Background Image
Our Minds Are Specifically Adapted To Developing Certain Theories, And We Have A Science If The Theories That Are Available To Our Minds Happen To Be Close To True. Well, There Is No Particular Reason To Suppose That The Intersection Of True Theories And Theories That Are Accessible To The Mind Is Very Large. It May Not Be Very Large.
-Noam Chomsky
Please Wait....
Translating....

Our Minds Are Specifically

Noam Chomsky
Our Minds Are Specifically Adapted To Developing Certain Theories, And We Have A Science If The Theories That Are Available To Our Minds Happen To Be Close To True. Well, There Is No Particular Reason To Suppose That The Intersection Of True Theories And Theories That Are Accessible To The Mind Is Very Large. It May Not Be Very Large.
Views: 80407
Topic
Mind
May
Reason
More From Noam Chomsky
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.
Christian
Thinking
Trying
Let's Take Adam Smith, The Patron-saint Of Capitalism, What Did He Think? He Thought The Main Human Instinct Was Sympathy. In Fact, Take A Look At The Word "invisible Hand." Which, Of Course, You Learned About, Or You Think You've Learned About. Take A Look At The Actual Way In Which He Used The Phrase. There Is Almost No Relation To What Is Claimed.
Thinking
Invisible Hand
Hands
Take Cuba. 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.
Government
Long
Majority
Let's Take Southeast Asia. The Last 20, 30 Years Has Been What's Called The "asian Miracle" - Fast Economic Growth, Industrial Society. It's Happening All Over, With One Exception, Which One? The Philippines Is The One That Can't Grow, Which The Us Has Been Running For 100 Years. Is There A Correlation? Have You Read About It? It Comes To Mind, At Least.
Running
Years
Miracle
Fed And Electoral College Could Use Some Tinkering, But They Are Not The Source Of The Problems.
College
Tinkering
Use
No One Seriously Doubts That If Piraha Children Are Brought Up In Boston They'll Be Speaking Boston English, That Is, That The Capacities Are Present, Unlike Other Animals, As Far As Is Known. There's No Challenge To The Theory - Not Mine, But Everyone's - That The Human Language Faculty Provides The Means For Generation Of An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions.
Children
Mean
Animal
Barron And Paul...rely On 'specialists' At The State And Defense Departments...elsewhere In The Media, Similiar Figures Are Bandied About, With Equal Credibility.
War
Media
Defense
The Beam In Our Own Eye Is Harder To Detect, Although - Or More Accurately Because - To Detect It, And Remove It, Is Vastly More Important On Elementary Moral Grounds, And Commonly More Important In Terms Of Direct Human Consequences As Well. Intellectuals Have Historically Played A Critical Function In Performing These Tasks, And [ivan] Illich Is Right To Observe That Claims To Scientific Expertise And Special Knowledge Are Often Used As A Device.
Eye
Important
Special
The Communists Basically Acted As The Police Force Of The Security System Of The [spain] Republic And Were Very Much Opposed To The Anarchists, Partially Because [joseph] Stalin Still Hoped At That Time To Have Some Kind Of Pact With Western Countries Against [adolf] Hitler. That, Of Course, Failed And Stalin Withdrew The Support To The Republic. They Even Withdrew The Spanish Gold Reserves.
Country
Security Systems
Support
As The Capacity To Coerce Declines, It Is Natural To Turn To Control Of Opinion As The Basis For Authority And Domination - A Fundamental Principle Of Government Already Emphasized By David Hume.
Government
Principles
Fundamentals
Well, They Really Didn't Have To Worry, Because The Way Power Politics Works, The World Court Can't Do Anything. Look, There's One Country In The World At The Moment Which Has Refused To Accept World Court Decision-that's The United States. Is Anybody Going To Do Anything About It?
Country
Worry
Decision
An Unstated But Crucial Premise Is That The "responsible Men" Achieve That Exalted Status By Their Service To Authentic Power, A Fact Of Life That They Will Discover Soon Enough If They Try To Pursue An Independent Path.
Independent
Men
Soon Enough
Arab Public Opinion Does Not Regard Iran As A Hostile Entity. In Fact It's So Supportive Of Iran That A Majority Would Think The Place Would Be Better Off If Iran Had Nuclear Weapons. The Main Enemies Are The United States And Isreal, In The 80, 90 Percent Range.
Thinking
Iran
Enemy
For The Totalitarian Mind, Adherence To State Propaganda Does Not Suffice: One Must Display Proper Enthusiasm While Marching In The Parade.
Mind
Liberty
Libertarian
The [ronald] Reagan Administration Told The Business World That They Were Not Going To Enforce The Labor Laws.
Law
World
Administration
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
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
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.
Military
Moving
Past
The Missile Defense Component Is A Minor Feature That Nobody Takes Very Seriously. Nobody Really Believes That The Us Is Trying To Protect Itself From North Korea. That's Not Serious. But The Militarization Of Space Is Quite Serious.
Believe
Space
Korea
In The United States, And To A Certain Extent In Canada, There's Very Little Interest In What Happens Outside Their Borders.
United States
Borders
Littles
[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.
Mean
Government
People
As Long As Each Individual Is Facing The Television Tube Alone, Formal Freedom Poses No Threat To Privilege
Long
Television
Privilege
The Social System Is Taking On A Form In Which Finding Out What You Want To Do Is Less And Less Of An Option Because Your Life Is Too Structured, Organised, Controlled And Disciplined.
Want
Life Is
Social
When People Say Do You Believe In God? What Do They Mean By It? Do I Believe In Some Spiritual Force In The World? In A Way, Yes. People Have Thoughts, Emotions. If You Want To Call That A Spiritual Force, Okay. But Unless There's Some Clarification Of What We're Supposed To Believe In Or Disbelieve In, I Can't Answer.
Spiritual
Believe
Mean
U.s. Has No Feudal Background, So Institutions That Remained In Place In Europe Did Not Remain In Place Here.
Europe
Institutions
Backgrounds
The Responsibility Of The Writer As A Moral Agent Is To Try To Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them.
Responsibility
Trying
Agents
Major Efforts Have To Be Undertaken To Bring The General Public To Understand The Real Reasons For Their Plight, And The Possibilities For Radical Social And Political Change To Construct Meaningful Popular Control Of All Institutions - In Communities, In The Workplace, In The Larger Society, And On To The International Order.
Meaningful
Real
Order
It's Kind Of Interesting And Sick That The Intellectual Culture Called The 1960s, "time Of Troubles," A Dangerous Period In Which A Lot Of Harm Was Done To The Society. And The Reason Is Because We Were Civilized And That's Dangerous. That Increased The Commitment To Democracy, To Rights And So On, And This Left People Much Less Obedient.
Commitment
Rights
People
There Is Extensive Critical Scholarship That Provides Illustrations In Many Areas Of Scholarship. I've Discussed Many Cases Myself, While Also Citing And Often Relying On Academic Studies That Disentangle These Webs Of Mystification Woven For The General Public. It's Impossible To Provide Illustrations That Would Even Approach Accuracy, Let Alone Carry Any Conviction, Without Going Well Beyond The Bounds Of This Discussion.
Illustration
Woven
Citing
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
I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.
Primaries
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
The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.
Communication
Technology
Long Ago
The U.s. - The Idea That The U.s. Has Introduced And Imposed Principles Of International Law, That's Hardly Even A Joke. The United States Has Even Gone So Far As To Veto Security Council Resolutions Calling On All States To Observe International Law. That Was In The 1980s Under Reagan.
Law
Ideas
Principles
Should People Be Mere "interested Spectators Of Action," Not "participants," Restricted To Lending Their Weight Periodically To One Or Another Sector Of The "responsible Men," As Advocates Of "manufacture Of Consent" Have Recommended? Or Should Their Rights Transcend These Highly Restricted Bounds?
Men
Rights
People
It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.
Terrorism
Ifs
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
Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.
Nice
People
Nice People
If You Want To Talk About Distributing Substances That Are Lethal, . . . Let's Be Serious. Tobacco Is Far Ahead Of Anything Else. Alcohol Is Second.
Alcohol
Substance
Want
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
If A Person Chooses Not To Be A Writer, Or Speaker, Then (by Definition) The Person Is Choosing Not To Be Engaged In An Effort,"to Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them," Apart, Perhaps, From Some Circle Of Immediate Associates.
Circles
Effort
Definitions
What's The Point Of Being Better Than Someone Else?
Resource Extraction Impacts A Global Environment That Is Increasingly At Severe Risk.
Impact
Risk
Environment
We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People. And We Have To Maintain This For Years. And Then We'll Be Able To Carry Out The Actions That We Want To Carry Out.
Years
People
Want
We [ With Edward Herman] Believe That The Empirical Evidence We Review There - And Elsewhere, In A Great Deal Of Joint And Separate Work - Lends Substantial Support To The Conclusions; Whether That Is True Is For Others To Judge.
Believe
Judging
Support
They Are Involve In Producing Products And There Are Different Kinds Of People Running Them, But The Principle Is The Same. A Corporation Shouldn't Have The Right. Under American Law As Its Developed Over The Past Century, Corporation Do Have Personal Rights, But I Think That's A Very Negative Development.
Running
Past
Thinking
States Are Violent To The Extent That They Have The Power To Act In The Interests Of Those With Domestic Power
Violent
States
Interest
As Long As Nuclear Weapons Exist, The Chances Of Survival Of The Human Species Are Quite Slight.
Long
Survival
Nuclear
[after Vietnam] The Type Of Interventions That Are Carried Out Are Designed So As Not To Elicit Public Reactions.
Vietnam
Reactions
Type
In The West, You Don't Get In Any Trouble If You Tell The Truth, But You Still Can't Do It. Not Only Can't You Tell The Truth, You Can't Think The Truth. It's Just So Deeply Embedded, Deeply Instilled, That Without Any Meaningful Coercion It Comes Out The Same Way It Does In A Totalitarian State.
Meaningful
Thinking
Doe
In Ideal Form Of Social Control Is An Atomised Collection Of Individuals Focused On Their Own Narrow Concern, Lacking The Kinds Of Organisations In Which They Can Gain Information, Develop And Articulate Their Thoughts, And Act Constructively To Achieve Common Ends.
Information
Gains
Common
Those Who Had Demanded No More Than An End To The Bombing Of North Vietnam And A Commitment To Negotiations Saw Their Demands Being Realized, And Lapsed Into Silence.
Commitment
Silence
Being Real
There's Just No Question That The United States Was Trying Desperately To Prevent The Independence Of South Vietnam And To Prevent A Political Settlement Inside South Vietnam. And In Fact It Went To War Precisely To Prevent That. It Finally Bombed The North In 1965 With The Purpose Of Trying To Get The North To Use Its Influence To Call Off The Insurgency In The South.
War
Political
Independence
It Also Seems Beyond Controversy That Moral Responsibilities Are Greater To The Extent That People "have The Resources, The Training, The Facilities And Opportunities To Speak And Act Effectively."
Responsibility
Opportunity
People
You Are Responsible For The Predictable Consequences Of Your Actions.
Action
Responsible
Predictable
Greece, Alone, Is In A Very Vulnerable Position. If The Greeks Had Had Support From Progressive Left And Popular Forces Elsewhere In Europe They Might Have Been Able To Resist The Demands Of The Troika, But They Had Almost No Support. Not Even From Portugal, Spain, Or Other Left Forces. They Were Left Alone.
Europe
Support
Greek
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.
Government
Important
Corporations
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.
Smart
Passivity Is
People
It's Hard To Achieve That, Especially In A Free Society, But It's Been Done, And That's The Kind Of Thing That Activists In The Iww Have To Work Against, Right On The Shop Floor. It's Not So Simple, But It's Been Done Before.
Simple
Done
Kind
For Decades Israel Has Been Capturing, And Kidnapping Lebanese And Palestinian Refugees On The High Seas, From Cyprus To Lebanon, Killing Them In Lebanon, Bringing Them To Israel, Holding Them As Hostages. It's Been Going On For Decades, Has Anybody Called For An Invasion Of Israel?
Israel
Sea
Cyprus
For Us, We Are All Very Different, Our Languages Are Very Different, And Our Societies Are Very Different. But If We Could Extract Ourselves From Our Point Of View And Sort Of Look Down At Human Life The Way A Biologist Looks At Other Organisms, I Think We Could See It A Different Way.
Thinking
Views
Different
It Doesn't Matter How Much You Learn In School; It's Whether You Learn How To Go On And Do Things By Yourself. And That Can Be Done At Any Level.
School
Done
The Contradiction Is Somehow Unresolved. In The Case Of The Business Propaganda, It's Particularly Ironic Because While Business Wants The Population To Hate The Government, They Want The Population To Love The Government. Namely, They're In Favor Of A Very Powerful State Which Works In Their Interest.
Powerful
Hate
Government
There Are Very Few People Who Are Going To Look Into The Mirror And Say, 'that Person I See Is A Savage Monster;' Instead, They Make Up Some Construction That Justifies What They Do.
Mirrors
People
Monsters
The People Who Are Unemployed Want To Do The Work, But The System Is Such A Catastrophic Failure That It Cannot Bring Together Idle Hands And Work. This Is All Hailed As A Great Success, And It Is A Great Success - For A Very Small Sector Of The Population.
Hands
People
Together
Public Opinion Can Be Influential, The Media Can Be Influential.
Media
Public Opinion
Opinion
[donald Trump] Guru Steve Bannon Is Worse, He's Much Scarier. He Probably Knows What He's Doing.
Guru
Trump
Knows
You Never Need An Argument Against The Use Of Violence, You Need An Argument For It.
Peace
War
Needs
Democracy, In The United States Rhetoric Refers To A System Of Governance In Which Elite Elements Based In The Business Community Control The State By Virtue Of Their Dominance Of The Private Society, While The Population Observes Quietly. So Understood, Democracy Is A System Of Elite Decision And Public Ratification, As In The United States Itself. Correspondingly, Popular Involvement In The Formation Of Public Policy Is Considered A Serious Threat. It Is Not A Step Towards Democracy; Rather It Constitutes A 'crisis Of Democracy' That Must Be Overcome.
Money
Community
Decision
The Irish Were Treated Horribly, Even Here In Boston. For Example, In The Late Nineteenth Century They Were Treated Pretty Much Like African Americans. You Could Find Signs Here In Boston In The Restaurants Saying "no Dogs And Irish."
Dog
Boston
African American
Nobody Should Have Any Illusions. The United States Has Essentially A One-party System And The Ruling Party Is The Business Party.
Party
Should Have
United States
The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.
Reactions
Delusion
It's Not A Free Trade Agreement. It Has Virtually Nothing To Do With Free Trade... It's A Protectionist Agreement; It's Anti Free-trade.
Agreement
Trade
Free Trade
Personally, I Am Uneasy About The Notion Of "a Politically Engaged University," For Reasons I Wrote About Over 30 Years Ago, At The Height Of Protest And Resistance (reprinted In For Reasons Of State).
Years
Height
Resistance
American Society Is Now Remarkably Atomized. Political Organizations Have Collapsed. In Fact, It Seems Like Even Bowling Leagues Are Collapsing. The Left Has A Lot To Answer For Here. There's Been A Drift Toward Very Fragmenting Tendencies Among Left Groups, Toward This Sort Of Identity Politics.
Organization
Identity Politics
League
So The First Things That You See When You Look Up Something On Google Could Be Dependent On The Amount Of Advertising Or Something Else. Since It Is A Profit Making Institution, It Is Going To Reflect The Interests And Concerns Of Those Who Fund It, Which Is Advertisers.
Google
Looks
Firsts
The Second World War Ended With A Radicalization Of The Population In The United States And Everywhere Else, And Called For All Kinds Of Things Like Popular Takeovers, Government Intervention, And Worker Takeovers Of Factories. Business Propagated A Tremendous Propaganda Offensive. The Scale Surprised Me When I Read The Scholarship - It's Enormous, And It's Been Very Effective. There Were Two Major Targets: One Is Unions, The Other Is Democracy.
War
Two
Government Intervention
In Fact, When Drugs Are Legalized, Use Sometimes Goes Down, It's Been Claimed. Part Of The Reason Is That Teenage Kids Use Illicit Drugs Because They Are Illicit. They Are Thumbing Their Noses At Society. If They Were Legal, They Might Not.
Teenage
Kids
Drug
When I Was Ten Years Old I Wanted To Be A Taxidermist For Some Reason, Don't Ask Me Why.
Years
Reason
Ask Me
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
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.
Diversity
Liberty
Needs
The People Who Were Really Important Are The Ones Whose Names Are Forgotten. And That's True Of Every Movement That Ever Existed.
Names
People
Important
It May Be Beyond The Limits Of Human Intelligence To Understand How Human Intelligence Works.
May
Limits
Humans
I Think It's Just Been A Core Part Of The Cuban Revolution To Have A Very High Level Of Internationalism. I Mean, These Cases You've Mentioned Are Cases In Point, But The Most Extreme Case Was The Liberation Of Africa. Take The Case Of Angola For Example, And There Are Real Connections Between Cuba And Angola-much Of The Cuban Population Comes From Angola.
Real
Mean
Thinking
Armed Attack Has A Definition In International Law. It Means Sudden, Overwhelming, Instantaneous Ongoing Attack.
Mean
Law
Ongoing
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.
School
Thinking
People
One Of The Greatest Dangers Is Secular Religion - State Worship.
Worship
Danger
States
No Use In Waiting, We Can All Work Hard To Bring About Changes.
Hard Work
Waiting
Use
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.
Wall
Interesting
Want
Nobody Is Going To Pour Truth Into Your Brain. It's Something You Have To Find Out For Yourself.
Truth
Brain
As Any Good Teacher Knows, The Methods Of Instruction And The Range Of Material Covered Are Matters Of Small Importance As Compared With The Success In Arousing The Natural Curiosity Of The Students And Stimulating Their Interest In Exploring On Their Own.
Teacher
Teaching
Curiosity
In America, The Professor Talks To The Mechanic. They Are In The Same Category.
4th Of July
America
Mechanic
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.
Views
Civilization
Ideas
How People Themselves Perceive What They Are Doing Is Not A Question That Interests Me.
People
Interest
Perceive
In Many Respects, The United States Is The Freest Country In The World. I Don't Just Mean In Terms Of Limits On State Coercion, Though That's True Too, But Also In Terms Of Individual Relations. The United States Comes Closer To Classlessness In Terms Of Interpersonal Relations Than Virtually Any Society.
Country
Mean
United States
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
There's A Very Committed Effort To Convert The Us Into Something Resembling A Third World Society, Where A Few People Have Enormous Wealth And A Lot Of Others Have No Security.
People
Effort
World
We Should Certainly Not Be Perpetuating Further Harm To Others Or To The Environment. Suppose That Workers At Exxonmobil Are Trying To Unionize. We Have Two Choices: To Help Them Improve Their Lives, Or To Keep Away So That Their Lives Will Be Worse. Neither Choice Has Any Effect On Use Of Fossil Fuels. So Radical Organizers Can Both Help Them Unionize And Improve Their Lives, And Convince Them To Find A Different Way To Survive And Work For Ending The Use Of Fossil Fuels.
Two
Choices
Trying
Very Urgent Measures Need To Be Taken, And Without Much Delay, In Dealing With The Ongoing Destruction Of The Environment.
Taken
Delay
Needs
People Are Interested In Authentic Long-term, Socialist Goals, Which Is Not What Is Usually Called Socialism. They Should Be Thinking Through Carefully How The Projected Society Should Work, But Not In Extensive Detail Because A Lot Of Things Just Have To Be Learned By Experiment And We Don't Know Enough To Plan Societies In Detail By Any Means. But, General Guidelines Could Be Worked Out And Many Of The Specific Problems Can Be Discussed. That Should Just Be Part Of People's Popular Consciousness. That's How A Transition To Socialism Could Take Place.
Mean
Thinking
Long
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.
Lucky
Asking
Answers
I Think It Only Makes Sense To Seek Out And Identify Structures Of Authority, Hierarchy, And Domination In Every Aspect Of Life, And To Challenge Them; Unless A Justification For Them Can Be Given, They Are Illegitimate, And Should Be Dismantled, To Increase The Scope Of Human Freedom.
Thinking
Challenges
Hierarchy
It Is Only In Folk Tales, Children's Stories, And The Journals Of Intellectual Opinion That Power Is Used Wisely And Well To Destroy Evil. The Real World Teaches Very Different Lessons, And It Takes Willful And Dedicated Ignorance To Fail To Perceive Them.
Children
Real
Ignorance
Anything Feasible And Potentially Effective Should Be Explored.
Should
Well, In Fact If You Look At The Trump Voters, You Take A Look At Their Attitudes It's Not All That Different. In Some Respects They're Similar. They're An Older Version Of The Sanders People. So A Lot Of It Is Racist And You Have That Sort Of Thing, But If You Look At Their Views On Say Health, Education, And So On, It's Kind Of The Same As Sanders.
Attitude
Views
Health Education
It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.
Matter
You Can Imagine A Different World In Which A Number Of Species Developed With Different Genetically Determined Linguistic Systems. It Hasn't Happened In Evolution. What Has Happened Is That One Species Has Developed, And The Genetic Structure Of This Species Happens To Involve A Variety Of Intricate Abstract Principles Of Linguistic Organization That, Therefore, Necessarily Constrain Every Language, And, In Fact, Create The Basis For Learning Language As A Way Of Organizing Experience Rather Than Constituting Something Learned From Experience.
Organization
Numbers
World
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.
War
Adventure
Media
The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet.
Communication
Sailing
Ships
Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.
Song
Art
Real
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.
Party
Vote
Republican
The U.s. Directed The War Against South Vietnam. There Was A Political Settlement In 1954. But In The Late '50's The United States Organized An Internal Repression In South Vietnam, Not Using Its Troops, But Using The Local Apparatus It Was Constructing. This Was A Very Significant And Very Effective Campaign Of Violence And Terrorism Against The Vietminh - Which Was The Communist-led Nationalist Force That Fought The French. And The Vietminh At That Time Was Adhering To The Geneva Accords, Hoping That The Political Settlement Would Work Out In South Vietnam.
War
Work Out
Political
Mexico Is A Pretty Poor Country, But They Are Maintaining A Free, High Quality Public Education System, Not For Everyone Of Course But Pretty Substantial.
Country
Quality
Mexico
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.
Hate
Government
Interesting
Anyone Who Studies Declassified Documents Soon Becomes Aware That Government Secrecy Is Largely An Effort To Protect Policy Makers From Scrutiny By Citizens, Not To Protect The Country From Enemies.
Country
Government
Effort
It's Fine To Criticize Somebody Else's Crimes And Misdeeds, But You Don't Talk About Your Own. The Only Exception Is A Country That Is Defeated. And Even That Is Rather Nuanced.
Country
Defeated
Crime
What I've Called "the Mafia Doctrine" In Many Publications: When The Godfather Issues An Edict, Others Must Obey, Or Else. It's Too Dangerous To Allow Disobedience. A Leading Principle Of World Affairs - Though, Of Course, Officials And Commentators Put It More Politely.
Issues
Mafia
Principles
A Democracy Barely Functions Under The Neoliberal System.
Democracy
Function
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
There Are Huge Areas Where The Human Mind Is Apparently Incapable Of Forming Sciences, Or At Least Has Not Done So. There Are Other Areas - So Far, In Fact, One Area Only [physics] - In Which We Have Demonstrated The Capacity For True Scientific Progress.
Mind
Progress
Done
For Those Who Stubbornly Seek Freedom, There Can Be No More Urgent Task Than To Come To Understand The Mechanisms And Practices Of Indoctrination.
Practice
Tasks
Indoctrination
A More Appropriate Expansion Is The Statement "it Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies" A Transcript Of A Talk To A Writers Conference In Australia In 1996, Where I Had Been Asked To Talk On "writers And Intellectual Responsibility" - A Question That I Said I Found "puzzling," Because I Knew Of Nothing To Say About It Beyond Truisms, Though These Were Perhaps Worth Affirming Because They Are "so Commonly Denied, If Not In Words, Then In Consistent Practice."
Lying
Responsibility
Practice
Syria Is Bad Enough, It's A Pretty Terrible Atrocity. But There Are Much Worse Ones In The World. So For Example, The Worst Atrocities In The Past Decade Have Been In The Congo, The Eastern Congo, Where Maybe 5 Million People Have Been Killed.
Past
People
Atrocities
The Drug Problem Is In The United States, Not In Mexico. It's A Demand Problem And That Is To Be Dealt With Here, And It Is Not Being Dealt With. It's Been Shown Over And Over That Prevention And Treatment Are Far More Cost Effective Than Police Action, Out-of-country Action, Border Control, And So On.
Country
Drug
Police
The Republican Establishment, The Mainstream Corporate Financial Wealth, Is Getting To A Point Where It Can't Control The Base It's Mobilized.
Financial
Republican
Wealth
The Actual Consequences Of Plan Colombia Are To Devastate Peasant Communities, Which Have Been Driven To Drug Production. These Peasants Have No Particular Desire To Grow Coca, But Their Other Means Of Livelihood Have Been Wiped Out.
Mean
Community
Drug
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. These Are Simply Decisions Made Within Institutions That Are Subject To Human Will And That Must Face The Test Of Legitimacy. And If They Do Not Meet The Test, They Can Be Replaced By Other Institutions That Are More Free And More Just, As Has Happened Often In The Past.
Believe
Acceptance
Past
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.
War
Events
Example
Of Course, We [ With Edward Herman] Have A Purpose: Namely, To Encourage Readers To Undertake What Might Be Called "a Course In Intellectual Self-defense," And To Suggest Ways To Proceed; In Other Words, To Help People Undermine The Dedicated Efforts To "manufacture Consent" And To Turn Them Into Passive Objects Rather Than Agents Who Control Their Own Fate.
Fate
Self
People
There Is No Reason To Believe ... That The "essential Purpose" Of Language Is "communication". Language Can Be Used To Transmit Information, But It Also Serves Many Other Purposes: To Establish Relations Among People, To Express Or Clarify Thought, For Play, For Creative Mental Activity, To Gain Understanding, And So On. In My Opinion, There Is No Reason To Accord Privileged Status To One Or The Other Of These Modes.
Believe
Communication
Play
It Was Right After Woodrow Wilson's First Serious Post-world War I Repression, Which Deported Thousands Of People, Effectively Destroyed Unions And Independent Press, And So On. Right After That, The Anti-immigration Law Was Passed That Remained In Place Until The 1960s.
War
Independent
Law
This Is Class War On An International Scale, And Power Is In The Hands Of Those Who Control The International Economic System.
War
Hands
Class
I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.
Thinking
Democracy
Impossible
From The Late 1940s, Into And Through The '50s, There Developed A Complex Interaction Between Federal Government, State And Local Government, Real-estate Interests, Commercial Interests And Court Decisions, Which Had The Effect Of Undermining The Mass Transit System Across The Country.
Country
Real
Government
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
If You Look At The Minutes Of The Constitutional Convention - Which We Have - Madison Who Was The Main Framer, Proceeded To Develop A System In Which - As He Put It - Power Would Be In The Hands Of The Wealth Of The Nation, The More Responsible Set Of Men And Who Recognize The Need To Protect The Rights Of Property Owners. That's Why In The Constitutional System, The Most Powerful Part Of The Whole System Is The Senate.
Powerful
Men
Rights
The Republican Party Among The Public Is A Minority Party.
Party
Minorities
Republican
The Us Is Also Unusual In The Enormous Scale Of Religious Fundamentalism. The Impact On Understanding Of The World Is Extraordinary. In National Polls Almost Half Of Those Surveyed Have Reported That They Believe That God Created Humans In Their Present Form 10,000 Years Ago (or Less) And That Man Shares No Common Ancestor With The Ape. There Are Similar Beliefs About The Second Coming.
Religious
Believe
Men
My Feeling Is That The Supreme Court Reached A Reasonable Standard Of Protection Of Speech In The 1960s, A Standard Higher Than Any Other Country In The World, To My Knowledge. In Brief, Speech Should Be Protected Up To Participation In Imminent Criminal Action.
Country
Feelings
World
Take Google - I Can Use It, You Can Use It, Anyone Else Can Use It, But We All Know Its Designed So That Private Power Can Influence Significantly How You Access It.
Google
Use
Influence
Right Now, We Happen To Be In A General Period Of Regression, Not Just In Education. A Lot Of What's Happening Is Sort Of Backlash To The 60s; The 60s Were A Democratizing Period.
The Main Mineral In Your Cellphone, Coltan [a Black Metallic Ore], Comes From The Eastern Congo. Multinational Corporations Are There Exploiting The Very Rich Mineral Resources Of The Region. A Lot Of Them Are Backing Militias Which Are Fighting One Other To Gain Control Of The Resources Or A Piece Of The Resources.
Fighting
Black
Pieces
Latin America Is All Moving To The Left, From Venezuela To Argentina With Rare Exceptions, But There's A Good Left And A Bad Left.
Latin
Moving
America
U.s. International And Security Policy . . . Has As Its Primary Goal The Preservation Of What We Might Call "the Fifth Freedom," Understood Crudely But With A Fair Degree Of Accuracy As The Freedom To Rob, To Exploit And To Dominate, To Undertake Any Course Of Action To Ensure That Existing Privilege Is Protected And Advanced.
Goal
Degrees
Might
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.
Decision
Important
Technique
Before The 1970s, Banks Were Banks. They Did What Banks Were Supposed To Do In A State Capitalist Economy: They Took Unused Funds From Your Bank Account, For Example, And Transferred Them To Some Potentially Useful Purpose Like Helping A Family Buy A Home Or Send A Kid To College.
Home
Kids
College
The West Bank Is Essentially Imprisoned.
West
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
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.
Latin
Years
Uprising
The Imf Economists Were Doubtless Shaken By The Extreme Failures Of Their Prescriptions Over Many Years, And By The Collapse Of The Intellectual Edifice Of Economic Theory On Which They Were Relying.
Years
Intellectual
Imf
I've Often Been Struck By The Extensive Knowledge That People Have Of Sports, And Particularly, Their Self-confidence In Discussing It With Experts. . . . In Contrast, When Discussing Matters Of Concern To Human Lives - Their Own And Others - People Tend To Defer To Experts.
Sports
Self Confidence
People
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.
Self
People
Apathy
To Say That The United States Has Pursued Diplomacy With North Korea Is A Little Bit Misleading. It Did Under The Clinton Administration, Though Neither Side Completely Lived Up To Their Obligations. Clinton Didn't Do What Was Promised, Nor Did North Korea, But They Were Making Progress. So When Bush Came Into The Presidency, North Korea Had Enough Uranium Or Plutonium For Maybe One Or Two Bombs, But Then Very Limited Missile Capacity. During The Bush Years It's Exploded. The Reason Is, He Immediately Canceled The Diplomacy And He's Pretty Much Blocked It Ever Since.
Korea
Years
Two
Bohemian Grove Seems To Be A Kind Of Frat House Affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] May Be Marginally More Serious. The Cfr Is Transparent. You Can Read Their Publications. In The 18th Century It Perhaps Made Some Sense To Conjure Up The Illuminati And Masons. Not Since.
Philosophy
House
May
What Happened In The Following Years? Well, I Think That Among The Educated Classes It Stayed The Same. You Talk About Humanitarian Intervention, It's Like Vietnam Was A Humanitarian Intervention. Among The Public, It's Quite Different.
Thinking
Years
Class
Dissidents Are Not Imprisoned As In The Domains Of The Kremlin, In The Old Days. They Do Not Have Their Brains Blown Out By Elite Forces Armed And Trained By The Reigning Superpower, As Happens In Washington's Domains - With No Particular Concern At Home - An Important Fact, One Of Many That Help Us Learn About Ourselves, If We Choose.
Home
Brain
Important
Nothing In These Abstract Economic Models Actually Works In The Real World. It Doesn't Matter How Many Footnotes They Put In, Or How Many Ways They Tinker Around The Edges. The Whole Enterprise Is Totally Rotten At The Core: It Has No Relation To Reality.
Real
Economic Models
Rotten
There Are Enormous Opportunities To Work For A World That Is More Free, Peaceful And Just.
Opportunity
Peaceful
World
Hume's Paradox Does Hold: Power Is In The Hands Of The Governed. If They Refuse To Accept It, You're In Trouble, No Matter How Many Guns You Have.
Gun
Hands
Doe
Presented With The Claims Of Nineteenth-century Racist Anthropology, A Rational Person Will Ask Two Sorts Of Questions: 'what Is The Scientific Status Of The Claims?' 'what Social Or Ideological Needs Do They Serve?'
Two
Needs
Racist
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
Suppose That, Say, China Established Military Bases In Colombia To Carry Out Chemical Warfare In Kentucky And North Carolina To Destroy This Lethal Crop [tobacco] That Is Killing Huge Numbers Of Chinese.
Military
Kentucky
Numbers
Latin America Wants To Decriminalize At Least Marijuana (maybe More Or Course;) The Us Wants To Maintain It. An Interesting Story. There Seems To Me No Easy Way Out Of This.
Latin
Marijuana
America
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
America Has Always Been The Richest And Most Secure, And Sometimes The Most Dangerous Country In The World. In The Early Years, The Danger Was To Everybody Near Us, Slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It Finally Expanded In 1898 To The Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, And The Philippines.
Country
Native American
Years
The U.s. Is Different From Europe And Other Industrial Countries.
Country
Europe
Different
When Something Isn't Constantly Drummed-up By The Media, [people] Just Don't Know About It.
Media
People
Knows
There Have Been Many Measures Taken To Try To Turn The Educational System Towards More Control, More Indoctrination, More Vocational Training, Imposing A Debt, Which Traps Students And Young People Into A Life Of Conformity... That's The Exact Opposite Of [what] Traditionally Comes Out Of The Enlightenment. And There's A Constant Struggle Between Those. In The Colleges, In The Schools, Do You Train For Passing Tests, Or Do You Train For Creative Inquiry?
Educational
Taken
Struggle
If You Take An Economics Or A Political Science Course, You're Taught That Humans Are Supposed To Be Rational Wealth Accumulators, Each Acting As An Individual To Maximize His Own Wealth In The Market.
Political
Acting
Taught
A War With Pakistan Would Be An Utter Disaster.
War
Would Be
Pakistan
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.
Country
Educational
Rich Countries
In The 1960s, Various Parts Of The Population Became Energized And Began To Enter The Public Arena To Call For The Rights Of Women, Students, Young People, Old People, Farmers And Workers. What Are Called "special Interests" - Meaning The Whole Population - They Began To Press To Enter The Public Arena. And They Said That Puts Too Much Pressure On The State And Therefore We Have To Have More Moderation In Democracy And They Should Go Back And Be Quiet And Obedient.
Rights
People
Democracy
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
I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.
Thinking
Government
Surveillance
The Iranian Government Is Undoubtedly A Severe Danger To Its Own Population, But Not Beyond That.
Government
Population
Danger
Credible Reports Came Through That Syria Had Used Chemical Weapons. Whether It's True Actually Is Still Open To Question, But It's Very Probably True. At That Point, What Was At Stake Was What Is Called Credibility. So If You Read The Political Actors, Political Leadership, Foreign Policy Commentary, They Constantly Point Out Accurately That Us Credibility Was At Stake, And We Have To Maintain Us Credibility. So Therefore Something Had To Be Done To Show You Can't Violate Our Orders.
Order
Political
Done
Iraqi Commandos Landed At George W. Bush's Compound, Assassinated Him, And Dumped His Body In The Atlantic.
Body
Compounds
Commandos
I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.
Expectations
Disillusioned
Barack
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
In 1961, The United States Began Chemical Warfare In Vietnam, South Vietnam, Chemical Warfare To Destroy Crops And Livestock. That Went On For Seven Years. The Level Of Poison - They Used The Most Extreme Carcinogen Known: Dioxin. And This Went On For Years.
Years
United States
Warfare
President Barack Obama, To His Credit, Has Given - Issued Personal Pardons In Deserving Cases. But He Should Go Far Beyond. He Should Proceed To What Is In Fact An Urgent Necessity: To Grant A General Pardon To 11 Million People Who Are Living And Working Here, Productive Citizens In All But Name, Threatened With Deportation By The Incoming Donald Trump Administration. This Would Be A Horrible Humanitarian Tragedy, A Moral Outrage.
People
Tragedy
President
Language Is A Process Of Free Creation; Its Laws And Principles Are Fixed, But The Manner In Which The Principles Of Generation Are Used Is Free And Infinitely Varied. Even The Interpretation And Use Of Words Involves A Process Of Free Creation.
Language Words
Law
Generations
Student Debt Is Structured To Be A Burden For Life. The Indebted Cannot Declare Bankruptcy, Unlike Donald Trump. Current Student Debt Is Estimated To Be Over $1.45 Trillion. There Are Ample Resources For That Simply From Waste, Including The Bloated Military And The Enormous Concentrated Private Wealth That Has Accumulated In The Financial And General Corporate Sector Under Neoliberal Policies. There Is No Economic Reason Why Free Education Cannot Flourish From Schools Through Colleges And University. The Barriers Are Not Economic But Rather Political Decisions.
Military
School
College
[according To The Rigid Dogma] We Have To Believe The United States Would Have So-called Liberated Iraq Even If Its Main Products Were Lettuce And Pickles And The Main Energy Resource Of The World Were In Central Africa.
Believe
Iraq
Energy
The Most Dramatic Case Is That Of The Central Americans. Why Are People Fleeing Central America? It's Because Of The Atrocities The U.s. Committed There. Take Boston, Where There's A Fairly Large Mayan Population. These People Are Fleeing From The Highlands Of Guatemala, Where There Was Virtual Genocide In The Early 1980s Backed By Ronald Reagan. The Region Was Devastated, And People Are Still Fleeing To This Day, Yet They're Sent Back.
Boston
America
People
The [ronald] Reagan Administration Picked Up The Rhetoric Of The Anti-nuclear Movement; They Said "yyeah, You're Right." We Have To Eliminate Nuclear Weapons.
Nuclear
Movement
Weapons
Some Of The Younger People Afford Hope For The Future. I Am Not Opposed To Reform Initiatives. For Example, If You Can Build Up Enough Popular Support In The United States To Put Through A Reasonable Health Care Program Or To Support The Rights Of The Working People Against The Version Of Nafta Which Was Rammed Through, These Can Be Good Things.
Rights
People
Support
When People Know We Are Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons, They're Going To Back Off If We Do Something Aggressive. So Basically, Nuclear Weapons Are Always Being Used.
People
Nuclear
Use
In Fact, It Was Stated Early In The First Bush [presidency], Bush I, In One Of Their Documents They Pointed Out In The Future, Us Wars Are Going To Be Against Much Weaker Enemies. And They Have To Be Won Quickly And Decisively Before A Popular Reaction Develops. And Iif You Take A Look, That's What's Done. Look At Panama, For Instance, Over A Couple Of Days; And Kosovo, No American Troops.
Couple
War
Enemy
If We Move Toward The Weaponisation Of Space, We Can Bid Farewell To The Planet. The Chances Of Survival Are Very Slight.
Moving
Farewell
Space
Free Markets Are Based On The Free Circulation Of Labor. If You Don't Have Free Circulation Of Labor, You Don't Have Free Markets.
Free Market
Circulation
Labor
What The Public Wants Is Called 'politically Unrealistic.' Translated Into English, That Means Power And Privilege Are Opposed To It.
Mean
Justice
Diversity
It Makes Sense For Societies To Make Education Compulsory For Children. Children Are Vulnerable. They Can't Make Decisions. But The Decisions Can't All Be Left In The Hands Of The Parents. They Can Be Irresponsible Too.
Children
Hands
Decision
Bradley Manning Should Be Regarded As A Hero. He Is Doing What An Honest, Decent Citizen Should Be Doing: Letting Your Population Know What The Government, The People Who Rule You Are Doing. They Want To Keep It Secret Of Course.
Hero
Government
People
That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody's Going To Be Against, And Everybody's Going To Be For. Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything.
Mean
Want
Propaganda
The United States Is Unique Among The Rich Countries, Developed Countries, In Not Having Some Kind Of A National Health-care System.
Country
Unique
Rich Countries
Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I'm Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.
Thinking
Community
Political
There's Actually An Article In The Washington Post, I Don't Know Whether It's Tongue In Cheek Or Not, Which Said The Criterion For Being On The List Of Banned States Is That [donald] Trump Doesn't Have Business Interests There.
Tongue
Lists
Criteria
Growing Up In The Place I Did I Never Was Aware Of Any Other Option But To Question Everything.
Growing Up
Growing
English Is A Second Language In Most Of The Educated Sectors Of Europe And Much Of The World. But Maybe In The Future Chinese Will Be. But I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.
Europe
Doubt
Chinese
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
Jascha Heifetz
Diane Von Furstenberg
Alphonso Jackson
Paul Dirac
Jamelia
Kimora Lee Simmons
Category
Information