Nonsense.
That's what pundits do.
I assume that in-your-face-moment is brought to me as a result of our exchange about Horowitz and Chomsky.
Well, hate to tell you this, but that's not what the pundits I read do.
I think Nadine nailed it just right and I should have said so to her in one of my replies. This is the apostate (Horowitz) trying to nail someone he thinks of as a zealot (Chomsky). It's a religious war carried out, in this case, via Salon, though, with Horowitz, it will know no borders.
I have no brief for Chomsky, so I'm not defending him. I was just doing my little one liners with Nadine because it's fun to do it.
There is no doubt Chomsky is an undeniable intellectual giant for his contributions to linguistic theory. But I'm not on board. I disagree with the premises of his work. To put it as succintly as I can, arguments which presume invariant structures of any kind, leave me behind. I find we all live, thank heavens, in specific times and places and aren't able to vault ourselves into the invariant save as a heuristic thought device. Which is not what Chomsky has in mind.
As for his views of US foreign policy, the ones of his I read are not mine. Perhaps he has others I might share. I don't know. In general, as I was just saying to Raymond in some private e-mails, I'm not as far into conspiracy theories as folk like Chomsky are. I have no doubt there are conspiracies out there but there's a helluva lot of simple incompentence that often looks like conspiracy. I tend to prefer the incompetence explanations. (I wish I could find some typing item which would convey irony and humour at the same time. That's what belongs after that last sentence).
Have a good day,
John |
