Winner of the "Oops! I Spoke Too Soon!" Award, Dr. Francis Fukuyama

"The distant origins of the present volume lie in an article entitled “The End of History?” which I wrote for the journal The National Interest in the summer of 1989. In it, I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism. More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government,” and as such constituted the “end of history.” That is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions" --Dr. Francis Fukuyama, in his introduction to his book, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992.

Yes, what a moron he was and is, but that's a given. Fukuyama's been spreading the love since 1992. Would he really know democracy if it bit him?

But even at that time, it was becoming obvious through developments of the successful Zapatista uprising, the subsequent rise of the "anti-globalization movement," the "Battle for Seattle," the rise of an unending proactive antiwar movement, new forms of resistance and theory arising throughout the globe to neoliberalism (notably in South America in the last decade where it has been rejected almost entirely), and so on, that Professor Fukuyama couldn't have been more wrong. He still is wrong, as is his wont, and he isn't going to be satisfied until he has no reputation left but that of a laughingstock. Mission accomplished--time to retire along with George Lucas.

Fukuyama was defending himself even when his book version of The End of History was released, with the author even going as far as to use Marx and Hegel as a shield in the above introduction. That they posited some "end-point" to human social and political evolution--the evolution of ideology--is well known. On this point, he's correct, and he shold have enjoyed being right, at least for once. Yet, Marx and Hegel were never so brazen, ignorant or insolent as to claim when that end-point time would actually come, and it's clear from their writings that it would probably take centuries, if not millennia. Never mind all that: someone's paying the bills, and it's good business to agree with oneself.

No, Marx and Hegel weren't being paid by a bunch of rich capitalists (although the factory owning Engels could fit into that category, he was headed in another direction...) to be one of the shrill voices during the fall of a global power (the Soviet Union) lauding the invincibility of another global player (American style economics, themselves). People like Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Fukumaya were drunk on their short-lived "victory" over the ending of the Cold War and their plans to take Capitol Hill "permanently," if not the White House. Sober minds in the Kremlin warned, ominously, that the United States would fall as a power after the Soviet system. They were right, and now we find ourselves where they were twenty years ago: Afghanistan. The warning signs have been flashing for decades, but never so brightly as now. But power is tone deaf.

As should be common currency by now, power corrupts, and that was the voice speaking from the well-fed yob of Fukuyama back in the 1980s-90s. His utterances in the present historical moment don't show any sign that he, his class (academic historians of all sorts), or those he serves, have lost any of their lust for power for its own sake. That he's looking like even more of an ribald ass now than he did at the time of 9/11 is a given. When you don't have the truth on your side, you resort to jargon and jingoism, and that's about all that Fukuyama and the so-called conservative side of the fence ever had besides the willingness to use barbarous violence to impose neoliberal/Reaganist capitalism on the rest of the world. You lie, rhetorically, throwing out the words "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality," and other myths regarding our way of life.

What does any of that have to do with "liberal democracy"? Nothing, it's just rhetoric on their part, and the new president surely shares many of their assumptions. But things have changed.

Now that America's dominance is slipping--most importantly, on the economic side--it appears that history is far from over, not even by a longshot. At best, Fukuyama's writings on whether the historical development of ideologies have ended are political-philosophical tracts written by a conservative hack on the payroll. In the future--if we're left with one thanks to people like them--they'll make for a very humorous read.

If you've actually ever read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, you know that one of the central tenets of the book is that all nations have their time at the top, but that history deems there is a time when that dominance ends economically. Contrary to what many are saying, America doesn't have to suffer under this cycle--quite the contrary. Without all the unnecessary expenditures revolving around an empire, the average American will have lifted a very heavy lodestone from their neck. As a result of the ending of empire, illegitimate control over their lives by domestic elites will be severely weakened. The power structure in America is under serious threat, caused by their own hand.

What comes next is the groundswell of people demanding a better life, which isn't always a pretty or even tidy affair.

This is why we saw the passing of so much repressive legislation under Bush II and why most of it isn't going away anytime soon. Far from being a "coup," American elites are doing their best to hold onto power, and castles have a dramatic way of falling (watch your heads). History is over? Tell that to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and tell it to the average American solidier or military contractor on the ground. They might point to the dead and ask, "What's that?" Dr. Fukuyama should be taken on a tour of our torture and rendition facilities to ask inmates whether they think "history has ended," and he might also take a tour of South America today and ask the leaders of those nations whether they think history has ended.

He isn't likely to get a positive answer, but probably more than a few laughs at his expense again. Laughter is the summation of his legacy. Fukuyama realized this--belatedly--in his boring and lie-ridden October 4th, 2008 oped piece titled, "The End of America Inc.":

All this suggests that the Reagan era should have ended some time ago. It didn't partly because the Democratic Party failed to come up with convincing candidates and arguments, but also because of a particular aspect of America that makes our country very different from Europe. There, less-educated, working-class citizens vote reliably for socialist, communist and other left-learning parties, based on their economic interests. In the United States, they can swing either left or right. They were part of Roosevelt's grand Democratic coalition during the New Deal, a coalition that held through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s. But they started voting Republican during the Nixon and Reagan years, swung to Clinton in the 1990s, and returned to the Republican fold under George W. Bush. When they vote Republican, it's because cultural issues like religion, patriotism, family values and gun ownership trump economic ones. ("The End of America Inc.," Newsweek, 10.04.2008)

In other words, the right has used cultural flashpoints as phony issues to sway a healthy chunk of American workers away from servicing their own economic and political interests. Europeans tend towards the left because of centuries of struggle by the average person, two devastating world wars that made it clear that a lasting peace could only come through social justice, better educational systems and traditional systems and networks of resistance that have no analog in the US, and because there was an incredible loss of faith coming from the fall of the traditional monarchies after the wars of the 20th century. America has experienced little of this, partly due to how young it is as a nation. If it's broken, don't fix it.

Like America's business class, the Monarchies had used religion as a weapon to control the masses, and they fell. Again, America doesn't have the same historical experiences, but these things have a way of playing-out similarly, these all being human systems of social organization rather than ones from Mars or Jupiter. Once the Monarchies were delegitimized, religion fell into disfavor throughout many parts of the European Continent. It's quite possible that the same could happen here, and for similar reasons.

In the 1980s and 1990s, it was the job of people like Dr. Fukuyama to drive people away from working towards their own interests by deceiving them with false invocations of patriotism, religion, "family values," and sundry other Shibboleths. That no longer works when the system crashes under its own in-built paradoxes, and the public correctly moves towards the left (or, more accurately, away from authoritarian thinking) because it's natural to do so in the "correction" part of this historical cycle. If there are no corrections, there is no recovery, a word to the wise who are wishing very vocally that President Obama's economic stimulus plan fails--then what?

Ultimately, the only thing Fukuyama could do in the fall of 2008 was to finally start covering his ass, and to do it as substantially as he could manage. How sweet it was of Newsweek to pay him for his services rendered. He might want to convert it into non-perishable foodstuffs and gold. Do he and his ilk really believe in anything at all besides power? Unfortunately, yes. We might find that at the heart of Reaganism there always contained more than a hint of the death wish and nihilism, especially when power isn't achieved, is under serious threat, or is lost altogether. False conservativism's implicit logic can be found in the writings of Dr. Fukuyama, a logic that offers no future at all.

"The End of America Inc.," Newsweek, 10.04.2008:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401/page/1

On President Barack Obama's Town Hall in Elkhart, Indiana

Michiana--To say we're seeing a change and a change in tone from that of the Bush II administration would be an understatement, it's more than refreshing, it's exhilarating.

It's the feeling and knowledge that at least there's some genuine leadership in the White House and the Capital in general, a kind of civic feeling Americans haven't felt since before the Republican disgrace of Watergate. The paralyzing cynicism that has benefited the GOP and business sector for over a generation--for now at least--is abating.

69% of the American public approve of the route being taken by the Democratic majority in Congress and the White House, a majority. Obama's ratings on the same are 67%. But there are those who have decided to live in the past, to suggest doing little-or-nothing, and to insist on the same-old, same-old phony panacea of tax-cuts. But that's the minority of Americans today, it's not 2004, let alone 1928.

Yet the Republican minority still doesn't appear to have realized that they lost the elections in 2006 and 2008 and have reverted to their usual M.O. of obstructionism and the inaction of Herbert Hoover. If they don't relent in this behavior, 2010 appears to hold the same for them. America has bigger problems than this, but rather than pooling together with the rest of America to solve this economic crisis they're working to survive ideologically and politically thanks to the very crisis that was created at their strong insistence not just over the last eight years, but the last 28. The GOP exceeds in servicing the paradox and the illogical demands of unaccountable power, and the DNC has been their enabler until now, the reason they're throwing their tantrums.

However, this time, the obstructionism is occurring in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, and predictably, they're not changing their stripes. Quite the contrary, but we knew it was coming. The Republican Party, rather than changing and adapting to an unprecedented crisis, is attempting to go further to the right, and it's a sign of their dysfunctional nature. This refusal to change is going to come at an incredible additional cost for a party that's already disgraced on the national political stage and throughout the world.

Granted, an utter failure of ideology has never stopped the GOP, but events do. During the deepest, darkest years of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover did virtually nothing in response to an unprecedented economic crisis, and the contemporary Republican Party are acting along similar lines. Hoover's inaction cost the GOP for over fifty years, putting them in an earned minority status. The public merely finished the job when they stopped voting for them as they had before October 1929.

While the GOP is openly admitting that there needs to be a stimulus package, they undermine what is a national effort to stem the tide of what could become a catastrophic crash if they continue to insist on the old rules of the game. Should there be wasteful earmarks in the stimulus bill? Of course not, and they should know full well that more tax-cuts for the wealthiest aren't going to do any good and aren't going to create any new jobs anytime soon either. It's truly the "end of an era," that of Reaganomics and neoliberalism, both essentially the same thing.

Trickle-down economic practices have bitten the dust, but you wouldn't know that from talking with a Republican or watching their hysterics on the mainstream news, C-Span, and through their echo chamber throughout the Internet and the mainstream media in general. This is a noise. It's just more "cut taxes," as though there's some magic panacea that's going to fix everything or that such practices didn't get us into the mess we're in right now.

Logic and experience tell us otherwise: The rich will hold-on to that money, hoarding it just as the banks have under the Bush II administration's poor stewardship of the banking bailouts. Why? Besides your basic greed, a lack of imagination and that inability to change in a rapidly changing world economy. That's nothing new, but the urgency of this crisis is.

Now, the congressional GOP are stalling and nit-picking over sections of the proposed stimulus legislation that covers public-spending, namely spending so that there is a future economy. Some of this is legitimate criticism, but holding-up this crucial legislation generally over social-spending is not, and just another indicator that the Republican Party has little to offer in vision or constructive action. When it comes to military-spending, the GOP are about as "conservative" as a sailor on shore leave after payday, no limits, no-holds-barred. We don't even need the F-22 fighter? No problem, we'll label it something other than "pork," that it's "vital to the defense of the nation," when the reality is that it doesn't create many jobs and doesn't make us any safer. The Democrats have problems in this area as well...

In addition, the GOP had no problem--John McCain and a few others in Congress notwithstanding--during the Bush II years in creating a grotesque distortion in our economy with a $1 trillion tax-cut for the wealthiest back in 2001, expected to sunset in 2010, but will likely be dropped as events in the economy take us into a deeper man made decline.

A new weapons system now? Fine, both parties can agree on that most of the time, but forget about cleaning-up the mess they created, it being primarily the GOP's mess. Breaking-up is hard to do, however, and the Republican Party has become accustomed to Democratic submissiveness to their agenda over the years since Reagan. Some so-called "centrist" Democrats in Congress also seem to have missed-the-fact that the old relationship is ending, but it doesn't matter. More political fallout for the GOP is coming and it's going to be a tidal wave coming from the public, especially if inaction clearly causes a deepening of this crisis. The time for political games is over.

Again: events are taking things down a specific and irresistible historical road that was created by the excesses of the business, financial, and political sectors. Deregulation made this not only possible, but inevitable at some point.

The plan President Obama outlined today was a breath of fresh air, and the skeptics are dwindling in a part of the country--the heart of the Midwest--which nobody would have thought would turn to the left anytime soon back in 2004, Elkhart notwithstanding. Events have a way of changing things, attitudes, and the way people view their lives. That means the economy, and our political process. The world is watching, and the world will be affected, almost immediately. They will not be pleased if we fail. It's time to set-aside petty differences and act as Americans by supporting immediate action by passing this stimulus bill now, within the next two weeks.

The President has warned that without acting now, we could have a "catastrophe" on our hands that could become irreversible for at least a generation. Credible economists are telling us this, not some political hack at the Heritage Foundation in their ivory tower office, but real economists, academic ones. This isn't about left or right, this is about rebuilding the economy of the United States of America. If we fail, we fail not only ourselves, but the rest of the world, and future generations of Americans. It's unacceptable.

Conservatives who claim government intervention isn't going to work are wrong (as usual): it's the only option left when over 25 banks have already failed in 2009--that's a situation in which the private sector is totally paralyzed--both by failed ideologies and by the fact that many of them have no capital left to spend...or borrow. Banks who have been given capital-infusions are hoarding previous bailout capital thanks to the flawed methodology (incompetence) of the outgoing Bush II administration's in expediting their bailouts.

Oversight and reasonable regulation would have fixed this proactively and it's just another example of how this mess began in the first place, and how it has perpetuated and expanded and deepened. It's also how it could become a much bigger crisis than the Great Depression. But for the GOP, nothing succeeds like failure, and their ideology has been tested and proven as such--a failure. The time for throwing fits is over, and it's time for America to grow-up and realize that the marketplace should never trump government ever again because it isn't sustainable.

The President has made it clear by inviting everyone in an unscreened town hall meeting in Elkhart that he is serious about the input of the public. This is new. He was asked critical questions and answered them, a situation that the last president was incapable of coping with his entire unfortunate duration in office with his hand-picked audiences.

This wasn't the case today.

There were no "loyalty oaths" to sign for everyone coming into the event as there were in the Bush II years, only a normal security screening. Nobody was thrown-out--unlike during the Bush II years--for disagreeing with the president, and Mr. Obama fielded them, he answered them directly, honestly, and reasonably. The entire process was informative in a way we haven't seen from a president in decades. Good job, Mr. President, you have my full support on this stimulus plan.

Will it work? Nobody knows, not even economists, not the GOP, and not the president. But we must try. We can come out of this with a much better America, and handily, but there are forces in this nation who would drag us down into the muck with them to save their petty privileges for just one more day.

Conspiracy LLC.™

WWW--This is likely to be the last thing I'm going to write about this species of bottom feeder (no, not Bill Bastone, another fish-to-fowl). The vast majority of these people who write on so-called "conspiracies" tend to be completely off--not just in their contentions, but in their minds. Many of them and their readers are--flatly-put--mentally ill individuals who are so messed-up that they created a new religion.

Their writings will never accomplish much of anything substantial, except diverting people's attention from what really needs to be done to change things. They will never spawn a real or constructive political movement with any real results. What they accomplish is to demoralize people, making genuine social and political problems into a mythology of hopelessness and demoralization. Some of them are definitely on the payroll of the FBI, the CIA, and other aspects of the intelligence community, either as assets or as operatives, just as some journalists are.

That they're pathetic is a given. LavaCocktail's Jay Beldo summed it best for me today: "Conspiracy itself has become a bottom line commodity no different than I-Pods or Nike tennis shoes, sold by various fear/profit mongers." Yes, the primary motive here is sales, primarily of books, but also mugs, t-shirts, DVDs, CDs, and other worthless collectibles for the desperate. How is this any different from fundamentalist Christian hucksters? It isn't. I like Jay, he gets it. He understands we have to keep our minds positive and clear, and we have our own paths to take. I recommend his website highly.

Sure, Alex Constantine will probably try to bait me on this again, but rest assured that he and others have got their work cut-out for them. There was no defamation on my part, I wasn't the one who yelled "liar" over and over again on my site. My right to the opinion that Constantine and his ilk are pricks, bastards, assholes, morons, and scum, is secure in the First amendement. It's also my opinion that these arch-conservative turds have very little respect for the right to free speech, unless it applies to them. The Bolsheviks and German National Socialists held the same attitudes.

A message to Senate Republicans

We're on to you. Even your base is on to you. Soon, very soon, the economy is going to take an even greater hit and we're going to place most of the blame where it belongs: with you, the GOP. This isn't to say that we don't understand the Democratic Party's role in this crisis--we do--but first things first, since you're the greatest single threat to peace and stability.

Your unending insistence on deregulation that gave us the current economic crisis, to the gerrymandering and disenfranchisement of the poor, of Black Americans, and of homeless veterans, to your illegal war predicated on a lie, you time is ending.

Not only that, but we're coming for you with the legal system, with the courts. That time is coming soon. Observers like myself have waited for the day when the American public had no other choice but to deal with you, the real terrorists, the real internal criminal threat to the security and prosperity of the average person worldwide.

There won't be any more copping-out, no more cable television, no more shopping, no more, over, done. Without runaway consumerism to divert the public's attentions away from the real problems and the glaring inequality, you don't have much left except force.

That force will work for a short time, and then the public will stop tolerating it and absorb it in the groundswell that's coming--as it should--spontaneously, not directed from above. We know that the most extremist elements of the political world will label self-defense as "terrorism," just as they have so many time in the past, but it's not going to work. Why? You can't even accomplish what you want effectively, with any lasting-impact, which is a blessing.


You have:

--Increased the power and size of the federal government in ways you never wanted to, thank you.

--Created an economic crisis that's sure to place you back firmly as the minority political party for another fifty years, thank you very much.

--Run a cha-cha line of corruption into our courts and jails that would shock the citizens of the worst banana republics in this hemisphere.

--Far too many candidates and incumbents who appear to have very serious sexual issues such as pedophilia and closeted homosexual urges, as well as serial-adultery and the solicitation of prostitutes.

--No ideological foundation left as a party, the reason for this belated-move towards "conservatism" (a faux-version) in the auto "bailout," really a loan, but being misreported by your allies in the media.

--No morals, no beliefs, and no soul.

--The markings of criminals in almost every respect.

--To be broken-up as a national party due to endless criminal behavior,
an aversion for rehabilitation, and a lack of remorse.


After all the masks and excuses are used up (coming tomorrow), there will only be the reality of what held this American order together all along: the threat of naked force.

This time, it's going to meet up with a sociological explosion mightier than all the atomic weapons on earth, and it will lose. See you in 2010 when the playing field has changed even further away from your agenda, and hope many of you aren't sitting in prison at that time.

And don't think for a moment that we didn't notice you throwing loans to the auto industry to your lame duck president, since he's on his way out. You're next. Even the rednecks are getting sick of you and your shit and Black Americans are going to continue voting regardless of your efforts. Unions are going to be making a comeback, and most of the economy is going to become nationalized.

"The Socialists are taking over": A Free-Market Final Solution for the American/Global Economy

Waukesha, Wisconsin--If you didn't see it on Fox or C-Span today, John McCain was speaking at a rally when a very stupid old man started yelling, "The socialists are taking over," which makes no real sense while making a certain slanted sense, it being the GOP's lot to make no sense at all.

Of course, McCain being McCain, the dumbo demagogue he is, agreed with him, which is totally insane.

This line is being peddled by the GOP far-and-wide right now, and it's something to watch, counter, and to be wary of. "The Socialists are taking over."

We are? Can I tell you what to do now, asshole? Please? I kid. Others aren't, and they're rightly angry over the last 28 years of GOP meddling (they had DNC help) in our lives. "Kozmik" at Talking Points Memo wrote this eloquent and accurate assessment of where the GOP is right now regarding the Wall Street crash:

The GOP is in shambles. The ideology which sustained the GOP through the cold war is now expiring in rough parity with the Chevrolet truck as commuter vehicle.

You just can't base a platform on greed, ignorance, and violence and expect to be prosperous. You can't run a party on nihilism while claiming to be the party of morality. You can't expect to be the world's leader while encouraging anti-intellectualism.

Both McCain and the Bush family show they've lost control of the base they cultivated and hoped to exploit for their ignorance. The essential flaw in Machiavellian logic.

Today's GOP is based on? What?

It's all garbage. From the virulent anti-intellectualism to the nonsense laissez-faire supply-side economics, to the moronically hyper aggressive FP and colonial mindset more appropriate to the era of telegrams and horseback than global markets/media and loose nukes. http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/mccain_supporter_rants_about_h.php

Of course bailing-out the banks is a kind of socialism, but it's nothing new to this country, it hasn't felled any civilizations recently (actually saving them in Sweden when their banks collapsed for similar reasons), and he's misreading history as most Americans who have had to suffer under our miseducational system that allows gym teachers to instruct in history, forget economics.

But you see, I have a plan that can bring about a kind of Gnostic-healing of the divide between the Free Market and Socialism, an admixture, and it's a novel one.

It's very simple and very American: give everyone a credit card with an absolutely insane credit limit. Then, tell them they can go out and spend-spend-spend. Go to Pier 1 (not really, this is hypothetical, don't do this at home), go to Red Lobster, take vacations in Europe (Italy, that should do the trick), hit-up all the remaining record stores and comic book shops and buy almost everything, buy new cars and trucks, start an expensive and trendy new drug-habit, eat out all the time, go to tanning salons, and all those expensive department stores you always wanted to go nuts at.

You know, just go crazy, girl, and spend as much as humanly possible.

After that, we know the rest: bailouts for the entire American public, everyone, even illegal aliens. That's right, drinks for everyone, and on the house. That free lunch we've all been dreaming of could be nigh, and since it's the nightmare of the Republican Party and bitter shopkeepers everywhere--delicious. Voila! Everyone in America is bailed-out by the government, all will be pure as light, and we'll live happily ever after in la-la land.

You might think I'm kidding, but that's OK. It's understandable.

The insanity of it all is that my plan would likely work, this being the worst--and utterly irrational--of all possible human worlds. While Michelle Malkin (who's losing it today more than usual), Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the GOP's apparatchiki go even crazier than they already are trying to explain away the bailout, we can all rest more soundly than they ever will. Yes, even with the worst economic crisis in our history facing us. Idiots like that old man in Waukesha are about to become a very isolated-cult of wackos, which is exactly what they were all along.

Now, things have been pushed so far by the conservatives that they've kicked their own hollow ideology from underneath themselves, they're done. Hemlock anyone? A drink for that man in the back row! I'd suggest that the old man from Waukesha drink hemlock, but he committed mental suicide a long time ago when he became a Republican.

And how is the right's "socialist" panic any different from the so-called online Left's with their hysteria over "an October 1 takeover"? It's not. They're all reactionaries who need to get-a-grip on themselves. That means you too Larisa Alexandrovna and all of the kooks at OpEd News. Reel it in, you're all beginning to sound like a bunch of hopped-up rednecks.

Political labels: The Great Shell-Game

WWW--I know that there are many of us in America who are never going to see eye-to-eye. That's expected. That's not what this is about.

Words like "conservative," "liberal," "left," "right," "centrist," "Republican," "Democrat," "anarchist," "communist," "Libertarian," "reactionary," "socialist," "feminist," "pro-life," "pro-choice"--they don't mean anything anymore, especially when you have monolithic corporations lording over our lives.

They and their allies in the press and the media have used such words against the American public for over a century to divide us for the ends of concentrated, run amok wealth.

Why do they do this? Because, at the end of the day, we all want a better society that caters to our basic needs, and not the wants of the big guys, the big money.

I extend my hand out to everyone who wants to make this a more livable and tolerant society where the American people control the direction of this society, not a narrow-group of the selfish and the power-mad.

That's right: traditional conservatives, I am your friend. Republicans who understand this--I am also your friend. Communists too. Feminists, the Hispanic community, Black Americans, Jews, immigrants, the elderly, young voters, and-so-on. Democrats who get this, I am also your friend. The fighting amongst ourselves is beginning to end. Libertarians, and all of the rest--the same applies. We all have the same enemy, and it is Wall Street and globalization.

We owe it to ourselves, and to future generations to work towards a genuine solidarity with each other. We owe it to the world to be a good neighbor, and to stop meddling with the lives of innocent people thousands of miles away. Am I suggesting isolationism as part of our foreign policy? Absolutely. It has to stop. We owe it to the children, and we owe it to the spirit of the truth.

But besides all that, why should the public keep paying for a foreign policy they never asked for and isn't in their best interests monetarily? Any good traditional conservative would agree to this.

The greed and the dog eat dog attitudes must be dropped in this great nation, and the time for the great credo of beating our swords into plowshares has come. The great Populist call is being sounded once again, and it's time for the man in the street and in our rural communities to listen, to have that change-of-heart, and to act accordingly. We can make a better world, it's up to us. Let's roll.

An interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky, from "Interpol Magazine," February 1995 (Part 2 of 2)

This was an interview conducted through the mail with Dr. Chomsky while I was finishing my degree in American History at Ball State University. Just two-months after I received his answers in the mail, we all witnessed the Oklahoma City bombing, and the first stirrings of the war on terror (really a domestic one against all of us). It's been a long road from the Spring of 1995. At that time, the internet was just starting to become accessible, and its impact on the political and cultural discourse is only now being realized. 1995 was a year when the "zine revolution" was occurring, and it was quickly-supplanted by the high-price of paper and the internet.

This interview was done for one of those little zines--my own--called "Interpol." I actually got copies of it in zine-central, the legendary Quimby's Queer Store in Chicago. It was pretty surreal going up to the Windy City and seeing those copies in the store (I never got paid, incidentally), it felt pretty good.

All that said, I would never trade the blog format, it's superior in every respect to that old digest format, and it's getting better all the time. Dr. Chomsky is a very friendly and encouraging person, and when he passes from this world, we will have lost a wonderful human being. Appreciate the flowers in life, they are fleeting. Try to be that person you admire, and strive to make a better world for all. That's the meaning of life.


Matt Janovic: Is "Leftism", as defined by the mainstream culture, more a problem of semantics, rather than a cohesive movement? It seems that throughout much of the 20th century, when groups worked and protested and acted for honest political change, the press and various "populist" elements resorted to labeling them "anarchists," "reds," "communists/commies," "pinkos," etc. . Do you agree with the analysis that often mob actions are stimulated from above, or are there complex social and economic reasons behind scapegoating and vigilantism?

Noam Chomsky: If I were a PR specialist trying to indoctrinate and marginalize people(as they do, quite consciously), I'd try to deprive all words of meaning, so that it's impossible even to think and talk coherently about things that matter (the powerful will continue in their own ways). To a large extent, that's happened. Personally, I keep away from words like "left," "liberal," "conservative," etc.

They have been so deprived of meaning as to become useless. Take "conservatism." The Reaganites were called "conservative." In fact, they were statist reactionaries; a genuine conservative would have turned over in his grave to hear the way the term is used today. There's also been a massive falsification of the "sacred texts." Take Adam Smith. We are supposed to worship at his shrine, but if anyone takes the trouble to read him, they'll find a very different picture from the official version handed down in the doctrinal system.

As for "mob action," it has so many different causes and sources that one can't generalize. CIO organizing and the civil rights movement were "mob action" from one point of view; the rampages of Hitler's organizations were too. Usually, when destructive mob action is stimulated from above, as it often is, it appeals to genuine social and economic concerns, manipulated for that purpose. Those are the tools in trade of demagogues, of every stripe. We've got plenty of experience with it throughout US history, dramatically right now.

Matt Janovic: What can the average person learn from the fall of the Soviet Union?

Noam Chomsky: The simplest lesson is a familiar one: in a conflict, the more powerful adversary tends to win. Europe began to separate into two parts in the 15th century, the West beginning to develop, the East becoming its "third world." That continued right to the early years of this century--for much of Eastern Europe, until 1945. There are some rules of the international game: (!) service areas have to fulfill their function, not get uppity about following an independent path; (2) if they do take off on their own and turn out to be successful in terms that appeal to others in the same boat, they really have to be crushed--in official rhetoric, they are a "virus" that might "infect others," a "rotten apple" that might "spoil the barrel."

If it's a speck in the Caribbean, it takes a weekend. If it's 1/6 of the world, it takes 70 years. But the logic is rather similar; and not surprisingly, much of Eastern Europe is returning to its earlier origins. Sectors that were part of the industrial West, like the Czech Republic, are returning to that status; parts that were basically service areas are returning to the typical third world model. There are all sorts of nuances and complications, but that's a fair approximation.

It's worth stressing that despite much pretense, Western leaders had no serious objections to Stalin's awesome crimes, any more than they had fundamental objections to Hitler or Mussolini, or to Saddam Hussein, or to a host of similar and lesser monsters. On that, the documentary record is very clear, and one can learn about it in arcane monographs (or the marginalised dissident literature). In a really free society, it would be on the front pages and in the school texts, along with much else that is consigned to the memory hole, as Politically Incorrect (in the operative sense of this ridiculous term).

Matt Janovic: Dr. Chomsky, what kind of direct improvements would you envision for the American worker in the workplace, if there was more democracy in most institutions of our society? How do you think that could be brought about?

Noam Chomsky: Right now [1995] one can't look for any improvements; the immediate problem is to preserve the rights that were finally achieved at least in part in the 1930s, after a century of bitter struggle, and have been eroding ever since. They are now under very sever and cruel assault, not just for working people: the same is true of family values, as I mentioned. A traditional stance within the US labor movement and intellectual life, as American as apple pie, is that industrial democracy must be a central component of operative democracy.

If the central decision-making institutions of a society--in production, commerce, finance, ideology, etc.--are in the hands of unaccountable private power, then democracy is a thin reed at best. That's traditional and mainstream. Today it sounds exotic, but that's because the American tradition has largely been demolished, also being "Politically Incorrect." How can democratic practices be extended to the central institutions of the society? There's only one answer, always: the same way they were slowly extended to governmental functions. That was never a gift; it was the result of committed popular organization and action.

Matt Janovic: In a truly democratic society, what do you think our educational system would be like?

Noam Chomsky: Education in a democratic society would try to encourage the natural curiosity and independence of mind of children, instead of suppressing it and channelling them into obedience and conformity. It would celebrate the traditional values of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, which held that teaching should not be like filling a vessel with water, but helping a plant grow in its own way by allowing it to have proper food and light. These traditional conservative values are, of course, anathema to contemporary statist reactionaries.

Matt Janovic: Lastly, what is your idea of international humanism, and do you believe that to impose Western democratic and humanistic ideals (as the Chinese communists/nationalists loyal to the party argue) on non-Western nations is cultural imperialism?

Noam Chomsky: The idea that the West tries to impose "western democratic and humanistic ideals" on the rest of the world is one of the most ridiculous scams that the commissar class has indulged in. Western leaders, including intellectual elites, are dedicated to undermining these professed ideals at home, and centuries of brutal history show how they have "fostered" them elsewhere. Take simply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UD).

The official line is that we courageously defend its universality, fighting off the "cultural relativists" of backward countries who say it doesn't fully extend to them. As even a moment's attention will show, the US flatly rejects about half of the UD even in principle, and grossly violates the rest. That's not controversial; the documentation is readily available. But for the doctrinal managers, it doesn't matter: what is important is ideological warfare, not truth or honesty--in fact, those are the values that have to be undermined.

Link to Part 1: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/05/interview-with-dr-noam-chomsky-from.html#links

End of Part 2 of 2 (and statement of intellectual ownership): This interview is the intellectual property of Dr. Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic, in toto. Permission to reprint, quote, or reproduce can be obtained through written permission from the authors. Quotes of up-to four lines are acceptable without permission. All rights reserved as of 2007, Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic.