [bill] Clinton. It's Not [richard] Nixon, You Know. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People.
People
Bills
Clinton
One Of The Christian Fundamentalists' Goals Seems To Be To Rebuild The Temple, Which Means Destroying The Al-aqsa Mosque, Which Presumably Means War With The Arab World - One Of The Goals, Perhaps, In Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Armageddon. So They Strongly Support Israeli Power And Expansionism, And Help Fund It And Lobby For It; But They Also Support Actions That Are Very Harmful And Objectionable To Most Of Its Population - As Do Jewish Fundamentalist Groups, Mostly Rooted In The Us, Which, After All, Is One Of The Most Extreme Religious Fundamentalist Societies In The World.
Christian
Religious
War
There's A Tremendous Amount Of Language Loss. Most Of The Attention Is Given To Indigenous Languages, Which Makes Sense, But Some Of The Most Dramatic Language Loss Is In Europe.
Loss
Europe
Attention
It Is Reported That About 30% Of The World's Population Is Unemployed. That's Worse Than The Great Depression, But It's Now An International Phenomenon.
Population
World
Great Depression
As Far As U.s. Intelligence Knows, Iran Is Developing Nuclear Capacities, But They Don't Know If They Are Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons Or Not. Chances Are They're Developing What's Called 'nuclear Capability,' Which Many States Have. That Is The Ability To Have Nuclear Weapons If They Decide To Do It. That's Not A Crime.
Iran
Trying
Nuclear
A Good American Friend Of Mine Who Has Lived In India For Many Years, Working As A Journalist, Was Recently Denied Entry To The Country Because He Wrote On Kashmir. This Is A Reflection Of Fractures Within Society. Pakistan, Too, Has To Focus On The Lashkar [lashkar-i-taiba] And Other Similar Groups And Work Towards Some Sort Of Sensible Compromise On Kashmir.
Country
Reflection
Years
What Has To Be Done Today Is (1) Large-scale Conversion (weatherizing , Etc.), (2) Sharp Change In Transportation To Greater Efficiency, Like High-speed Rail, (3) Serious Efforts To Move To Sustainable Energy, Probably Solar In The Somewhat Longer Term, (4) Other Adjustments That Are Feasible. If Done Effectively, That Might Be Enough To Stave Off Disaster. If Not, Then We Can Give Up The Ghost, Because There Are No Alternatives In This World, At Least None That I've Seen Suggested.
Giving Up
Moving
Effort
A Large Part Of The Left Is Pro-assad. In Those Circles, You Can't Criticize Assad, But You Know He's A Monstrous War Criminal. And Anyone Who Criticizes Assad Is Joining The Us Imperialists. That's Just Ludicrous.
War
Circles
Criminals
How Do I Define God? I Don't.... People Who Find Such Conceptions Important For Themselves Have Every Right To Frame Them As They Like. Personally, I Don't.
Spiritual
Atheist
Science
In The Late 19th Century There Was A Major Union Organization, Knights Of Labor, And Also A Radical Populist Movement Based On Farmers. It's Hard To Believe, But It Was Based In Texas, And It Was Quite Radical. They Wanted Their Own Banks, Their Own Cooperatives, Their Own Control Over Sales And Commerce.
Believe
Knights
Texas
One Contribution Scientists Can And Should Make Is To Be Clear And Explicit About The Limits Of Scientific Understanding, A Matter That Is Particularly Important In Societies Where People Are Trained To Defer To Alleged Experts.
People
Understanding
Important
There Is A Reason Why Nelson Mandela Went To Cuba To Praise Castro And Thank The Cuban People Almost As Soon As He Got Out Of Jail. That's A Third World Reaction And They Understand It. Cuba Played An Enormous Role In The Liberation Of Africa And The Overthrow Of Apartheid, Sending Doctors And Teachers To The Poorest Places In The World, To Haiti, To Pakistan After The Earthquake, Almost Everywhere. The Internationalism Is Just Astonishing. I Don't Think There Has Been Anything Like It In History.
Teacher
Thinking
Doctors
In A Really Business-run Society Like The United States, The Business Elites Are Deeply Committed To Class Struggle And Are Engaged In It All The Time. They're Instinctive Marxists.
Running
Struggle
Class
[there Is] Is All Part Of The Whole Neoliberal Shift In The Economy. But The Parties Have Shifted To The Right.
Party
Economy
Whole
Everybody's Worried About Stopping Terrorism. Well, There's A Really Easy Way: Stop Participating In It.
War
Stopping
Way
United States Has Comparative Advantage In Military Force. It Tends To React To Anything At First With Military Force, That's What It's Good At. And I Think They Overdid It. There Was More Military Force Than Was Necessary.
Military
Thinking
United States
States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.
Powerful
Hero
People
Roughly Speaking, I Think It's Accurate To Say That A Corporate Elite Of Managers And Owners Governs The Economy And The Political System As Well, At Least In Very Large Measure.
Thinking
Political
Economics
Go Back To The Bible, The Old Testament. I Mean There Were People Who We Would Call Intelectuals, There, They Were Called Prophets, But They Were Basically Intelectuals: They Were People Who Were Doing Critical, Geopolitical Analysis, Talking About The Decisions Of The King Were Going To Lead To Destruction; Condemning Inmorality, Calling For Justice For Widows And Orphans. What We Would Call Dissident Intelectuals. Were They Nicely Treated? No, They Were Driven Into The Desert, They Were Imprisoned, They Were Denounced. They Were Intelectuals Who Conformed.
Kings
Mean
Talking
Isis Is A Monstrosity. It Didn't Come From Nowhere. It's One Of The Results Of The U.s. Hitting A Very Vulnerable Society - Iraq - With A Sledgehammer.
Iraq
Isis
Hitting
I Have Trouble Reading Modern Hebrew. In The 1950s, I Could Read Anything. I Don't Know How Much Experience You've Had With Contemporary Hebrew. It's Quite Difficult.
Reading
Hebrew
Trouble
The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.
Reactions
Delusion
There's An Interesting Book About That Called The Third Reich And The Ivory Tower, Written By Stephen H. Norwood. It Has A Long Discussion About Harvard, And Indeed The School's President, James Conant, Did Block Jewish Faculty. He Was The One Who Prevented European Jews From Being Admitted To The Chemistry Department - His Field - And Also Had Pretty Good Relations With The Nazis.
Block
Book
School
The Murder Of Lumumba, In Which The U.s. Was Involved, In The Congo Destroyed Africa's Major Hope For Development. Congo Is Now Total Horror Story, For Years.
Years
Horror Stories
Development
September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.
Government
Issues
September 11
There's An Internal Coherence And Logic To What They Get From [rush] Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, And The Rest Of These Guys. And They Sound Very Convincing, They're Very Self-confident, And They Have An Answer To Everything - A Crazy Answer, But It's An Answer. And It's Our Fault If That Goes On. So One Thing To Be Done Is Don't Ridicule These People, Join Them, And Talk About Their Real Grievances And Give Them A Sensible Answer, Like, "take Over Your Factories."
Crazy
Real
Self
The Search For Truth Is A Cooperative, Unending Endeavor. We Can, And Should, Engage In It To The Extent We Can And Encourage Others To Do So As Well, Seeking To Free Ourselves From Constraints Imposed By Coercive Institutions, Dogma, Irrationality, Excessive Conformity And Lack Of Initiative And Imagination, And Numerous Other Obstacles.
Imagination
Obstacles
Conformity
The Idea That Hezbollah Is Acting As An Agent Of Iran Is Very Dubious. It's Not Accepted By Specialists On Iran Or Specialists On Hezbollah. But It's The Party Line. Or Sometimes You Can Put In Syria, I.e. "syrian-supported Hezbollah," But Since Syria Is Of Less Interest Now You Have To Emphasize Iranian Support.
Party
Iran
Ideas
The Target Of Preventive War Must Have Several Characteristics. It Must Be Virtually Defenceless; It Must Be Important Enough To Be Worth The Trouble; It Must Be Possible To Portray It As The Ultimate Evil And An Imminent Threat To Our Survival.
War
Evil
Survival
The Market Is Regarded As Democratic Because Everybody Has A Vote. Of Course, Some Have More Votes Than Others Because Your Votes Depend On The Number Of Dollars You Have, But Everybody Participates And Therefore It's Called Democratic.
Numbers
Dollars
Vote
In General, I Think, U.s. Policies Remain Constant, Going Back To The Second World War. But The Capacity To Implement Them Is Declining.
War
Thinking
World
I Don't Bother Writing About Fox News. It Is Too Easy. What I Talk About Are The Liberal Intellectuals, The Ones Who Portray Themselves And Perceive Themselves As Challenging Power, As Courageous, As Standing Up For Truth And Justice. They Are Basically The Guardians Of The Faith. They Set The Limits. They Tell Us How Far We Can Go. They Say, 'look How Courageous I Am.' But Do Not Go One Millimeter Beyond That. At Least For The Educated Sectors, They Are The Most Dangerous In Supporting Power.
Writing
Justice
Challenges
As A Health Scientist At Columbia University, Les Roberts, Pointed Out, Sooner Or Later People Are Going To Be Looking At A Child In A Wheelchair Suffering From Polio And Will Say 'the Americans Did That To Him'. So They Continue Policies Which Have Similar Effects I.e. Organising The Taliban. This Will Come Back To Them Too.
Children
People
Suffering
Thomas Jefferson, The Leading Enlightenment Figure In The United States, Along With Benjamin Franklin, Who Took Exactly The Same View, Argued That Dependence Will Lead To "subservience And Venality", And Will "suffocate The Germs Of Virtue". And Remember, By Dependence He Meant Wage Labor, Which Was Considered An Abomination Under Classical Liberal Principles.
Views
Enlightenment
Principles
In A Moment Of Crisis, Of Which There Are All Too Many, Russian Military Planners May Conclude That Lacking A Deterrent, The Only Hope Of Survival Is A First Strike - Which Means The End For All Of Us.
Military
Mean
Survival
Enormous And Growing Parts Of The Population Are Basically Superfluous For Profit-making Purposes. Along With This, The Jail Population Is Increasing Very Rapidly; It's The Highest In The Industrial World By Far. New And Onerous Crime Bills Are Being Passed To Deal With This Superfluous Population.
Jail
Population
Purpose
Like Most Terms Of Political Discourse, Socialism Has More Or Less, Lost Its Meaning. Socialism Used To Mean Something. If You Go Back Far Enough It Meant Basically Control Of Production By Producers, Elimination Of Wage Labor, Democratization Of All Spheres Of Life; Production, Commerce, Education, Media, Workers Control Of Factories, Community Control Of Communities, And So On. That Was Socialism Once. But It Hasn't Meant That For A Hundred Years. Socialism Meant Something Different.
Mean
Media
Years
If It's Wrong When They Do It, It's Wrong When We Do It.
International Relations
Ifs
I Didn't Pay My Taxes For Years.
Years
Pay
Taxes
It Turned Out That [bill] Clinton Had Authorized Texaco To Illegally Ship Oil To The Military Junta [in Haiti] During A Time When We Were Supposedly Opposing The Military Junta And Supporting Democracy Instead.
Military
Oil
Democracy
These Are Fashionable People Who Call Themselves Philosophers.
People
Philosopher
Fashionable
South America Goes Its Own Way Dramatically In International Affairs.
America
Way
Affair
Should We Even Have The Classification System? Why Shouldn't These Things Be Open? There Are Things You Want To Keep Secret, Like The Characteristics Of Your Latest Fighter Plane Or Something Like That.
Secret
Want
Fighter
Unaccountable Private Power Concentrations That Dominate Economic And Social Life Have The Means To Seek To "regiment The Public Mind," And Become "tools And Tyrants" Of Government, In James Madison's Memorable Phrase, As He Warned Of The Threats He Discerned To The Democratic Experiment If Private Powers Were Granted Free Rein.
Memorable
Mean
Government
It Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies.
Leadership
Truth
Lying
As Long As The General Population Is Passive, Apathetic, Diverted To Consumerism Or Hatred Of The Vulnerable, Then The Powerful Can Do As They Please, And Those Who Survive Will Be Left To Contemplate The Outcome.
Powerful
Long
Hatred
Obama's Latest Line Is That He Didn't Establish A "red Line" But The World Did Through Its Conventions On Chemical Warfare.
World
The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.
War
Enemy
Reason
I Listen To Talk Radio A Lot And It's Kind Of Interesting. If You Can Sort Of Suspend Your Knowledge Of The World And Just Enter Into The World Of The People Who Are Calling In, You Can Understand Them.
People
Interesting
Calling
What Wikileaks Exposed Is Kind Of Superficial In A Way.
Way
Wikileaks
Kind
If The Rewiring Of The Brain That Yielded Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions Took Place In An Individual, Not A Group (and There Seems To Be No Coherent Alternative), Then Interaction Must Have Been A Later Phenomenon.
Expression
Brain
Groups
Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.
Rights
Majority Rule
Democracy
The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.
Intellectual
World
Crime
Pre-emptive War Might Fall Within The Framework Of International Law.
War
Fall
Law
The Term "intellectual" Is Used Conventionally To Refer To People Who Happen To Have Unusual Opportunities In This Regard, And As Always, Opportunity Confers Moral Responsibility.
Responsibility
Opportunity
People
The Majority Of The Population Thinks That If The Government Runs Healthcare, They're Going To Take Away Your Freedom. At The Same Time, The Public Favors A National Healthcare Program.
Running
Thinking
Government
There Is Always Room For Gramsci's "optimism Of The Will."
Optimism
Rooms
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


Trending Author
Sarah Dessen
Faith Evans
Mike Royko
Ali Smith
Carson McCullers
Patrick Dempsey
Category
Information