Chomsky For Beginners

162 Pages·2007·62.443 MB·English

by  Cogswell, David, Gordon, Paul

DAVID COGSWELL
ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL GORDON
For Beginners LLC
155 Main Street, Suite 211
Danbury, CT 06810 USA
www.forbeginnersbooks.com
Text: © 1996 David Cogswell
Illustrations: © 1996 Paul Gordon
Cover Design: Terrie Dunkelberger and Paul Gordon
Text Design: Paul Gordon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
permission of the publisher.
A For Beginners® Documentary Comic Book
Originally published by Writers and Readers, Inc.
Copyright © 1996
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress
eISBN: 978-1-939994-01-1
For Beginners® and Beginners Documentary Comic Books® are published
by For Beginners LLC.
v3.1
O!JlJDu@dJ(l!J<SDll@!Jll .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
"Noam WHO?'' ............................................................................................. 2
Why haven't you heard of "the most important intellectual alive'? ... 3
Chomsky's two careers ............................................................................ 7
'lf(ijj@ ~0@ @!Jll <5[ijj@IJUi)0~~ B ffio@~~fP[ijjocs~o 0~@t1cs[ijj ........... 9
Growing up during the Depression ..................................................... 10
His uncle's Kiosk in New York ................................................................. 12
College drop out ........................................................................................ 15
On a kibbutz in Israel ................................................................................ 17
Speaking out against Vietnam ............................................................ 19
~@ 0[ijj@G!J0dJ@170 @!} @Lj~!Jllt10~
fJ!Jllt1@cs@@]@!Jllt10 t1@ ~@ 'lf(ijjoUil~D!Jll~@!} C5Gu@OUi)0~ ................. 22
Plato ............................................................................................................. 22
Rene Descartes ...................................................................................... 23
Jean Jacques Rousseau ...................................................................... 28
Wilhelm von Humboldt ............................................................................. 31
Karl Marx ................................................................................................... 33
George Orwell .......................................................................................... 36
The anarchist tradition ........................................................................ 42
Zellig Harris ............................................................................................... 42
A note to the Reader ............................................................................. 44
OIJrnC50000lfD<S0 .............................................................................................
45
What is Linguistics? ............................................................................... 45
The evolution of Linguistics ................................................................. 46
Linguistics as a science ......................................................................... 51
Universal generative grammar ........................................................... 54
Evidence that generative grammar is innate ............................... 55
Is grammar learnable? .......................................................................... 58
The infinite variety of language ........................................................... 61
What is the nature of the original state? ..................................... 63
Chomsky on Skinner and Behaviorism ............................................ 65
i1J@8JGW @@GW0~~ ~w@J Qflu@ ~13GDB~
@ou '\7@ 0<EIJL<Ev<E 0<E<E
~ '\7@@1 ~ou@l ~@~[i'f? ............................... 69
Necessary Illusions: The science of propaganda ....................................... 70
What is the function of the Media in a Democratic Society? ................ 71
Engineering consent ............................................................................................. 74
Walter Lippman ....................................................................................................... 75
Reinhold Neibuhr .................................................................................................... 76
Recap of Chomsky's view ...................................................................................... 77
The Targets of Propaganda ................................................................................ 78
The Threat of Democracy ................................................................................... 80
How does "ownership determine content"'?- The Propaganda Model .... 82
Filter #1: MONEY-"The Media of Influence" ............................................. 83
Filter #2: ADVERTISING-How does that distort the news? ............ 87
Filter #3: "EXPERTS"-Who do they work for. .. and why do the same
ones keep popping up? .......................................................................................... 91
Filter #4: "FLAK''-Who writes all those Letters-to-the-Editor? ............ 94
Filter #5: ANTI-COMMUNISM-creating a Bogeyman .................................. 96
Concision: How "sound bites" are used to kill opposing viewpoints ..... 97
Keeping the herd in line ........................................................................................ 98
Don't take Chomsky's word for it-check it out yourself! ...................... 99
What are they hiding? ........................................................................................ 101
CPGQlll]OCSf3 ..............................................................................
CS~@GW0l~ @OD 103
Chomsky's first hand experience with The Censor ................................... 103
Why doesn't the news compute? ................................................................... 105
The myth of the Classless Society .............................................................. 106
The myth of the Free Market system ........................................................... 110
Welfare for the Rich-How it works ................................................................. 111
Uncle Newt's double standard ......................................................................... 116
"National Defense is a sick joke." ..................................................................... 117
Colonialism, then and now .................................................................................. 118
Foreign Policy: Friendly Dictators and Client States ........................... 120
The real New World Order-how it started ............................................... 121
The real objective of the New World Order ................................................ 122
"Corporate interests"f'American interests" ........................................... 124
History-one or two things they forgot to tell you ............................ 127
Coming home to roost ........................................................................................ 137
@@LW0~d7 @Oil [;[l~ou~ I:&J~~~ ~ &Jou Gou@ [;)@u0@0D8®'E? ....... ..139
Taking Responsibility-What can one person do? ................................... 139
Intellectual self-defense ................................................................................... 140
Knowledge and information
OIUJ130WOI.3W wOODu .................................................
[Ik~)i:Duuu C5lli@uuu0~ 142
0[,(]G(].L3. ...............................................................................................................................
153
AC -- After the Cataclysm, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1979, South End Press.
APNM --American Power and the New Mandarins, Noam Chomsky, 1967, 1969, Pantheon.
ATS -- Aspects of The Theory of Syntax, Noam Chomsky, 1965, MIT press.
CR -- The Chomsky Reader, ed. Richard Peck, 1987, Pantheon Books.
DD -- Deterring Democracy, Noam Chomsky, 1991, 1992, Hill and Wang.
ESP -- Equality and Social Policy, Noam Chomsky, 1978, University of Illinois Press.
FRS --For Reasons of State, Noam Chomsky, 1970, 1971, 1972, Pantheon.
FT -- The Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky, 1983, South End Press.
INT -- Interview with Noam Chomsky, Sept. 14, 1993, David Cogswell
L&P -- Language and Politics, by Noam Chomsky, 1988, Black Rose Books.
MC -- Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988, Pantheon Books.
MCF -- Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. A film by Mark Achbar and Peter
Wintonick in association with the Canadian Film ...
Nl -- Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky, 1989, South End Press.
NCZM --Noam Chomsky writing in Z Magazine.
PE -- Pirates and Emperors, Noam Chomsky, 1986, Amana Books.
PD --"The Panama Deception," a film by the Empowerment Project, 1992.
RC --Rethinking Camelot, Noam Chomsky, 1993, South End Press.
TNCW -- Towards a New Cold War, Essays on the current crisis and how we got there, Noam
Chomsky, 1982, Pantheon.
TT -- Turning the Tide, Noam Chomsky, 1985, South End Press.
WC -- The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman,
1979, South End Press.
WUS -- What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky, 1986-92, Odonian Press.
Y5 -- Year 501, Noam Chomsky, 1993, South End Press.
Editor's note: Actual quotes by Chomsky are denoted with quotation
marks and abbreviations indicating the source of the quote.

[\oam Chomsky is
one of the ten
most-quoted
writers of
all time.
The Chicago Tribune has
called Professor Chomsky 11the
most cited living author. ..
adding that among intellectual
luminaries of all eras, he ranks
eighth, just behind Plato and
Sigmund Freud.
, I "To confront a mind
that radically alters
our perception of the
world is one of life's
most unsettling,
yet liberating
experiences,"
... writes James Peck in the
Introduction to The Chomsky Reader.
"In all American history, no one's
writings are more unsettling than
Noam Chomsky's.... No intellectual
tradition quite captures his voice ....
No party claims him; he is a
spokesman for no ideology."
And the Mother of American newspapers,
The New York Times, called Noam
Chomsky "arguably the mo5t important
intellectual alive."
In the 1990s, this is still the most frequent response to the mention of
the name of Noam Chomsky, a mild-mannered professor of linguistics
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2
(Why, you might wonder, have so many of us never heard
of someone so "famous?" Is this the ultimate Yogi-Berra-ism-He's so
famous no one's ever heard of him?)
The reason you haven't heard If too many people lis
much about Noam Chomsky ten open-mindedly to what
(which, by the way, is a Chomsky has to say about
demonstration in action of huge corporations running
his thesis that the Media the country, the world, both
manipulates /dis- political parties, and the
torts/withholds Major Media ... why,
information to the whole ginger-
suit their own bread fantasy
ers) is because we've been fed
the gentlemen about America
who own the might vanish like
Major Media the Emperor's
don't want you clothes.
to know about
Noam Chomsky.
3