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Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sunday, December 02, 2007 (06:21:21)
Posted by personman
* Update: I E-mailed Prof. Chomsky for confirmation. Z magazine is an official source, but some Ron Paul supporters are calling the forum comments a hoax or a fake. View Prof. Chomsky's response here.
From the znet sustainers forum:
Questioner: Hello Mr. Chomsky. I’m assuming you know who Ron Paul is. And I’m also assuming you have a general idea about his positions. Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:
- He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).
Noam Chomsky: Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.
- He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)
Noam Chomsky: “Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.
- He defends workers right to organize (so long as owners have the right to argue against it).
Noam Chomsky: Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you’ve already mentioned.
There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power — itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.
- He proposes staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless his home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).
Noam Chomsky: He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.
I really can’t find differences between your positions and his.
Noam Chomsky: There’s a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn’t themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being “broken” are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based — the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we’re at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).
So I have these questions:
1) Can you please tell me the differences between your schools of “Libertarianism”?
Noam Chomsky: There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion — on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.
2) Can you please tell me what role “private property” and “ownership” have in your school of “Libertarianism”?
Noam Chomsky: That would have to be worked out by free communities, and of course it is impossible to respond to what I would prefer in abstraction from circumstances, which make a great deal of difference, obviously.
3) Would you support Ron Paul, if he was the Republican presidential candidate…and Hilary Clinton was his Democratic opponent?
Noam Chomsky: No.
www.anarchismtoday.org/News/p...74.html
Sunday, December 02, 2007 (06:21:21)
Posted by personman
* Update: I E-mailed Prof. Chomsky for confirmation. Z magazine is an official source, but some Ron Paul supporters are calling the forum comments a hoax or a fake. View Prof. Chomsky's response here.
From the znet sustainers forum:
Questioner: Hello Mr. Chomsky. I’m assuming you know who Ron Paul is. And I’m also assuming you have a general idea about his positions. Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:
- He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).
Noam Chomsky: Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.
- He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)
Noam Chomsky: “Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded — like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,….? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.
- He defends workers right to organize (so long as owners have the right to argue against it).
Noam Chomsky: Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you’ve already mentioned.
There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power — itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.
- He proposes staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless his home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).
Noam Chomsky: He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.
I really can’t find differences between your positions and his.
Noam Chomsky: There’s a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn’t themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being “broken” are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based — the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we’re at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).
So I have these questions:
1) Can you please tell me the differences between your schools of “Libertarianism”?
Noam Chomsky: There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion — on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.
2) Can you please tell me what role “private property” and “ownership” have in your school of “Libertarianism”?
Noam Chomsky: That would have to be worked out by free communities, and of course it is impossible to respond to what I would prefer in abstraction from circumstances, which make a great deal of difference, obviously.
3) Would you support Ron Paul, if he was the Republican presidential candidate…and Hilary Clinton was his Democratic opponent?
Noam Chomsky: No.
www.anarchismtoday.org/News/p...74.html
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sat, December 15, 2007 - 7:50 AM....as I live with an a paul o gist, this serves as a very useful dialogue tool. Thanks. -
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sun, December 16, 2007 - 2:41 PMYes, Ted, I have a self-described "angry Libertarian" living down the road with R Paul signs everywhere...ugh
Oh , yes, lets return to feudalism. We each build our own roads through our property and charge tolls. And it would provide income for all the tribe trolls. What to do about airspace? I duuno. But Rue Paul, I mean Ron Paul certainly has some ideas... -
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sun, December 16, 2007 - 4:43 PM....they never can get past the infrastructure dillema.... -
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Sun, December 23, 2007 - 6:47 AM....don't mind me. I was just digging that someone posted something Chomsky-related on the Chomsky tribe..... -
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Tue, December 25, 2007 - 3:19 AMYes. I was looking for material on his linguistics thoeries ....
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Unsu...
Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Mon, January 7, 2008 - 11:41 AMChomsky is mostly right. Here is what I wrote:
The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat
By STEVEN ARGUE
For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.
Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.
At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.
In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".
On abortion, Ron Paul is against it and puts forward a “state rights” argument. It took the national Roe v Wade decision to legalize abortion. Getting rid of national protections for a woman’s right to choose is one way to move towards the banning of abortions.
In addition to his opposition to a woman’s right to choose, Ron Paul opposes any protections for women being sexually harassed on the job, saying they should just quit.
He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.
On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties as well as states rights. Once again “state rights” are being used to defend Ron Paul’s racist and sexist positions. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".
Anyone who votes against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act is a racist. And you can spare me the Civil War era “states rights” rhetoric. Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army, including 200,000 Black soldiers, smashed the southern slavocracy, and this was a tremendous step forward. More recently the Voting Rights Act was passed, but if it were up to Ron Paul, it would be abolished.
No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.
Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.
There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?
I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8469739.php
Or here is a different version of the same article:
nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html
*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us
Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:
Comrades:
I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.
Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.
I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.
For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.
I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.
Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party
*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue
Liberation News
lists.riseup.net/www/info/...ation_news
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Wed, January 9, 2008 - 4:12 PMFinal Nails in Racist-Sexist-Homophobic Ron Paul Campaign Coffin
By STEVEN ARGUE
Since I wrote the article:
The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8470186.php
New information has surfaced regarding Ron Paul’s pro-fascist agenda.
That information is discussed in the following January 7, 2008 MSNBC interview conducted by Tucker Carlson with the New Republic’s Jamie Kirchick. In it he gives an inside look into his controversial piece on presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, due to hit newsstands on Friday.
antironpaul.com/
The following are newly released copies of Ron Paul’s extreme right newsletter to which Jamie Kirchick refers:
www.tnr.com/downloads/March1990.pdf
www.tnr.com/downloads/January91.pdf
www.tnr.com/downloads/October1990.pdf
www.tnr.com/downloads/June1990.pdf
www.tnr.com/downloads/August1990.pdf
In addition to these revelations, in New Hampshire Ron Paul also failed to repeat anything close to the 10% vote he achieved in Iowa.
Somewhat surprisingly, there are a large number of liberal minded anti-war people who have urged a vote for Ron Paul.
They are liberal "support the lesser viable evil" types that see Ron Paul as more viable than any anti-war Democrat (arguably Kucinich and Gravel).
Additional questions have always existed if Ron Paul really was viable, or if he really was a lesser evil. New Hampshire and the latest revelations ought to put both questions to rest.
But for me there are always more important questions than if a candidate is viable or a "lesser evil". I think that building a long-term movement for real change is much more important than backing a candidate of any degree of evil. For me that includes deflating illusions in the corporate politicians of the Democrat and Republican Parties, getting out information on candidates to the left of the Democrats (the real anti-war and anti-corporate candidates), and urging further actions such as protests, strikes etc.
Simply put, there is nobody worth supporting in the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-poor, and capitalist Republican Party. Never has been, never will be. Get over it. In fact, there is nobody in the corporate Democrat and Republican Parties that are worth supporting. I discuss some of the candidates that may be worth supporting in the following article:
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
www.indybay.org/newsitems/...8469739.php
And just for fun, here's the Ron Paul Time Machine!
www.youtube.com/watch
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Thu, January 10, 2008 - 3:33 AMThanks for this Tedster, mind if I cross-post it? -
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Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul
Thu, January 10, 2008 - 12:42 PMPlease do. In fact, I encourage people to cross post anything that I post so if something else comes up, just do it.
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