(...) At the fringes, some observers reject the shared assumptions, bringing up the historical record: for example, the fact that "for nearly seven decades" the United States has led the world in aggression and subversion - overthrowing elected governments and imposing vicious dictatorships, supporting horrendous crimes, undermining international agreements and leaving trails of blood, destruction and misery.
To these misguided creatures, Morgenthau provided an answer. A serious scholar, he recognized that America has consistently violated its "transcendent purpose."
But to bring up this objection, he explains, is to commit "the error of atheism, which denies the validity of religion on similar grounds." It is the transcendent purpose of America that is "reality"; the actual historical record is merely "the abuse of reality."
In short, "American exceptionalism" and "isolationism" are generally understood to be tactical variants of a secular religion, with a grip that is quite extraordinary, going beyond normal religious orthodoxy in that it can barely even be perceived. Since no alternative is thinkable, this faith is adopted reflexively.
Others express the doctrine more crudely. One of President Reagan's U.N. ambassadors, Jeane Kirkpatrick, devised a new method to deflect criticism of state crimes. Those unwilling to dismiss them as mere "blunders" or "innocent naivete" can be charged with "moral equivalence" - of claiming that the U.S. is no different from Nazi Germany, or whoever the current demon may be. The device has since been widely used to protect power from scrutiny.
Even serious scholarship conforms. Thus in the current issue of the journal Diplomatic History, scholar Jeffrey A. Engel reflects on the significance of history for policy makers.
Engel cites Vietnam, where, "depending on one's political persuasion," the lesson is either "avoidance of the quicksand of escalating intervention {isolationism} or the need to provide military commanders free rein to operate devoid of political pressure" - as we carried out our mission to bring stability, equality and freedom by destroying three countries and leaving millions of corpses. (...)
Those still deluded by "abuse of reality" - that is, fact - might recall that the Sunni-Shiite violence resulted from the worst crime of aggression of the new millennium, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And those burdened with richer memories might recall that the Nuremberg Trials sentenced Nazi criminals to hanging because, according to the Tribunal's judgment, aggression is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The same lament is the topic of a celebrated study by Samantha Power, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In "A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," Power writes about the crimes of others and our inadequate response.
She devotes a sentence to one of the few cases during the seven decades that might truly rank as genocide: the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Tragically, the United States "looked away," Power reports.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, her predecessor as U.N. ambassador at the time of the invasion, saw the matter differently. In his book "A Dangerous Place," he described with great pride how he rendered the U.N. "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" to end the aggression, because "the United States wished things to turn out as they did."
And indeed, far from looking away, Washington gave a green light to the Indonesian invaders and immediately provided them with lethal military equipment. The U.S. prevented the U.N. Security Council from acting and continued to lend firm support to the aggressors and their genocidal actions, including the atrocities of 1999, until President Clinton called a halt - as could have happened anytime during the previous 25 years.
no. Having won the Peace Prize and escalating the use of drones as he has makes him far, far worse than his predecessor. It makes him a disgusting hypocrite.
And of course they are being used to assassinate. There’s a global assassination campaign going on which is pretty interesting when you look into how it’s done. I presume everyone’s read the front page of the New York Times story, which is more or less a leak from the White House, because they are apparently proud of how the global assassination campaign works. Basically President Obama and his national security advisor, John Brennan, now head of the CIA, get together in the morning. And Brennan’s apparently a former priest. They talk about St. Augustine and his theory of just war, and then they decide who is going to be killed today.
And the criteria are quite interesting. For example, if, say, in Yemen a group of men are spotted by a drone assembling near a truck, it’s possible that they might be planning to do something that would harm us, so why don’t we make sure and kill them? And there’s other things like that.
And questions did come up about what happened to due process, which is supposedly the foundation of American law—it actually goes back to Magna Carta, 800 years ago—what about that? And the justice department responded. Attorney General Holder said that they are receiving due process because it’s “discussed in the executive branch.” King John in the 13th century, who was compelled to sign Magna Carta, would have loved that answer. But that’s where we’re moving. The foundations of civil law are simply being torn to shreds. This is not the only case, but it’s the most striking one.
And the reactions are pretty interesting. It tells you a lot about the mentality of the country. So one column, I think it was Joe Klein, a bit of a liberal columnist for one of the journals, was asked about a case in which four little girls were killed by a drone strike. And his answer was something like, “Well, better that their little girls should be killed than ours.” So in other words, maybe this stopped something that would ultimately harm us.
Yep. Never ceases to amaze me. President Barack Obama, Ladies and Gentlemen,...Nobel Peace prize winner of 2009.
I feel safer with his finger on the button, how about you?!
And of course they are being used to assassinate. There’s a global assassination campaign going on which is pretty interesting when you look into how it’s done. I presume everyone’s read the front page of the New York Times story, which is more or less a leak from the White House, because they are apparently proud of how the global assassination campaign works. Basically President Obama and his national security advisor, John Brennan, now head of the CIA, get together in the morning. And Brennan’s apparently a former priest. They talk about St. Augustine and his theory of just war, and then they decide who is going to be killed today.
And the criteria are quite interesting. For example, if, say, in Yemen a group of men are spotted by a drone assembling near a truck, it’s possible that they might be planning to do something that would harm us, so why don’t we make sure and kill them? And there’s other things like that.
And questions did come up about what happened to due process, which is supposedly the foundation of American law—it actually goes back to Magna Carta, 800 years ago—what about that? And the justice department responded. Attorney General Holder said that they are receiving due process because it’s “discussed in the executive branch.” King John in the 13th century, who was compelled to sign Magna Carta, would have loved that answer. But that’s where we’re moving. The foundations of civil law are simply being torn to shreds. This is not the only case, but it’s the most striking one.
And the reactions are pretty interesting. It tells you a lot about the mentality of the country. So one column, I think it was Joe Klein, a bit of a liberal columnist for one of the journals, was asked about a case in which four little girls were killed by a drone strike. And his answer was something like, “Well, better that their little girls should be killed than ours.” So in other words, maybe this stopped something that would ultimately harm us.
Q: Beyond the seven year old, the questions are from Middle School students, 12, 13, 14, but I was talking with a friend's seven year old daughter and I mentioned that we would be interviewing you, and tried to give her a little context, and I asked her, "If you were sitting down and asking Noam a question, what would you ask." She said, "Hmmm ... that is easy ... I would ask ‘Why are we here?'"
NC: There are two views about that which go back to classical Greece, maybe before. One is we are here for the same reason that rocks and trees and grass are here. That is just the way the rules of nature worked out, and they happened to lead to us just like they led to other things.
The other answer, which goes back to Aristotle actually, is that everything in nature has a purpose and a function. And the purpose of rain is to let crops grow. That is its essence, and so on for everything else. And the purpose for humans is to be rational and thoughtful and to live "a considered life" thinking about how to do the right thing. And then Aristotle drew some pretty ugly conclusions from that. He said that is only true for educated Greeks. Others are not fully human. And for some, he said, their purpose is to be slaves. Their purpose is to serve the "real humans," and therefore we should not deprive them from their function. So, to liberate slaves would be criminal ... even the failure to enslave people, so they can fulfill their function as providing service to real humans, that would be immoral. But, we are here because the creator assigned us a function. Then there are variations of these.
The modern view among educated people who pay attention to what has been discovered about the world is the first one. We are here for the same reason that other things in the universe are here. It is the way the laws of nature work.
Noam Chomsky on How He Found His Calling Renowned linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky shares his take on his career and his drive to educate the public on world affairs.
(...) Why didn't they vote? Well, there are things they know intuitively, which are well studied in the political science literature. One of the things it does quite well is study polling, which is very extensive. So we know a lot of what people think, and there's very good work comparing attitudes as indicated by polls with policy - and there's some pretty striking results. The sort of gold standard in this work right now is Martin Gilens' recent book, which is quite good. What he points out is that the lower 70 percent have no influence on policy, so they're essentially disenfranchised. And then as you move up higher, you get a little more influence. When you get to the very top, they essentially get what they want. Polling results aren't sharp enough for him to deal with the crucial segment of the population - the top fraction of 1 percent - which is where the real concentration of wealth is, and undoubtedly the real concentration of power. But you can't show it, because the polls aren't good enough.
Going back to why people don't vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand without reading political science texts that it doesn't make any difference how they vote. It's not going to affect policy, so why bother?
On top of that are all the various difficulties that are imposed on less privileged people to vote. We know about all that. It starts with the fact that the voting is on Tuesday. It's a workday, so you can't take off from work, and it goes on from there. So that affects it, but my guess is - I don't think it's been studied - the primary reason for not voting is just the recognition that it doesn't make any difference. Those guys up there aren't interested in me anyhow, so why should I bother?
So what you have is a highly class-based electoral system which is almost overwhelmed by the fact that in order to even participate in the election, you have to have a huge amount of money. You get that money from the pockets of wealth, the corporate sector and wealthy individuals, so you're naturally indebted to them. (...)
Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses.
Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if you prefer, government by education. But education, in the academic sense of the word, is not sufficient. It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events, and the dramatization of important issues. The statesman of the future will thus be enabled to focus the public mind on crucial points of policy, and regiment a vast, heterogeneous mass of voters to clear understanding and intelligent action.