Noam Chomsky

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Michael, Apr 18, 2015.

  1. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    How dare Noam Chomsky question the Empire! Oh, and to the Russian propaganda machine to boot! Well, that doesn't surprise me, this crazy old kook is an avowed Anarchist (his book as PDF here). As a world renown linguist he GASP defines Anarchy as moral whereas the State is immoral - BY DEFINITION. But hey, what the f*ck does he know?

     
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  3. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Gallup International Poll

    Huffington:
    The conclusion of a massive world opinion poll conducted by Win/Gallup International and released at the close of 2013. The poll, which was first conducted in 1977, asked over 66,000 thousand people across 65 countries this year a variety of questions about the world, including which country poses the greatest threat to world peace. The U.S. was voted the biggest threat by far, garnering 24 percent of the vote. Pakistan was a very distant second with 8 percent, followed by China (6 percent) and Afghanistan (5 percent).

    --
    Hey, I got an idea, let's all get out our made-in-China American flag and wave it for Obama, Hitlery or Jeb Bush the III.

    Land of the Free/Fleeced
    Home of the Brave/Slave
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2015
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    What does the Gallup poll have to do with Noam Chomsky?

    Do you have a question or point of discussion, Michael, or is this thread a propaganda exercise?
     
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  7. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Did you watch the video and purview the PDF?

    Numerous forum members appear to be confused as to what various words mean. Words like "Ethics" and 'morals'. Many don't appear to understand Ethics to be a discipline that studies morals, but instead to be a word they insert into whichever post-hoc belief system they were raised to believe in - replacing the word 'Gughd'.

    Noam, being an Anarchist and a linguist, isn't 'making up definitions' to make his points regarding the sad state of the Empire. So, I thought I'd post a video (for those who have a hard time reading) and PDF of his work such that anyone wanting to understand Anarchy as a moral system and the Republic as inherently immoral, can do so. Thus, when we 'vote' to use violence against others (people with the Citizen stamp or otherwise), we can come to understand our role in this immoral process.

    As for "Propaganda", you may want to ask why the majority of American see themselves as moral crusaders making the world a safer place for everyone to live, whereas the citizens of every other country in the world overwhelmingly view the USA as the greatest threat to World peace. Seeing as in the war drums are beating for another "Good War" whereby we invade Ukraine or Iran, I thought that was telling (it was part of the interview).

    Thus, this was more a clarification of 'definitions' thread.
     
  8. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    um seriously your going to lecture people on needing to stick to words definitions, the person whose probably redefined have the words in the English language that deal with politics and economics. you ever hear the phrase practice what you preach because that's majorly in play right now i'm am left in awe at the level of hypocrisy from the post.
     
  9. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    You do understand Noam is an Anarchist? What do you think that word means?
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2015
  10. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Right. What the fuck does he know? Chomsky is just expressing his own political opinions, which in my opinion are largely drivel.
     
    spidergoat likes this.
  11. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Isn't that what you are Michael, an anarchist? Are you not the one who is always complaining about regulation and "statism" and we would all be much better off if we could just get rid of the state? Haven’t you been the one who has consistently advocated for many years now that if we would just get rid of the state and all that nasty regulation everyone would magically and suddenly play nice? Wasn’t it you complaining about all that “govment” regulation?
     
  12. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Well that is hardly surprising given the previous Baby Bush administration led the war into Iraq and Afghanistan and botched both and deregulation of US financial institutions causes a global banking crisis.
     
  13. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Are you back at the Left -vs- Right thinking again? In between blow jobs Clinton signed to deregulate the banks (which is itself a bunch of crap as banks were and still are the most regulated institutions in the world - not to mention the criminal institutions that pose a Central Banks) with full support of the GOP in CONgress. And Bush made up phony bullshit to wage and lose wars in the ME with full support of the Democrats in CONgress.
     
  14. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    His opinion aside, he's a linguist and an Anarchist and thus he isn't "making up definitions" when he states Anarchy to be a moral system whereas Republic is inherent immoral. It's simply a matter of using the words as defined and following Ethical consideration to its moral conclusion. Using force against innocent people is immoral.

    Example: 5 men and 1 woman are on an island. A vote is taken to decide if raping the woman should be legal. At 5 to 1 the vote is made and rape is made legal. While it may be legal, taping the woman will always be immoral. That's why it's called "rape". If not it'd be called 'making love'. Thus, these 5 men could wave stupid looking Made-In-China Island Nation flags all god damn day long - that isn't going to change the moral outcome. Now, what's really interesting, is the response you get when you take the piss out of the 5 idiots waving their stupid flag. Yeah, never mind the woman being raped, who cares about THAT. Now, making fun of the flag, now that really get's people's ire.

    Nice we live in a "Nation" where 'free' citizens can and are legally strangled to death for selling 0.50 cent cigarettes or shot in the head for selling a weed or *gasp* smoking it.
     
  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    So now you are for regulation after being against regulation for all these years? Wow, that is a major turnaround. Yeah, Baby Bush was and is an incompetent boob. But what does that have to do with the discussion?
     
  16. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    You brought Bush up not me.

    The entire foundation of the USA was one in which the Government was there as a violence of 'last resort' - a violence that can be directed at innocent people. As a matter of fact, this ability to direct violence against innocent humans is the ONLY aspect that differentiates 'Government' from other groups of humans. It is immoral by its very nature. Which is why the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution are there to protect us FROM government. Not to protect us from the 'rich', or Rx, or a bad hair cut, not to determine which books we can read or games we can play, not what weeds we can smoke, not to whom we can sell food to, not to control our money, not to bail out the rich - those amendments were written to protect us from the Government. Because Government is evil by its very nature.

    Look at the Government we have - it imprisons more humans than any other government in the history of humanity, wages trillion dollar wars off phony made up bullshit, is the largest polluter in the history of the world, is the largest consumer of energy of any other human organization anywhere, its agents can even legally strangle you to death for selling a 0.50 cent cigarette, it agents control what you and your children think and even how you think because you were all 'Schooled' in its institutions. As children you were taught to hold your hand over your heart and pledge yourself to it.

    That sick in the head shit. Nineteen Eighty Four-esk.

    Government was LIMITED for a reason - and the only way to live in a free society is to live with a limited government.

    Government was only meant to play a part when dealing with disputes over private property rights, contract law and fraud. All of which can be dealt with through voluntary legal agreement. Said government would only act as the enforcer of last resort - which is agreed to when the contract, trade or property rights are in dispute. This then actually puts the government in a moral position as there is a Ethical consideration via moral arguments as to what is fraud and what is a contract and what is property that can be made in the original contract.

    But hey, that'd require a population of people who (a) don't resort to violence at the drop of a pin (see: Drug War, War on Drugs, Income Tax, Rx monopoly, War on Terror, War on Bad Hair, War on Privacy, and etc...) and (b) can read. Two characteristics no longer prevalent in the USSA where so-called "free" Americans can't imagine how people got by without the Gubermint determining who can cut hair, practise medicine, law, be veterinarian, dentist, drive a taxi, build an extension onto their own home, and somehow managed to wipe their own arses.

    That America is gone.

    So no Joe, I don't think we need more regulation.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    54,036
    It's a paradox. The more complex a society becomes, the more rules it needs to govern behavior. The more free we are, the more free we are to commit crimes and violence. Even when power is returned to local governments, they will find a need for a police force, otherwise the strongest group wins, and that group may not be very nice. The times are long past when the government could even be limited to the bureaucratic functions you mention. We are a population of 300 million people, of course our government is going to be imperfect. You try running something that big with simple rules. It's naive to think it's possible.
     
  18. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    Oh, and I suppose you don’t remember writing, “Hey, I got an idea, let's all get out our made-in-China American flag and wave it for Obama, Hitlery or Jeb Bush the III.” (your post #2). “And Bush made up phony bullshit to wage and lose wars in the ME with full support of the Democrats in CONgress.” (post 10)? Either your memory is going or you are lying.
    Ok, that is your standard anti-American tirade. You don’t want government to force you to do anything, but letting wealthy individuals like the Koch brothers, poison the land and air, or steal your assets, that’s fine – just as long as it isn’t “govment”.
    Well here is the thing, you have been repeatedly challenged to provide a meaningful definition of limited government and you have been consistently unable to provide that definition. You have been consistently inconsistent.
     
  19. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    4,885
    In the last decade or so, Chomsky & many other believers in socialism/communism have started to understand that its implementation requires a totalitarian government and a massive bureaucracy. Consider the basic premise
    It calls for stealing from or enslaving those with ability & making the art of whining/begging a recipe for success.

    Socialist believers often decry the USSR as a perversion of socialism. Actually, it is almost an inevitable consequence of attempting to have a socialist/communist government.

    A person with superior abilities will not willingly conform to a system which does not reward his efforts. Note that the USSR suffered from a Brain Drain & tried to prevent citizens from going to foreign lands.

    Hence: Chomsky & others with socialist views started advocating Libertarian Socialism. This is socialism in the context of anarchy or a close approximation to anarchy. This indicates that they have lost their grip on
    reality.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Chomsky, like most lefties, actually has a basic comprehension of socialism, understands the differences between socialism and communism, and disdains authoritarian rule of any kind - left, right, whatever.

    That's always been the original version, from before Chomsky was born.
    It indicates that you have never had a grip on what socialism is, , or capitalism for that matter. Too much wingnut TV and radio.

    It doesn't "call for" anything. It's a criterion for evaluating one's government and economic arrangements.

    You live in a country dominated by the establishment, destruction, and long term after effects of capitalistic slavery, for example. So only recently has your country begun to meet that criterion.
     
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2015
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    You seem to think that the complexity of our society is increasing?

    I doubt. The various moral prescriptions people had to follow in the middle ages were much more complex than what we have today, at least in principle.

    Of course, the various ideologist, today mostly from the left, are working hard to correct this, making our society regarding the complexity of the moral rules as complex as it was in the middle ages, with the various classes, religions, and professional standards of behaviour replaced by political correctness codes. But as a society, our society is rather trivial, a mass society, where everybody can behave in the same uneducated and uncivilized way in relation to everybody else.

    A complex society is something completely different. It is a society with very different organizations - family, churchs, professional societies, clubs, salons, communities, all of them having power, with complex connections between these different power centers. The democratic society is, in comparison, a trivial one. Atomic individuals, and the state which regulates everything. Organizations and firms have no independent power, their statutes follow prescriptions of the state.

    The reality is, of course, quite different, the US deep state is as complex as the society of the middle ages, with families, networks, lobbies, brotherhoods, firm conglomerates, media moguls and religious sects as independent power centers with complex interactions, but this complexity is something relevant inside the 1%, nothing for the 99% sheeple, and, paradox, this is the part of the society not governed by the government at all - it is the one governing it.

    It is certainly not the pure number of people which makes the society complex - instead, the fact that in a society with too many people one simply cannot know much about the other people enforces a rigorous simplification.

    A long time, there have been remains of civilization, thus, people have made complex differences, with rules of politeness being very different for men, women, children, depending on age, profession, religion as well as dress codes. This no longer exists, if one follows rules of polite behaviour, which make differences between men and women, one is called a sexist and so on. This deccline of culture and civilization, lead by gum chewing presidents, is a loss of complexity. People of the past have read much more literature, have been much more educated than today.

    All those regulations are also not a description of complexity of the society. They are artificial restrictions of the free market with the aim to force the sheeple to buy what the established firms produce and to protect these firms from competition.

    What else? The complexity of the technics requires a large subdivision of labor. But this subdivision does not at all need complex regulations. All one needs for this is quite simple, and was known already in the Roman empire. Contracts have to be fulfilled. Everything else is part of the contracts. It is really that simple. One needs secure ownership. This is also well-known, and the need for secure ownership existed also already in the middle ages.

    And the most complex thing humanity has constructed - the internet - works essentially without any regulation at all. It is based on a simple technical protocol.

    The other great success story of mankind - science - is also almost completely unregulated.

    It is different: The strongest group wins, always. And is, after its victory, named police.

    A state is considered free, if the difference between what only the state is allowed to do and what everybody is allowed to do is small.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    You seem to think that the complexity of our society is increasing?

    I doubt. The various moral prescriptions people had to follow in the middle ages were much more complex than what we have today, at least in principle.

    Of course, the various ideologist, today mostly from the left, are working hard to correct this, making our society regarding the complexity of the moral rules as complex as it was in the middle ages, with the various classes, religions, and professional standards of behaviour replaced by political correctness codes. But as a society, our society is rather trivial, a mass society, where everybody can behave in the same uneducated and uncivilized way in relation to everybody else.

    A complex society is something completely different. It is a society with very different organizations - family, churchs, professional societies, clubs, salons, communities, all of them having power, with complex connections between these different power centers. The democratic society is, in comparison, a trivial one. Atomic individuals, and the state which regulates everything. Organizations and firms have no independent power, their statutes follow prescriptions of the state.

    The reality is, of course, quite different, the US deep state is as complex as the society of the middle ages, with families, networks, lobbies, brotherhoods, firm conglomerates, media moguls and religious sects as independent power centers with complex interactions, but this complexity is something relevant inside the 1%, nothing for the 99% sheeple, and, paradox, this is the part of the society not governed by the government at all - it is the one governing it.

    It is certainly not the pure number of people which makes the society complex - instead, the fact that in a society with too many people one simply cannot know much about the other people enforces a rigorous simplification.

    A long time, there have been remains of civilization, thus, people have made complex differences, with rules of politeness being very different for men, women, children, depending on age, profession, religion as well as dress codes. This no longer exists, if one follows rules of polite behaviour, which make differences between men and women, one is called a sexist and so on. This deccline of culture and civilization, lead by gum chewing presidents, is a loss of complexity. People of the past have read much more literature, have been much more educated than today.

    All those regulations are also not a description of complexity of the society. They are artificial restrictions of the free market with the aim to force the sheeple to buy what the established firms produce and to protect these firms from competition.

    What else? The complexity of the technics requires a large subdivision of labor. But this subdivision does not at all need complex regulations. All one needs for this is quite simple, and was known already in the Roman empire. Contracts have to be fulfilled. Everything else is part of the contracts. It is really that simple. One needs secure ownership. This is also well-known, and the need for secure ownership existed also already in the middle ages.

    And the most complex thing humanity has constructed - the internet - works essentially without any regulation at all. It is based on a simple technical protocol.

    The other great success story of mankind - science - is also almost completely unregulated.

    It is different: The strongest group wins, always. And is, after its victory, named police.

    A state is considered free, if the difference between what only the state is allowed to do and what everybody is allowed to do is small.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Yeah, they were "different" alright. Women, for example, were obliged to obey their grown male children without any backtalk, and servant girls of course - - but we avoid examining the actual "differences"
    involved in that time of wonderful complexity.

    If you want to examine such complexity in all its civilized glory, visit Afghanistan. Or Saudi Arabia.

    This was enforced by their employers and neighbors and community headmen, not the State, so of course no loss of freedom for anyone was involved - by presumption, only the State oppresses.

    So the erosion of such institutions as servility and abnegation in the presence of one's superiors is a decline in "civilization".
    Oh bullshit. Before public, State-established and State run education, most girls and other lower class people never even learned to read and write.
    The internet is heavily regulated, by States (including the government that invented it) and by the government established "technical protocols", and by the corporate interests involved.

    So on the one hand you bemoan the loss of religion, rigid social roles, complex forms of servility and abnegation, and the sequestration of learning to the rich and the (male) recipients of charity from the rich; on the other hand you refer with approval to an example of supposedly unregulated endeavor that was instrumental, some say crucial, in the destruction of those features you regard as the signposts of civilization.

    Circular. You define the winner to have been the strongest group. And the winner does not always become the police - pirate towns, organized crime run communities, feudal operations of one kind or another, the militia dominated regions of the earth, do not need or want police forces.

    A State is considered free by Charles Koch if the difference between what only the State is allowed to do and what Charles Koch is allowed to do is small.
     

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