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[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.

-Noam Chomsky

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[james] Madison Pointed Out

Noam Chomsky

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[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.

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I Should Say That Canada Is One Of The Major Criminals, Not Just The Tar Sands And So On, But Even Mining Throughout The World, A Lot Of It Is Canadian. It's Extremely Destructive, So An Important Thing For Canadians To Do Is Curtail The Predatory And Destructive Behavior Of Their Own Government And Corporations. A Carbon Tax Is One Way Of Doing It.

Similar Problems Are Arising In Egypt Too. The Question Is Whether The Military Will Release Its Grip Which Has Been Extremely Strong For The Past 60 Years. So This Is Happening All Over The Region And Particularly Strikingly In Pakistan.

Younger People Who Are Being Indoctrinated Into The Contemporary System Of Falsification - They Really Have To Do Some Research To Find Out What Is The Truth. In The General Population, People Forget Or Don't Care That Much. And Gradually What You Hear Drilled Into Your Head Everyday Comes To Be Believed. People Don't Understand What You're Talking About Any More If You Discuss The American War On South Vietnam.

If Something Is Right (or Wrong) For Us, It’s Right (or Wrong) For Others. It Follows That If It’s Wrong For Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, And A Long List Of Others To Bomb Washington And New York, Then It’s Wrong For Rumsfeld To Bomb Afghanistan (on Much Flimsier Pretexts), And He Should Be Brought Before War Crimes Trials.

We Recriminalized Black Life. Incarceration Rates Since The 1908s Have Gone Through The Roof, Overwhelmingly Black Males, Women And Hispanics To Some Extent. Essentially Re-doing What Happened Under Reconstruction. That's The History Of African Americans - So How Can Any One Say There's No Problem. Sure, Racism Is Serious, But It's Worse Than That.

African American

We Do Not For Example Say That The Person Has A Perfect Knowledge Of Some Language L Similar To English But Still Different From It. What We Say Is That The Child Or Foreigner Has A 'partial Knowledge Of English' Or Is 'on His Or Her Way' Towards Acquiring Knowledge Of English, And If They Reach This Goal, They Will Then Know English.

On Humanitarian Intervention In General, I Guess My View Is Not Unlike The View That Was Attributed To Gandhi, Accurately Or Not, When He Was Supposedly Asked What He Thought About Western Civilization. He Is Supposed To Have Said That He Thought It Would Be A Good Idea. Similarly, Humanitarian Intervention Would Be A Good Idea, In Principle.

The Fact That All Normal Children Acquire Essentially Comparable Grammars Of Great Complexity With Remarkable Rapidity Suggests That Human Beings Are Somehow Specially Designed To Do This, With Data-handling Or 'hypothesis-formulating' Ability Of Unknown Character And Complexity.

Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.

For One Thing, Studying Language Is By Itself A Part Of A Study Of Human Intelligence That Is, Perhaps, The Central Aspect Of Human Nature. And Second, I Think, It Is A Good Model For Studying Other Human Properties, Which Ought To Be Studied By Psychologists In The Same Way.

One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.

The Occupy Movement Did Create Spontaneously Communities That Taught People Something: You Can Be In A Supportive Community Of Mutual Aid And Cooperation And Develop Your Own Health System And Library And Have Open Space For Democratic Discussion And Participation. Communities Like That Are Really Important.

For 500 Years, Since European Explorers Came, Latin American Countries Had Been Separated From One Another. They Had Very Limited Relations. Integration Is A Prerequisite For Independence.

The Invasion Of Panama, What Was That? The U.s. Killed, According To The Panamanians, 3,000 Civilians. Maybe They're Right. We Don't Investigate Our Own Crimes, So Nobody Knows.

In Egypt The Neoliberal Programs Have Meant Statistical Growth, Like Right Before The Arab Spring, Egypt Was A Kind Of Poster Child For The World Bank And The Imf [international Monetary Fund:] The Marvelous Economic Management And Great Reform. The Only Problem Was For Most Of The Population It Was A Kind Of Like A Blow In The Solar Plexus: Wages Going Down, Benefits Being Eliminated, Subsidized Food Gone And Meanwhile, High Concentration Of Wealth And A Huge Amount Of Corruption.

If In Fact, The Us Story Is Correct, If It Is True That Syria Used Chemical Weapons, Then It Wouldn't Be A Major Crime To Send A Kind Of Shot Across The Bow Saying You Can't Do This Anymore. Not The Best Thing In The World, But Not A Major Crime, Either. So, I Think At The Very Least There Should Have Been An Inquiry Into What Happened. But Just Joining The Bandwagon About How We're Finally Standing Up To Crimes In Syria, That's Ridiculous.

When Something Like This [2003 Invasion Of Iraq] Takes Place, The International Law Professionals Have A Complicated Task. There Is A Fringe That Just Tells The Truth: Look, It's A Violation Of International Law. But Most Have To Construct Complex Arguments To Justify It As Defense Counsel. That's Basically Their Job, Defense Counsel For State Power.

The Intellectual Tradition Is One Of Servility To Power, And If I Didn't Betray It I'd Be Ashamed Of Myself.

What Was The Invasion Of South Vietnam, For Example, In 1962, When Kennedy Sent The Air Force To Bomb South Vietnam And Start Chemical Warfare? That's Aggression.

Whatever The Reasons May Be, I Was Very Much Affected By Events Of The 1930s - The Spanish Civil War, For Example, Though I Was Barely Literate.

The United States Invaded Iraq To Gain Control Of One Of The Major Sources Of The World's Energy.

I Think The Christian Coalition Could Be Extremely Dangerous. We Should Always Be Concerned When Any Group Wants To Impose Their Doctrinal Concerns On All. To An Extent That's What They Are Trying To Do.

When I Was A College Student And I Got Interested In Linguistics The Concern Among Students Was, This Is A Lot Of Fun, But After We Have Done A Structural Analysis Of Every Language In The World What's Left? It Was Assumed There Were Basically No Puzzles.

Sports Plays A Societal Role In Engendering Jingoist And Chauvinist Attitudes. They're Designed To Organize A Community To Be Committed To Their Gladiators.

We Are Hurtling Towards Self-destruction At An Alarming Rate Thanks Chiefly To An Advertising And Propaganda System That Goads People From Infancy Towards Apathy, Isolation, Passivity, Helplessness And Separation.

Technology Can Also Be Used So That Private Individuals Will Have Access To The Way Centralized Decisions Are Being Made.

One Can Contrive A Religious Motivation For Virtually Any Choice Of Action, From Commitment To The Highest Ideals To Support For The Most Horrendous Atrocities. In The Sacred Texts, We Can Find Uplifting Calls For Peace, Justice And Mercy, Along With The Most Genocidal Passages In The Literary Canon. Conscience Is Our Guide, Whatever Trappings We Might Choose To Clothe It In.

So Marxism, Freudianism: Any One Of These Things I Think Is An Irrational Cult. They're Theology, So They're Whatever You Think Of Theology; I Don't Think Much Of It. In Fact, In My View That's Exactly The Right Analogy: Notions Like Marxism And Freudianism Belong To The History Of Organized Religion.

To Achieve Respectability, To Be Admitted To The Debate, They Must Accept Without Question Or Inquiry The Fundamental Doctrine That The State Is Benevolent, Governed By The Loftiest Intentions, Adopting A Defensive Stance, Not An Actor In World Affairs But Only Reacting To The Crimes Of Others...if Even The Harshest Of Critics Tacitly Adopt These Premises, Then The Ordinary Person May Ask, Who Am I To Disagree?

Our Whole Educational And Cultural System Is Not Designed To Provide Those Intellectual Tools, So People Are Often Lost And The Internet Often Becomes Kind Of A Cult Generator.

It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.

A Good Education Instills In You The Intuitive Comprehension - It Becomes Unconscious And Reflexive - That You Just Don't Think Certain Things, Things That Are Threatening To Power Interests.

To Summarize, Draft Resistance Can Make Use Of The Inegalitarian Nature Of American Society As A Technique For Increasing The Cost Of American Aggression, And It Threatens Values That Are Important To Those In A Decision-making Position.

The 1980's Was The First Time In The History Of Imperialism That People From The Imperial Society Went In Substantial Numbers To Stay With The Victims In The Hope That Their Presence Would Offer Some Protection And Some Help. These Were Not The Usual Students From Elite Universities. These Were People Straight Out Of Middle America.

The More You Can Increase Fear Of Drugs And Crime, Welfare Mothers, Immigrants And Aliens, The More You Control All The People.

If The Mutation Is Partially Transmitted To Offspring, They Too Would Have The Advantage. And Over Time It Might Have Come To Dominate A Small Breeding Group.

The Invasion Of Iraq Was Simply A War Crime. Straight-out War Crime.

There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws.

Amusing And Perfectly Self-conscious Charlatans.

I Did Not Say That Language As A Completed System Emerged In An Individual In An Instant. But I Cannot Think Of A Coherent Alternative To The Idea That Mutations Take Place In Individuals, Not Communities, So That Whatever Rewiring Of The Brain Yielded The Apparently Unique Properties Of Language, Specifically Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions, Would Therefore Have Taken Place In An Individual, And Only Later Been Used Among Individuals Who Had Inherited This Capacity.

There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany. [adolf] Hitler Was Appealing To Groups With Similar Grievances, And Giving Them Crazy Answers, But At Least They Were Answers; These Groups Weren't Getting Them Anywhere Else. It Was The Jews And The Bolsheviks [that Were The Problem].

In America, The Professor Talks To The Mechanic. They Are In The Same Category.

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.

People Are Dangerous. If They're Able To Involve Themselves In Issues That Matter, They May Change The Distribution Of Power, To The Detriment Of Those Who Are Rich And Privileged.

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum - Even Encourage The More Critical And Dissident Views. That Gives People The Sense That There's Free Thinking Going On, While All The Time The Presuppositions Of The System Are Being Reinforced By The Limits Put On The Range Of The Debate.

For Example, When My Father Was Able To Buy A Secondhand Car In The Late 1930s, And He Took Us To The Countryside For A Weekend, If We Looked For A Motel To Stay In We Had To See If It Said "restricted" On It. "restricted" Meant No Jews.

The Labor Movement Had Been Pretty Much Killed In The 1920s, Almost Destroyed. It Revived In The 1930s And Made A Huge Difference. By The Late 1930s The Business World Was Already Trying To Find Ways To Beat It Back.

Science Talks About Very Simple Things, And Asks Hard Questions About Them. As Soon As Things Become Too Complex, Science Can't Deal With Them... But It's A Complicated Matter: Science Studies What's At The Edge Of Understanding, And What's At The Edge Of Understanding Is Usually Fairly Simple. And It Rarely Reaches Human Affairs. Human Affairs Are Way Too Complicated.

The Republicans Went So Far To The Right That They Just Can't Get Votes. They've Become A Dedicated Party Of The Very Rich And The Corporate Sector.

Our Only Real Hope For Democracy Is That We Get The Money Out Of Politics Entirely And Establish A System Of Publicly Funded Elections.

The Government Of Israel Doesn't Like The Kinds Of Things I Say, Which Puts Them Into The Same Category As Every Other Government In The World.

A Principle Familiar To Propagandists Is That The Doctrine To Be Instilled In The Target Audience Should Not Be Articulated: That Would Only Expose Them To Reflection, Inquiry, And, Very Likely, Ridicule. The Proper Procedure Is To Drill Them Home By Constantly Presupposing Them, So That They Become The Very Condition For Discourse.

Target Audience

The Republican Primaries Were Quite Interesting. The Establishment Had Its Candidate, [mitt] Romney, A Kind Of A Wall Street Lawyer And Investor, And They Wanted Him In. But The Base Didn't Want Him.

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.

It Is ... Necessary To Whip Up The Population In Support Of Foreign Adventures. Usually The Population Is Pacifist, Just Like They Were During The First World War. The Public Sees No Reason To Get Involved In Foreign Adventures, Killing, And Torture. So You Have To Whip Them Up. And To Whip Them Up You Have To Frighten Them.

The Fourteenth Amendment, After The Civil War, In Principle Brought Former Slaves Into The Category Of Persons, Theoretically. But If You Actually Look, Almost All The Cases Brought Up For Personal Rights Under The Fourteenth Amendment Were By Corporations. Freed Slaves Couldn't Do It. In Fact They Were Pretty Much Driven Back Into Something Like Slavery By A North - South Compact, That Allowed Former Slave States To Criminalize Black Life, Which Made A Criminal Force That Was Basically Used As A Forced Labor Force, Up Until The 1930s.

Somehow The Fact Of Enormous Privilege And Freedom Carries With It A Sense Of Impotence, Which Is A Strange, But Striking, Phenomenon. The Fact Is, We Can Do Just About Anything. There Is No Difficulty, Wherever You Are, In Finding Groups That Are Working Hard On Things That Concern You.

The Crimes Committed Against The People Of West Papua Are Some Of The Most Shameful Of The Past Years. The Western Powers Have Much To Answer For, And At The Very Least Should Use Their Ample Means To Bring About The Withdrawal Of The Occupying Indonesian Army And Termination Of The Shameful Exploitation Of Resources And Destruction Of The Environment And The Lives And Societies Of The People Of West Papua, Who Have Suffered Far Too Much.

I Hope That A Move Toward Clemency With Judge Afiuni Would Be A Step Towards The Importance Of Maintaining A Properly Functioning Justice System.

We Have Never Had Class-based Parties. We've Had Parties Run By The Business Classes. There's Slight Variations. Like In The New Deal Period, There Was A Lot Of Popular Activism, So Things Shifted Slightly, But Not Much.

People Who Spend Their Working Hours In A Lab Or Research Library Or A Classroom Might Be Intent Primarily On Keeping Or Advancing Their Elite Positions, Thereby Lending Tacit Support To Power Structures. Or They Might Not Be.

A Number Of Analysts Have Observed That Although Bin Laden Was Finally Killed, He Won Some Major Successes In His War Against The U.s.

We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.

In Some Ways, [the Student Anti-sweatshop Movement] Is Like The Anti-apartheid Movement, Except That In This Case Its Striking At The Core Of The Relations Of Exploitation. Much Of This Was Initiated By Charlie Kernaghan Of The Institute For Global Labour And Human Rights.

The Us Cannot Be Brought To The World Court For Major Crimes, For Example The Supreme International Crime, Invasion, Or Violation Of The Un Charter, Or Violation Of The Genocide Convention, These Are Things The Us Is Exempt From, Because They Exempted Themselves From Being Subjected To International Treaties In World Court Proceedings.

[for Business After Wwii ] Democracy Means Getting People To Regard Government As An Alien Force That's Robbing Them And Oppressing Them, Not As Their Government. In A Democracy It Would Be Your Government.

Look, The United States Doesn't Have Political Parties. In Other Countries, Take Say Europe, You Can Be An Active Member Of The Political Party. Here, The Only Thing In A Political Party Is Gearing To Elections, Not The Other Things You Do. So It's Basically, A Way Of Making People Passive, Submissive Objects.

Part Of The Uprising Of Latin America, Particularly In The Last 10 To 15 Years, Has Been A Reaction To [neoliberal Regime], And They Have Thrown Out A Lot Of These Measures And Moved In A Different Direction. In Earlier Years, The Us Would Have Overthrown The Governments Or, One Way Or Another, Curtailed Them. Now, It Can't Do That.

Pick The Topic You Like: The Middle East, International Terrorism, Central America, Whatever It Is - The Picture Of The World That's Presented To The Public Has Only The Remotest Relation To Reality. The Truth Of The Matter Is Buried Under Edifice After Edifice Of Lies Upon Lies. It's All Been A Marvelous Success From The Point Of View In Deterring The Threat Of Democracy, Achieved Under Conditions Of Freedom, Which Is Extremely Interesting. It's Not Like A Totalitarian State, Where It's Done By Force. These Achievements Are Under Conditions Of Freedom.

Since The Civil War In Laos Was Resumed In Earnest In 1963, American Participation Has Been Veiled In Secrecy.

The Times Are Too Difficult And The Crisis Too Severe To Indulge In Schadenfreude. Looking At It In Perspective, The Fact That There Would Be A Financial Crisis Was Perfectly Predictable: Its General Nature, If Not Its Magnitude. Markets Are Always Inefficient.

In Kosovo, The U.s. Has Chosen A Course Of Action That Escalates Atrocities And Violence. It Is Also A Course Of Action That Strikes A Blow Against The Regime Of International Order, But Which Offers The Weak At Least Some Protection From Predatory States.

The Basic Idea Which Runs Right Through Modern History And Modern Liberalism Is That The Public Has Got To Be Marginalized. The General Public Are Viewed As No More Than Ignorant And Meddlesome Outsiders, A Bewildered Herd.

In Europe There's An Dangerous Growth Of Ultra Xenophobia Which Is Pretty Threatening To Any One Who Remembers The History Of Europe... And An Attack On The Remnants Of The Welfare State. It's Hard To Interpret The Austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession Policy As Anything Other Than Attack On The Social Contract.

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.

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.

You Can't Mention Hezbollah In The U.s. Media Without Putting In The Context Of "iranian-supported Hezbollah." That's Its Name. Its Name Is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It Gets Iranian Support. But You Can Mention Israel Without Saying Us-supported Israel. So This Is More Tacit Propaganda.

Julian Assange Shouldn't Be The Subject Of A Grand Jury Hearing, He Should Be Given A Medal. He's Contributing To Democracy.

I Think Religion Has Often Played A Very Positive Role. Take Western Civilization, The Catholic Church Has Played An Honorable Role In Helping Those In Need. In Contrast, The Us Carried Out A Virtual War Against The Church In Central America In The 1980's Primarily Because Prime Elements In The Church Were Working With Great Courage And Honor To Help Those In Need. And To Organize Them To Help Themselves.

In Our Society, Real Power Does Not Happen To Lie In The Political System, It Lies In The Private Economy: That’s Where The Decisions Are Made About What’s Produced, How Much Is Produced, What’s Consumed, Where Investment Takes Place, Who Has Jobs, Who Controls The Resources, And So On And So Forth. And As Long As That Remains The Case, Changes Inside The Political System Can Make Some Difference-i Don’t Want To Say It’s Zero-but The Differences Are Going To Be Very Slight.

In Many Respects, The United States Is A Great Country. Freedom Of Speech Is Protected More Than In Any Other Country. It Is Also A Very Free Society.

Freedom Of Speech

Cuba Forces In Angola Gave A Real Shot In The Arm To The Liberation Movements, And It Also Was A Lesson To The White South Africans That The End Is Coming. They Can't Just Hope To Subdue The Continent On Racist Grounds.

The Us Reasserted Control Over Nicaragua In 1990. Since Then, The Country Has Experienced A Steep Decline. It's Now The Second Poorest Country In The Hemisphere.

Suppose That We Believe What We Are Taught. . . . Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies . . . Of Institutional Lunacy.

All Forms Of Involuntary Servitude Are Prohibited, Not Only Slavery But Also Conscription, Forced Association, And Forced Welfare Distribution.

Plainly Elites In America Don't Want Democracy. And Why Should They? Democracy Is Always Harmful To Elite Interests. Almost By Definition.

The Human Digestive And Visual Systems Did Clearly Evolve Over A Very Long Period.

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

Suppose That Insect Wings Developed Primarily As Thermoregulators And Then Were Used For Skimming And Finally Flying, Evolving Along The Way. What Would They Be "for"? Or What Is The Skeleton "for"? For Keeping One Upright, Protecting Organs, Storing Calcium, Making Blood Cells...?

A Person Who Issues That Charge That Someone Adheres To The Principle "do As I Say, Not As I Do" Has Three Options: Produce An Example; Withdraw The Charge; Take The Coward's Way Out And Slink Away Silently.

The Idea That People Should Be Allowed To Decide Something About Their Own Fate Is Just Anathema To European Elites.

I Pretend No Originality In Observing That Mass Education Was Motivated In Part By The Perceived Need To "educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats," To Borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's Parody Of Elite Fears That Inspired Early Advocates Of Public Mass Education.

Silicon Valley Benefits, As All Of Industry, From Highly Protectionist Policy - Patent Policies And Things Like That - Which Come Out Of The Government.

Organization And Education, When They Interact With Each Other, They Strengthen Each Other, They Are Mutually Supportive.

Governments Are Not Representative. They Have Their Own Power, Serving Segments Of The Population That Are Dominant And Rich.

Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.

The U.s. Is, To A Very Unusual Extent, A Business-run Society.

I Don't Think That The United States Cares. They Just Assume That North Korea Will Soon Have Nuclear Weapons.

Jingoism, Racism, Fear, Religious Fundamentalism: These Are The Ways Of Appealing To People If You're Trying To Organize A Mass Base Of Support For Policies That Are Really Intended To Crush Them.

The Basic Principle Is That The Losers Have To Confess, Not The Victors. When They Do It, It's A Crime. When We Do It, It's Not. And More Generally, It's The Defeated Who Are Tried, Not The Victors.

The Internet Could Be A Very Positive Step Towards Education, Organisation And Participation In A Meaningful Society.

There Is No Evolutionary Pressure To Create Minds Capable Of Forming Sciences; It Just Happened. Evolutionary Pressure Has Not Led To Higher Rates Of Reproduction For People Capable Of Solving Scientific Problems Or Creating New Scientific Ideas. So If, In Fact, The Science-forming Capacities Evolved For Other Reasons, It Would Not Be Too Surprising If Those Particular Structures That Have Developed Proved To Be Rather Special In Their Nature, Reflecting The Contingencies Of Their Evolution Or The Working Of Physical Law.

Establishing A Client State In Iraq Would Significantly Enhance That Strategic Power, A Matter Of Great Significance For The Future. As Zbigniew Brzezinski Observed, It Would Provide The Us With "critical Leverage" Of Its European And Asian Rivals, A Conception With Roots In Early Post-war Planning. These Are Substantial Reasons For Aggression - Not Unlike Those Of The British When They Invaded And Occupied Iraq Over 80 Years Earlier, At The Dawn Of The Oil Age.

You Can’t Have Meaningful Political Democracy Without Functioning Economic Democracy.

In Western Europe, Turkey Is Regarded As Uncivilized, So They Can't Come In Into The European Union Until They're Civilized. I Think It's The Other Way Around. If You Could Achieve The Level Of Civilization Of, Say, Turkish Intelectuals, It Would Be Quite An Achievement.

In Much Of The World The U.s. Is Regarded As A Leading Terrorist State.

If You Have To Control People, You Have To Have An Administrative Force That Does It. So In U.s. Industry, Even More Than Elsewhere, There's Layer After Layer Of Management - A Kind Of Economic Waste, But Useful For Control And Domination. And The Same Is True In Universities.

The American Escalation Of The War In Laos Provoked A Response By The Communist Forces, Which Now Control More Of Laos Than Ever Before.

I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

Language Etches The Grooves Through Which Your Thoughts Must Flow.

Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.

I Just Went Along With Political Activists And Interested In Other Intellectual Interests Which I Pursued Kind Of At Random. I Never Had A Real College Education. I Got A Degree, But It Was Just Patching Together Courses Here And There.

I Still Think, Despite Everything, That The Us Is Very Unlikely To Attack Iran. It Could Be A Huge Catastrophe; Nobody Knows What The Consequences Would Be. I Imagine That Only An Administration That's Really Desperate Would Resort To That.

Trump Keeps The Spotlight On Himself With One Act After Another, Assuming Correctly That Yesterday's Antics Will Be Swept Aside By Today's.

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

I Didn't Pay My Taxes For Years.

Syria Is Descending Into Suicide. It's A Horror Story And Getting Worse And Worse. There's No Bright Spot On The Horizon. What Will Probably Happen, If This Continues, Is That Syria Will Be Partitioned Into Probably Three Regions; A Kurdish Region - Which Is Already Forming - That Could Pull Out And Join In Some Fashion The Semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, Maybe With Some Kind Of Deal With Turkey.

For The Totalitarian Mind, Adherence To State Propaganda Does Not Suffice: One Must Display Proper Enthusiasm While Marching In The Parade.

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."

Why Should Iran Have A Deterrent Strategy? Well, It's Surrounded By Hostile Enemies. Both Of Its Borders Have Been Under Occupation By A Hostile Superpower, The United States, Which Is Constantly Violating The U.n. Charter By Leaving Open What They Call The Saying, 'all Options Are Open' - Meaning The Threat Of War.

The Very Properties Of The Human Mind That Provide An Enormous Scope For Human Genius In Some Domains Will Serve As Barriers To Progress In Other Domains, Just As The Properties That Enable Each Child To Acquire A Complex And Highly Articulated Human Language Block The Acquisition Of Other Imaginable Linguistic Systems.

The [ronald] Reagan Administration Told The Business World That They Were Not Going To Enforce The Labor Laws.

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.

It Is Quite Possible--overwhelmingly Probable, One Might Guess--that We Will Always Learn More About Human Life And Personality From Novels Than From Scientific Psychology

I Don't Feel That I Have Anything To Say Beyond Moral Truisms.

There Are Simple Things Which Would Make Sense. Take, Say, Weatherization, Which Would Make A Big Cut In The Unemployment Rate. That's The Kind Of Work That Plenty Of People Are Quick To Do, And It Would Save Individual Households Money, And It Would Make A Significant Reduction In The Threats Of Climate Change. But Something Is Holding It Back: The Sociopathic Character Of Market Systems.

Throughout History, Even The Harshest And Most Shameful Measures Are Regularly Accompanied By Professions Of Noble Intent - And Rhetoric About Bestowing Freedom And Independence.

[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.

You Also Have To Get Beyond That To Dismantle The System Of Production For Profit Rather Than Production For Use. That Means Dismantling At Least Large Parts Of Market Systems.

But On The Contrary Wikileaks Is Under Heavy Attack By The Government And Corporations Are Participating In That By Closing Down Their Websites.

Our Yearning For Democracy Is Accompanied By A No Less Profound Yearning For Peace. And The Media Also Faced The Task Of Historical Engineering To Establish This Required Truth. We Therefore Have Phenomena Called 'peace Missions' And The 'peace Process'. These Are Terms That Apply To Whatever The United States Happens To Be Doing Or Advocating At Some Moment... In Short, 'war Is Peace'.

Maybe The Science Is Uncertain, Maybe We Don't Have To Worry About It. Climate Change Is The Worst, But There's Others.

One Of The Problems Of Organizing In The North, In The Rich Countries, Is That People Tend To Think - Even The Activists - That Instant Gratification Is Required. You Constantly Hear: 'look I Went To A Demonstration, And We Didn't Stop The War So What's The Use Of Doing It Again?'

Let's Take Pravda In The 1980s. I Mean You Could Have Read Things In Pravda Saying That It Was A Stupid Error To Invade Afghanistan: "it Was A Dumb Thing To Do, We Have To Get Out, It's Costing Us Too Much." I Mean That U.s. Analog Of That Would Be "extreme Liberalism," And It Has Been Pretty Well Studied.

Control Of Thought Is More Important For Governments That Are Free And Popular Than For Despotic And Military States. The Logic Is Straightforward: A Despotic State Can Control Its Domestic Enemies By Force, But As The State Loses This Weapon, Other Devices Are Required To Prevent The Ignorant Masses From Interfering With Public Affairs, Which Are None Of Their Business… The Public Are To Be Observers, Not Participants, Consumers Of Ideology As Well As Products.

Ignorant Masses

Right At The Beginning Of All Of This [ukraine To Join Nato], Serious Senior Statesmen, People Like [george] Kennan For Example And Others Warned That The Expansion Of Nato To The East Is Going To Cause A Disaster. I Mean, It's Like Having The Warsaw Pact On The Mexican Border. It's Inconceivable. And Others, Senior People Warned About This, But Policymakers Didn't Care. Just Go Ahead.

The World Was Warned Of Extremely Severe Dangers Unless Urgent Steps Are Taken To Deal With Global Warming.

Selfish-gene Theory Tells Us Nothing About The Value Of Interacting Through Language.

American Imperialism Has Suffered A Stunning Defeat In Indochina. But The Same Forces Are Engaged In Another War Against A Much Less Resilient Enemy, The American People. Here, The Prospects For Success Are Much Greater. The Battleground Is Ideological, Not Military. At Stake Are The Lessons To Be Drawn From The American War In Indochina; The Outcome Will Determine The Course And Character Of New Imperial Ventures.

Every Night I Get Many Letters, And After Every Talk I Get Many Questions From People Who Say, "i Want To Change Things. What Can I Do?" I Never Hear These Questions From Peasants In Southern Colombia Or Kurds In Southeastern Turkey Under Miserable Repression Or Anybody Who Is Suffering. They Don't Ask What They Can Do; They Tell You What They're Doing.

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.

A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.

Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.

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.

Censorship Is Never Over For Those Who Have Experienced It. It Is A Brand On The Imagination That Affects The Individual Who Has Suffered It, Forever.

You Have To Love That Government, But Hate The Government That Might Work In Your Interest And That You Could Control. That's An Interesting Propaganda Task, But It's Been Carried Out Very Well.

It Is True That Classical Libertarian Thought Is Opposed To State Intervention In Social Life, As A Consequence Of Deeper Assumptions About The Human Need For Liberty, Diversity, And Free Association.

If You Sell Me A Car, We Have Perhaps Made A Good Bargain For Ourselves. But There Are Effects Of This Transaction On Others, Which We Do Not Take Into Account. There Is More Pollution, The Price Of Gas Goes Up, There Is More Congestion.

The Literature Is Like That - They [unions] Are Constantly Talking About The Masses, The Danger They Pose, And How To Control Them. They Understand What They're Doing, And They're Very Class Conscious. They Press Policies Which Work For Their Interests.

It's Not A Matter Of Public Relations And Rhetorical Style But Of Actions. It's The Actions And Policies Under George W.bush Administration That Have Left The Us Government Remarkably Isolated, Feared And Often Hated To An Extent With No Historical Precedent.

Nixon At One Point Informs Kissinger . . . That He Wanted Bombing Of Cambodia. And Kissinger Loyally Transmits The Order To The Pentagon To Carry Out A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves . . . Genocide.

Power Is Concentrated. The General Policy Is Exactly The Way That Adam Smith Described It: It's Designed For The Benefit Of Its Principal Architects, The Powerful. It Serves "the Vile Maxim Of The Masters: All For Ourselves And Nothing For Anyone Else". Those Are The Basic Rules Of The World.

There's A Strange Myth Of Anglo-saxonism. When The University Of Virginia Was Founded By Thomas Jefferson, For Example, Its Law School Offered The Study Of "anglo-saxon Law." And That Myth Of Anglo-saxonism Carries Right Over Into The Early Twentieth Century.

As Far As Dsa Is Concerned, I'm Perfectly Happy To Be Associated With It While Disagreeing With A Large Part Of The Leadership.

Democracy Is A Danger To Any Powerful Group.

The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.

The Public Is Not To See Where Power Lies, How It Shapes Policy, And For What Ends. Rather, People Are To Hate And Fear One Another.

The Country That Consistently Ranks Among The Highest In Educational Achievement Is Finland. A Rich Country, But Education Is Free. Germany, Education Is Free. France, Education Is Free.

The Development Of Space Technology, Including Space Warfare Today, Is Similar In Its Technological-industrial Significance To The Development Of Navies A Hundred Years Ago.

As Soon As Questions Of Will Or Decision Or Reason Or Choice Of Action Arise, Human Science Is At A Loss.

In General, We Should Be Able To Agree That Those Who Have Greater Opportunities And Face Fewer Impediments Have A Greater Responsibility To Do More To Help Achieve Such Ends.

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.

In Fact, There Is A Very Close Correlation Between Human Rights Violations And Us Aid, Particularly In Latin America.

The Reaction We Should Be Having To [rich Liberals] Is Not Ridicule, But Rather Self-criticism. Why Aren't We Organizing Them? I Mean, We Are The Ones That Ought To Be Organizing Them, Not Rush Limbaugh. There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany.

A Default Of The Us Government Would Not Only Be Very Harmful Here, It Would Probably Send The Country Back Into Deep Recession, But It Just Might Crash The International Financial System.

A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It, Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.

Adam Smith Is An Egalitarian, He Believed In Equality Of Outcome, Not Opportunity. He Is An Enlightenment Figure, Pre-capitalist. He Says, Suppose In England, One Landowner Got Most Of The Land And Other People Would Have Nothing To Live On. He Says It Wouldn't Matter Much, Because The Rich Land Owner, By Virtue Of His Sympathy For Other People Would Distribute Resources Among Them, So That By An Invisible Hand, We Would End Up With A Pretty Egalitarian Society. That Is His Conception Of Human Nature.

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.

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think. Tuition Fee Increases Are A Disciplinary Technique, And By The Time Students Graduate, They Are Not Only Loaded With Debt, But Have Also Internalized The Disciplinarian Culture. This Makes Them Efficient Components Of The Consumer Economy.

When Something Isn't Constantly Drummed-up By The Media, [people] Just Don't Know About It.

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

When Geologists Announced The Beginning Of A New Geological Epoch, The Anthropocene, Humans Destroying The Environment, One Of The Main Things They Pointed To Is The Use Of Plastics In The Earth. We Don't Think About It, But It Has A Tremendous Effect. But These Are Things You Don't See Right In Front Of Your Eyes. You Need To Think About Them A Little, To See What The Consequences Are. It's Easy To Put Them Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them.

I Don't Suggest That The Observations Are Surprising Or Profound. Rather, They Seem To Me The Merest Truisms. I Was Not Aware That [ Michel] Foucault Had Used The Phrase "speaking Truth To Power." I Had Thought It Was An Old Quaker Phrase.

There Are Enormous Opportunities To Work For A World That Is More Free, Peaceful And Just.

To Understand How People Organize Social Systems, We Have To Discover The Principles That We Create To Make Some Societies Intelligible.

The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.

There Is Little Doubt That A Significant Part Of Any Serious Solution Will Require Advances Of Technology, But That Can Only Be Part Of The Solution. Other Major Changes Are Necessary.

[after Vietnam] The Type Of Interventions That Are Carried Out Are Designed So As Not To Elicit Public Reactions.

The Us Is A Business-run Huckster Society, And Its Primary Value Is Deceit.

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.

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.

I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.

Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Have A Share Of Privilege In The More Free Societies Should Not Be Asking This Question, But Doing Something To Answer It.

States Are Violent Institutions. The Government Of Any Country, Including Ours, Represents Some Sort Of Domestic Power Structure, And It's Usually Violent. States Are Violent To The Extent That They're Powerful, That's Roughly Accurate.

When I Look At Public Opinion, I'm Not Far Out Of The Mainstream. I'm In It, In Many Respects. In Some Respects, Public Opinion Goes Beyond Anything I've Ever Said.

You Know, We Have Little Bits Of Understanding, Glimpses, A Little Bit Of Light Here And There, But There's A Tremendous Amount Of Darkness, Which Is A Challenge. I Think Life Would Be Pretty Boring If We Understood Everything. It's Better If We Don't Understand Anything And Know That We Don't, That's The Important Part.

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.

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.

Stephen Colbert's Recent Comment Is Apropos: When The Republican Legislature Of North Carolina Responded To A Scientific Study Predicting A Threatening Rise In Sea Level By Barring State And Local Agencies From Developing Regulations Or Planning Documents To Address The Problem, Colbert Responded: "this Is A Brilliant Solution. If Your Science Gives You A Result That You Don't Like, Pass A Law Saying The Result Is Illegal. Problem Solved."

We Naturally Assume That Our Mental Structures Are Universal. But I Suppose An Outside Biologist Looking At Us Would See Something Very Different. He Would See That, Like Other Organisms, We Have A Narrow Sphere Within Which We Are Very Good, But That Sphere Is Very Limited. And That, In Fact, The Very Achievements We Can Have Within That Sphere Are Related To Lack Of Achievements In Other Spheres.

There Are No Conservatives In The United States. The United States Does Not Have A Conservative Tradition. The People Who Call Themselves Conservatives, Like The Heritage Foundation Or Gingrich, Are Believers In -- Are Radical Statists. They Believe In A Powerful State, But A Welfare State For The Rich.

Scientists Generally, Not Just Evolutionary Biologists, Don't Take Much For Granted.

Finally Irish Were Accepted Into Society And Became Part Of The Political System, And There Were Kennedys, And So On. But The Same Is True About Other Waves Of Immigrants, Like The Jews In The 1950s.

I Don't Like Piracy But If Anybody's Concerned About Piracy, Why Don't They Pay Attention To Our Role In It?

We Can, For Example, Be Fairly Confident That Either There Will Be A World Without War Or There Won't Be A World - At Least, A World Inhabited By Creatures Other Than Bacteria And Beetles, With Some Scattering Of Others.

In Turkey Also, For A Long Time, The Military Was The Decisive Force But In The Past 10 Years They Have Backed Off Somewhat And The Civilian Government Has Gained More Independence And Autonomy Even To Shake Up The Military Command. In Fact, It Even Arrested Several High-ranking Officers [for Interfering In Governmental Affairs]. Maybe Pakistan Can Move In A Similar Direction.

What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.

There Is Either A Crisis Or A Return To The Norm Of Stagnation. One View Is The Norm Is Stagnation And Occasionally You Get Out Of It. The Other Is That The Norm Is Growth And Occasionally You Can Get Into Stagnation. You Can Debate That But It's A Period Of Close To Global Stagnation.

In Fact, A Rather Striking Aspect Of Business Propaganda In The United States Is The Demonization Of Government, Starting After The Second World War.

It Hardly Takes More Than A Day In Gaza To Begin To Appreciate What It Must Be Like To Try To Survive In The World’s Largest Open-air Prison.

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