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.

-Noam Chomsky

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We Are Hurtling Towards

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Self

People

Apathy

More From Noam Chomsky

If There Was An Observer On Mars, They Would Probably Be Amazed That We Have Survived This Long.

Interesting

Long

Mars

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

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

Ignorance

One Of The Truths About The World Is That There Are Two Superpowers, One A Huge Power Which Happens To Have Its Boot On Your Neck; Another, A Smaller Power Which Happens To Have Its Boot On Other People's Necks. I Think That Anyone In The Third World Would Be Making A Grave Error If They Succumbed To Illusions About These Matters

Thinking

Errors

Two

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

Discovery Is The Ability To Be Puzzled By Simple Things. Noam Chomsky

Inspirational

Simple

Discovery

Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.

Why Not

Facts

Action

The United States Is Going To Continue To Punish Iran Because Of Its Defiance.

Iran

United States

Defiance

If There Are Lessons To Be Drawn From The Sciences, Then That Should Be The Concern Of Everyone, Including Scientists To The Extent That They Can Make A Contribution.

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

Any Incident Could Instantly Blow Up. Both Sides [usa And Russia] Are Modernizing And Increasing Their Military Systems, Including Nuclear Systems.

Military

Blow

Russia

The Search For Truth Is A Cooperative, Unending Endeavor. We Can, And Should, Engage In It To The Extent We Can And Encourage Others To Do So As Well, Seeking To Free Ourselves From Constraints Imposed By Coercive Institutions, Dogma, Irrationality, Excessive Conformity And Lack Of Initiative And Imagination, And Numerous Other Obstacles.

Imagination

Obstacles

Conformity

If Humans Are Organisms Like Every Other Organism - Which They Are - Then We Should Expect That If There Are Some Domains Where Real Scientific Progress Is Possible, Then There Are Others Where It Is Not.

Real

Progress

Should

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

Let's Imagine Again An Observer Looking At Us Without Any Preconceptions. I Think He Would Be Struck By The Fact That Although Human Beings Have The Capacity To Develop Scientific Knowledge, It Must Be A Very Limited Capacity Because It Is Only Done In Very Narrow And Specific Domains.

Thinking

Would Be

Done

On October 15, 1965, An Estimated 70,000 People Took Part In Large-scale Anti-war Demonstrations.

War

People

October

The Us And Europe Are Committing Suicide In Different Ways. In Europe It's Austerity In The Midst Of Recession And That's Guaranteed To Be A Disaster. There's Some Resistance To That Now. In The Us, It's Essentially Off-shoring Production And Financialization And Getting Rid Of Superfluous Population Through Incarceration.

Suicide

Europe

Austerity

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

I Suppose Frogs Pay No Attention To Being Frogs. They Take It For Granted. What Interests A Frog Are Differences Among Frogs. From Our Point Of View They Are More Or Less The Same, From Their Point Of View They Are All Radically Different.

Views

Differences

Different

Democracy Doesn't Mean Much If People Have To Confront Concentrated Systems Of Economic Power As Isolated Individuals. Democracy Means Something If People Can Organize To Gain Information, To Have Thoughts For That Matter, To Make Plans, To Enter Into The Political System In Some Active Way, To Put Forth Programs And So On. If Organizations Of That Kind Exist, Then Democracy Can Exist Too. Otherwise It's A Matter Of Pushing A Lever Every Couple Of Years; It's Like Having The Choice Between Coca-cola And Pepsi-cola.

Couple

Hero

Mean

A 1998 Study Was Done In Hebrew By An Israeli Scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, And The English Translation Of The Title Is Good Human Material. That's What They Wanted Sent To Palestine For Colonization And For The Eventual Conflict That Took Place Some Years Later. These Policies Were Somewhat Complementary To The U.s. Policy Of Pressuring England To Allow Jews To Go To Palestine, But Not Allowing Them Here. The British Politician Ernest Bevin Was Quite Bitter About It, Asking, "if You Want To Save The Jews, Why Send Them To Palestine When You Don't Admit Them?"

Years

Titles

Asking

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.

Believe

Law

Privilege

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

If The United States Loses The Economic Weapons Of Control, It Is Very Much Weakened.

United States

Weapons

Economic

There Was Also A National Policy, Which As A Child I Didn't Know Anything About. In 1924 The First Major Immigration Law Was Passed. Before That, There Was An Oriental Exclusion Act, But Other Than That, European Immigrants Like My Parents Were Generally Admitted In The Early Years Of The Twentieth Century. But That Ended In 1924 With An Immigration Law That Was Largely Directed Against Jews And Italians.

Children

Years

Law

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

Giving

Population

Want

In The Humanities And Social Sciences, And In Fields Like Journalism And Economics And So On, People Have To Be Trained To Be Managers, And Controllers, And To Accept Things, And Not To Question Too Much.

People

Humanity

Too Much

As Soon As One Identifies, Challenges And Overcomes Illegitimate Power, He Or She Is An Anarchist. Most People Are Anarchists. What They Call Themselves Doesn’t Matter To Me. The World Is Full Of Suffering, Distress, Violence And Catastrophes. Students Must Decide: Does Something Concern You Or Not? I Say: Look Around, Analyze The Problems, Ask Yourself What You Can Do And Set Out On The Work!

People

Challenges

Suffering

Descriptive Grammar Is An Attempt To Give An Account Of What The Current System Is For Either A Society Or An Individual, Whatever You Happen To Be Studying.

Giving

Study

Individual

I Agree With Bill Clinton That Us Forces Should Not Be Sent To Haiti, But Not For His Reasons.

Haiti

Bills

Reason

In The American Jewish Community, There Is Little Willingness To Face The Fact That The Palestinian Arabs Have Suffered A Monstrous Historical Injustice . . . Until This Is Recognized, Discussion Of The Middle East Crisis Cannot Even Begin.

Community

Historical

Middle East

Silicon Valley, After All, Feeds Off The Existence Of Computers, The Internet, The It Systems, Satellites, The Whole Of Micro Electronics And So On, But A Lot Of That Comes Straight Out Of The State Sector Of The Economy. Silicon Valley Developed, But They Expanded And Turned It Into Commercial Products And So On, But The Innovation Is On The Basis Of Fundamental Technological Development That Took Places In Places Like This [mit] On Government Funding, And That Continues.

Government

Technological Development

Innovation

You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.

People

Magic

Sometimes

The Free Market Is 'socialism' For The Rich: The Public Pays The Costs And The Rich Get The Benefit - Markets For The Poor And Plenty Of State Protection For The Rich.

Cost

Benefits

Pay

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

Latin

America

Pathology

Human Physical Structures And Intellectual Structures Are Generally Studied In Different Ways. The Assumption Is That Physical Structures Are Genetically Inherited And Intellectual Structures Are Learned. I Think That This Assumption Is Wrong. None Of These Structures Is Learned. They All Grow; They Grow In Comparable Ways; Their Ultimate Forms Are Heavily Dependent On Genetic Predispositions.

Thinking

Intellectual

Way

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

Law

World

Administration

When I Am At Home, I Never Watch Tv, But When I Am Abroad In A Hotel I Take A Look At The Bbc To Find Out What's Going On.

Home

Watches

Looks

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

Selfish

Language

Genes

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

Today

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

Right To A Speedy Jury Trial And So On And So Forth. But What Do They Mean By 'person'? It Certainly Didn't Mean Individuals With Flesh And Blood Like Native Americans Who Weren't Persons, They Don't Have Any Rights.

Native American

Mean

Rights

We Should Therefore Be Opposed To Institutional Barriers To That Freedom: Military Dictatorships, For Example. Or States Run By A Central Committee.

Running

Military

Example

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

Taken

Unique

Thinking

Far From Creating Independent Thinkers, Schools Have Always, Throughout History, Played An Institutional Role In A System Of Control And Coercion. And Once You Are Well Educated You Have Already Been Socialized In Ways That Support The Power Structure, Which, In Turn, Rewards You Immensely.

School

Independent

Creating

Even Stalin Proclaimed His Love For Democracy. We Do Not Learn About The Nature Of Systems Of Power By Listening To Their Rhetoric.

Listening

Democracy

His Love

For Thirty Years, Isreal Has Been Highjacking Ships In International Waters, Killing People, Taking Hostages, Bringing Them To Israel, Putting Them In Secret Prisons, All With The Help Of The United States. That's Serious Piracy.

Israel

Years

People

...the Mass Media. What Are They? They're Huge Corporations, Massive Corporations, Linked Up With Even Bigger Corporations. They Sell Audiences To Other Businesses, Namely Advertisers. So When You Turn On The Television Set, Cbs Doesn't Make Any Money. They Make Money From The Advertisers. You're The Product That They're Selling, And The Same Is True Of The Daily Newspaper. They're Huge Corporations, Selling Audiences, Potential Consumers, To Other Businesses, All Linked Up Closely To The Government, Especially The Big Media. What Picture Of The World Do You Expect Them To Present?

Government

Media

Political

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

Goebbels Was In Favor Of Free Speech For Views He Liked. So Was Stalin. If You’re Really In Favor Of Free Speech, Then You’re In Favor Of Freedom Of Speech For Precisely The Views You Despise. Otherwise, You’re Not In Favor Of Free Speech.

Views

Freedom Of Speech

Favors

It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Proceed. There Are Going To Be Barriers, Difficulties, Hardships, Failures - It’s Inevitable. But Unless The Spirit Of The Last Year, Here And Elsewhere In The Country And Around The Globe, Unless That Continues To Grow And Becomes A Major Force In The Social And Political World, The Chances For A Decent Future Are Not Very High.

Country

Political

Hardship

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. The Two Countries Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.

Country

Two

Effort

The 'anti-globalisation Movement' Is The Most Significant Proponent Of Globalisation - But In The Interests Of People, Not Concentrations Of State-private Power.

People

Movement

Significant

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

Government

Population

Rich

What The [james] Monroe Doctrine Stated, In Effect, Is That The Us Should Dominate The Hemisphere.

Doctrine

Hemisphere

Should

If You Look At The Associated Press Wires, There's A Constant Flow Of Information Coming In. At That Time I Happened To Have Direct Access To Ap Wires. The Day The Marines Landed In Haiti And Restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide There Was A Lot Of Excitement About The Dedication To Democracy And So On. But The Day Before The Marines Landed, When Every Journalist Was Looking At Haiti Because It Was Assumed That Something Big Was Happening, The Ap Wires Reported That Then [bill] Clinton Administration Had Authorized Texaco To Ship Oil Illegally To The Military Junta.

Military

Marine

Dedication

The Pashtuns In Particular Are Kind Of Trapped. They've Never Accepted The Durand Line Nor Has Any Afghan Government Historically Accepted It.

Government

Lines

Kind

The General Population Doesn't Know What's Happening, And It Doesn't Even Know That It Doesn't Know.

Population

Knows

Happenings

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

Matter

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

Skeletons

Cells

Blood

Isn't It Interesting That Eating A Banana Is Somehow Comical.

Interesting

Bananas

Eating

A Tremendous Amount Of The Entrepreneurial Initiative, If You Want To Call It That, Comes From The Dynamic State Sector On Which Most Of The Economy Relies To Socialize Costs And Risks And Privatize Eventual Profit. And That's Achieved By, If You Like, Advertising.

Risk

Cost

Want

In The Academic World, Most Of The Work That Is Done Is Clerical. A Lot Of The Work Done By Professors Is Routine.

Routine

Done

World

After The First International Days Of Protest In October, 1965, Senator Mansfield Criticized The 'sense Of Utter Irresponsibility' Shown By The Demonstrators.

Firsts

October

Protest

The Main Selling Appeal Of Nafta To Us Corporations Is That It Gives Them An Advantage In The North American Market Over Their European And Japanese Competitors.

Giving

Corporations

Selling

In The Mid To Late Nineteenth Century, The Gun Manufacturers Recognized That They Had A Limited Market. Remember That This Is A Capitalist Society, You've Got To Expand Your Market. They Were Selling Guns To The Military. That's A Pretty Limited Market. What About All The Rest Of The People? So What Started Was All Kinds Of Fantastic Stories About Wyatt Earp And The Gunmen And The Wild West, How Exciting It Was To Have These Guys With Guns Defending Themselves Against All Sorts Of Things.

Military

Gun

People

Most Of Intellectuals Are False Prophets, Flatterers Of The Court. The Real Prophets Are The Exception And Treated Badly. How Badly They're Treated Depends On The Society. Like In Eastern Europe, They Were Treated Very Badly. In Latin America, They Were Slaughtered.

Real

Latin

Europe

One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.

Marijuana

Answers

Might

The Government Of Rwanda, Which Is A Us Client, Is Intervening Massively, And Uganda To An Extent. It's Almost An International War In Africa. Well, How Many People Know About This?

War

Uganda

Government

[with] Military Threats, You Can See Them Actually, You Can Imagine It. People Don't Think About It Enough. But If You Think About It For A Minute, You Can See That A Nuclear Attack Could Be The End Of Everything.

Military

Thinking

People

With Government Deregulation And The Triumph Of Financial Liberalization, The Dangers Of Systemic Risks, The Possibility Of A Financial Tsunami, Sharply Increased.

It's Easy To Put [serious Threats] Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them. Other Things Are More Important. How Am I Going To Put Food On The Table Tomorrow? That's What I've Got To Worry About, And So On. It's Very Serious, But It's Hard To Bring Out The Enormity Of These Issues, When They Do Not Have The Dramatic Character Of Something You Can Show In The Movies, With A Nuclear Weapons Falling And Everything Disappears.

Fall

Character

Media

A Lot Of The People Involved In The Media Are Very Serious, Honest People, And They Will Tell You, And I Think They Are Right, That They Are Not Being Forced To Write Anything.

Writing

Thinking

Media

Anarchism, In My View, Is An Expression Of The Idea That The Burden Of Proof Is Always On Those Who Argue That Authority And Domination Are Necessary. They Have To Demonstrate, With Powerful Argument, That That Conclusion Is Correct. If They Cannot, Then The Institutions They Defend Should Be Considered Illegitimate. How One Should React To Illegitimate Authority Depends On Circumstances And Conditions: There Are No Formulas.

Powerful

Views

Expression

After All, The Internet Originated Around 1960 And Wasn't Privatized Until 1995. That's Thirty Five Years In The Public Domain During The Hard, Creative Development Period.

Years

Creative

Development

It Was During The Reagan Years That Defiance Of International Law And The U.n. Charter Became Entirely Open.

Years

Law

Defiance

Today, Aid To Colombia Is Given Under The Pretext Of A Drug War. That's Pretty Hard To Take Seriously. Ten Years Ago, Amnesty International Flatly Called It A Myth.

War

Years

Drug

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

On The Other Hand, You Have To Balance That Against Expanding Our Nuclear Forces, Add To Our So-called Depleted Military, Which Is Already More Powerful Than The Rest Of The World Combined; Attack In Syria, Send Forces To Syria, Start Bombing. Who Knows What Could Be Next?

Powerful

Military

Hands

There's An Interesting Book Called The Fugu Plan, Written By Marvin Tokayer And Mary Swartz, Which Describes The Circumstances When European Jews Came To Japan, A Semi-feudal Society.

Book

Japan

Interesting

Some International Law Specialists Compare The Invasion Of Iraq To The 'crimes Against The Peace' For Which Nazi Leaders Were Indicted At Nuremberg.

Law

Iraq

Leader

The New Crimes That The Us And Israel Were Committing In Gaza As 2009 Opened Do Not Fit Easily Into Any Standard Category—except For The Category Of Familiarity.

Israel

Gaza Strip

Fit

The Idea That You Have To Drop Any Thing That You Might Be Interested In Doing Because You Have To Pass That Test Tomorrow And It's Something That You're Not Interested In, That's Just The Opposite Of Education. It's Also Harming Teaching, Because The Teachers Are Evaluated By The Results Of The Test.

Teacher

Teaching

Ideas

Nicaragua Dealt With The Problem Of Terrorism In Exactly The Right Way. It Followed International Law And Treaty Obligations. It Collected Evidence, Brought The Evidence To The Highest Existing Tribunal, The International Court Of Justice, And Received A Verdict - Which, Of Course, The U.s. Dismissed With Contempt.

[donald Trump] Guru Steve Bannon Is Worse, He's Much Scarier. He Probably Knows What He's Doing.

Guru

Trump

Knows

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

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

Well Before September 11, It Was Understood That With Modern Technology, The Rich And Powerful Will Lose Their Near Monopoly Of The Means Of Violence And Can Expect To Suffer Atrocities On Home Soil.

Powerful

Home

Mean

It Seems Self-evident That We Should Want People To Be Free, To Be Able To Play An Active Part In Making Decisions About Matters Of Concern To Them, To The Largest Possible Extent.

Self

Play

People

It's A Mistake To Suppose That Capacities Must Evolve Gradually. There Are Many Known Examples Of Sharp Changes - Slight Genetic Modification That Yields Substantial Phenotypic Effects, And Much Else.

Mistake

Yield

Example

Parts Of The United States Are Taking On A Third World Look.

United States

Looks

World

Nobody Can Successfully Defy The Master Of The Hemisphere [america], In Fact Of The World, Hence The Savagery.

America

Hemisphere

World

Going Back To Why People Don't Vote, I Presume The Main Reason Is Because They Understand Without Reading Political Science Texts That It Doesn't Make Any Difference How They Vote. It's Not Going To Affect Policy, So Why Bother?

Reading

People

Political

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

Children

Character

Data

Policies Are Designed To Undermine Working Class Organization And The Reason Is Not Only The Unions Fight For Workers' Rights, But They Also Have A Democratizing Effect. These Are Institutions In Which People Without Power Can Get Together, Support One Another, Learn About The World, Try Out Their Ideas, Initiate Programs, And That Is Dangerous. That's Like A Referendum In Greece. It Is Dangerous To Allow That.

Fighting

Class

Organization

There's A Good Reason Why Nobody Studies History, It Just Teaches You Too Much.

Edification

Too Much

Reason Why

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

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

The Us Stole Texas From Mexico By Violence, Then Invaded Mexico On Ludicrous Pretexts And Conquered Half Of It, What Is Now The Southwest And Far West. That's Why Cities Have Spanish Names: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Etc. All Of This Is Suppressed In Standard American History. But The Victims Remember. The Conquerors Typically Have One History, The Victims A Different One - And Often A More Accurate One.

Texas

Cities

Names

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

Opportunity

Invisible Hand

Hands

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

Rights

Land

Voting

It's A Class War, And A War On Young People Too... That's Why Tuition Is Rising So Rapidly. There's No Real Economic Reason For That. It's A Technique Of Control And Indoctrination. And This Is Really The First Organized, Significant Reaction To It, Which Is Important.

Real

War

Class

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

Real

Association

Problem

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

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

Thinking

Light

Challenges

I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.

Expectations

Disillusioned

Barack

Armed Attack Has A Definition In International Law. It Means Sudden, Overwhelming, Instantaneous Ongoing Attack.

Mean

Law

Ongoing

[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

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

I See No Anti-semitic Implications In Denial Of The Existence Of Gas Chambers, Or Even Denial Of The Holocaust.

Holocaust

Denial

Existence

There Is Still Much Debate About Whether Torture Has Been Effective In Eliciting Information - The Assumption Being, Apparently, That If It Is Effective, Then It May Be Justified.

Information

May

Assumption

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

In The Primary Debates For The 2016 Election, Every Single Republican Candidate Was A Climate Change Denier, With One Exception, John Kasich - The "rational Moderate" - Who Said It May Be Happening But We Shouldn't Do Anything About It. For A Long Time, The Media Have Downplayed The Issue.

Media

Issues

Long

Judge Afiuni Has Suffered Enough. She Has Been Subject To Acts Of Violence And Humiliations To Undermine Her Human Dignity. I Am Convinced That She Must Be Set Free.

Judging

Violence

Dignity

There's A Split In The Us About How This [split] Will Be Resolved. The Main Point To Look At Is The Split Within The Republican Party. The Republican Establishment, And Wall Street, And The Bankers, And The Corporate Executives And So On, They Don't Want This. They Don't Want It At All. It's The Part Of The Base That Is Mobilized That Wants It.

Wall

Party

Bankers

Nothing Can Justify Crimes Such As Those Of September 11, But We Can Think Of The United States As An Innocent Victim Only If We Adopt The Convenient Path Of Ignoring The Record Of Its Actions And Those Of Its Allies, Which Are, After All, Hardly A Secret.

Thinking

September 11

Secret

The United States Happens To Be The Only State In The World That Has Been Condemned By The World Court For International Terrorism.

United States

World

Terrorism

In Fact, For The Majority Of The Population, Wages And Incomes Have Stagnated And Conditions Have Gotten Worse. So They Are Asking, "what Did I Do Wrong?" And The Answer That The Talk Show Host Is Giving Them Is Convincing, In It's Internal Logic. It's Saying, "what's Wrong Is The Rich Liberals Own Everything, Run Everything, They Don't Care About You; Therefore, Distrust Them" And So On.

Running

Giving

Majority

People Who Call Themselves Supporters Of Israel Are Actually Supporters Of Its Moral Degeneration And Ultimate Destruction.

Israel

People

Moral

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

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

There Is A Reason Why Nelson Mandela Went To Cuba To Praise Castro And Thank The Cuban People Almost As Soon As He Got Out Of Jail. That's A Third World Reaction And They Understand It. Cuba Played An Enormous Role In The Liberation Of Africa And The Overthrow Of Apartheid, Sending Doctors And Teachers To The Poorest Places In The World, To Haiti, To Pakistan After The Earthquake, Almost Everywhere. The Internationalism Is Just Astonishing. I Don't Think There Has Been Anything Like It In History.

Teacher

Thinking

Doctors

Universities Are Less Constrained By Authority And Rigid Doctrine In The United States Than In Most Other Societies, To My Knowledge.

United States

Doctrine

Authority

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

There Is Pakistan's Relationship With Afghanistan Which Will Also Be A Very Tricky Issue In The Coming Years. Then There Is A Large Part Of Pakistan Which Is Being Torn Apart From American Drone Attacks. The Country Is Being Invaded Constantly By A Terrorist Superpower. Again, This Is Not A Small Problem.

Country

Small Problems

Years

The Respected Intellectuals Are Those Who Conform And Serve Power Interests.

Interest

Conform

Regulate The Banks, Get Money Out Of Elections; Raise The Minimum Wage, Environmental Issues. They're All Very Important And The Occupy Movement Made A Difference. It Shifted Not Only The Discourse But To Some Extent, Action On These Issues.

Differences

Issues

Environmental

The Former Colonies, In Latin America In Particular, Have A Better Chance Than Ever Before To Overcome Centuries Of Subjugation, Violence And Foreign Intervention, Which They Have So Far Survived As Dependencies With Islands Of Luxury In A Sea Of Misery.

Latin

Sea

Luxury

England Shouldn't Have The Real Freedom Of Vote And We Shouldn't Either. Because As [james Madison] Put It, One Of The Primary Goals Of Government Was To Protect The Minority Of The Opulent Against The Majority, To Make Sure The Opulent Maintain Their Rights. The Constitutional System Was Structured To Ensure That Outcome.

Real

Rights

Government

Colombia Has Been The Leading Western Recipient Of U.s. Arms And Training As Violence Has Grown Through The '90s.

Training

Arms

Violence

The Neoliberal Programs Of The Last Generation Have In Fact Been, And Were Intended To Be, A Pretty Serious Attack On Democracy, But Also They've Led To Stagnation Or Decline For Large Parts Of The Population - The Working Class, The Lower Middle Class, These People Have Essentially Been Cast Aside.

Class

People

Democracy

What 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

Suppose That Humans Happen To Be So Constructed That They Desire The Opportunity For Freely Undertaken Productive Work. Suppose That They Want To Be Free From The Meddling Of Technocrats And Commissars, Bankers And Tycoons, Mad Bombers Who Engage In Psychological Tests Of Will With Peasants Defending Their Homes, Behavioral Scientists Who Can't Tell A Pigeon From A Poet, Or Anyone Else Who Tries To Wish Freedom And Dignity Out Of Existence Or Beat Them Into Oblivion.

Home

Opportunity

Productive Work

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

The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.

Phones

Organization

Population

In General, I Think, U.s. Policies Remain Constant, Going Back To The Second World War. But The Capacity To Implement Them Is Declining.

War

Thinking

World

Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift.

Opportunity

Liberty

Devil

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

The Question In Brief, Is Whether Democracy And Freedom Are Values To Be Preserved Or Threats To Be Avoided . . . Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Values To Be Treasured; They May Well Be Essential To Survival.

Survival

Democracy

Essentials

Given Their Unusual Privilege, Western Intellectuals Can Realistically Accomplish A Great Deal. The Limits Are Imposed By Will More Than Objective Circumstances. And About Human Will Predictions Are Without Value.

Limits

Privilege

Unusual

That Was The Reason Why Very Few People Fleeing The Rise Of Fascism In Europe, Especially In Germany, Could Get To The United States. And There Were Famous Incidents Like With The Ms Saint Louis, Which Brought A Lot Of Immigrants, Mostly Jewish, From Europe. It Reached Cuba, With People Expecting To Be Admitted To The United States From There. But The Administration Of Franklin D. Roosevelt Wouldn't Allow Them In And They Had To Go Back To Europe Where Many Of Them Died In Concentration Camps.

Europe

People

Fleeing

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

I Think The Foreign Policy Is Really Not Donald Trump Administration Concern. Like The Syria Strike. I Mean, It Meant Almost Nothing. They Hit An Empty Air Base. Within A Day, It Was Functioning Again. Planes Were Flying Off It. It Was For A Domestic Show, You Know - Show What A Tough Guy I Am; I'm Not Barack Obama.

Mean

Thinking

Guy

Okay, Nato Expanded To East Berlin And East Germany. Under [bill] Clinton Nato Expanded Further, To The Former Russian Satellites. In 2008 Nato Formally Made An Offer To Ukraine To Join Nato. That's Unbelievable. I Mean, Ukraine Is The Geopolitical Heartland Of Russian Concern, Quite Aside From Historical Connections, Population And So On.

Mean

East Germany

East Berlin

I'm Sorry To Say It Has Some Historical Analogs. It's Kind Of Reminiscent Of What Happened In Germany In The Late Weimar Years.

Sorry

Years

Historical

You Can See It In The Worship Of [ronald] Reagan, Which Portrays Him As Somebody Who Saved Us From Government. Actually He Was An Apostle Of Big Government.

Government

Worship

Bigs

People Have To Be Atomized And Segregated And Alone. They're Not Supposed To Organize, Because Then They Might Be Something Beyond Spectators Of Action. They Might Actually Be Participants If Many People With Limited Resources Could Get Together To Enter The Political Arena. That's Really Threatening.

Media

People

Political

Some Innate Capacity - Some Part Of The Human Genetic Endowment - Enters Into Language Acquisition. That Much Is Uncontroversial Among Those Who Believe That Humans Are Part Of The Natural World. If It Were Not True, Would Be A Miracle That My Granddaughter Reflexively Identified Some Elements Of The Blooming Buzzing Confusion As Language-related And Went On To Acquire Capacities Of The Kind That You And I Are Now Exercising, While Her Pet Kitten (chimp, Songbird, Bee...), Presented With Exactly The Same Data, Could Not Take The First Step, Let Alone The Later Ones.

Believe

Exercise

Data

That's A Large Part Of The Source Of The Gun Culture. You Have To Have A Gun When You Go Into Starbucks, Because Who Knows What's Going To Happen. It Just Doesn't Happen In Other Countries.

Country

Gun

Culture

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

People

Doe

Layers

... An Essential Feature Of A Decent Society, And An Almost Defining Feature Of A Democratic Society, Is Relative Equality Of Outcome - Not Opportunity, But Outcome. Without That You Can't Seriously Talk About A Democratic State... These Concepts Of The Common Good Have A Long Life. They Lie Right At The Core Of Classical Liberalism, Of Enlightenment Thinking... Like Aristotle, [adam] Smith Understood That The Common Good Will Require Substantial Intervention To Assure Lasting Prosperity Of The Poor By Distribution Of Public Revenues.

Lying

Opportunity

Thinking

When [ Paul Johnson] Got To Me He Was In Trouble, Because I'm An Old-fashioned Conservative: Married When I Was 21, Stayed Married, 3 Kids, Live In The Suburbs, No Scandals, So Nothing To Write About. So What He Did Is Concoct One Of The Nuttiest Claims I've Ever Seen.

Writing

Kids

Scandal

By That Time [1966], We Did Begin To Get Some Protests [against Vietnam War]. But Not From Liberal Intellectuals; They Never Opposed The War.

War

Vietnam

Vietnam War

France Has Not Been Able To Come To Terms With The Fact That It's Not A Major Power Anymore. I Mean Even Before The Second World War Paris Was One Of The Main Centers Of Intellectual And Cultural Life. But Now Paris Is A Kind Of Subsidiary Of Germany, Their Traditional Enemy And They Can't Come To Terms With It.

War

Mean

Paris

I Think There Are Real Possibilities Of Reaching Out To Many Of The Trump Voters, Those Who Voted For Obama Believing His Rhetoric.

Real

Believe

Thinking

Compare Mathematics And The Political Sciences - It's Quite Striking. In Mathematics, In Physics, People Are Concerned With What You Say, Not With Your Certification. But In Order To Speak About Social Reality, You Must Have The Proper Credentials, Particularly If You Depart From The Accepted Framework Of Thinking. Generally Speaking, It Seems Fair To Say That The Richer The Intellectual Substance Of A Field, The Less There Is A Concern For Credentials, And The Greater Is The Concern For Content.

Reality

Thinking

Order

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

Agendas

Outcomes

Debate

One Of The Benefits Of A Properly Functioning Democracy Is Minority Rights And Majority Rule.

Rights

Majority Rule

Democracy

There's A Strong Nativist Tradition - Saying, "we Have To Protect Ourselves" - That Comes From The Founding Of The Country. If You Read Benjamin Franklin, Who Was One Of The Leading Figures Of The Enlightenment In The United States And The Most Distinguished Representative Of The Movement Here, He Actually Advised That The Newly Founded Republic Should Block Germans And Swedes Because They Were Too "swarthy" - Dark.

Country

Strong

Block

You Never Really Saw The Racism In Europe In The Past Because It Was So Homogeneous. When Everyone Is Blonde And Blue-eyed, You Don't See Racism. But As Soon As There Was The Beginnings Of Immigration, It Just Came Out Very Dramatically.

Past

Blue

Europe

China Has Been There For 3,000 Years, Has Contempt For The Barbarians, Is Overcoming A Century Of Domination, And Simply Moves On Its Own. It Does Not Get Intimidated When Uncle Sam Shakes His Fist. That's Scary.

Uncles

Moving

Years

Anti-americanism Is A Pure Totalitarian Concept. The Very Notion Is Idiotic.

Idiotic

Notion

Pure

Real Wages For Male Workers In The United States Are About What They Were In The '60s.

Real

Males

United States

Ug [universal Grammar] May Be Regarded As A Characterization Of The Genetically Determined Language Faculty. One May Think Of Thisfaculty As A 'language Acquisition Device,' An Innate Component Of The Human Mind That Yields A Particular Language Through Interaction With Present Experience, A Device That Converts Experience Into A System Of Knowledge Attained: Knowledge Of One Or Another Language.

Thinking

Yield

Mind

Some Of [donald Trump] Comments Can Be Interpreted As Potentially Reducing The Threat Of Nuclear War. The Major Threat Right Now Is Right On The Russian Border. Notice, Not The Mexican Border, The Russian Border. And It's Serious. He Has Made Various Statements Moving Towards Reducing The Tensions, Accommodating Russian Concerns And So On.

My Feeling Is That If Any Republican Was Elected It Would Be Almost A Death Knell For The Species Literally, Just Because Of Their Attitude On Climate Change.

Attitude

Feelings

Climate

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

Desktop Publishing Was A Big Innovation That Meant Small Groups Or Even Poor Societies Could Do Their Own Publication Without The Capital Investment In A Major Printing Press. That's A Big Difference. Same Is True Of More Advanced Technologies - It Can Offer Plenty Of Liberatory Possibilities - Can - But Whether It Does Or Not Or Whether It Serves For Coercion Depends On Socioeconomic Decisions.

Technology

Differences

Decision

Honduras Has Become A Murder Capital Of The World; There's Horrible Atrocities, Infanticide, Murder Of Women Is Way Up, And People Are Fleeing In Desperation. They Come To The Border, And We Put Them In Trucks And Send Them Back To Mexico To Die. And Here People Are Scared Of Illegal Immigrants - That's What We're Doing. It's Pretty Shocking.

People

Atrocities

Fleeing

Why Should Workers Agree To Be Slaves In A Basically Authoritarian Structure? They Should Have Control Over It Themselves. Why Shouldn't Communities Have A Dominant Voice In Running The Institutions That Affect Their Lives?

Running

Voice

Should Have

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

Linguistics

Theoretical

I Think The Most Important Work That Is Going On Has To Do With The Search For Very General And Abstract Features Of What Is Sometimes Called Universal Grammar: General Properties Of Language That Reflect A Kind Of Biological Necessity Rather Than Logical Necessity; That Is, Properties Of Language That Are Not Logically Necessary For Such A System But Which Are Essential Invariant Properties Of Human Language And Are Known Without Learning. We Know These Properties But We Don't Learn Them. We Simply Use Our Knowledge Of These Properties As The Basis For Learning.

Thinking

Important

Essentials

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

Opportunity

Peaceful

World

My Speculation Is That The U.s. Does Not Want To Establish The Principle That It Has To Defer To Some Higher Authority Before Carrying Out The Use Of Violence.

Use

Want

Violence

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

The Un To Some Extent Diffuses U.s. Power. Therefore It's Less Direct An Agency Of The United States Than The U.s. Army Is. But Still, It Can't Escape The Distribution Of Power In The World.

Army

Distribution Of Power

Agency

[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.

Party

Conservative

Republican

The First Step Is To Penetrate The Clouds Of Deceit And Distortion And Learn The Truth About The World, Then To Organize And Act To Change It. That's Never Been Impossible And Never Been Easy.

Clouds

Political

Deceit

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 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

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

Labor #‎ Unions Are The Leading Force For #‎ Democratization And #‎ Progress .

Progress

Unions

Force

A Property Of An Organism Enters Into Its Life (and Survival) In Many Different Ways, Some More Salient Than Others. But There Is No Simple Notion Of Its Being "for" Some Function.

Simple

Survival

Different

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

Powerful

Believe

People

I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.

Thinking

Government

Surveillance

Very Commonly I Get Queries. Somebody Saw Something Of Mine On Youtube And Of Course If There Is A Talk On Youtube, There Aren't Any Footnotes - And They Want To Know Why Did You Say This. Well If They Bothered To Look Up Something In Print, They Would've Seen Why I Said That. If They Ask For Evidence, I Just Say Well Take A Look And Mention Something They Can Read And That Usually Ends The Conversation.

Looks

Want

Saws

Welsh Is Now Almost A National Language In Wales. The Scottish Dialects Are Reviving To Some Extent. I Don't Think It's A Major Thing, But It's There, And It's Happening Elsewhere.

Thinking

Dialect

Language

Peace Is Preferable To War. But It’s Not An Absolute Value, And So We Always Ask, “what Kind Of Peace?

Peace

War

Kind

I've Occasionally Been Asked To Talk On Israel-palestine. Sometimes It Works, And Sometimes It Elicits Hysteria In The Community.

Israel

Hysteria

Community

The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.

Advertising

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

States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.

Powerful

Hero

People

Anarcho-capitalism, In My Opinion, Is A Doctrinal System Which, If Ever Implemented, Would Lead To Forms Of Tyranny And Oppression That Have Few Counterparts In Human History. There Isn't The Slightest Possibility That Its (in My View, Horrendous) Ideas Would Be Implemented, Because They Would Quickly Destroy Any Society That Made This Colossal Error. The Idea Of 'free Contract' Between The Potentate And His Starving Subject Is A Sick Joke, Perhaps Worth Some Moments In An Academic Seminar Exploring The Consequences Of (in My View, Absurd) Ideas, But Nowhere Else.

Errors

Views

Ideas

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

Attitude

Engineering

Perception

Surely No Rational Or Realistic Person Will Discount The Possibility That [during Wartime] The United States Might Suddenly Resort To Nuclear Weapons. Those Who Retain The Instinct For Survival, Not To Speak Of Minimal Concern For Their Fellow Man, Will Seek Ways To Act Before Rather Than After The Event.

Men

Survival

Church

Haitian Rice Farmers Are Quite Efficient, But They Can't Compete With U.s. Agribusiness That Relies On A Huge Government Subsidy, Thanks To Ronald Reagan's Free Market Enthusiasms.

Government

Subsidies

Agribusiness

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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