Re: Chomsky (was: Christopher Hitchens' Column)

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Oct 04 2001 - 03:37:03 MDT


John Clark wrote:
>
> From: Miriam English <miriam@werple.net.au>
>
> > It seemed to me that Chomsky kept his comments clear, calm, to the point,
> > and fair. The same could not be said about Hitchens sad piece of hysteria.
>
> I haven't read the particular article you refer to and don't intend to, I've read him
> before and life is too short to read more. Chomsky is always to the point I'll give
> you that; but "calm"? The man is hysterical, he always seems on the verge of a
> nervous breakdown and the air of moral outrage he radiates over just about
> everything under the sun gets real old real fast. Fair? Anybody who starts saying
> things like "the world trade center incident was regrettable but [...]" has no moral
> authority in my book. Some statements don't need a "but', especially with 7 thousand
> people still buried in rubble.

When we are talking seriously about killing many many times that
number as a supposed "cure" for the problem and risking liberty
in the process I think a few "buts" are not at all out of line.
When you say no other considerations are important due to the
life's lost and the nature of the incident you are being as
absolutist as you imply Chomsky is it appears to me.

> Even more important, except for linguistics the man is
> not smart, his writing is not only evil it is silly. He's a linguistic genius a moral imbecile
> and a political amateur. There is no more reason to waste time reading Chomsky's
> opinion of current events than Einstein's opinions of Chinese cooking.

Whereas your own opinion is, to your mind at least, the very
essence of reasonableness?

- samantha



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:12 MDT