AMERICAN IDEALISM VERSUS NOAM CHOMSKY
Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2016–2017)
American idealism needs the leaven of geopolitical analysis to find its way through the maze of new complexities.
Henry Kissinger¹
France ought to be with us and England — in our zone and our combination. It is the only sound arrangement economically and politically.
Henry Cabot Lodge²
It is infinitely better for a nation and for the world to have the Frederick the Great and Bismarck tradition as regards foreign policy.
Theodore Roosevelt³
American Idealists, those men and women whose minds are attuned to the rational conception of right found in the Magna Carta and The Constitution of the United States of America, the American notion of Global freedom in the world of today, will immediately understand the bankruptcy of modern European unreason in the passages that follow.⁴ American Idealists will recognize the outdated Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right, the contagion of 20th century autocracy founded upon popular consent, and they will immediately know beyond all doubt, exactly why Noam Chomsky is a very dangerous philosophical sophist whose anti–American ideology has fanned the flames of terrorism and violence across the Globe, from Europe to the Middle East, via South East Asia and Latin America: How many American lives have been ruined or destroyed by anti–Americanism around the world, and how much terrorism and violence were unleashed upon America in the past half–century, thanks to the anti–American ideology of Noam Chomsky and his followers?
According to Noam Chomsky, the Government of the United States of America is a Nazi Terror Regime:
“If they do it it’s terrorism, if we do it it’s counter–terrorism. That’s an historical universal: Go back to Nazi propaganda the most extreme mass murders ever. If you look at Nazi propaganda, it’s exactly what they said: They said they are defending the populations and the legitimate governments of Europe like Vichy from the terrorist partisans who are directed from London, that’s the basic propaganda line … We did it therefore it’s a just cause: You can read that in the Nazi archives too.”
Noam Chomsky [Television Interview Transcript]
“Chomsky did not say that the US government is a Nazi terror regime … intellectuals in power systems line up to sing the praises of those in power, and that we represent the righteous course of history. This is precisely what every major power has done and said, without exception, from Nazi Germany to Imperial Japan to Colonial Britain.”
Glen MacPherson, 2016
A: ?
B: ?
C: Therefore, “Chomsky did not say that the US government is a Nazi terror regime.”
Glen MacPherson: Intellectuals in power systems line up to sing the praises of those in power, and that we represent the righteous course of history. This is precisely what every major power has done and said, without exception, from Nazi Germany to Imperial Japan to Colonial Britain: Therefore Noam Chomsky did not say that the US government is a Nazi terror regime?
Therefore: “According to Noam Chomsky the Government of the United States of America is a Nazi Terror Regime” = Chomsky did say that the US government is a Nazi terror regime?
“Chomsky did not [merely] say that the US government is a Nazi terror regime” and “[some] intellectuals in [some] power systems [sometimes] line up to sing the praises of [some of] those in power, and that [sometimes] we represent the righteous course of [some] history. This is precisely what every major power has [sometimes] done and said, without exception, from Nazi Germany to Imperial Japan to Colonial Britain.”
Therefore, according to Noam Chomsky the Government of the United States of America is a Nazi Terror Regime, namely he implies that Washington is a Nazi Terror Regime: Chomsky implies that the outdated Napoléonic and French revolutionary conception of right is not the cause of Bonapartism, namely, autocracy founded upon popular consent; he implies that the conception of right found in the Magna Carta, the fountainhead of the Industrial revolution, is the cause of modern European political and economic irrationalism in the 20th century, because he implies that the former conception of right, and not the latter, is the basis of The Constitution of the United States of America:
American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays, (1969); At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, (1970); Two Essays on Cambodia, (1970); For Reasons of State, (1973); Cambodia in the Southeast Asian War, (1973); Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, (1974); Cointelpro: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom, (1975); Arabs in Israel, (1976); After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, (1980); Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, (1981); Superpowers in Collision: The Cold War Now, (1982); The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, (1983); Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World, (1986); Deterring Democracy, (1991); Terrorizing the Neighborhood: American Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era, (1991); The Culture of Terrorism, (1999); The Umbrella of Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradiction of U.S. Policy, (1999); Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization, (2002); Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, (2003); Power and Terror: Post–9/11 Talks and Interviews, (2003); Imperial Ambitions, (2005); Superpower Principles: U.S. Terrorism Against Cuba, (2005); Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, (2006); Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force, (2011); Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, (2013); On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, (2013) …
Noam Chomsky was seduced very early by the philosophical sophistry of Locke, Leibniz, Hume and Kant, namely “[modern] Europe’s Machiavellian relativism and selfishness” (Henry Kissinger),⁵ the subjectivism, relativism and irrationalism of modern European unreason: Noam Chomsky maintains that the ultimate realm of logical and linguistic truth and reality is unknowable. In other words, Chomsky’s program to revise and replace traditional grammar is deeply inspired by the Kantian delusion that the ultimate realm of truth and reality is unknowable: Chomsky endeavors to transform traditional grammar based upon his version of logical and linguistic phenomena, in order to lend credence to the highfalutin verbiage with which he clothes his modern European political and economic irrationalism, and to attack his adversaries as bad grammarians, namely as Hegelians (as conservatives, right–wing extremists and fascists).⁶ Chomsky’s 20th century modern European irrationalism has collapsed in the face of Globalism and the supremacy of universal freedom in the world of today.⁷
How many American lives have been ruined or destroyed by anti–Americanism around the world, and how much terrorism and violence were unleashed upon America in the past half–century, thanks to the anti–American ideology of Noam Chomsky and his followers?
ENDNOTES
1. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 812. [Italics added]
American Idealists are not theoreticians, doctrinaires and idéologues cloistered in their ivory towers: Americanism is forged by American Idealists like Henry Kissinger in the world historical collapse of modernity and rise of Globalism.
2. Letter from Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt in Henry Cabot Lodge and Charles F. Redmond, editors, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge: 1884–1918, vol. 2, New York/London, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, 162. [Italics added]
3. Letter from Theodore Roosevelt (3 October 1914) to Hugo Münsterberg in Elting E. Morison, editor, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 8, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1954, 824–825. [Italics added]
4. See: “America serves its values best by perfecting democracy at home, thereby acting as a beacon for the rest of mankind … America’s values impose on it an obligation to crusade for them around the world … [American Idealists] envisioned as normal a global international order based on democracy, free commerce, and international law. Since no such system has ever existed, its evocation often appears to other societies as utopian, if not naïve. Still, foreign skepticism never dimmed the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or indeed of all other twentieth–century American presidents. If anything it has spurred America’s faith that history can be overcome and that if the world truly wants peace, it needs to apply America’s moral prescriptions.”
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994, 18.
See: “Americans, protected by the size and isolation of their country, as well as by their own idealism and mistrust of the Old World, have sought to conduct a unique kind of foreign policy based on the way they wanted the [old] world to be, as opposed to the way it really is … Modern diplomacy emerged from the trials and experiences of the balance of power of warfare and peacemaking … America, sometimes to its peril, refused to learn its [modern European diplomacy] lessons … Americans, from the very beginning, sought a distinctive foreign policy based on [American] idealism.”
Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, Jacket.
America refused to follow in the footsteps of modern European diplomacy, sometimes to its peril, because Americans, from the very beginning, sought a distinctive foreign policy based on idealism and their mistrust of the Old World: American Idealists have sought to conduct a unique kind of foreign policy based on the way they wanted the Old World to be, as opposed to modern European diplomacy.
5. Henry Kissinger, Ibidem, 820.
6. “Nearly fifty years ago Chomsky argued for explicit rigor, for various levels of representation provided by a theory of grammar, and for seeking a precise evaluation metric to compare grammars … we can revisit this matter and many others in light of subsequent work developing theories of grammar and spelling out the details of Universal Grammar, now seen [by Chomskyians] as defining the language faculty … It has also spawned new approaches to old philosophical questions, notions of meaning and reference, and Chomsky has taken the lead in this area.”
David W. Lightfoot, “Introduction,” Syntactic Structures, 2nd edition, Noam Chomsky, New York/Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, 2002, v–xviii, xvi.
Noam Chomsky, according to David W. Lightfoot, is not a sophist, but is a philosopher, among other things. We will evaluate how exactly Chomsky puts into political and economic language the so–called explicit rigor, levels of representation and precise evaluation of his grammar theory. A fortiori, Chomsky’s political and economic grammar is inseparable from his theory of grammar: We will uncover and expose this link. We will examine in detail some of Noam Chomsky’s sophistical philosophical arguments with regards to his “notions” of meaning and reference in the world historical realm of political and economic language.
We will discover that Chomsky’s sophistical notions (sophisms) of meaning and reference are advanced in the world historical realm of politics and economics as “logical and linguistic” justifications for the language of modern European political and economic irrationalism. Noam Chomsky’s anti–American sophisms of meaning and reference are therefore very dangerous delusions in the Global world of today, especially in the Middle East, but also in Western countries vulnerable to terrorist attacks, such as nations in southern and eastern Europe: The anti–American ideology of Noam Chomsky and his followers is a very serious threat to America and Americans in every corner of the Globe.
See: “The successful use of terrorism is not considered a scandal. On the contrary, it is welcomed and applauded, including large–scale state terrorism in the Middle East–Mediterranean region sponsored or carried out directly by the United States.”
Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism, London, 1988, 92.
For what reason our labors of American Idealism? The American victims of Global terrorism, and their families, must be financially compensated for the terrible pain and suffering they have endured over the years: Class action lawsuits must be launched against Noam Chomsky and his followers, the publishing firms and websites that have backed them, and the academic institutions that have employed them.
Anti–Americanism has greatly fanned the flames of terrorism and violence around the world, and contributed to radicalization and extremism, the fertile recruiting ground of terrorist organizations. Noam Chomsky and his followers have provided terrorist groups and cells across the Globe with the sophistical and ideological weapons of anti–Americanism which have greatly contributed over the decades to the contagion of terrorism and violence against America and the Western world.
7. See: “The year 1992 poses a critical moral and cultural challenge for the more privileged sectors of the world–dominant societies. The challenge is heightened by the fact that within these societies, notably the first European colony liberated from imperial rule, popular struggle over many centuries has achieved a large measure of freedom, opening many opportunities for independent thought and committed action. How this challenge is addressed in the years to come will have fateful consequences. October 11, 1992 brings to an end the 500th year of the Old World Order, sometimes called the Colombian era of world history, or the Vasco da Gama era, depending on which adventurers bent on plunder got there first. Or ‘the 500–year Reich,’ to borrow the title of a commemorative volume that compares the methods and ideology of the Nazis with those of the European invaders who subjugated most of the world. The major theme of this Old World Order was a confrontation between the conquerors and the conquered on a global scale. It has taken various forms, and been given different names: Imperialism, neocolonialism, the North–South conflict, core versus periphery, G–7 (the 7 leading state capitalist industrial societies) and their satellites versus the rest. Or, more simply, Europe’s conquest of the world … ‘Hegel discoursed authoritatively on the same topics in his lectures on philosophy of history, brimming with confidence as we approach the final ‘phase of World–History,’ when Spirit reaches ‘its full maturity and strength’ in ‘the German world.’ Speaking from that lofty peak, he relates that native America was ‘physically and psychically powerless,’ its culture so limited that it ‘must expire as soon as Spirit approached it.’ Hence ‘the aborigines … gradually vanished at the breath of European activity.’ ‘A mild and passionless disposition, want of spirit, and a crouching submissiveness … are the chief characteristics of the native Americans,’ so ‘slothful’ that, under the kind ‘authority of the Friars,’ ‘at midnight a bell had to remind them even of their matrimonial duties.’ They were inferior even to the Negro, ‘the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state,’ who is beyond any ‘thought of reverence and morality — all that we call feeling’; there is ‘nothing harmonious with humanity … in this type of character.’ ‘Among the Negroes moral sentiments are quite weak, or more strictly speaking non–existent.’ ‘Parents sell their children, and conversely children their parents, as either has the opportunity,’ and ‘The polygamy of the Negroes has frequently for its object the having many children, to be sold, every one of them, into slavery.’ Creatures at the level of ‘a mere Thing — an object of no value,’ they treat ‘as enemies’ those who seek to abolish slavery, which has ‘been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among the Negroes,’ enabling them to become ‘participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it’ … Hegel, Philosophy, 108–9, 81–2, 93–6; ‘the German world’ presumably takes in Northwest Europe … Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History (Dover, 1956; Lectures of 1830–31).”
Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Montréal/New York, 1993, 3–4–5–291–313.
See: “Hegel discoursed authoritatively … in his lectures on philosophy of history.”
Chomsky, Ibidem, 4.
That Hegel discoursed authoritatively in his lectures on philosophy of history does not mean the hitherto published editions of Hegel’s Lectures are authoritative, particularly the edition which Chomsky cites, although it goes without saying that, trivially speaking, back in the day when Hegel gave his lectures, he did so in a very authoritative manner, at least according to the historical accounts of some of his pupils.
See: “Hegel’s own course notes and those of his students should be used with caution to clarify and illustrate the meaning of the texts he published during his lifetime … In general, the student notes written during or after Hegel’s classes should be used with caution … What has been said about the student notes must also be applied to the so–called Zusatze (additions), added by ‘the friends’ to the third edition of the Encyclopedia (1830) and the book on Rechtsphilosophie … Some commentators, however, seem to prefer the Zusatze over Hegel’s own writings; additions are sometimes even quoted as the only textual evidence for the interpretation of highly controversial issues. For scholarly use, however, we should use them only as applications, confirmations, or concretizations of Hegel’s theory. Only in cases where authentic texts are unavailable may they be accepted as indications of Hegel’s answers to questions that are not treated in his handwritten or published work. If they contradict the explicit theory of the authorized texts, we can presume that the student is wrong, unless we can show that it is plausible that they express a change in the evolution of Hegel’s thought … According to Leopold von Henning’s preface (pp. vi–vii) in his edition (1839) of the Encyclopädie of 1830, the editors of the Encyclopedia sometimes changed or completed the sentences in which the students had rendered Hegel’s classes.”
Adriaan Theodoor Basilius Peperzak, Modern Freedom: Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism), Reinier Munk, series editor, Dordrecht, 2001, xvi–27–28–29–29.
See: Leopold Dorotheus von Henning, Hrsg., “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse — Die Logik: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten: D. Ph. Marheineke, D. J. Schulze, D. Ed. Gans, D. Lp. v. Henning, D. H. Hotho, D. K. Michelet, D. F. Förster, Erster Theil, Erste Auflage, Sechster (6) Band, Berlin, 1840, v–viii.
See also: Leopold Dorotheus von Henning, Hrsg., “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse — Die Logik: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten: D. Ph. Marheineke, D. J. Schulze, D. Ed. Gans, D. Lp. v. Henning, D. H. Hotho, D. K. Michelet, D. F. Förster, Erster Theil, Zweite Auflage, Sechster (6) Band, Berlin, 1843, v–viii.
See also: “The transcripts known today for all the Berlin lecture series are consistently, even surprisingly, reliable testimonies … It may indeed be disconcerting that only today do we doubt — and not everyone does — that Hegel’s lectures … are actually reproduced authentically in the published [Berlin] edition … that did not become full–blown for more than a hundred and fifty years. We can hardly examine here all the reasons for this circumstance.”
Annemarie Gethmann–Siefert, “Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,” Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, Robert F. Brown, editor and translator, Oxford, 2014, 32–46.
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