Chomsky Review Blog

The Greatest Intellectual? -by Emma Brockes

2005-11-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

Some excerpts from this interview with Noam Chomsky

Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated?
A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough

and later...

In the ensuing outcry, Chomsky lent his name to a letter praising Johnstone's "outstanding work". Does he regret signing it?
"No," he says indignantly. "It is outstanding. My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough. It may be wrong; but it is very careful and outstanding work."

How, I wonder, can journalism be wrong and still outstanding?

The Branding of the World's Top Intellectual: Noam Chomsky

2005-10-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Peter Schweizer's new book Do as I say (Not as I do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

"

One of the most persistent themes in Chomsky's work has been class warfare. He has frequently lashed out against the "massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich" and criticized the concentration of wealth in "trusts" by the wealthiest one percent. The American tax code is rigged with "complicated devices for ensuring that the poor -- like eighty percent of the population -- pay off the rich."

But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of $2,000,000, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning" set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.

Chomsky favors the estate tax and massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

When I challenged Chomsky about his trust, he suddenly started to sound very bourgeois: "I don't apologize for putting aside money for my children and grandchildren," he wrote in one email. Chomsky offered no explanation for why he condemns others who are equally proud of their provision for their children and who try to protect their assets from Uncle Sam. Although he did say that the tax shelter is okay because he and his family are "trying to help suffering people."

Indeed, Chomsky is rich precisely because he has been such an enormously successful capitalist. Despite the anti-profit rhetoric, like any other corporate capitalist he has turned himself into a brand name.

Chomsky Wrecks His Train Set - by John Williamson

2005-09-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

A heavy read, found on FrontPageMag.com can be found here

“We are now moving to domains of will and choice and judgment…”

Will…and…judgment…and choice. Oh my!

Language as a matter of will? Language as a matter of choice? Language as a matter of judgment? This cannot be. For everything that Chomsky has ever advocated or argued for has been to support the notion of language as an organic function of the brain. As recently as 2004, he has famously compared the language function to “insect navigation.”

Again, the topic of linguistics is some heavy stuff. I am on my third read of the article and just starting to comprehend some of the material.

Chomsky: The Theory Unified and Deconstructed - by John Williamson

2005-04-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

Article Here

"
In short, leaving aside his work that is openly political, his linguistics theory doesn’t merely represent bad science; rather, it happens to be politics masquerading as bad science.

"

Symposium: Noam Chomsky: Academic Insider or Outsider?

2005-02-18T11:29:00.000-08:00

Is Noam Chomsky an icon in academia today? Or has he been marginalized into invisibility? Frontpage Symposium assembled a distinguished panel to discuss this.

Chomsky can't be read seriously, because Chomsky himself pays no attention to even basic rules of evidence or argument. If he needs to invent material to support an argument, he does, and then audaciously creates an empty footnote to make it appear as though he's done his homework and is referencing an actual fact. In his article, Mr. Summers lauds Chomsky's scholarship, but I defy him to do what I did in The Anti-Chomsky Reader, and actually try to follow some of Chomsky's footnotes. As every scholar knows, the whole point of references are to allow other scholars to replicate your research and thus confirm or debate your interpretation, but Chomsky's references are meant to obscure the fact that he's basically making stuff up. When you have, for example, footnotes that support important and controversial points by referencing four or five books in their *entirety*--including, most often, Chomsky's own books--that's not only lousy scholarship, it's a terrible insult to the reader.

Tom Nichols, the chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of “Chomsky and the Cold War” in Peter Collier and David Horowitz (editors),

Noam Chomsky: A Critical Review - by Russel Wvong

2005-01-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

A very critical review that gives equal treatment to those arguments and beliefs that the author and Noam Chomsky have in common as well as those very same things that the author disagrees.

Finally, and perhaps most seriously, I would expect that when a writer quotes someone, the quote should fairly represent what the other person is saying. Chomsky does not appear to adhere to this rule.

Chomsky's Linguistics Refuted - by John Williamson

2005-01-03T11:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, for those of you who may want to challenge Chomsky on linguistics this is an excellent article. For the novice (such as yours truly) it may take several reads to fully appreciate.

Thus, in Chomskyan linguistics, sentences which violate the rules of the language are lumped in with sentences which don’t, in an attempt to create some overarching theory which explains all human utterances.

America's Dumbest Intellectual - by Stefan Kanfer

2004-12-15T19:23:00.000-08:00

A good read here

Mostly a review of Chomsky's book, 9/11.

A quote:
"Chomsky’s response to September 11 outraged even leftist Christopher Hitchens, a former admirer of the MIT professor who now attacked him for abandoning “every standard that makes moral and intellectual discrimination possible.”"

Chomsky's Myth of the Leftist Silent Majority - by Benjamin Kerstein

2004-12-14T04:38:00.000-08:00

Some good quotes from this article:

"What we are really seeing here, of course, is not so much a commentary on the recent election but yet another asinine display of Chomsky's hopelessly narcississtic contempt for democracy and the intellectual and moral capacities of his fellow citizens. He is unwilling to accept the possibility of a real and meaningful election or a real and meaningful democracy should it fail to enshrine his pseudo-prophetic blubberings into official policy. Thus the system which fails to enshrine becomes a farce and the people who fail to heed become easily manipulated dupes incapable of forming or expressing their own opinions and values through a representative system."

"Chomsky's obsession with Ronald Reagan is an odd one, though only in its extreme rhetorical violence, since it is understandable that the man who brought about the final historical discrediting and collapse of authoritarian socialism should arouse the ire of one of its foremost advocates. As for the "horrendous atrocities" and "harsh and destructive programs" we can only assume - since Chomsky, per usual, refuses to give specifics to his slanders - that he means the efforts of the Reagan administration to resist authoritarian socialism abroad and the hugely successful campaign to revitalize American capitalism and economic liberty at home. Since these efforts were overwhelmingly approved by the American electorate in the most massive electoral victory in history (not, as Chomsky claims, by the same percentage as this years more narrow, but still decisive, Republican victory) and proved immensely successful at regenerating the vital forces of American society, and, indeed, led directly to the preeminent economic, political, and military position of the United States in the world today; it is hardly surprising that such a perfect storm of rejection by the great unwashed and by the tide of history itself should turn Chomsky to spasms of apoplectic rage. Rage, however, is not truth; a lesson Chomsky ought to have learned a long time ago."

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky - David Horowitz

2004-12-13T11:35:00.000-08:00

David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture - Copyright 2001 Salon.com

A quote from this article, well worth reading.

"The real threat of a good example is the threat of America, which has lifted more people out of poverty -- within its borders and all over the world -- than all the socialists and progressives put together since the beginning of time. To neutralize the threat, it is necessary to kill the American idea. This is, in fact, Noam Chomsky's mission in life, and his everlasting disgrace."

Partners in Hate: Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers - by Werner Cohn

2004-12-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

Article published by Avukah Press, Cambridge

Avram Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for his left-wing politics. It is the gravamen of this book, however, that these politics derive as much from the extreme right wing particularly right-wing anti-Semitism as from the rhetoric of the American Left.

The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky - by Keith Windschuttle

2004-12-11T05:35:00.000-08:00

"Chomsky’s moral rationalizations in his most recent book—“almost any crime, a crime in the street, a war, whatever it may be, there’s usually something behind it that has elements of legitimacy”—could be used to plead for a lighter sentence."

The above quote is from an article written in the New Criterion that also discusses Chomsky's book "Power and Terror".