Hi Jillian!!

[Jumps, waves arms, fumbles and drops cell phone trying to get a picture, all well outside the yellow tape]

A fairly wise, grouchy, equivalently experienced warrior right there in that hotbed of foreign policy innovation, Fresno, California, fella by the name of “Brecher” if I’m not mistaken, already had the good sense and bias toward action to set Hanson’s vineyard on fire, so really, if we’re not gonna stick sticks and shit in his spokes, the hell with him, y’know?

mikey

In this long war, that belief was — and is — far deadlier even than an unhinged murderer at the controls of an airliner.

Depending on just how you parse ‘that belief’, I could see agreeing with this thought. Of course, by ‘that belief’ I refer to what VD Hanson believes.

You’re all a bunch of goobers.

America-hating goobers.

Slobbering, sissified, Caliphate-loving GOOBERS. ;-P

Helluva start for the Jillian the Rookie. First time in The Show and she hits it out of the park. Next, she’s going to focus on the Chargers.

Write it, Jillian. I stand in awe.

does any of this sickness to which you refer somehow regard the fact that the red sox are choking like a bunch of things that choke on stuff?

or no. is it something else?

I am ashamed that this man calls my region, (hell, my state,) home. What the hell is it with Stanford University? Do they collect wingnuts? Gotta catch ’em all? Get the whole set!? W.T.F?

The more we push for democratic change abroad, the more the democracy-hating terrorists slander us that we do not.

Sadly, No.

VD’s case is classic projection. We gotta invade their countries, rape their women, slaughter their menfolk ‘coz otherwise someday they’d imagine they could do that to us! That’ll show ’em good what “civilization” is. As Colonel Kurtz observed, “The horror! The horror!”

Now that was a movie worth actually ruminating over (not quite as much fodder there as in the book, but nonetheless). Thanks for sharing VD’s take on the inferior film “300”. But I’m sure a scholar as wise as VD knows that a lot of the Greek warrior classes were into “teh gay”, big time from what I hear, and sometimes with minors, like Mark Foley. It’s cultural and acceptable when those manly muscles are presented on Attic vases, but good ReThugs like Larry “not gay” Craig would surely be embarrassed by Hanson’s glamorizing such a sick and deviant lifestyle by praising these people. (And remember: Christianity was not yet invented, so all these people are in Hell anyway.)

It still puzzles me how so-called Republicans and Conservatives (at the behest of NeoConservatives) have embraced Nation Building and Colonialism as the new paradigm of U.S. Foreign Policy.

It’s completely anti-conservative in nature.

I also find it sadly hilarious that after all these years when the mission started out because Saddam attacked us on 9/11 which was subsequently debunked, then it was Saddam had WMD and was an imminent threat to the U.S., which was subsequently debunked, to Saddam was a bad guy so we had to get rid of him, and finally leading us to the current conclusion, that we invaded Iraq to bring Democracy to the Middle East…How can anyone take this seriously?

If Bush had come to the American People in 2003 and said “let’s spend $600 billion to liberate Iraq and bring Democracy there” he would have gotten no where. So the elaborate propaganda mind fuck was created to drag the American People along.

Even though the current argument for staying in Iraq is to bring stability and democracy to the Middle East, it still doesn’t hold water.

If the requisite for using military force was to depose evil dictators and liberate down trodden people, then our work as a nation has just begun.

No one seems to give a fuck about Darfur and Rwanda.

It’s completely anti-conservative in nature.

Actually, isn’t the conservative movement pretty much devoid of principles, and only exists in opposition to whatever enemy du jour can unify their movement?

(Jillian are you really a girl? snicker snicker snort giggle)

“Actually, isn’t the conservative movement pretty much devoid of principles, and only exists in opposition to whatever enemy du jour can unify their movement?” DING,DING,DING. Anythingonthemiddlerowsonny! 10 10 10 nice form kiddoo.Didn’t any of these asshelmets read “Heart of Darkness”

Dear bradrocket,
plz post so I can enjoy myself fully
papelbot is human, and mo closed it out
life is good

*cough* Yankees win *cough*

Alas, Kurtz started from a position of believing in more than his own venal bullshit. That’s why he’s a tragic figure.

These mopes are just fuckups.

Depending on just how you parse ‘that belief’, I could see agreeing with this thought. Of course, by ‘that belief’ I refer to what VD Hanson believes.

VD’s got a lot of stock in belief. It’s easier to deal with than fact.

The great lesson of September 11 was not that the jihadists ever believed that they could kill us all.

What a nitwit.

Noam Chomsky should have stuck with psycholinguistics. Is he a little out there? Well, how should I put it? He makes Michael Moore look like Sean Hannity.

You’re just a Dr BLT knock off, so please, knock it off!

Rather, they trusted that enough of the West and indeed enough of us here in America, might at the end of the day declare that we had it coming.

But we did.

I agree with Dinesh. Being dead I understand the whole “had it coming” business.

Another 9/11 might help.

What did we expect?

It was everything I’d dreamed of.

Love the post, love love love it.

Shorter VDH:

Obviously, we need BIGGER GUNS!

VDH has some issues in need of intense psychotropics and/or bitch-slapping therapy.

Wonderful post, Jillian.

I think VD is in need of a FOX-sponsored stroll through Baghdad, free of such restraints like an overwhelming military force.

Hell, SN! shoud start a sponsorship drive for an Iraq trip for all wingnuttia. It would be funny, and likely successful.

If only the GOP and their fans could deal with non-whitey.

Mariners win

Alice Miller describes the psychology of “poisonous pedagogy” in her book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the roots of violence:

1. Adults [America] are the masters (not the servants!) of the dependent child [Iraq].
2. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong.
3. The child is held responsible for their anger.
4. The parents must always be shielded.
5. The child’s life-affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic adult.
6. The child’s will must be “broken” as soon as possible.

[In addition to physical punishments], the methods that can be used to suppress vital spontaneity in the child are: laying traps, lying, duplicity, subterfuge, manipulation, “scare” tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation, distrust, humiliating and disgracing the child, scorn, ridicule, and coercion even to the point of torture.

Jillian, fardels bear beat me to the whole “hit one out, first time up” thing I had so cleverly constructed, but I’m (metaphorically) standing up & shouting!!

Amusing how D’Souza’s “The Left Was Responsible For 9/11” book was pretty roundly thwacked, even by the ReichWing, but now that the occupation of Iraq is swirling closer to the drain w/ each passing day, the RW is perfectly willing to accept it, & assign blame everywhere but to themselves & our gov’t’s. policies.

PoliShifter, they aren’t “conservatives,” they’re authoritarians, little scared weenies looking for a daddy to lead & protect them from scary boogie-men under the bed. Actual policies, philosophies & the like make little difference to them.

L. A. Angels of Disneyland, still 7½ up on the Mariner Moose.
Former Brooklyn Bums leading current Arizona Venomous Serpents, 7-4, top of the eighth. (Now I’ve probably cursed them.)

Had your suspicions? Or just thought she had an unrequited crush on Bush? And Big Oil? And how did she ever get to be the provost @ the Harvard of the West? (The only thing wrong w/ Stanford, really, is the Hoover Institution & its reservoir tipped penis- bldg.) Well, whatta ya think of Condi now?

P. P. S.: Bums over ‘Backs, 7-4 (still) top of ninth, one away. Fingers crossed, breath held.

You give VDH too much credit.

I think that VDH is less of a Kipling worshipper like Boot or Ferguson, and is really just a Western civilization triumphalist.

He is talking about morality as a prelude of abandoning morality as a justification for the Iraq War.

He never really cared about the moral lapses of the Greeks, just the fact that they beat those nasty Persians. He has often written about how Western values such as individualism, modernity are not necessarily better in an ethical sense, but they win wars, and that is all that matters. I seriously doubt if VDH cares about famines in British India or human rights abuses or about Iraqis at all.

He hates Iraq because they are lowering our winning percentages, and America might not make the History Hall of Fame alongside Wade Boggs. He’s Blut und Boden, without the eugenics angle.

Soon he will give up on America, saying American soldiers lack the raw individualist Western manpower (read: teh gay) of his masturbatory hoplite fantasies, and go back to farming, daydreaming the windmills are Persian horsemen.

I know I should have some more snark, but I just really, really, really hate him. Reading his work makes me want to support those Mexican farm labor unions only for spite.

The War Nerd said it wasn’t him who burned Victor Handjob’s vineyards.

Whoa, Jillian, well said. Sing it, Sister.

I have got *such* a crush on Jillian right now.

Whoever told her where to find the little fake rock that hides the keys deserves a promotion.

VDH sounds better in the original Latin.

It’s completely anti-conservative in nature.

What are you talking about PoliShifter? This strategy allows conservatives to be forever at war, and to forever hate people who want the war stopped.

Quite seriously, what could be more conservative than that?

Fantastic writing Jillian.

“The more we pay for outrageously priced oil”

It seems Mr. Hanson knows as much about oil as he does military history. As a former employee of NYMEX I have seen the price of oil being set daily. It is done not by evil brown people but by greedy white men, in a pure market (the open outcall). Speculation & the need for profit are what drives the price of oil, mostly.

What I learned from VDH today:

– Norman Mailer and Ward Churchill are sympatico.

– Flight 93 was filled with conservatives.

– Dinesh D’Souza and friends fell right into bin Laden’s trap.

– Jerry Falwell was deadlier than Mohammed Atta.

Yup, just another day in wingnut academia.

Thucydides vs. Victor Davis Hanson

“300,” aside from being the single most homo-erotic movie I’ve ever seen, also showed how superior forces can be provoked into putting themselves into strategically inferior positions. Osama is Leonidas, the US military is the wolf, and Iraq is the narrow pass.

I imagine that these “military experts” missed this point because they were too busy masturbating to the taut abs and pumped pecs.

The right has long impressed me to the degree that they simultaneously trumpet Western civilization and Western values and Western rationality at the exact same time their policies and arguments oppose every one of those cherished notions.

As a linguist, I must admit that Chomsky has become something of an evil incantation. Go back to linguistics pal! At least VDH uses his field of expertise to vent punditry. I feel kind of bad for VDH, his earliest articles after 9/11 weren’t far off the mark, but once championed by the right, he decided to “brand” himself and go public (where can we buy stock, actually?). Now he has too much to lose by changing his tack, even if he were to think his stance is now far off the mark. This article was hardly one of his more drifting into space pieces though, I think we could still hear Major Tom on this one a bit.

Agreed wholeheartedly with Pollshifter above. There is nothing farther from “traditional conservatism” than these new ideas of “nation building” as well as this masked colonialism of Christian Evangelicals running amok to ‘convert the heathens’ (OT, but relevant IMO). But remember Pollshifter, no one ever cared about Sudan. Colin Powell and Bill Clinton tried to bring attention to the now almost 3 decade killing fields there, to no avail. Roundly ignored. Darfur is now just another sort of incantation, much like the “Free Tibet” stickers sported by college students who care more about the Beastie Boys than they ever could care about the situation in Tibet.

Great use of Lovecraft references, though. Bravissimo, Sadly, No!

“Hell, SN! shoud start a sponsorship drive for an Iraq trip for all wingnuttia.”

I’m holding off on any more donations until I get an update on the bear/puma surge I helped fund.

Can I say something about the movie 300?

VDH praises its depiction of the Spartan warrior ethic. Yes, but, you see, the whole movie is about how the splendid Spartan army is betrayed and hamstrung and left hung out to dry (I know–block that metaphor) by the predictions of four or five creeps on a mountain, a drunken teenage girl’s modern dance routine, and the gasbags and old men of the Council.

All of whom–except the girl–were trained in the same warrior ethic.

The whole first act of the movie is about Leonida’s Youth, his Training, his cruel-but-essential blah blah into the pitiless yadda of the etc., which (we are told repeatedly in portentous voice-over) is the Way of All Spartan Men.

Then the next two acts are about how the noble, democratic governing Council is full of sissies, hesitaters, dupes, traitors, and cowards.

What am I missing?

Leonidas’.

I didn’t see 300, but the Spartans were only one element of the Greek resistance against the Persians.

we, the kaganklan, believe that everyone upthread should volunteer to fight in any of the several wars we have planned for the upcoming fall season (and wait until sweeps week!!). anyone who doesn’t is a terrorist who loves burkas.

we would love to join you but unfortunately our institutes and newspaper columns need us and we have a bad back and our trick knee and anyway we are fighting the war on the home front and lots of people have advocated for war but not fought and LOOK OVER THERE A PONY!!!!

Everyone with teh surname Kagan needs to listen to more Alien Sex Fiend.

Re: harry
Awesome argument: ” He has often written about how Western values such as individualism, modernity are not necessarily better in an ethical sense, but they win wars, and that is all that matters. I seriously doubt if VDH cares about famines in British India or human rights abuses or about Iraqis at all.

He hates Iraq because they are lowering our winning percentages, and America might not make the History Hall of Fame alongside Wade Boggs”

Re: MrWonderful

“Then the next two acts are about how the noble, democratic governing Council is full of sissies, hesitaters, dupes, traitors, and cowards.”

VDH: “[300‘s] unabashed defense of the Spartan notion of martial excellence and the superiority of a free Hellas over a subservient Persian East.”

VDH: “the Greeks, if we can believe Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus, saw Thermopylae as a ‘clash of civilizations’ that set Eastern centralism and collective serfdom against the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis.”

Although VD hedges, by putting it off to the portrayal by the Greek historians, he should do what a real goddamn historian does, and explain how, well, no, they weren’t exactly portraying this “freedom” very accurately.

Consider that the Spartans and Athenians both had massive slave populations (not to mention other, ahem, legal alien laboring non-citizens) that enabled them their warrior spirit, the time for philosophizing, and, yes, the time to be democrats. The Spartan capture/dispersal of some of Athenian slave labor was crucial to undermining the Athenian war effort.

And the idea that Persian governance was all about dictatorship and authoritarianism also ignores some of the liberties their subjects received in occupied lands. (Hello, Jewish religious freedom and construction of the “Old Testament.”) Why, too, was the Persian empire’s army so vastly drawn from its subject lands, if those soldiers didn’t get some of the perks that the “free” Greeks did?

What I learned from 300, Troy, and Alexander, which I watched all at once.

a) Spartans have Scottish accents
b) Athenians have English accents
c) Macedonians have Irish accents
d) Persian kings are either African and nine feet tall and gay. Or they are Egyptian Arabs.

Excellent post, Jillian!!!

ps. if someone’s in Boston, please comfort Bradrocket. I hear Bloddy Mary’s (extra spicy) are good for a meloncholy hangover.

What I learned from 300, Troy, and Alexander, which I watched all at once.

hee. this made me laugh.

…er, sequentially….

Xenophon, the first great warrior to strike a blow for the West deep into the Orient, once wrote:

Further, the law enjoins upon all Spartans, during the whole period of the campaign, the constant practice of gymnastic exercises, whereby their pride in themselves is increased, and they appear freer and of a more liberal aspect than the rest of the world.

See, taut abs will show the world that we are better. I recommend Petraeus to immediately institute the policy of more shirtless soldiers, as it will compound the successes of the Surge. But only the fit ones.

Great post Jillian. You put your finger on something that has bothered me a long time. White man’s burden pervades all of the pro-war views of Iraq, at least since we occupied Baghdad and then found out they didn’t want Chalabi as their proconsul. Every time I hear that we are building (or sometimes just painting) schools, I think, “what, the Iraqis can’t do that for themselves?” They had a highly educated, technically competent society before we invaded. But because the democracy, sexy, whiskey narrative flopped really badly, the default narrative — our civilizing mission among the dark races — was the only thing pea-brained wingers had to fall back on.

See, taut abs will show the world that we are better. I recommend Petraeus to immediately institute the policy of more shirtless soldiers, as it will compound the successes of the Surge. But only the fit ones.

You mean like this?

He stands there with a bloody knife, body at his feet. The witnesses to the murder gather and ask, “Why did you kill this person?” He responds, “because he looked like someone who I believed wanted to kill me so I killed him first!” He continues, “I also plan to kill his family since they obviously hate me as well!” He goes on to add, “You all should be thanking me for protecting YOU from this guy I BELIEVED wanted to kill me! Anybody who doesn’t is completely evil and deserves death as well!”

BRUTES!!!!!

Slightly off-topic, I no longer understand what Niall Ferguson believes. He’s famous for being an enthusiastic cheerleader for American neo-imperialism and an apologist for torture in the earlier days of the Bush regime. On the other hand, stuff he’s written recently seems to recognize that the US is losing its grip internationally, that Iraq is a catastrophe, and that military intervention in Iran would be nuts.

Of course, Ferguson doesn’t acknowledge that he himself helped bring about the current mess.

VD Hanson is another matter. Ferguson has advocated a bunch of slop over the years, but he does have a brain. Hanson is just a hack.

What the fuck is the problem with Chomksy?

Shouldn’t it be natural that if you’re thinking about linguistics, which, after all, is the science of human communication, you might then move on to thinking about WHAT that communication’s used for and its misuse by amoral cretins in the furtherance of their dark Satanic agendas?

Oh, jeezul, THAT’S RIGHT. Academics should stick to their ivory towers, or at least to their “field of expertise”. Political commentary should be left to the Very Serious People who use terms like “Realpolitik” in telling us why it’s regrettable but necessary to slaughter the indigs ’cause we really really need their resources/land/markets and you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omlette and and We’re Doing Things With The Best Of Intentions and after all They Started It and We’ve Got To Protect Ourselves and Better Them Than Us.

“Chomsky should stick to linguistics” is the academic equivalent of “shut up and sing”.

I have to say, that first line should be something more along the lines of “what the fuck is the problem with wingnuts and their obsessive hatred of Chomsky and the anaphlactic reactions to his name in general?”

Speak me bad english? Unpossible!

Chomsky firmly holds to the belief that his linguistic theorizing and his political activism are not related, and what is related to his activism is the position of privilege that being granted a platform at MIT confers. That is, he has been, potentially unjustly, given a place to speak with greater impunity than most—consequently, he is morally obliged to say something. And this applies to most of us, in proportion to our ability to evade the consequences of speech (oppression, loss of financial support, etc).

He also firmly holds that “communication” and “language” are not directly related scientifically. This stand is counterintuitive to people not directly involved in that sort of debate over linguistics, but it isn’t a trivial argument. A bit of the argument in a nutshell: you can communicate things—fairly complex and abstract concepts—in pictures, but what we normally call language has characteristics that pictures do not.

Of course, lots of people don’t like this argument. I tend to agree with Chomsky and not them, though.

you can communicate things—fairly complex and abstract concepts—in pictures…

With grunts and gestures, even.

Well, automatically dismissing someone means you don’t have to engage in debate, which means you don’t have to read their books, watch their movies or learn anything that might be too hard for your widdle head or that might challenge your fragile worldview.

This is why liberals are generally well-informed on the views of their ideological foes, and why conservatives say things like, If there’s global warming, how come it was cold last night, “huh, huh, huh?” and “If man evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?”

I do read the blabberings of the other side. I don’t find them very convincing. I love it when they cite a study that proves their latest talking point … then don’t provide a single clue as to who made the study or how it was conducted. And then, the following week, they scoff at a poll or study that says 67 percent of Americans think George W. Bush is a douchebag and say how unreliable such studies are.

The latest witless mummery from conservatives is to compare lefty bloggers to Osama bin Laden and then say how hateful lefty bloggers are, generally in the same sentence. Cause, you know, comparing a mass murderer to people who write things you don’t agree with, that’s not hateful.

Huh? Are they really that delusional? Or do they just robotically read from the Repug script without thinking about how it makes them look to honest, decent people?

From what I hear from the right, the bad thing about Noam Chomsky is that he sent fleets of B-52s to carpet bomb Cambodia from 1965 until 1973 and massacring hundreds of thousands and destroying the nation’s agricultural systems until the peasantry fled into the hands of the crazy and formerly marginal Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who imposed a genocidal regime on an already starving population.

Then after the Vietnamese invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, Noam Chomsky found himself newly allied to the Khmer Rouge whose guerrilla forces retreated, and with China supplying aid and arms to the Khmer Rouge at Noam Chomsky’s suggestion, the Khmer Rouge maintained a guerrilla force for over a decade.

Noam Chomsky even went so far as to recommend that the UN not recognize the new post-Khmer government installed by the Vietnamese, but to continue to recognize Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge government as the legitimate.

And then to rub it all in, Noam Chomsky turned around and kept blaming the United States for all the terrible things that the Khmer Rouge had done.

A decade later, the United States would harshly criticize Noam Chomsky for following much of the Indochina model by hiring death squads and genocidal governments throughout Central America. Noam Chomsky even was found to be directly materially responsible for aiding genocide in Guatemala through his secret intelligence agency.

That’s what makes people so mad about Noam Chomsky.

Except, I think I meant to say the US Government when I said Noam Chomsky, and when I said United States I meant Noam Chomsky.

Doesn’t Noam Chomsky support the Holocaust? I think I read that somewhere, so I’m going to assume that its true.

Oh, so here we go with the hateful left! Calling me stupid, and a liar, just because I said something stupid that wasn’t true!

What I meant to say was …

S.T.D. Hanson said,
Xenophon, the first great warrior to strike a blow for the West deep into the Orient

STD Hanson knows perfectly well that Xenophon was deep in the Orient because he was a mercenary, striking a blow for a Persian rebel. Then he went home to write a book on kitchen management and home economics. What a total wowser.

But Hanson really isn’t channeling the fine tradition of Jewish bubbies everywhere
In fact his column sounds like it was written fresh after an argument with a teenage daughter.

Daughter: And I never asked to be born, anyway! [slams door]
…
Hanson [later, at the pub, with sympathetic mates]: It’s like I’m always in the wrong, whatever I say. The more that I tolerate the great asymmetry of reciprocity between her and me; the more I am supposed to apologize for just that tolerance and liberality.
Mate #1: Damn straight.
Mate #2: The more pocket money we give them for tidying their rooms, the more we are to concede that we are exploiting them.
Hanson: And you know the worst thing about it? Her mother always takes her side!

I am now compelled to tell my favorite Jewish mother joke, which I tell with deep and strong affection, because it always makes me think of my own mother and how crazy she can be sometimes….

“How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“Don’t mind me; I’ll just sit here in the dark. After all, what should you trouble yourself about me for? Who am I? I’m just your mother.”

Perhaps one of my readers with experience in changing lightbulbs can help me out here.

Jillian-

You.

Me.

Blue dress.

Oval office.

And while I am denying that I spewed on your pretty blue dress— I will also bomb our enemies’ “aspirin factories’… and send my wife out to talk of a “right-wing conspiracy” w/ Katie Couric on “The Today Show”…

Holy Cripes, it really all does come down to teh Clenis for you guys, doesn’t it?

jillian

Holy Cripes, it really all does come down to teh Clenis for you guys, doesn’t it?

You’re the one who actually mentioned “Caligula”, sweetie!

I’m just a ‘libertarian’ whose last Republican Presidential vote was for Reagan in ’84-

But, I can be GWB for you— if that’s really what you need…

I didn’t see 300, but the Spartans were only one element of the Greek resistance against the Persians.

Not only that, but it was those sissy Athenians with their philosophy and their togas who dealt the killing blow to Xerxes’s empire dreams, at the battle of Salamis. And they used boats, not leather speedos! Wussies.

jillian-

Holy Cripes, it really all does come down to teh Clenis for you guys, doesn’t it?

Let’s poll some of the “leftist” “mens-es” on this board. (yes …that was a pun!)

Is “angry” sex the “best” sex?

I’ll bet “the Clenis” had her ‘timing’ down- simply because he didn’t want the “excess iron” on his cigar… :o)

jillian-

Holy Cripes, it really all does come down to teh Clenis for you guys, doesn’t it?

Let’s poll some of the “leftist” “mens-es” on this board. (yes …that was a pun!)

Is “angry” sex the “best” sex?

I’ll bet “the Clenis” had his ‘timing’ down- simply because he didn’t want the “excess iron” on his cigar… :o)

Victor Davis The Muslims Are Coming Hanson used to be a fairly interesting historical writer, and I used to have a soft spot for him because he said nice things about William Tecumseh Sherman. I guess the soft spot was in my head. I like to imagine Sherman rising out of his grave and appearing to Victor, rather like when Marshall McLuhan suddenly comes out from behind a pillar in “Annie Hall”: to tell him he doesn’t know anything about war, or the military, or history. And then kicking his ass.

Pere Ubu, I just don’t much like Chomsky, but I do like theories that involve his work in linguistics and his political analyses to be at odds with one another. However, I would have to bring in a far better educated linguist to explain that crap. I’m too engrossed in dead languages to deal with the Chomsky side of linguistics even. Highly respected, just completely different.

I just hate partisan bickering to the point that I just bitch about everyone now. It’s not so much Chomsky, it’s the reverence for Chomsky, just like it’s the reverence for VDH that is annoying. Both are held up as if their words are infallible because they have these great careers in academia to back them up (though Chomsky wins hands down in that dept. actually, I’d concede). I just think that neither deserve it for their punditry.

I give all the credit to Smotes Durston above for saying this:

What I learned from 300, Troy, and Alexander, which I watched all at once.

a) Spartans have Scottish accents
b) Athenians have English accents
c) Macedonians have Irish accents
d) Persian kings are either African and nine feet tall and gay. Or they are Egyptian Arabs.

Now THAT was good. But I’m just an Azagthoth, so don’t mind me.

I am sort of educated in that stuff, kinda sorta, and I don’t agree that his linguistic analyses and political analyses are at odds with one another. Furthermore, the reason why the big NC is held in such reverence for his political analyses is that, well, very rarely has he ever been successfully challenged on any substantive point. Furthermore, his moral analysis of the situation is quite clear, and he doesn’t buy into Beltway-pundit fatuous notions of “nuance.”

I would posit that the issue people take with Chomsky has not relation to his work in linguistics. Indeed, Chomsky’s area of innovation and brilliance comes from his work in syntax and formal (i.e. context-neutral) language. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cartesian Linguistics, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use, and Towards a Unified Theory of Syntax are his seminal works and deal in no way with morphology, phenomenology, or semiotics. Even works such as Language and Responsibility are disinclined to delve in conversational exchange, units of participation, or cultural influence, trading instead in areas he feels most comfortable, such as syntax and acquisition. He has, in fact, gone so far as to openly dismiss work by Bourdieu, Labov, Lakoff, Wierzbicka, and Rossi-Landi (a fellow socialist, by the way) because of their focus on the socio-cultural and politically mitigated aspects of language.

Perhaps therein lies the trouble. Chomsky dismisses or diminishes the role of culture in language even as he uses it as a tool to further his sociopolitical agenda. His analysis of culture and politics are simply one-sided, egotistical, and frequently lacking in what would normally be considered solid scholarship. Rather than sticking with his area of very well developed expertise, he drifts into areas of scholarship wherein he is unable of unwilling to apply the same academic rigor of which he would apply in the study of syntax and structure. Being a genius in one area does not mean being a genius in all. Einstein was a brilliant physicist but a mediocre violinist. The same can be said for Chomsky’s relationships with formal linguistics and political theory.

Wow, I love Mr. Man…..

I like Harry’s summation of this. I would just add my rant as an appendix to what has been said:

What the @#$%! is up with Classical scholarship in this country? Under its big tent there are all stripes of idiotologies from fascists, neo-fascists, all the way to authoritarians of all stripes. I took my degree in this field and spent far too much time listening to professors like VDH and lecturers who believe the US needs to become a militaristic theocracy and those who advocate global domination (especially over those uncivilized places that supply us with our luxurious lifestyle), to those who swoon like schoolgirls over the volk-marching stylings of third reich pagents. Many an article by people writing for cultural magazines sighs and laments the passings of classical studies in the US – but it hasn’t passed away, it died, was buried, has been dug up and reanimated in Frankensteinish fashion with a million volts of uber-crazy ideas by people who idealize a military-theocracy, who glorify war, who desire a draconian legal institution that does not apply to all equally, and who long for conformity enforced through terror but don’t want to be perceived as neo-nazis. It didn’t pass away at all, its legacy is now used to validate much of what we see happening in politics today.

So…every so often this strange criticism of Chomsky comes up, about Chomsky’s lack of “academic rigor” and “solid scholarship” in the analysis of “culture and politics”, and his “mediocre” relationship to “political theory.” Well, it seems to me that, for some reason, there is annoyance in some quarters that Chomsky has not delivered on something he never promised, and that, even though he never promised it, he should have delivered it anyway.

I’ve never quite understood this. I hope that at least we can agree that “academic rigor” and “solid scholarship” are means to an end, because otherwise that leads to academic cargo-cultery. What of Chomsky’s moral-political goals or themes in linguistic research would have been served by “conversational exchange” or “units of participation” or “cultural influence”? I’m not myself sure this sort of analysis is particularly meaningful in a scientific or “academic-rigor” sense, nor am I even certain that Chomsky could have delved into these alleged “scholarly” areas of inquiry without undermining central theses is what is to me a relatively successful cognitive-scientific enterprise.

In terms of political consequences, what I have seen as the end, real-world result of, eg, Lakoffian “solid scholarship” is the strange obsession with political manipulation using “frames” that one sees on places like Daily Kos. Not convinced, if that is the practical consequence, that Lakoffian “solid scholarship” leads to a liberatory politics…

Mandos, you can see from Mr Man’s comment why many in the Linguistic Anthropology field would be annoyed with Chomsky, though. It’s a pretty within-the-field criticism. Usually I think people are annoyed not by Chomsky so much as by people much less intelligent and eloquent than you who try to bring in one of Chomsky’s political ideas when it really doesn’t apply and then tout his academic prowess. Trust me, there are plenty of people on the left who can’t debate worth a crap just as there are on the right. Thus the invoking of the Mighty Professors!

Actually, this entire phenomenon seems to stem from debates that take place online and is much more recent, but causes rampant and rabid looking exchanges between certain opposing groups on university campuses that make me quite happy to no longer be 18. Honesty, when this all came up when I really was 18 and in college, the hard-core Chomsky fans actually brought Chomsky himself. Now that was interesting.

Time–really? That’s a sad experience you had in your education, and a darned shame. We still had a very good Classics Department in place who would have never accepted a VDH mentality at all.

Chomsky has indeed promised it, or at the very least implied it — Hitler never directly called for the death camps, but the implication was an undeniable truth. No, I am not relating Chomsky to Hitler and indeed, I am rather a fan of the man’s work (his writings on transformational syntax are the foundation of modern formal linguistics). The point is that Chomsky relies on his PhD and academic standing as a crutch for shoddy scholarship and sloppy argumentation. He has (does) use his very brilliance in one field as the foundation for his credibility.

Furthermore, when he attacks others on the grounds that their work is intellectually substandard or lacks academic rigor, something he does frequently when attacking or dismissing opponents on the right, he opens himself up implicitly to similar accusations of sloppy scholarship. As long as Chomsky makes no promises he gets a pass? Even as he levels the “non-academic” criticism against people boasting nothing more than an opinion? The fact is that Chomsky makes arguments that are frequently inaccurate, weakly reasoned, and grounded in an ontological whirlpool stemming from an over-inflated ego. The work is simply of poor quality. And it gains recognition purely on the basis of his academic credentials. It’s like a medical doctor telling someone who speaks with a loud voice that they are insane when there is nothing to back up the diagnosis beyond the title MD. Chomsky is without a doubt a giant of the linguistic world. But if he uses his title and stellar performance in one venue as a means to sell sociopolitical parlor tricks, then people have a right to call him on it. Particularly when he is so prone to do the same to other authors with whom he disagrees.

The fact is that Chomsky makes arguments that are frequently inaccurate, weakly reasoned, and grounded in an ontological whirlpool stemming from an over-inflated ego. The work is simply of poor quality. And it gains recognition purely on the basis of his academic credentials. It’s like a medical doctor telling someone who speaks with a loud voice that they are insane when there is nothing to back up the diagnosis beyond the title MD. Chomsky is without a doubt a giant of the linguistic world. But if he uses his title and stellar performance in one venue as a means to sell sociopolitical parlor tricks, then people have a right to call him on it. Particularly when he is so prone to do the same to other authors with whom he disagrees.

Can you cite an example of what you’re talking about here? I’m still not sure what class of promises he’s been accused of having broken.

Mandos, you can see from Mr Man’s comment why many in the Linguistic Anthropology field would be annoyed with Chomsky, though. It’s a pretty within-the-field criticism. Usually I think people are annoyed not by Chomsky so much as by people much less intelligent and eloquent than you who try to bring in one of Chomsky’s political ideas when it really doesn’t apply and then tout his academic prowess. Trust me, there are plenty of people on the left who can’t debate worth a crap just as there are on the right. Thus the invoking of the Mighty Professors!

BTW, I totally understand this, and often it’s a case of ignorance of what Chomsky himself has said. Chomsky would never say, eg, that his linguistics promise anything about the political questions that he attempts to answer. He would however say that his position of privilege that accrued from the work he did in that field *does* enable him to write about other topics of moral import.