From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 17:52:09 PDT
To: blancw@microsoft.com (Blanc Weber)
Subject: Re: Chomsky Arguments / Redefinitions
In-Reply-To: <9409222338.AA01059@netmail2.microsoft.com>
Message-ID: <199409230049.RAA20560@netcom8.netcom.com>
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Blanc Weber writes
> I haven't read Chomsky and have limited acquaintance with the labor 
> theory of value, but I can appreciate the games people can play with 
> torturing definitions to mean other than what is usually understood, 
> until it isn't possible to recognize them.

Thank you for your kind words.

By the way when I called this thread "more tedious Chomsky stuff"
I was perfectly serious - This thread has been beaten to death
time and time again, and many people have a kill file that
automatically kills anything with Chomsky in the header.

Chomsky correctly points out all sort of lies and bias in the mass
media.  Since some the evils he points to are indeed real and indeed
wrong, people automatically sympathize with what he says.

(He pulled terrible clangers on Pol Pot and Idi Amin, but this
is irrelevant to the argument.  Even when the misleading statements
that he complains about are real and evil, the language
he uses still implies that coercive solutions to the
problem are just, necessary, and will make us more free.)

The problem is that if you call it media bias, you imply one
class of solutions.  If you call it a coercive system of
power and control, you get a different class of solutions.  
The language that Chomsky uses suggests to me he very much 
favors that other class of solutions.

But it is absolutely true, as the supporters of Chomsky 
claim, that Chomsky has never said explicitly in so many
words, that coercive solutions to the problem of political
untruths, are good.  On the other hand he has never said
that they are bad either, and the language he uses would`
tend to make a reasonable person feel that coercive solutions
to this problem are good.

Obviously the problems that Chomsky justly complains about
are largely solved when everyone owns their own printing
press, or its network equivalent.  But for some strange
reason I do not hear him saying "Hurrah, the cavalry have
arrived."


-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we              James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.                jamesd@netcom.com