What would sound-bite Chomsky sound like? you asked. That is truly a funny thought. And we could have sound-bite Plato, and Kant and Hegel too. And sound-bite ethics and metaphysics. Like I tell my students, when sometimes they get impatient with long explanations: reality is sometimes like that. It takes a while to address it. Maybe fourteen weeks or so just to introduce the topic :)

logic and argument. He knew the difference between a valid argument and a sound one, and that to reject an interlocuter's premises is not to find him illogical, but to simply disagree. I admired him for that.

something like this today:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VYlMEVTa-PI

(Buckley and Chomsky talking with each other).

you are like the PI of UT, a veritable gum shoe sleuth, tracking down all the nefarious connections.

if we will all run into one another some day in some American equivalent of the old Soviet Gulag. I will hear some prisoner making some argument off in the corner and I will say: sounds just like WT, or LWM, or Cocktailhag . . . or can it be? Bebop, sore leg and all??

Hope not, guys and gals. Hoping for better days. Let's keep trying. Once more into the breach. Where is my lance? I see a windmill I need to attack? Sancho, where are you?

Thanks for the link to the Nace book.

you wrote: *What Bush is actually saying to congress is that if he does not get what he wants, he will let Cheney explode a nuclear device in an American city."

this is how strange my country has become to me: I wonder if you are right. Would that explain Reyes' "broken" appearance others have remarked upon? Why Dodd has just faded away on this? Why no one really does anything? Something like that? Something vicious and terrible? We need a HP Lovecraft of political writing to limn this all out.

"If the Democrats cave on FISA, we'll need to see to it that it will cost them dearly. I can see only one way to accomplish this. We need to ensure that it will cost them the presidency."

But don't you get it? If a republican OR a democrat is president, they HAVE the presidency. Most democrats and republicans are true servants of the corporations, who ultimately control most of them. The minority who don't are tolerated like court jesters. The current democratic house and senate have demonstrated clearly that there is no opposition party in this country anymore. I think they are so brazen about it because they feel they no longer have any need to hide. They are sure they have won.

Yes. Last night I was having a conversation with a colleague, and I happened to mention how I viewed the real pressing issue of this time that no politician running for president was discussing: the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people that was visited upon them by my country. All the innocent dead and shattered lives. And the incredible shame of it all. And not a word about it from anyone. Burning shame for my country. Sadness.

has some validity: Someone who has not followed this blog might easily miss the subtext, which is only clear to, say, me, because I have been reading Glenn for months. Reading it out of the blue (and reading some of the comments mocking the "like wow kidspeak") might lead one to think the posting of the video had another subtext. I know it doesn't have that subtext because I read Glenn all the time. And someone commented to Kathy that people are just mean on the internets, etc. Well, so what? I then become mean because others are?

I find it refreshing to read Glenn's stuff: it is a relief to find a venue where someone knows how to think things through, and express it so clearly.

Thanks.

Giambattista Vico was from Napoli. Wrote my dissertation on that wonderous Italian soul. I have a soft spot for Napoli. A nice thought to cheer my up this cheerless day in the news, as torture has become accepted and my country continues to ruin the lives of millions of Iraqis (and thousands of American soldiers, too).

Napoli!

Grazie!

You wrote: "The more accurate analogy to criminalizing prostitution would be to criminalize driving, not speeding . . .

(Some may think constantly responding to the critics is pointless, but I regard it as good exercise.)"

Indeed. Your responses are like a kind of review of logic homework. Very instructive. I get so tired of doing it at my job, though, and I appreciate you doing it here for us.

taken quite a task upon yourself, Glenn: pointing out the horrors and sadness often found in our public discourse. It reminds me of the feeling I get when I am at some function and someone makes some outrageous statment, and you feel that tired call of duty: yes, I have to speak up and challenge that, because of who might be listening. Because of the example I need to set that things like this should not be tolerated. But it becomes so tiresome sometimes that you want to just go and hide.

I signed up for premium salon this past week because of you, Glenn. As long as salon gives you this venue, it is worth supporting.

Thanks.

Thank you for all your work on this, Glenn.

And indeed a good start to the weekend.

Parenti is a stooge of the chinese governement (or at least an academic who likes official access and such to China, etc). See Ondolette's post above yours for some perspective on that. One does not have to believe that Tibet was a paradise to believe that what was done to them was wrong.