Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Noam Chomsky: Ron Paul's Ideas Are Savage

This is very strange analysis from Chomsky, aside from creating a strawman as to what Ron Paul said about a dying man, he goes on to say that libertarianism is about a call for corporate tyranny, but then goes on to state that business wouldn't allow it because they can't live without a strong nanny state.

Which is it Noam, liberty creates corporate tyranny or the nanny state does? And how is liberty savage, when it is government that is about the monopolization of force and its use on a massive scale, to coerce people in their daily lives and on a broader scale launch wars regularly that have resulted in hundreds of millions dead?

What terrible thinking.



(ht Travis Holte)

34 comments:

  1. One of the fascinating things you will find when people pose theoretical questions is they will take a situation as it is presently-say atrocious health care costs- and they will say what would a libertarian do for a dying man that has no health insurance?

    The problem with that type of question is that it has one foot in the present and one foot in a world that has never existed.

    In a libertarian world we would not be in such an atrocious mess to begin with. We would not have to pose the question because quite possibly in a libertarian world there would be reduced costs and real competition free from the influence of the nanny state. Maybe saving your life surgically would be do able on a payment plan. Who knows? We have never had a pure form of libertarianism.

    These types of questions are confusing. Sometimes you have to stop and break them down to see how masterfully manipulative or down right ridiculous they can be..

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    1. Agreed. If there was no nanny state, I'm sure the business community would have come up with a way to provide poor people with health care (even when they're in a coma).

      After all, Walmart came up with a way for poor people to afford cell phones and shoes.

      I loved Murray Rothbard's analogy for shoes (if the US Government had always provided shoes and people couldn't imagine a world where the Government didn't provide shoes). This is the common problem that libertarianism is up against. People have to be able to imagine the system all at once or else it's not feasible.

      That's why socialism sounds like a good idea to people. All you have to say is "the Government will take care of that!" and all problems are magically solved. It's easy to explain and easy to imagine. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

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    2. Indeed, that "find a way" would be called lower prices.

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    3. Good point. It is like those who attacked Ron Paul for not being the type to stand up to Hitler, neglecting the fact that had Wilson not intervened during and after WWI then a Hitler would not have taken power.

      The folly of the leftists who seem to understand that intervention in foreign policy has side effects that are unintended, yet this never happens with intervention in the economy is quite silly. Of course, the GOP neo-con types are the exact opposite.

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    4. Exactly. People who look at WW2 without examining the machinations that created it are idiots. Had the US stayed out of WW1, and forced a peace settlement then WW2 would never have happened.

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  2. Well, at least he acknowledges that we live in a nanny state at the end.

    It's a sad statement that this supposedly brilliant man has virtually no concept of the free market and how they self regulate.

    Even further, Chomsky really demagouges and provides no answers of substance to the question(s).

    Being generous, his claim that Ron Paul said it would be a "triumph of liberty" on the coma question is false:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHY21VA8WE

    The laughter surrounding Paul's suggestion that churches would pick up some slack shows the tremendous lack of knowledge of healthcare history in our country.

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  3. Chomsky misrepresents Ron Paul. Nobody in the audience challenges him.

    Here is Wolf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HJqlqZ13qeE#t=43s

    Here is Turk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HJqlqZ13qeE#t=45s

    Paul is challenging the statist nanny-healthcare system instituted by FDR and Kennedy in the US, and Churchill in England.

    Through the years, Chomsky has been critical of establishment. Good for him. When has he ever offered any solutions or answers? He no longer offers insight. He parrots leftist dogma and that passes for intelligent intelligentsia.

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  4. Very odd, perhaps he's loosing it in his old age. I've read noam for many years and agree with much of what he says. I've read ron paul as well and agree with much of what he says. When it comes to corporatism I've always felt they were in agreement or at least on the same general page.

    I don't understand how the boomer generation got their thinking so messed up, they litterally transitioned from free love hippies into corporate worshiping fascists. Assholes, all of them, we'll not all but the collective whole of them.

    Signed..
    --"slacker"gen-xer

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  5. I always hate these sorts of things.

    The idea that libertarianism/free market/etc and the people who support the idea are just shills for the corporate types just doesn't work if you look at it.

    If this was true, then the corporate/big bank types would be funding libertarian/free market types running for office. But they don't. They fund Republicans/Democrats.

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  6. im sure you already know noam chomsky is clueless when it comes to economics. ive even seen him rant about how division of labor is leading us into tyranny..

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    1. Yeah not really surprising, the man's a fool or a shill

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  7. I have read credible and articulate explanations of how Chomsky and other key left gate keepers like Amy Goodman are likely controlled opposition - loyal agents of some group - whose jobs are to steer dissidents into a safe cattle car. They both will never talk about 9/11 being inside job or perpetrated by foreign "ally" govts. They won't acknowledge the JFK assasination as a coup. They steer people to a polite non threatening to the state territory. it makes sense that if the Nat Review served that purpose so did folks like Amy Goodman and Chomsky.

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  8. I know, I know, its just clearly savage to prefer peace, non-coercion, voluntary markets and self direction. Savage to the core!

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  9. I refuse to dignify these ramblings as "thinking". I read Kolko's "Triumph of Conservatism" in 1973 which conclusively demonstrated that big business could not monopolize the market in the late 1800s and instead relied upon "progressive" regulation to accomplish the monopolization. The entire fraudulent "progressive" narrative cannot survive with an honest definition of basic terms of the debate. In 40 years, I have yet to find a single anti-libertarian anti-Austrian who will concede to the difference between laissez faire and crony capitalism even at the early stage of defining terms for the debate. Our opponents lost the debate decades ago and are left with nothing other than obfuscation/distortion and/or avoiding and ignoring our positions. Always.

    http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500

    Heck, I can't even get MMTer "progressives" to agree that it is physically and conceptually impossible to have the simultaneous enforcement of a rule against the initiation of force and a genocidal totalitarian regime in the same place at the same time. Our opponents are liars and fools. We must accept it and figure out what to do next based upon that reality.

    http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/11/ron-unz-raising-american-wagesby.html?showComment=1353436146972#c8313591332569546313

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    1. Heh, I'm seeing a Special version of Roddis's Law formulating in my mind.

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    2. Oh dear. My musings on MMT have induced 80 comments instead of the usual 2, but after 24 hours, Mike "War on Women" Norman has deleted all of my comments.

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    3. I saw that. I encouraged JK and called out the moron who claims Lew and Murray and Ludwig were racists. These people know less about economics than The Bernankasaur.

      Quit trying- just communicate with "JK" and he will see the light. He's already starting to question the dogma.

      You do good work, Bob. Thanks.

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  10. For a true example of "savage ideas", consider Chomsky's support for UN sanctions on Iraq prior to the Gulf War. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199102--02.htm

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  11. If not for Chomsky's meticulous conceptual muddlement, he would be neither as famous nor beloved today as he is.

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    1. "I like this Chomsky fellow because he makes a really convincing, albeit nonsensical, case for why nothing is my fault."

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    2. Love it. I'll have to share that with my best friend, a linguist who idolizes Chomsky but has finally become a libertarian after 20 years of argument. Thanks.

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  12. At least for Chomsky he could plausibly blame the inane, incoherent and self-contradictory ramblings and pants-shitting on senility.

    It is the younger folk who tout the same arguments that leave me scratching my head. What is their excuse?

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  13. Chomsky is expert at misusing words, or else he simply shares his audience's inability to use them correctly. The instance that comes to mind was in a forum where he was asked about Ron Paul's argument with Giuliani at the 2008 debate. Chomsky, more or less, sided with Paul but did so by saying that Paul's views were "uncontroversial". What he should have said is that Paul's views were true and, perhaps, obvious to anyone that looks at the facts. Uncontroversial they are not, or else everybody would agree about them. It is also very rare for him to make a true argument about social or economic theory. He just makes alot of assertions in a tone of voice that appeals to people in his selective audience. Does he actually debate anybody any more? Or does he only preach to the choir?

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  14. http://ziomania.com/chomsky/Do%20as%20I%20say%20not%20as%20I%20do.htm

    Interesting piece on Chomsky...

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  15. I really wish that Chomsky would just stick to linguistics.

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  16. People cling to his words like Pavlovian dogs, too. A shame, really.

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  17. Not only is Chomsky an economic retard, as I like to call him, and a hypocrite, as the recent LRC blog post demonstrated, but his linguistic theories are poppycock. Just check out the venom directed at Daniel Everett by Chomsky's followers for demonstrating that Chomsky's universal language rules are not universal:
    http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004567.php
    and here:
    http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003837.html

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    1. Thanks Ed. My best friend is a linguistics PhD and has a soft spot for Chomsky. I can't wait to print these out and ask what he thinks.

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  18. The 3rd Roddis law of reality: There’s really really big money to be made in anti-capitalism. Chomsky owns some really big ass houses and appears to make an effort at avoiding black people.

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/126778.html

    And, BTW, Lord “Rain Man” Keynes has finally bought Bob Murphy’s book on the depression and tears it apart without understanding any basic Austrian concepts. He’s amazing, isn't he?

    http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/11/robert-murphys-politically-incorrect.html

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  19. Which would you rather have...some portion of the people falling through the nanny-state healthcare cracks (and perhaps even dying) or, with everyone forced into collective insurance schemes, EVERYONE'S standard of living (part of which is healthcare) declining?

    Only the former option allows for individual choice.

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  20. You just can't think with Chomsky. Corporate USA wants everything both ways to beneft their pocketbook...and not pay into it at the same time...hence Chomsky's comment. Corporate America is decietful and duplicitous...They want you to pay for the nanny state as they use the nanny state to thier advantage.

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