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From our April issue, Mark Bauerlein reviews a new book on the political thought of Noam Chosmky, which suggests that maybe the leftist eminence grise's colorless green ideas should go back to sleeping furiously.
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|4.18.05 @ 1:44PM|#
Slagging Chomsky is shooting fish in barrel, isn't it?
Aside from that, there is no fucking way I'm giving a dime to Horowitz, who is a bigger menace to freedom than Chomsky in contemporary America.
FYI: menace = absolute malignancy (left/right irrelevant) x potentional degree of influence over policy (through advocacy, popular influence, political connections, etc.).
|4.18.05 @ 2:02PM|#
Spot on definition of menace...
Still, as someone who works on a college campus, I can tell you that he's one fish in a barrel that needs continual shooting.
|4.18.05 @ 2:05PM|#
Interesting that Chomsky reacts exactly the same way to people who disagree with him in linguistics. Steven Pinker, Paul Boom and Ray Jackendoff are playing the Horowitz/Collier role in the latest academic war against Chomsky. http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005_02.html
|4.18.05 @ 2:08PM|#
I don't think Horowitz is as much a menace as some of the other writers on his website, and *especially* the vile scum that contribute comments to the articles. Horowitz is usually the most rational, restrained voice on that site.
|4.18.05 @ 2:29PM|#
Horowitz is usually the most rational, restrained voice on that site.
Oh my.
|4.18.05 @ 2:33PM|#
To dig up leftist kooks you have to go to college or Hollyweird. To find rightist kooks you merely need look in the House of Representatives or Senate.
Noam isn't writing any laws.
|4.18.05 @ 2:45PM|#
Noam may not be writing any laws, but he is a big influence on college students and many people in my town(nyc). Not challanging him just adds to a general anti-capitalist/anti-americanism that seems to be turning moderate liberals into radicals. Then again, I do live in the land of Che Guevera T-shirts. If Chomsky was handsome he'd be on a t-shirt.
drf|4.18.05 @ 2:47PM|#
just minimize the guy - i recommend the noam chomsky blow up doll. open up a bottle of white zin, inflate ol' noam, and crack open the sweaty pillow fight scene in "heather has two mommies" (2003 ed. page 69)
then all is well again...
(good call, brian - i follow you in the order of the shoe)
|4.18.05 @ 3:47PM|#
A couple years, I was one of the many who mourned the passing of Nim Chimpsky, who surpassed his namesake in intellect.
|4.18.05 @ 3:53PM|#
You have to hand it to Noam, his reasoning, whether logical or not, is so much more eloquent, to put it. He always seems more filling then just saying, "They hate us for our freedoms." Lefty intellectuals always bring more passion, more color and taste, the right just feels more institutional, morally condescending and propagandish, sort of "father knows best."
PintofStout|4.18.05 @ 3:57PM|#
The Goard! The Gourd! Follow the Gourd!
Warren|4.18.05 @ 4:05PM|#
Forsake the gourd! Follow the shoe!
|4.18.05 @ 7:09PM|#
You have to hand it to Noam, his reasoning, whether logical or not, is so much more eloquent, to put it. He always seems more filling then just saying, "They hate us for our freedoms."
I think you've confused eloquence with logorrhea. Chomsky is famous for taking fifteen thousand words to express a thought that could have been fully expressed in fifty.
|4.18.05 @ 8:17PM|#
The article hit on what I think is the biggest problem with Chomsky: his stubborness. In linguistics he is notorious for half-witted slaggings of new theories that aren't derivative of his original 1960s work which was, to his credit, quite groundbreaking for the time. I don't bother reading much of his political rants, but, as this piece points out, he seems to be totally bewildered by anything that happened after 1980. At least he tends to restrain himself from perverting linguistics in order to prop up his ravings (a la George Lakoff, my nemesis).
|4.19.05 @ 1:40AM|#
And yet not one revelation of the last 20 years has led to a moment's reassessment by Chomsky. - Mark Bauerlein
20 years? Try 70+. This hagiobiographical work by Robert Barsky shows that the little red-diaper baby has been supporting armed lefties since he was 10 years old! I had fierce political opinions when I was twelve, but I've actually changed my mind about a few things since then.
Besides his stuck-in-concrete ideology, I dislike Chomsky because his entire career as a political analyst depends on the logical fallacy of the Appeal to Misleading Authority. In matters of history or politics, he's no more an expert than any of the readers of Reason who never trained in those fields. This isn't to say that Joe Citizen can't make a valuable contribution to public debate. Chomsky's acolytes should just stop pointing to the letters after his name as some sort of proof that what he asserts is true.
Kevin
|4.19.05 @ 11:13AM|#
It's always worthwhile to see a thinker's ideas challenged effectively, but I wouldn't go looking for elevated contests of ideas in a David Horowitz book. Was he this insane, obnoxious, manipulative, dishonest and intellectually useless when he was lefty?
I haven't read very much Chomsky, but his comparitive analysis of media coverage during the 70s and 80s in "Manufacturing Consent" was quite insightful. The unquestioning acceptance by mainstream media outlets of the administration's narratives, regardless of the facts on the ground, is very familiar to anyone who lived through the runup to the Iraq war.
|4.19.05 @ 11:34AM|#
I'll actually second that: Chomsky's media analysis (as opposed to his policy analysis, which is usually cartoonish) is frequently perceptive and penetrating, maybe because it's a little closer to his area of actual expertise.
|4.19.05 @ 12:42PM|#
Chomsky's biggest intellectual error is his continual reliance on the association is causation fallacy. He asserts A, notes that B followed, and then forms a causal link. How is this differrent from that crazy uncle who spouts political "truisms" at Thnaksgiving dinner?
|4.19.05 @ 5:19PM|#
If you want to see Chomsky trying to grasp the internet, and failing every step of the way:
http://corpwatch.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=1408
Keep in mind that his school was one of the first with internet access, so he really has no excuse for getting the history wrong.