Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy • Hacker News Board

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#21

Post by omonra » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #5

soup10 wrote: post #4

Chomsky takes the anti-American, or anti-government side of any and all debates and writes whiny essays full of sarcastic jabs that preach to a choir of the faithful. He makes no attempt to consider the side of government(or whoever he as casting as the villain at the moment of his self righteous spiel). It's as much of a tragedy to take him seriously as it is to take radical right think tank garbage seriously.

Without an example of specific instances where Chomsky does this, and reasons why he was wrong, this is pure ad hominem.

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

Please do familiarize yourself with his views on other issues.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#22

Post by jgalt212 » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:48 PM UTC

OldSchool wrote: post #11

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

Irrespective of anything Chomsky says on the whole Snowden affair, Chomsky is bad American/borderline traitor. If there's an anti-American government position to take on an issue, he'll find it and take it.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#23

Post by WayneDB » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

OldSchool wrote: post #11

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

He is a great intellectual, but he MAY also be acting as just another control mechanism, a gatekeeper:

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/noamchomskygatekepper26sep05....

https://startpage.com/do/search?query=chomsky+gatekeeper

Bio of the author of the first article - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-abrahamson

(Has the mention of this simple possibility offended you? If you think it's impossible, tell me why.)

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#24

Post by zackmorris » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:50 PM UTC

I've been a big fan of Noam Chomsky for years. I had to implement a recursive descent parser for a project recently and stumbled onto this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy

He laid out the classes of formal grammars clear back in 1956. Every time you use a regular expression, compile code or run a script, you're applying concepts that he helped pioneer. I almost couldn't believe it.

I have a new appreciation for his work, and a better understanding of why his logical approach to ethics/civics/philosophy always resonated with me.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#25

Post by pfraze » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:53 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #22

OldSchool wrote: post #11

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

Irrespective of anything Chomsky says on the whole Snowden affair, Chomsky is bad American/borderline traitor. If there's an anti-American government position to take on an issue, he'll find it and take it.

Dissent isn't treason, even if you do it a lot.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#26

Post by ak39 » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:54 PM UTC

brockers wrote: post #17

rdtsc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soup10 takes the anti Chomskian side and writes whiny comments full of ad-hominem attacks. He makes no attempt to consider Chomsky's side. But I still have hope and I am sure soup10 unlike Chomsky of course has a long list of documented bullet points that explain government's side.

I am a huge fan of Snowdens, of ending the Orwellian institutionalization of our democratic society, and even of Chomsky's statements in this instance but in Soup10's defence, Noam Chomsky IS an anti-American/anti-Government liberal socialist anarchist (in fact that is how he would describe HIMSELF) who uses linguistic gymnastics to de-construct cultural norms in a way the reflects his own ideology. As such he almost…

Define "Anti-American" please.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#27

Post by eksith » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:55 PM UTC

omonra wrote: post #21

graeme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without an example of specific instances where Chomsky does this, and reasons why he was wrong, this is pure ad hominem.

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html Please do familiarize yourself with his views on other issues.

Excellent! I always wanted to read a completely unbiased (and totally not cherry-picked and wasn't compiled by a fanatical detractor) resource on Chomsky's collected works.

Clearly, this is it.

Worth noting, Paul Bogdanor contributed to The Anti-Chomsky Reader : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader

While I'm educating myself, I really should tune to Rush Limbaugh to learn about contraception, feminism and LGBT rights.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#28

Post by galois17 » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

OldSchool wrote: post #11

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

"Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time"

This is undoubtedly true. He is one of the most cited authors of all time.

It is unfortunate that the american media does not give him the attention he deserves. In fact, in Europe Noam Chomsky and his opinions are very highly regarded and his writings are taught in schools. I am Greek (living in the U.S for the last 5 years) and I was first introduced to Noam Chomsky during a writing class in my (public) high school.

I guess the fact that he is an anarchist and very often criticizes the U.S government and foreign policy does not make him popular within the U.S.

Btw, some of us, no matter what country we are from, need to understand that when someone criticizes our country's government and its actions, it does not mean automatically that they are criticizing us. I honestly find it very naive when someone defends their government's policies just because they feel somehow they have to do so.

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#29

Post by northwest » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 7:00 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #22

OldSchool wrote: post #11

Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. The man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by voicing his thoughts. Too bad he is getting up there in age but hopefully we will enjoy his presence for many more years.

Irrespective of anything Chomsky says on the whole Snowden affair, Chomsky is bad American/borderline traitor. If there's an anti-American government position to take on an issue, he'll find it and take it.

Why would you think that criticism of something is the same as being fundamentally against that thing?

I'd say what you're doing here is "emotional thinking". Try being more rational when thinking.

When you love your country, you actually have the duty to point things out that are wrong. That's the only way problems can be corrected. Otherwise it would mean you're ok with your country decaying.

(Just like with your boy/girlfriend or husband - if you love them, you need to openly talk about the problems.)

Re: Chomsky praises Snowden and condemns US hypocrisy

#30

Post by gruseom » Sun, Jul 28, 2013, 7:08 PM UTC

brockers wrote: post #17

rdtsc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soup10 takes the anti Chomskian side and writes whiny comments full of ad-hominem attacks. He makes no attempt to consider Chomsky's side. But I still have hope and I am sure soup10 unlike Chomsky of course has a long list of documented bullet points that explain government's side.

I am a huge fan of Snowdens, of ending the Orwellian institutionalization of our democratic society, and even of Chomsky's statements in this instance but in Soup10's defence, Noam Chomsky IS an anti-American/anti-Government liberal socialist anarchist (in fact that is how he would describe HIMSELF) who uses linguistic gymnastics to de-construct cultural norms in a way the reflects his own ideology. As such he almost…

Chomsky would never describe himself as anti-American. He's a critic of power structures. His focus is on U.S. power structures because (a) they're the most impactful and (b) in the classic prophetic/dissident tradition, he believes that one ought to criticize one's own house before condemning others. That's actually an act of loyalty, or can be, despite its inevitably being met with anger at the time. History tends to take the opposite view, of course.

I've heard Chomsky speak about his feelings toward the U.S. a couple times in interviews and it was quite clear that he's devoted to it. (IIRC he even described it as "the greatest country in the world", or agreed with a questioner who so described it. I remember being surprised that he didn't demur at that.) He talked about how he feels much more comfortable with American values than anywhere else he's traveled. But he clearly doesn't like to talk about himself, let alone proclaim national sentiments, so there aren't many instances of this.