Posted on 04/22/2010 2:35:49 PM PDT by tatown
Not everyday that I find myself agreeing with a radical militant leftist like Noam Chomsky.
Or rather, not every day that Noam Chomsky agrees with a stubborn (left-leaning) centrist like me.
But last week while receiving the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship, Chomsky warned that fascism looms if Americans are not careful: “I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering…”
Well, la dee da. Now where have you heard something like that before? Right here, over and over again.
The very first article published here on Post-Partisan Examiner was a siren call, warning that Obama’s leadership would slide America towards corporate fascism. We have kept calling out the fascististic Washington-Wall Street corporate oligarchy and urging post-partisanship ever since. No one should put one hundred percent of one's faith, money, time, and support in one party one hundred percent of the time.
Chomsky's speech went on to cite a poll showing that at least half of independent voters sympathize more with the Tea Party than with any partisan movement or political figure, to slam Obama for coziness with Wall Street and Big Corporate, and to explain why the upset disaffection of tea partiers is “understandable”: The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime. Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error. For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined…The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels. The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain. They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: they were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are ‘fine guys’ and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’ People see that and are not happy about it. People want some answers. They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.
According to Chomsky, this is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.” Of course, Obama critics have been pointing this out all along.
While Obama’s Big Media pals have been denigrating the disaffected as racist, ignorant, hick teabaggers who represent a meaningless minority of the country we defended the movement as legitimate civil disobedience and the inevitable reaction to Obama’s blatant hypocrisy and poor leadership.
While deranged Palin haters have used every low, cruel, misogynistic trick in the book to knock her down, we have warned that she deserves to be treated with respect even when we disagree with her policy views.
We have constantly knocked Obama for his sellouts to Big Corporate and warned that Obamacrats are turning their backs on the working classes with their odious policy of endless bailouts for their bankster friends on the back of taxpayers.
Chomsky’s public truth-telling indicates that even the most hardcore leftists are waking up to the awful truths centrists warned about for two years.
We need more Noam Chomsky’s willing to admit reality and fewer lamestream media elites with their biased heads buried up the President’s butt. We need people on the left respected by the left who can see through Obamacratic empty rhetoric and announce to their friends on the left that the emperor has no clothes. That liberals and progressives have been duped. Obama is not who he said he was. He is not a change agent.
He is a tool of the regressive anti-Main Street, pro-Wall Street status quo which plots daily to subjugate working folks while consolidating more and more of America’s wealth into their own insatiably greedy hands.
Chomsky's statements will startle those who view he and Obama as two of the biggest living liberal heroes. They will be alone in their astonishment. Chomsky has merely admitted the obvious.
Hillary promoting PUMAs were the first to realize that Obama’s inexperience, incompetence, and corporate hackery would lead to disaster. They were followed by Republicans, then independents, and now Tea Partiers. Together, these group represent the growing majority whose votes will rescue America from Obamacratic corporate cronyism and remind politicians and pundits, once more, that Americans are the deciders.
Chomsky need not worry. The voting booth will save ourselves from ourselves. Democracy and the will of the people – and the right of the people to govern themselves as they see fit – will prevail again.
Obama can lay with the bankers all he wants: America will not be sacrificed upon a cross of credit default swaps.
Money quotes:
"We need more Noam Chomsky’s willing to admit reality and fewer lamestream media elites with their biased heads buried up the President’s butt."
"While deranged Palin haters have used every low, cruel, misogynistic trick in the book to knock her down, we have warned that she deserves to be treated with respect even when we disagree with her policy views."
"Chomsky's statements will startle those who view he and Obama as two of the biggest living liberal heroes. They will be alone in their astonishment. Chomsky has merely admitted the obvious."
"Chomsky need not worry. The voting booth will save ourselves from ourselves. Democracy and the will of the people – and the right of the people to govern themselves as they see fit – will prevail again."
So Chomsky’s not a fascist? He’s just a Marxist?
Noam Chomsky is a libertarian.
Case in point are the Chomsky/Buckley conversations from the 1970s/80s, many of which can be found on YouTube today. Here are two guys that are polar opposites philosophically, and really didn't like each other. But, not a single debate or conversation that they engaged in included name-calling, demagoguery or ad hominem attacks.
It was just two intellectuals advocating their position in an incredibly articulate and intellectual way. They let their ideas speak for themselves. There's something to be said for that in today's era of bloviating, loud-mouth abrasive and sarcastic television that we're treated to today both on the left and the right.
I miss Buckley.
Can anyone name a fascist state that was defeated peacefully?
I didn’t think so.
“Where justice ends tyranny begins.”
“A people unwilling to use extreme violent force to perserve or obtain their liberty deserves the tyrants that rule them.” stockpirate
As far as I can tell, those are all quotes from D.K. Jamaal. Hardly any Chomsky qutoes to be found in the article.
Hah... Surely you jest! Just look at his past history - please! Seems like the younger generation just gets stupider and stupider...
I've heard him described as a "libertarian socialist", which seems about as oxymoronic of a phrase as possible.
He's definitely a libertarian, or espouses libertarian ideals, when he speaks about foreign policy, but I'm not sure I'd describe his domestic philosophy as a libertarian one.
He seems like a classic redistributionists - very anti-libertarian.
Very interesting. The wheels are falling off the Obama bus. O & the Rats have only a few more months to pass legislation. Need the Senate Repubs to hold firm.
“Need the Senate Repubs to hold firm.”
No easy task when we are reliant on back(door) stabbing fools like Pansy Graham.
The lightbulb came on. Hope it doesn’t pop!
What’s that old saying about a broken clock?
They struck me as two people who are used to being under the strict rules of some Ivy League debating society, where the moderator would say " [snooty Haahvaahd voice] I'm sorry Mr. Buckley, that is an ad hominem attack . Two points will be deducted from your score."
lol!!
That was funny.
Whoa - our side couldn't have said it better...
Pigs be flyin’.
He’s a communist and thus an atheist. His insight lies in realizing once the islamists are done with useful idiots they’ll be coming for the non-believers like him with a vengeance.
Love the “Left of Center” quote - heh. Well, how about putting him left of the left - that would be more appropriate.
He was and still is a Communist leftist that seems to get lots of love from the left. Just how does he make up for this with this column?
He is so far left that he come close to the right’s attitudes. That’s okay though - after all, he is so far out there that even the leftist News tend to overlook him...
He is simply a Communist Kook that echoes the lefts opinions and thus he is quoted often. Any changes will be nullified quickly...
Obama bailout big car companies, big banks and big health industry forcing everyone to buy health insurance of pay a fine or risk jail. Not much of a socialist or capitalist there. More like a fascist or corporatist
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