Rowan Berkeley --

1) Orwell : absolutely cynical and sinister, and self-brainwashed, and brainwashed by others, and, to make it worse, he knew it. This is as good a description of living in hell as any, psychologically speaking, but then again, some of us choose this life. I mean, you are aware, aren't you, that he worked for british wartime broadcasting, and I shall leave that phrase a little vague.

Orwell was an expert on propaganda because he was a propagandist.

'Nuff said.

(4) Vonnegut, well, look, the man is a comic novelist, a buffoon. His highly public spasms of disgust at mansinhumanitytoman are just spasms. US novelists nowadays do not inspire respect, generally, for intellectual rigor, integrity, or anything else - at last not the ones who get lionised. What that says about US pop lit is obvious, and it is not intended to imply anything about novelists outside th epop lionised circuits, since I don't claim to know about them, or to have much time to find out.

Vonnegut was a satirist -- which means one cannot be certain he was saying what he actually believed. In addition, he was an elitist in that he believed his views superior to opposing views. And he disparaged the human race -- hardly a new motif or conceit -- because it was a fashionably elitist position to take in order to impress such as the rebellious teen seeking negative identity-forming affirmations.

He was, to put it mildly, no Mark Twain -- who was genuinely humane and humble. And who, in disparaging the human race, and unlike Vonnegut, included himself.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me.

Chomsky, absolutely definitely, the man is a fraud. That isn't to say that anything in his political books is untrue, rather, that the US system protects him because of his selectivity, which is only in recent years starting to show visible cracks, which attract the attention of different observers according to their own interests, but currently include such diverse topics as Israel and 9-11. Also, in my humble opinion, his 'language organ' theory is rubbish, but I am not expert enough to be able to say either why it is rubbish, or why it is never exposed as such.

Than a frontal lobotomy.

The US political system "protects" Chomsky?

From what, exactly?

-- Aycharaych Sunday, May 11, 2008 11:55 AM

From being silenced by a "Libertarian"/Anarchist acting out his "freedom" unconstrained by gov't-enacted and -enforced law.

This Tuesday, a group people including Scott Ritter, former UN inspector and John J. Mearsheimer who co-wrote the book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy are testifying to the Council so that they will pass a resolution urging negotiations with Iran rather than an attack. Today’s Chicago Tribune carried an excellent op-ed article by another participant, Stephen Kinzer, NWU professor. See link at my sig.

The Cheney propaganda machine and those who brought you the Iraq War are hard at work ensuring that we send our country further down the rode to ruin. We all have to do whatever we can to stop the idiots from destroying our country and Obama’s chance of rebuilding our relationship with the world.

reject it out of hand. This is the "Libertarian"/anarchist/your thesis, bucky1 --

Man isn't perfect, therefore his gov'ts and laws aren't perfect, therefore his gov'ts and laws should be repealed and then man will be perfect.

For which, of course, you provide no supportive evidence.

Mikey

You have a point. The authors of some of those quotes are not cynical liars; some are self-deluded. Some really intelligent people are very close to instability, and sometimes cross the line.

Mike, your response and the brit's were just as expected.

Niether of you even had the decency to define government.

You haven't either -- see above -- so have a rather large amount of gall to demand others do it for you.

Neither explained the wonderful record of governments in the 20th century.

You mean the history of gov'ts violating laws? Certainly no one denies that as a fact of history.

What you leave out is how the non-gov't individual and group is no less prone to or guilty of violating the law against his fellows.

You have yet to provide a means to prevent that without establishing gov't, laws, and gov't enforcement of laws. Simply citing reality as being the problem doesn't do that, let alone persuade that reality should tehrefore be supplanted by a fantasy which didn't exist before there was gov't and laws, and won't exist in the absence of gov't and laws.

Again: man is imperfect, and everything man does is imperfect, including the making of gov't and laws. So, murder is prohibited, but because law is imperfect, murder still occurs. But murder doesn't occur as often as it would were imperfect gov't and law to be released or otherwise eliminated.

Come to think of it, both of you said I must be wrong because Mrs. Fardquard (5th grade teacher) said so.

Most 5th graders are mature enough, if it is explained to them, to understand from their own life-experiences the necessity of gov't and laws.

Hmmmm. Damn convincing you two are. I would like you to find Paramor on your next trip to central Florida and stand on a corner yelling how great the US government is and how much the locals should love it.

Typical simple-minded extremists: there is either absolute oppression, or absolute freedom, with nothing possible in between.

Even though between those two extremes is the imperfect reality we as imperfect humans at least in part generate.

The two of you carry on with your fact-free discussion as I really must get to work.

You have a fact? Then provide it: how, if there is not gov't, and no laws, will man suddenly become perfect?

duke46 --

No, the liberal internationalists control the government who controls the media

Well, good morning, sleepy head. Another robot comes alive. Of course the U.S. government manipulates news media coverage. But this is intermediate-level stuff. From the beginning to this day, the intellectual and financial energy for the global communist revolution has come from wealthy western capitalists. These are the guys that manipulate everything, even persuading us to pay interest for exercising our sovereign right as a nation to issue money. The Federal Reserve is a union of private banks whose monopoly control of monetary policy is enforced by the U.S. government. These wealthy capitalists are not communists. They are international socialists. Their Bible is Plato's Republic. All power is exercised by an elite group of philosopher/kings, whose edicts are enforced by military/police. Everyone else is manager/workers. Having no political responsibility, they need no education beyond vocational training. Plato advised using every available means to destabilize society, clearing the way for the New World Order; and that is where the communists come in.

These same capitalists control the curriculum at Ivy League Universities, whose graduates control the news media, the Washington Bureaucracy, the CIA, etc. That is why none of you has the slightest idea what our American heritage is all about.