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.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Basic Idea Which

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Running

Ideas

Ignorant

More From Noam Chomsky

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.

School

Virginia

Law

Everything Depends Very Much On Who You Are, What Your Values Are, What Your Commitments Are, What Circumstances You Live In And What Options You're Willing To Undertake, And That Determines What You Ought To Be Doing.

Commitment

Circumstances

Determine

As For Climate Change, It's By Now Widely Accepted By The Scientific Community That We Have Entered A New Geological Era, The Anthropocene, In Which The Earth's Climate Is Being Radically Modified By Human Action, Creating A Very Different Planet, One That May Not Be Able To Sustain Organized Human Life In Anything Like A Form We Would Want To Tolerate.

Creating

Community

Climate

Unlimited Economic Growth Has The Marvelous Quality Of Stilling Discontent While Maintaining Privilege, A Fact That Has Not Gone Unnoticed Among Liberal Economists.

Growth

Quality

Gone

Another Recollection Is That [ Paul Johnson] Mostly Kept Away From Ideas And Dedicated Activism, And Concentrated On Sex Lives And Other Gossip.

Sex

Ideas

Gossip

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

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.

Fun

College

Analysis

Occupying Armies Have Responsibilities, Not Rights. Their Primary Responsibility Is To Withdraw As Quickly And Expeditiously As Possible, In A Manner Determined By The Occupied Population.

Responsibility

Army

Rights

Capitalism’s Concept Of Competitive Man Who Seeks Only To Maximize Wealth And Power, Who Subjects Himself To Market Relationships, To Exploitation And External Authority, Is Anti-human And Intolerable In The Deepest Sense

Men

Wealth

Authority

There Was A Free Election In Palestine, But It Came Out The Wrong Way. So Instantly, The United States And Israel With Europe Tagging Along, Moved To Punish The Palestinian People, And Punish Them Harshly, Because They Voted The Wrong Way In A Free Election. That's Accepted Here In The West As Perfectly Normal. That Illustrates The Deep Hatred And Contempt For Democracy Among Western Elites, So Deep-seated They Can't Even Perceive It When It's In Front Of Their Eyes. You Punish People Severely If They Vote The Wrong Way In A Free Election.

Eye

Israel

Europe

The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.

Real

Political

Proposal

Take, Say, The Solidarity Movement In Central America, Which I Think Is What You Probably Had In Mind. To A Large Extent, It Comes Out Of Mainstream Christianity, Based On Beliefs That Have Had Outrageous Human Consequences In The Past, And That I Think Are Totally Indefensible. In This Case, They Happen To Lead To Some Of The Most Courageous, Heroic, And Honourable Human Action That's Taking Place Anywhere In The World. Well, That's How Life Is, I Guess. It Doesn't Come In Neat Little Packages.

Past

Thinking

America

Markets Also Have A Very Bad Psychological Effect. They Drive People To A Conception Of Themselves And Society In Which You're Only After Your Own Good, Not The Good Of Others And That's Extremely Harmful.

People

Psychological

Effects

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

Linguistics

Theoretical

There Are Leaks From The Embassy In Honduras. There Was A Coup In 2009. Obama Broke With Most Of Latin America And Even Europe And Supported The Military Coup, Still Does. The Ambassador In Honduras Sent Back A Detailed Analysis Saying The Coup Was Military, Illegal, Unconstitutional, And That The Legitimate President Was Thrown Out. Okay, We Now Know That Washington Was Perfectly Aware Of That And Decided To Support The Military Coup Anyway. We Should Have Known That At The Time. The Government Has No Right To Keep That Information Secret.

Latin

Military

Should Have

[companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions] Don't Make It A Secret, And They Have All Sorts Of Techniques For Management To Destroy Unions.

Secret

Technique

Unions

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

The Country Was Founded On The Principle That Primary Role Of Government Is To Protect Property From The Majority, And So It Remains.

Country

Government

Majority

I Don't See Much Use In General Slogans. Sometimes It Is Worth Resisting Evil With Lesser Evil, Very Commonly In Fact.

Evil

Use

Facts

Why Does Everyone Take For Granted That We Don't Learn To Grow Arms, But Rather, Are Designed To Grow Arms? Similarly, We Should Conclude That In The Case Of The Development Of Moral Systems; There's A Biological Endowment Which In Effect Requires Us To Develop A System Of Moral Judgment And A Theory Of Justice, If You Like, That In Fact Has Detailed Applicability Over An Enormous Range.

Justice

Facts

Doe

Every Great Power, Every Aggressive Power Has Always Regarded Itself As Exceptional And As Doing Things Only For The Most Moral Ends.

Moral

Ends

Aggressive

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

Credibility

Situation

Syria

There Was Very Little International Support, Even England Wouldn't Support [bombing Of Syria], Which Is Amazing.

Support

Littles

England

My Own Feeling Is That A Corporation Has No Right To Have A Political Or Social Influence.

Political

Feelings

Corporations

The U.s. Is Different From Europe And Other Industrial Countries.

Country

Europe

Different

Andorrans Deserve Much Better Than The Rule Of Superstitious Hysterics And Extreme Authoritarians, Who Try To Instill Obedience To Their Holy Texts And Chosen Divinities - And We Should Not Fail To See That The Terms Are Appropriate, If Anything Too Kind.

Trying

Divinity

Kind

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.

Moving

Order

Campaigns

Plainly, Children Learn Their Language. I Don't Speak Swahili. And It Cannot Be That My Language Is 'an Innate Property Of Our Brain.' Otherwise I Would Have Been Genetically Programmed To Speak (some Variety Of) English.

Children

Brain

Language

Don't Be Obsessed With Tactics But With Purpose. Tactics Have A Half Life.

Purpose

Half

Tactics

That's A Point That Dan Ellsberg Has Made For Years. He Said It's Kind Of Like If You And I Go Into A Grocery Store To Rob It, And I Have A Gun. The Guy May Give You The Money In The Cash Register. I'm Using The Gun Even If I Don't Shoot. Well That's Nuclear Weapons - Essential To Post-war Deterrence - They Cast A Shadow Over Everything.

War

Gun

Years

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.

Thinking

Way

Study

Social And Political Issues In General Seem To Me Fairly Simple; The Effort To Obfuscate Them In Esoteric And Generally Vacuous Theory Is One Of The Contributions Of The Intelligentsia To Enhancing Their Own Power And The Power Of Those They Serve.

Simple

Issues

Effort

Western Intellectuals, And Also Third World Intellectuals, Were Attracted To The Bolshevik Counter-revolution Because Leninism Is, After All, A Doctrine Which Says That The Radical Intelligentsia Have A Right To Take State Power And To Run Their Countries By Force, And That Is An Idea Which Is Rather Appealing To Intellectuals.

Running

Country

Ideas

If You Want To Control A Population... Give Them A God To Worship.

Giving

Population

Want

The Earthquake In Haiti Was A Class-based Catastrophe. It Didn't Much Harm The Wealthy Elite Up In The Hills, They Were Shaken But Not Destroyed. On The Other Hand The People Who Were Living In The Miserable Urban Slums, Huge Numbers Of Them, They Were Devastated. Maybe A Couple Hundred Thousand Were Killed. How Come They Were Living There? They Were Living There Because Of-it Goes Back To The French Colonial System-but In The Past Century, They Were Living There Because Of Us Policies, Consistent Policies.

Couple

Past

Hands

One Of The Christian Fundamentalists' Goals Seems To Be To Rebuild The Temple, Which Means Destroying The Al-aqsa Mosque, Which Presumably Means War With The Arab World - One Of The Goals, Perhaps, In Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Armageddon. So They Strongly Support Israeli Power And Expansionism, And Help Fund It And Lobby For It; But They Also Support Actions That Are Very Harmful And Objectionable To Most Of Its Population - As Do Jewish Fundamentalist Groups, Mostly Rooted In The Us, Which, After All, Is One Of The Most Extreme Religious Fundamentalist Societies In The World.

Christian

Religious

War

There Had Been A Free And Open Election In Haiti In The Early 1990s And President Jean-bertrand Aristide Won, A Populist Priest. A Few Months Later Came The Expected Military Coup - A Very Vicious Military Junta Took Over, Of Which The United States Was Passively Supportive. Not Openly, Of Course, But Haitians Started To Flee From The Terror And Were Sent Back And On Towards Guantanamo Bay. Of Course, That Is Against International Law. But The United States Pretended That They Were "economic Refugees."

Military

Law

President

[camillo] Berneri Proposed That The Anarchists Should Link Up With The Effort Of Northern Africa To Overthrow The Spanish Government, Carry Out Land Reform, Attract The Base Of The Moorish Army, And See If They Could Undermine [francisco] Franco's Army Through Political Warfare In Northern Africa Combined With Guerrilla Warfare In Spain. Historians Laughed At That, But I Don't Think They Should Have. This Was The Kind Of War That Might Have Succeeded In Stopping Spanish Fascism.

War

Army

Thinking

In My Experience At Least, The Large Public Universities Do Not Fall Behind In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Often The Contrary.

Fall

Creativity

Independence

The Us Has Been The Leading Terrorist State In The World For Many Years.

Years

World

States

In The Sciences Particularly The Large Public Universities Must And Do Take An Active Role In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Otherwise The Fields Will Wither, And Along With Them Even The Aspirations Of Wealth And Power.

Creativity

Independence

Fields

Rush Limbaugh Has Answered - It's The Rich Liberals Who Own The Banks And Run The Government, And Of Course Run The Media, And They Don't Care About You - They Just Want To Give Everything Away To Illegal Immigrants And Gays And Communists And So On.

Running

Gay

Government

There Is Massive Propaganda For Everyone To Consume. Consumption Is Good For Profits And Consumption Is Good For The Political Establishment.

Political

Propaganda

Profit

My Memory - Faded, As I Say - Is That Paul Johnson Was Trying To Vilify All Intellectuals Who Were At All Critical Of The States He Worships, And Of Power Generally (except, Of Course, The Power Of Enemies, Which We Must Denounce, Imitating The Commissars Who Are His Models, Though He Doesn't Understand It).

Memories

Enemy

Trying

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

Take A Look At The Current Debates In Washington, And Of Course, Everything In The Media. Only One Issue Is Discussed: The Deficit - The Least Significant Issue, But The Most Significant Issue For The Banks. The Big Problem, Joblessness, Is Barely Discussed, Even Though That's What The Public Wants, As Polls Clearly Show. That's Even What The Business Press Supports, But The Financial Institutions Are So Powerful That The Only Issue Is The Deficit, And This Runs Right Through The Intellectual Culture.

Running

Powerful

Support

The Structure Of Language Determines Not Only Thought, But Reality Itself.

Reality

Language

Structure

There's Kind Of A Hidden Point Which Isn't Being Brought Out, And That Is That It Is Inconceivable That The U.s. Would Permit Democracy In The Middle East, And For A Very Simple Reason. Just Take A Look At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion. They Exist. You Can't Find Them In The Press, But They Exist From Prestigious Polling Agencies. Released By Major Institutions. And What They Show Is That If There Was Democracy In The Middle East, The Entire U.s. Program For Domination Of The Middle East Would Be Down The Tube.

Simple

Agency

Democracy

No One Is Concerned With Central America Anymore. If A Million People Are Facing Starvation In Northern Nicaragua And Honduras, It's None Of Our Business. Few People Even Recognize That This Situation Is In Part An Outgrowth Of Us Policies Going Back To The 1980's. Nobody Is Concerned Because Nicaragua Is Technically Stable.

America

People

Nicaragua

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

The Bible Is One Of The Most Genocidal Books In History.

Bible

Atheist

Book

Take A Look At The Bombing Of Serbia In 1999. The Us Was Quite Open About The Reasons For The Bombing. A Main Reason Was To Preserve Stability And Credibility. Serbia Was Interfering With Stability, Meaning That It Was The One Part Of The Balkans That Was Not Integrated Into The Western-dominated (mostly Us-dominated) System.

Looks

Reason

Balkans

At The Beginning Of His Administration, Reagan Tried Set The Basis For American Military Intervention In El Salvador - Which Is About What Kennedy Did When He Came Into Office In Regard To Vietnam. Well, When Kennedy Tried It In Vietnam, It Just Worked Like A Dream. Virtually Nobody Opposed American Bombing Of South Vietnam In 1962. It Was Not An Issue. But When Reagan Began To Talk Of Involving American Forces In El Salvador There Was A Huge Popular Uproar. And He Had To Choose A Much More Indirect Way Of Supporting The Collection Of Gangsters In Power There. He Had To Back Off.

Dream

Military

Issues

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.

Xenophobia

Europe

Growth

The Lessons Are, Unfortunately, That A Small Weak Country That Is Facing An Extremely Hostile And Very Violent Superpower Will Not Make Much Progress Unless There's A Strong Solidarity Movement Within The Superpower That Will Restrain Its Actions. With More Support Within The United States, I Think The Haitian Efforts Could Have Succeeded.

Country

Strong

Thinking

The Only Justification For Repressive Institutions Is Material And Cultural Deficit. But Such Institutions, At Certain Stages Of History, Perpetuate And Produce Such A Deficit, And Even Threaten Human Survival.

History

Survival

Institutions

The Focus On Creativity And Independence Exists In Pockets Of Resistance In The Educational System, Which, To Thrive, Should Be Integrated With The Needs And Concerns Of The Great Majority Of The Population. One Finds Them Everywhere.

Educational

Creativity

Focus

We Should Recall That During The Second World War And The Great Depression There Was An Upsurge In Popular, Radical Democracy. In All Over The World. It Took Different Forms, But It Was There, Everywhere. In Greece It Was In The Greek Revolution, And So On. And It Had To Be Crushed. In Countries Like Greece, It Was Crushed By Violence. In Countries Like Italy, Where The Us Forces Entered In 1943, It Was Crushed By Attacking And Destroying The Anti-german Partisans And Restoring The Traditional Order.

Country

War

Order

In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.

War

America

Years

Maybe [the Republicans] 'll Find Ways Around It, But The Financial System Of The World Depends Very Heavily On The Credibility Of The Us Treasury Department. Us Treasury Securities Are What's Called "good As Gold"; They're The Basis Of International Finance, And If The Government Can't Uphold Them, If They Become Valueless, The Effect On The International Financial System Could Be Quite Severe. But In Order To Destroy A Limited Health-care Law, The Right-wing Republicans, The Reactionary Republicans, Are Willing To Do That.

Government

Order

Law

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

The Evangelicals. . . . If All They Want Is Gold Cadillacs And Sex And So On, No Big Problem.

Sex

Gold

Cadillacs

We're Now In A Situation In Which Capital Is Highly Mobile And Labour Is Basically Immobile.

Situation

Mobile

Labour

To Construct A Scientific Theory From The Data And To Be Able To Recognize That It Is A Reasonable Theory Is Possible Only If There Are Some Very Sharp Restrictive Principles That Lead You To Go In One Direction And Not In Another Direction. Otherwise, You Wouldn't Have Science At All, Merely Randomly Chosen Hypotheses.

One Direction

Data

Principles

In The Case Of Yugoslavia V. Nato, One Of The Charges Was Genocide. The U.s. Appealed To The Court, Saying That, By Law, The United States Is Immune To The Charge Of Genocide, Self-immunized, And The Court Accepted That, So The Case Proceeded Against The Other Nato Powers But Not Against The United States.

Self

Law

Yugoslavia

The Threat Is That The Public Will Know What The Government Is Up To. Any System Of Power Is Going To Want To Keep Free From Public Surveillance, That's Natural. Its Shouldn't Be But, Its Very Natural.

Government

Want

Surveillance

If You Want Information About Sports, I Can Tell You Things From The 1940's, And The Couple Years That My Grandson Was Kind Of A Jock, But Nothing In Between.

Sports

Couple

Years

The Sanders Campaign, However, Broke Dramatically With Over A Century Of U.s. Political History. Extensive Political Science Research, Notably The Work Of Thomas Ferguson, Has Shown Convincingly That Elections Are Pretty Much Bought. For Example, Campaign Spending Alone Is A Remarkably Good Predictor Of Electoral Success, And Support Of Corporate Power And Private Wealth Is A Virtual Prerequisite Even For Participation In The Political Arena.

Support

Political

Election

An Effective Regulatory System Today Would Be One Guided By A Few Basic Premises That Can Be Applied Flexibly But Also Universally.

Today

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.

Mean

Use

Profit

The Worst Terrorist Crimes Going On Right Now Are The Drone Campaigns.

Drones

Campaigns

Crime

You Have To Rely On Yourself And Your Associates - Gifts Don't Come From Above; You're Going To Win Them, Or You Won't Have Them.

Winning

Rely On Yourself

Rely

Control Is The Source Of Strategic Power.

Source

Strategic

Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development.

Effort

Tolls

Development

Washington Still Refuses To Provide Evidence To Support The Claims In 1990 That A Huge Iraqi Military Build-up On The Saudi Border Justified War.

Military

War

Support

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

If [respulicans] Can't Get Rid Of [obamacare], They're Going To Have To Tell Their Base, We've Been Lying To You For The Last Five Years. So They're Willing To Go To Almost Any Extent To Do That. That's Unusual, In Fact I Think It's Unique In The History Of Modern Parliamentary Systems. And It's Very Dangerous For The Country And For The World.

Country

Lying

Unique

Go Back To Classical Times, Say Classical Greece. Who Drank The Hemlock? Was It Someone Who Was Conforming, Obeying The Gods? Or Was It Someone Who Was Disrupting The Youth And Questioning The Faith And Belief? Socrates, In Other Words. It Was Socrates.

Hemlock

Belief

Youth

Hamas Is A Political Party And Political Parties Don't Recognize Other Countries.

Country

Party

Political

The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.

People

Drones

Target

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

Hypocrite

Media

Politics

The First Modern Propaganda Agency Was The British Ministry Of Information A Century Ago, Which Secretly Defined Its Task As "to Direct The Thought Of Most Of The World" - Primarily Progressive American Intellectuals, Who Had To Be Mobilized To Come To The Aid Of Britain During World War I.

War

Agency

Tasks

For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.

Couple

Struggle

Rights

Go Back To The Bible, The Old Testament. I Mean There Were People Who We Would Call Intelectuals, There, They Were Called Prophets, But They Were Basically Intelectuals: They Were People Who Were Doing Critical, Geopolitical Analysis, Talking About The Decisions Of The King Were Going To Lead To Destruction; Condemning Inmorality, Calling For Justice For Widows And Orphans. What We Would Call Dissident Intelectuals. Were They Nicely Treated? No, They Were Driven Into The Desert, They Were Imprisoned, They Were Denounced. They Were Intelectuals Who Conformed.

Kings

Mean

Talking

A War With Pakistan Would Be An Utter Disaster.

War

Would Be

Pakistan

In Southern Culture, Possession Of A Gun Became Kind Of A Sign Of Manhood, Not Just Because Of Slaves But Other White Men. If You Had A Gun, You're Not Going To Push Me Around. You Know, I'm Not One Of Those Guys You Can Kick In The Face.

Gun

Men

White Man

The Second World War Had Really Devastating Effects For Much Of Europe. It Really Didn't Take Them Very Long To Reconstruct State Capitalist Democracies Because It Was In People's Heads. There Were Other Parts Of The World That Were Pretty Much Devastated And They Couldn't Do It; They Didn't Have The Conceptions In Their Mind. A Lot Of It Is Human Consciousness.

War

Europe

Long

I Mean You Look Back At American History And American Culture, It's Pretty Striking. I Mean This Has Been The Safest Country In The World Forever, And The Most Frightened Country In The World.

Country

Mean

Forever

If A Child From An Amazonian Hunter-gatherer Tribe Comes To Boston, Is Raised In Boston, That Child Will Be Indistinguishable In Language Capacities From My Children Growing Up Here, And Vice Versa.

Children

Growing Up

Boston

The Truth Of The Matter Is That About 99 Percent Of Teaching Is Making The Students Feel Interestedin The Material. Then The Other 1 Percent Has To Do With Your Methods. And That's Not Just True Of Languages. It's True Of Every Subject.

Education

Teaching

Reading

I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.

Needs

Way

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

Media

People

Knows

The Sanders Campaign Showed That A Candidate With Mildly Progressive Programs Could Win The Nomination, Maybe The Election, Even Without The Backing Of The Major Funders Or Any Media Support. There's Good Reason To Suppose That Sanders Would Have Won The Nomination Had It Not Been For Shenanigans Of The Obama-clinton Party Managers. He Is Now The Most Popular Political Figure In The Country By A Large Margin.

Country

Party

Winning

Public Opinion In Egypt Is Very Antagonistic To The Way The Dictatorship, Mubarak Dictatorship, Interpreted Relations With Israel. Very Antagonistic.

Israel

Egypt

Public Opinion

There's A War Crimes Act In The United States Passed By A Republican Congress In 1996, Which Says That Grave Breaches Of The Geneva Convention Are Subject To The Death Penalty. And That Doesn't Mean The Soldier That Committed Them - That Means The Commanders.

War

Mean

Soldier

The Us Is Off The Spectrum In Religious Commitment. It's Been Increasing Since 1980 But It's A Major Part Of The Voting Base Of The Republican Party So That Means Committing To Anti-abortion Positions, Opposing Women's Rights.

Religious

Party

Mean

In Fact, I Was In A Lab That Was A Hundred Percent Funded By The Pentagon, And It Was One Of The Centers Of The Organized Antiwar Resistance Movement.

Movement

Labs

Resistance

There Are Very Deep And Restrictive Principles That Determine The Nature Of Human Language And Are Rooted In The Specific Character Of The Human Mind

Character

Mind

Principles

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

I Think This Country And The World Would Be Far Better Off If The Us Is Not An Outlaw State.

Country

Thinking

World

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

It Is Now Well-known That The Taliban's Creation Was Facilitated By The Cia And The Isi As Part Of The 1980s Anti-soviet War.

War

Well Known

Creation

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

There Are Major Efforts Being Made To Dismantle Social Security, The Public Schools, The Post Office - Anything That Benefits The Population Has To Be Dismantled. Efforts Against The U.s. Postal Service Are Particularly Surreal.

School

Office

Effort

The Number Of People Killed By The Sanctions In Iraq Is Greater Than The Total Number Of People Killed By All Weapons Of Mass Destruction In All Of History.

Mass Destruction

Iraq

Numbers

Stability Means You Do What We Say, And What We Say Is That Colombia And The Resources Of The Andean Region Shall Be Freely Available To The Rich And Powerful Of The World, Particularly Us-based Multinational Corporations.

Powerful

Mean

World

It Is A Virtual Reflex For Governments To Plead Security Concerns When They Undertake Any Controversial Action, Often As A Pretext For Something Else.

Government

Action

Controversial

I Do Not See How We Can Rationally Oppose High Speed Rail Because Of The Environmental And Other Costs Without Considering The Social And Human Consequences Of The Radical Elimination Of Transportation That This Entails.

Environmental

Cost

Speed

To Cite The Facts Of History Is To Fall Prey To 'moral Equivalence,' Or 'political Correctness,' Or 'the Error Of Of Atheism,' Or One Of The Other Misdeeds Concocted To Guard Against The Sins Of Understanding And Insight Into The Real World.

Real

Fall

Errors

I Happen To Agree With The Anti-dictatorship Policies, But I Don't Think It's The Role Of General Electric To Support Them Or Oppose Them. They Do Of Course, But I Don't Agree With That.

Thinking

Support

Roles

Anti-union Propaganda Has Been Considerably More Successful Here [ In The U.s.] Than In Europe, Even Among Working People Who Would Benefit [from] Unions.

Successful

Europe

People

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

Europe

Doubt

Facts

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

4th Of July

America

Mechanic

When You Read About The End Of The Soviet Union, It's Always About The "death Of Socialism." They Never Say "the Death Of Democracy." But It Makes About The Same Sense.

Democracy

Unions

Socialism

Anywhere In Latin America There Is A Potential Threat Of The Pathology Of Caudillismo And It Has To Be Guarded Against.

Latin

America

Pathology

Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.

Wealth

Palestinian

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.

Profound

Phrases

Quaker

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

Personality

Psychology

Might

Moves Toward Sovereignty In Iraq Stimulate Pressures First For Human Rights Among The Bitterly Repressed Shi'ite Population But Also Toward Some Degree Of Autonomy. You Can Imagine A Kind Of A Loose Shi'ite Alliance In Iraq, Saudi Arabia, And Iran, Controlling Most Of The World's Oil And Independent Of The United States. And Much Worse, Although Europe Can Be Intimidated By The United States, China Can't. It's One Of The Reasons, The Main Reasons, Why China Is Considered A Threat. We're Back To The Mafia Principle.

Moving

Independent

Rights

Jean Kirkpatrick [is] The Chief Sadist-in-residence Of The Reagan Administration.

Administration

Chiefs

Residence

[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

Roughly Speaking, I Think It's Accurate To Say That A Corporate Elite Of Managers And Owners Governs The Economy And The Political System As Well, At Least In Very Large Measure.

Thinking

Political

Economics

Very Commonly Substances Are Criminalized Because They're Associated With What's Called The Dangerous Classes, You Know, Poor People, Or Working People.... Actually, The Peak Of Marijuana Use Was As I Said, In The Seventies, But That Was Rich Kids, So You Don't Throw Them In Jail. And Then It Got Seriously Criminalized, You Know, You Really Throw People In Jail For It, When It Was Poor People.

Kids

Marijuana

Class

Imagine An Extrahuman Observer Looking At Us. Such An Extrahuman Observer Would Be Struck Precisely By The Uniformity Of Human Languages, By The Very Slight Variation From One Language To Another, And By The Remarkable Respects In Which All Languages Are The Same. And Then He Would Notice We Do Not Pay Any Attention To That Because For The Purpose Of Human Life It Is Quite Natural And Appropriate Just To Take For Granted Everything That Is Common. We Don't Concern Ourselves With That, All We Worry About Are Differences.

Differences

Worry

Would Be

What Has To Be Done Today Is (1) Large-scale Conversion (weatherizing , Etc.), (2) Sharp Change In Transportation To Greater Efficiency, Like High-speed Rail, (3) Serious Efforts To Move To Sustainable Energy, Probably Solar In The Somewhat Longer Term, (4) Other Adjustments That Are Feasible. If Done Effectively, That Might Be Enough To Stave Off Disaster. If Not, Then We Can Give Up The Ghost, Because There Are No Alternatives In This World, At Least None That I've Seen Suggested.

Giving Up

Moving

Effort

The Old-fashioned Idea Is That Responsibility Falls Upon Those Who Borrow And Lend. Money Was Not Borrowed By Campesinos, Assembly Plant Workers, Or Slum-dwellers. The Mass Of The Population Gained Little From Borrowing, Indeed Often Suffered Grievously From Its Effects.

Fall

Responsibility

Ideas

How People Themselves Perceive What They Are Doing Is Not A Question That Interests Me.

People

Interest

Perceive

Our Ignorance Can Be Divided Into Problems And Mysteries. When We Face A Problem, We May Not Know Its Solution, But We Have Insight, Increasing Knowledge, And An Inkling Of What We Are Looking For. When We Face A Mystery, However, We Can Only Stare In Wonder And Bewilderment, Not Knowing What An Explanation Would Even Look Like.

Ignorance

Knowing

Looks

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

Organization

Supportive

If The Us Were To Attack North Korea, They'd Certainly Destroy North Korea, But South Korea Would Be Pretty Well Wiped Out Too.

Korea

Would Be

Wells

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

Ignorance

There's An Interesting Book By The Former Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, He Initiated An Effort Along With Turkey To Settle The Whole Iran Issue. Nobody Outside Of The United States Takes It To Be Much Of An Issue. They Made A Deal With Iran For Iran To Essentially Give Away Its Low Enriched Uranium To Turkey For Storage, And In Return, The Western Powers. It Was Immediately Scratched By Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton. And The Main Reason Was They Didn't Want Anybody Else To Be Involved In It. We Were Supposed To Run Things, But We Didn't Say That.

Running

Book

Giving

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

The Atrocities In Cambodia Are A Direct And Understandable Response To The Violence Of The Imperial System.

War

Atrocities

Violence

Evaluating Countries Is Senseless And I Would Never Put Things In Those Terms, But That Some Of America's Advances, Particularly In The Area Of Free Speech, That Have Been Achieved By Centuries Of Popular Struggle, Are To Be Admired.

Country

Struggle

America

As For Geoengineering, There Have Been Serious General Critiques That I Think Cannot Be Ignored, Like Clive Hamilton's, Along With Many Positive Assessments. It Is Not A Matter For Subjective Judgment Based On Guesswork And Intuition. Rather, These Are Matters That Have To Be Considered Seriously, Relying On The Best Scientific Understanding Available, Without Abandoning Sensible Precautionary Principles.

Thinking

Assessment

Understanding

Of Course Language Arose In A Darwinian Biological World, Because That's All There Is, But That World Relates Only Superficially To The Pop-biology That Circulates Informally.

World

Language

Biology

Education Must Provide The Opportunities For Self-fulfillment; It Can At Best Provide A Rich And Challenging Environment For The Individual To Explore, In His Own Way.

Teacher

School

Opportunity

I Think That In Order To Achieve Progress In The Study Of Language And Human Cognitive Faculties In General It Is Necessary First To Establish 'psychic Distance' From The 'mental Facts' To Which Köhler Referred, And Then To Explore The Possibilities For Developing Explanatory Theories... We Must Recognize That Even The Most Familiar Phenomena Require Explanation And That We Have No Privileged Access To The Underlying Mechanisms, No More So Than In Physiology Or Physics.

Distance

Thinking

Order

Physics And Those Parts Of Other Fields That Grow Out Of Physics - Chemistry, The Structure Of Big Molecules - In Those Domains, There Is A Lot Of Progress. In Many Other Domains, There Is Very Little Progress In Developing Real Scientific Understanding.

Real

Understanding

Progress

The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.

War

Enemy

Reason

As To Whether Those Who Fit The Common Meaning Of The Term "intellectual" Should Act In The Manner That [ Edward] Said Prescribes, That's Another Question. Needless To Say, I Agree With Him That They Should, And That They Commonly Do Not.

Intellectual

Common

Fit

While Trump Keeps The Spotlight On Himself, The "respectable" Republican Establishment Chips Away At Government Programs That Benefit The General Population.

Republican

Program

Respectable

We Can Try To Gain Some Of The Sensibility Of Some Of The Indigenous Populations Of The World Or Our Predecessors 800 Years Ago. We Can Laugh At Them As Being Naive And Unsophisticated, But Unless We Can Gain That Sensibility That There Has To Be Rights Of Nature As Bolivians And Others Put It, Then We're Going To Be Destroyed.

Rights

Years

Laughing

Caterpillar Was Quite Important Because That Was The First Manufacturing Industry That Used Reaganite Strike-breaking Techniques. They Illegally Called In Scabs To Break A Major Strike. It Was Reported Pretty Well In The Chicago Tribune, Who Pointed Out Something Very Interesting. They Said That The Workers Got Very Little Support In Peoria When Scabs Illegally Broke The Strike, And That Was Particularly Striking Because That Whole Community Had Been Built Up By The Union - It Was A Union-based Community.

Interesting

Support

Community

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, You Are Unlikely To Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So.

Believe

Future

Optimistic

As For Organs, Traits, Etc., Being "for" Something, The Notion May Be A Useful Shorthand, But Shouldn't Be Taken Too Seriously, If Only Because Of The Ubiquitous Phenomenon Of Exaptation.

Taken

May

Etc

As For Academics, I Do Not See Why Their Responsibilities As Moral Agents Should Differ In Principle From The Responsibilities Of Others; In Particular, Others Who Also Enjoy A Degree Of Privilege And Power, And Therefore Have The Responsibilities That Are Conferred By Those Advantages.

Responsibility

Privilege

Principles

The Neo-cons Constitute A Radical Reactionary Fringe Of The Planning Spectrum, But The Spectrum Is Narrow.

Bear In Mind That Capitalism Is A Tiny Period Of Human Society. You Never Really Had Capitalism, You Always Had One Or Another Variant Of State Capitalism.

Mind

Tiny

Bears

You Win By Struggle, And That Requires Understanding And Serious Analysis Of The Options And The Circumstances, And Then You Can Do A Lot.

Struggle

Winning

Understanding

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

Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift.

Opportunity

Liberty

Devil

And If You Look At All This Academic Work In The Conferences And So On There's A Constant Theme That Terrorism Is Extremely Hard To Define And We Therefore Have To Have A Deep Thinking About It. And The Reason It's Hard To Define Is Quite Simple. It's Hard To Find A Definition That Includes What They Do To Us But Excludes What We Do To Them. That's Quite Difficult. So It Takes A Global War On Terrorism.

War

Simple

Thinking

To Speak Truth To Power Is Not A Particularly Honorable Vocation. One Should Seek Out An Audience That Matters - And Furthermore (another Important Qualification), It Should Not Be Seen As An Audience, But As A Community Of Common Concern In Which One Hopes To Participate Constructively.

Community

Important

Matter

It's Quite Extraordinary To Hear A Supposedly Learned Person Call The United States A Leading Terrorist Nation, One Of The Leading Terrorist Nations In The World. It's False And Very Treacherous Teaching.

Teaching

Learned Person

United States

For The Past Century Or So That's [ Monroe Doctrine] Actually Been True, But It's Declining Very Significantly.

Past

Doctrine

Century

We Don't Use The Term 'working Class' Here Because It's A Taboo Term. You're Supposed To Say 'middle Class,' Because It Helps Diminish The Understanding That There's A Class War Going On.

War

Class

Understanding

There Is Nothing More Mysterious About The Concept Human Nature Than About The Concept Bee Or Chicken Nature, At Least For Those Who Regard Humans As Creatures In The Biological World.

World

Bees

Mysterious

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

The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.

Advertising

There Is Undoubtedly Much To Learn About The Social Uses Of Language, For Communication Or For Other Purposes. But At Present There Is Not Much In The Way Of A Theory Of Sociolinguistics, Of Social Uses Of Languages, As Far As I Am Aware.

Communication

Purpose

Use

As International Support For Obama's Decision To Attack Syria Has Collapsed, Along With The Credibility Of Government Claims, The Administration Has Fallen Back On A Standard Pretext For War Crimes When All Else Fails: The Credibility Of The Threats Of The Self-designated Policeman Of The World.

War

Government

Self

From The U.s. Point Of View, Negotiations Are, In Effect, A Way For Israel To Continue Its Policies Of Systematically Taking Over Whatever It Wants In The West Bank, Maintaining The Brutal Siege On Gaza, Separating Gaza From The West Bank And, Of Course, Occupying The Syrian Golan Heights, All With Full U.s. Support.

Israel

Views

Support

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 Goal Is To Keep The Bewildered Herd Bewildered. It's Unnecessary For Them To Trouble Themselves With What's Happening In The World. In Fact, It's Undesirable - If They See Too Much Of Reality They May Set Themselves To Change It.

Reality

Goal

World

Governments Will Use Whatever Technology Is Available To Combat Their Primary Enemy - Their Own Population.

Technology

Government

Enemy

If North Korea Doesn't Have A Deterrent, They Will Be Wiped Out.

Korea

North Korea

Deterrent

If We Don't Believe In Free Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.

Inspirational

Relationship

Freedom

I Admire Ralph Nader And Denis Kucinich Very Much, And Insofar As They Bring Up Issues And Carry Out An Educational And Organisational Function - That's Important, And Fine, And I Support It.

Educational

Issues

Support

In General, The Attitude Towards Nazi Germany Was Not That Hostile, Especially If You Look At The U.s. State Department Reports. In 1937 The State Department Was Describing Adolf Hitler As A "moderate" Who Was Holding Off The Forces Of The Right And The Left.

Attitude

Germany

Looks

The Left, In A General Sense, Is Very Much Atomized. We Live In Highly Atomized Societies. People Are Pretty Much Alone; It's You And Your Ipad.

Ipads

People

Left

Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.

Nice

People

Nice People

California Is Maybe The Richest Place In The World. They're Destroying The Best Public Education System In The World.

California

World

Destroying

I Just Don't Care About Popular Culture. It Looks To Me Pointless And Superficial. If I Had Free Time I'd Rather Read A 19th Century Novel.

Culture

Looks

Care

We Live In This World, Not Another One That We'd Prefer, And Sometimes It's Necessary To Follow Painful Paths If We Hope To Provide At Least A Little Help For Suffering People.

People

Suffering

World

Modifying The Core Institutions Of The Society Is No Small Challenge.

Challenges

Institutions

Modifying

The Press Is Owned By Wealthy Men Who Only Want Certain Things To Reach The Public.

Men

Want

Certain

Blacks Have No Rights - In Fact They Were Three - Fifths Human According To The Constitution To Give Slave Owners More Voting Rights. So That's African Americans.

Rights

Slave Owners

Giving

Latin America, For The First Time In 500 Years, Is Moving Towards A Degree Of Independence.

Latin

Moving

Years

My Feeling Is That A Human Being Or Any Complex Organism Has A System Of Cognitive Structures That Develop Much In The Way The Physical Organs Of The Body Develop. That Is, In Their Fundamental Character They Are Innate; Their Basic Form Is Determined By The Genetic Structure Of The Organism. Of Course, They Grow Under Particular Environmental Conditions, Assuming A Specific Form That Admits Of Some Variation. Much Of What Is Distinctive Among Human Beings Is A Specific Manner In Which A Variety Of Shared Cognitive Structures Develop.

Character

Feelings

Environmental

International Affairs Is Very Much Run Like The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Accept Disobedience, Even From A Small Storekeeper Who Doesn't Pay His Protection Money. You Have To Have Obedience Otherwise The Idea Can Spread That You Don't Have To Listen To The Orders And It Can Spread To Important Places.

Running

Order

Ideas

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

If You Look At Say, England And Germany A Century Ago, Which Had The Most Advanced Navies Then, They Were Dealing With Extremely Tricky Technological Problems. Putting A Huge Gun On A Moving Platform And Ensuring That It Could Hit Another Moving Target Was One Of The Hardest Technical Problems Of The Early Twentieth Century.

Moving

Gun

Navy

I Would Feel No Hesitation In Saying That It Is The Responsibility Of A Decent Human Being To Give Assistance To A Child Who Is Being Attacked By A Rabid Dog, But I Would Not Intend This To Imply That In All Imaginable Circumstances One Must, Necessarily, Act In Accordance With This General Responsibility.

Dog

Children

Responsibility

The 'corporatization Of America' During The Past Century Has Been An Attack On Democracy.

Past

America

Democracy

Latin America Was The Most Obedient Follower Of The Neoliberal Regime That Was Instituted By The United States, Its Allies And The International Financial Institutions. They Followed It Most Rigorously. Almost Everyone Who's Followed Those Rules, Including The Western Countries, Have Suffered. And In Latin America They Suffered Severely.

Country

Latin

America

I Remember At The Age Of Five Travelling On A Trolley Car With My Mother Past A Group Of Women On A Picket Line At A Textile Plant, Seeing Them Being Viciously Beaten By Security People. So That Kind Of Thing Stayed With Me.

Birthday

Mother

Past

Unfortunately, You Can’t Vote The Rascals Out, Because You Never Voted Them In, In The First Place

Firsts

Vote

Rascals

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

Slavery

Association

Welfare

It's As If We're Higher Apes Who Had A Language Faculty Inserted.

Apes

Language

Faculty

Intellectuals Of The Categories Happen To Enjoy Unusual Privilege, Unique In History, I Suppose. It's Easy Enough To Find Ugly Illustrations Of Repression, Malice, Dishonesty, Marginalization And Exclusion In The Academic World.

Unique

Illustration

World

Plainly, Such An Approach Does Not Exclude Other Ways Of Trying To Comprehend The World. Someone Committed To It (as I Am) Can Consistently Believe (as I Do) That We Learn Much More Of Human Interest About How People Think And Feel And Act By Reading Novels Or Studying History Than From All Of Naturalistic Psychology, And Perhaps Always Will; Similarly, The Arts May Offer Appreciation Of The Heavens To Which Astrophysics Cannot Aspire.

Appreciation

Art

Reading

Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.

America

Wave

Integrated

Independence Of Mind, Enthusiasm, Dedication To The Field, And Willingness To Challenge And Question And To Explore New Direction. There Are Plenty Of People Like That, But Schools Tend To Discourage Those Characteristics.

School

Dedication

People

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

Worry

Climate

Uncertain

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.

Thinking

Europe

Turkeys

I Wouldn't Say That The Efforts Of Academics To Critique The Media's Messages Are "half-hearted." As Far As I Am Aware, The Efforts Scarcely Exist: Very Few Even Pay Attention To The Question.

Media

Effort

Attention

During The Terrorist Regime In Haiti In The 1990s, The Cia, Under The Administration Of Bill Clinton, Was Reporting To Congress That Oil Shipments Had Been Blocked From Entering Haiti. That Was Just A Lie. I Was There. You Could See The Oil Terminals Being Built And The Ships Coming In.

Lying

Oil

Entering

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.

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