Chomsky Vs. Bennett on CNN!

CNN

[xlib]

Missed the beginning, but Bennett seems to be highlighting Chomsky's worst distortions pretty well.

[xlib]

Anybody see the beginning? I surfed over from Fox during a commercial, and saw Chomsky jawing about the World Court calling the US a terrorist nation. Later, Bennett pointed out that refugees from tyranny and war always seem to flee TO the US, not FROM it, and asked Chomsky why he chose to live in a "terrorist nation." He also brought up the Khmer Rouge lies from the '70's. Chomsky denied it, but time ran out before he could offer a defense.

[Exnihilo]

what show? we can probably find a transcript.

[Gorest Gump]

Why do you watch cnn?

[day10]

Chomsky would be unarmed in this battle.

Transcript or summary anyone?

[miamimark]

Chomsky started out with the Nicaragua Contras and used that as an example that the US is a "terrorist state."

I don't like that pompous Bennett-but he kicked ass today.

[day10]

I don't normally watch CNN, but as a user of Bennett's K12 homeschool curriculum I got a notice that he would be apppearing to debate this Chomsky loon and figured it would be entertaining. Sadly, I am at work and couldn't see it.

[xlib]

It was on whatever they call Paula Zahn's show. She "moderated" the debate.

[xlib]

Why do you watch cnn?

Opposition research. "Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer."

[mewzilla]

Have you read Bennett's book, Why We Fight? I used to share your opinion of Bennett's pomposity. Now I think that what I saw as pomposity was in fact the result of a well functioning moral compass. Big difference.

[=Intervention=]

ohmigosh! Have you ever heard the man speak live? I did and it was a treat royale...he was self-effacing and very, very funny (in addition to being dead-on about morality)...

[day10]

Interesting viewpoint - I have never seen him as pompous, but very confident and sharp. Thru our contacts with his K12 effort, my wife had the opportunity to speak with him on the phone and commented on how down to earth and gracious he was.

[fourdeuce82d]

Chomsky would be unarmed in this battle

Didn't see the program, and haven't heard C speak, but based on the stuff he writes, he's not an idiot- I disagree with just about everything he says, but he's very, very bright, *hugely* informed about historical arcana, and I suspect would do quite well in a debate- rather than a brilliant "flat-earther"- he's wrong, but tough to debate.

[fourdeuce82d]

rather like a brilliant etc..

[OldFriend]

I'll not forget Bennett coming to NYC to support an unknown conservative against Rudy in his first election against David Dinkins. Rudy barely won, by 1%, and the unknown conservative got about 2-3% of the vote.

Bennett nearly cost the city it's life.

When conservatives begin their rant about this or that candidate not being conservative enough and therefore not worthy of support I always think of what Rudy accomplished in a city deemed unmanageable and not fit to live in either.

[johnny7]

That's right. When you know you're right, you swagger.

Chomsky swishes.

[Paul Atreides]

Notice that these intellectually-superior, high-moraled, guilty white liberals NEVER are principled enough to LEAVE! We have all been hearing that paradise that is Cuba but none of them never go to stay. Either put up or shut up.

[boris]

Chomsky has been reduced to an algorithm:

The Chomskybot

"For any transformation which is sufficiently diversified in application to be of any interest, this analysis of a formative as a pair of sets of features appears to correlate rather closely with the system of base rules exclusive of the lexicon. Nevertheless, the theory of syntactic features developed earlier is, apparently, determined by the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar. We have already seen that the appearance of parasitic gaps in domains relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction is unspecified with respect to irrelevant intervening contexts in selectional rules."

"On our assumptions, most of the methodological work in modern linguistics is rather different from a stipulation to place the constructions into these various categories. Thus the notion of level of grammaticalness can be defined in such a way as to impose nondistinctness in the sense of distinctive feature theory. We will bring evidence in favor of the following thesis: the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial is not to be considered in determining the strong generative capacity of the theory."

Got all that?

--Boris

[NativeNewYorker]

I saw Chomsky on multiple storefront TV screens as I walked to my midtown office this morning. I couldn't believe CNN had that guy on. At least he was set up opposite an intelligent counterparty.

[NativeNewYorker]

Ditto bump.