Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404070294
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARA LEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The "L" word is too weak for this internationally known leftist who spoke to a crowd of nearly 1,000 at Radford University last week.
He's not a communist either, though his Depression-era childhood among Jewish reds could have led to those convictions.
Like Gov. George Allen, President Bill Clinton, senate candidate Jim Miller and other politicians, Chomsky would like to be known as a Jeffersonian. Or a follower of Adam Smith.
After a disclaimer - "I don't think Jefferson was any kind of God either. He did a lot of awful things" - Chomsky quotes Jefferson's exhortations against centralized power, the banking institutions and incorporated interests. Chomsky calls for the end of the multinational corporation. No more Coca-Cola, G.E. or Philip Morris.
"This position is as American as apple pie," he said.
Noam Chomsky's been agitating about American adventurism and the media's collaboration for 35 years, and almost went to jail for his activism in the '60s. But he's not a political science, history or economics professor.
Chomsky teaches linguistics to graduate students. In fact, he's such a pioneer in language study that some call him "The Father of Modern Linguistics."
So why travel across the country carping on foreign policy?
"I was involved in this stuff long before I even heard of linguistics," he said last Monday, referring to his radical grandparents and parents. "These things are not academic fields. There's nothing complicated. There are no secrets. It's not quantum physics."
His wife's not always happy about his second full-time job. He said, "We've sort of made our arrangement. Every 'Movement' family I know had problems. Many broke up. There's a lot of strain. It's not just the time. It's a lot of emotional commitments that go other places."
And those emotional commitments, though perhaps strongest in Central America, cover the globe. Here's a few he talked about in a question and answer session, in his speech, and in an interview last week.
On Clinton vs. Bush: Chomsky shrugged. "[Clinton's] a right-wing Democrat, indistinguishable from a moderate Republican. Indistinguishable from George Bush. What's the surprise? You can't accuse [Clinton] of dishonesty."
On Generation X and politics: Chomsky debunked the '60s nostalgia. "'We'll shut Columbia [University] down for a couple of days and there'll be a revolution, and everyone will be smoking pot and making love, and there will be no capitalism. We'll go back, we'll pick up where we left off.'
"It is not a realistic assumption today. If you don't toe the line, you will not be allowed back in. We have social policy designed to drive the society towards low growth, low wages.
"Students, say getting their Ph.Ds in physics at M.I.T., there are an awful lot of them that will never get a job.
"That accounts for a large difference in willing to be more active."
A woman in the audience protested, citing a Washington Post article criticizing whining twentysomethings. He said, "That's absolute baloney. I spend a huge amount of time talking to students. I think they're more involved in issues today. The '60s were pretty narrow, in a small sector of the population for a very short period. Illusions have been created about that. Remember first of all, that a lot of it's fabrication. They now talk about it with pretended nostalgia. At the time, they hated it. The Vietnam War is described as a real peak protest. That's just not true.
"Look at polls, 75 percent of young people don't expect to live as well as their parents. But [the fear] is realistic. It has its psychic effects. It controls you."
On governments: "States are not moral agents. They're agents of power and of violence. People are moral agents. And sometimes they can have influence on their states. Adam Smith knew that. Machiavelli knew that.
On the media: "The business about the liberal media is not totally false. The media is liberal in the same way the Fortune 500 is liberal. Corporate executives are pro-choice, against religious fundamentalism, for free speech. On the issues [Rush Limbaugh] is trying to mobilize the population on, they are [liberal]."
On the Internet: The Internet is a very double-edged thing in my opinion. It's really given a lot of the protest movements momentum. [But] its nature is you're not looking at another human being. There's a big difference when you're having a love affair in virtual reality.
On Somalia: "It was one of the most cynical, hypocritical operations I know of. If [U.S. officials] had any concern for the Somalis, they wouldn't have supported Siad Barre or they would've done something when things were really bad. Marine colonels giving out sandwiches to children in front of the camera. Marine officer goes where there are hungry children and they all sing "God Bless America" and you give them some jelly beans... The Somalis were basically props for photo opportunities.
"We go in, we do what we feel like. Then it will be a disaster, and it'll be somebody else's problem. We pull out, get credit, let someone pick up the pieces."
On Bosnia: "The U.S. has got to stay out. The United States is only qualified to do one thing - bomb. And nobody there wants bombing. Whether there should've been some kind of military intervention, it's not easy to say, actually. Once the fighting really took off, it wasn't easy to see what to do." Diplomatic mistakes were made, he said. "The recognition of Bosnia-Herzogovina was premature. An invitation for disaster, and the disaster took place. The Bosnia case is a horrible one, but one of many."
How does Chomsky find the energy to keep talking about Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, East Timor, Vietnam, the Palestinians ... an endless stream of killing, and much of it, he said, the United States and its business community responsible. Is it guilt? Chomsky told activists, "They want you to see that everything's hopeless. It's by no means beyond possibility that human civilization will collapse." But things have changed in 30 years, he said, and can continue. "It's become a much more civilized country today."
by CNB