The Deadman Night Rider

A forum for evening students of the SMU Dedman School of Law and other outlaws..

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

For anyone with a strong stomach...

...here's a link to a diatribe from Noam Chomsky in the Independent. The tag line: Why It's Over for America.

Chomsky hangs his hat on the rise of China and an anticipated union between the lefties' new vision of a utopian state, Venezuela, and their old one, Cuba. I couldn't quite follow how Haiti fits into all of this, but he throws them in too for good measure.

All of this is good evidence why Noam Chomsky is a linguistics professor instead of CEO of a multi-national oil company with real power in the world. Click here to see what someone in that position thinks of the long-term prospects for China and Venezuela. Curiously, though, no mention of Haiti here. Oh, well.

UPDATE:

Check this out:

A survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked respondents in 33 countries to react to this statement: "I would rather be a citizen of [my country] than of any other." Among Americans, 75 percent "strongly" agreed; among Germans, French and Spanish, comparable responses were 21 percent, 34 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

As George Orwell supposedly said, some ideas are so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for your commentary. However, I thought you might need some pointers on your critical reading skills and give you some help. Let’s take one of your “favorite snippets” and look at it more closely: The Muslim women I talked with, Albeit With Some Reservations, agreed that they were happy to be Muslim because their faith gave them a solid rock of virtues, which their society reinforces.

This line was a subtle allusion to the very things you discussed in your paragraphs about the oppression of Muslim women. I did not want to get into a lenthy Muslim women’s rights discussion precisely because that is what everyone focuses on and I did not want to waste any more space in the article on that. That is the only point that people focus on and know about, not the fact that Muslim women might be experiencing new challenges as a result of globalization. It is true that they experience different forms of oppression, but I wanted to move away from the obvious, simple-minded thinking that most people have about the Muslim world.

Therefore, the very things you challenge me about, “nightrider”, or whatever this is, you might want to think more critically about your own reading and writing. Too bad the Dedman school of business at SMU isn’t doing a better job of that.

7:26 PM  
Blogger rattlerd said...

You're right, Hailey--I totally missed the subtle allusion to actual forms of brutal oppression represented by worries about eating disorders and the ever-present pressure to be tall, thin, and blonde in runway apparel. I'm so simple-minded that I never realized that the real problems facing Muslim women in the developing world are exactly the same problems that face young American women on college campuses! I guess that's my own cultural ego-centrism coloring my views...

A solid rock is a good thing when you need something to hang onto in a storm, but it's a terrible thing to be chained to. When the countries these women live in stop reinforcing those values with the whip, the stone, and the moral police, then they'll have my respect. Until then, teasing out subtle nuances and rationalizations is nothing more than the worst form of apologetics. "Albeit With Some Reservations" isn't a subtle allusion--it's purposeful avoidance of an inconvenient issue so you can get on to your own agenda with globalism.

You wouldn't accept a shadow of what these women face in your own life (though if you really want help making your tough life choices, there are plenty of fundamentalist churches--including Islamic ones--here in the States that will do your thinking for you as well), so why is it so great for them?

7:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"You call him 'Dr. Jones,' Doll!"

7:37 AM  
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6:21 PM  

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