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Quote by Noam Chomsky

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What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World

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Author

Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, born on December 7, 1928, is a renowned linguist from the United States. His research in generative grammar and transformational grammar has had a profound impact on modern linguistics. Chomsky's academic achievements extend beyond linguistics, as he is also an active political commentator and philosopher, known for his unique perspective and profound insights. more

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“Such impulses have displayed themselves very widely across left and liberal opinion in recent months. Why? For some, because what the US government and its allies do, whatever they do, has to be opposed—and opposed however thuggish and benighted the forces which this threatens to put your anti-war critic into close company with. For some, because of an uncontrollable animus towards George Bush and his administration. For some, because of a one-eyed perspective on international legality and its relation to issues of international justice and morality. Whatever the case or the combination, it has produced a calamitous compromise of the core values of socialism, or liberalism or both, on the part of thousands of people who claim attachment to them. You have to go back to the apologias for, and fellow-travelling with, the crimes of Stalinism to find as shameful a moral failure of liberal and left opinion as in the wrong-headed—and too often, in the circumstances, sickeningly smug—opposition to the freeing of the Iraqi people from one of the foulest regimes on the planet.”

“Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today.”

“Anti-Americanism is now the mother's milk of the American educational system. Many schools in the United States teach that capitalism is exploitative and American foreign policy is imperialistic. Patriotism isn't taught in American schools. This needs to be understood. The sins of America's past are emphasized while the country's virtues are eclipsed. The achievements of capitalism are denied by environmentalists, socialists and anarchists whose voices have poisoned the well of higher education to the bargain. The older generation has been asleep at the switch, not looking too closely at what their children have been taught. And now the damage is far advanced, and the country's bureaucracies are packed and crowded with people who haven't a clue. Oddly, the United States is undermined by a national psychology that tolerates sedition and treason as if these were legitimate forms of dissent.”

“Page 210 Indeed, precisely because American society is so wealthy overall, America has come to occupy the role of a starkly market-dominant minority vis-à-vis the rest of world. We are now the object of intense resentment, even hatred, spurred by globalization.”