Hey shonk, I have a joke for you.

Q: How do you get Noam Chomsky to shut up?

I think you may be wrong about Chomsky being dishonest, for the same reason that I think people are may be wrong to accuse Bush of being dishonest; i.e. to be dishonest one has to be aware of the gap between what one says and the truth, at least as one conceives it. In any case, that of which one can probably accurately accuse both Chomsky and Bush is not giving a shit what the truth is, much less consciously digressing from it (not that they would have any moral qualms about doing so, necessarily).

Are you really 6'7"?

Q: How do you get Noam Chomsky to shut up?

Ask him why, if he liked North Vietnam so much, he didn't move there?

Are you really 6’7”?

Yes.

You don't seem that tall. You got that metablog idea from me after I swiped it from you, didn't you?

btw, I can't seem to save my information here in the comment area, I have to enter name, email, and site each time I comment.

The first form I get has radio buttons for saving my data, but no fields to fill in. I choose yes and try to post a comment. Then I get to enter the info fields but have no radio buttons to save the info. Next time I try to comment it's the same deal.

I've just about had it with this crummy blog, fix this pronto or you can kiss my insightful comments goodbye.

In any case, that of which one can probably accurately accuse both Chomsky and Bush is not giving a shit what the truth is, much less consciously digressing from it (not that they would have any moral qualms about doing so, necessarily).

And this is different from intellectual dishonesty how?

btw, I can’t seem to save my information here in the comment area, I have to enter name, email, and site each time I comment.

Weird. What browser are you using?

It's one of those oddball browsers you probably don't see much of on your site: Internet Explorer.

And in the links in the top frame of your "metablog" you need to use target="_top". Right now they just open within the top frame.

And this is different from intellectual dishonesty how?

Right. Any politician is almost necessarily intellectually dishonest, and Bush certainly is, but Chomsky takes intellectual dishonesty to artistic heights Bush will never dream of.

(Clinton could possibly dream of them though.)

Are you kidding me? The guy has no intellectual honesty or logic behind anything he does. He has contradicted himself numerous times (as relates his anarchy vs. state control, not in the strict sense, but in other texts), he has contradicted himself over and over in linguistics (I am a linguist and have read his texts, as some of you may know, he has abandoned many of his original theories), not only sympathized with but defended at LENGTH the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, I mean, the list goes on and on --

But his books are basically big print and big pictures now anyway. He's marginalized himself and I hate to say it, but he's making linguistics look bad. :(

And in the links in the top frame of your “metablog” you need to use target=”_top”. Right now they just open within the top frame.

Fixed. As for the comments issue, I can't seem to reproduce the problem on my version of IE. Is anybody else having the same problem? I've mucked around a bit with the Movable Type template over time, but never with the cookies or with the actual forms.

Well, in a moral sense it certainly doesn't make much of a difference, but I simply made that comment because one thing which one can say about conscious liars is that they likely have a highly developed awareness of the truth, and when exposed they will likely retreat from their lies. But when someone does not know or care what the truth is, exposing the falsehoods they propagate will make absolutely no difference to them. That is why exposing Bush or Chomsky's falsehoods, as if that will resolve everything, seems naive to me.

Right, but as I'm using the term, there's a distinction to be made between "dishonesty" and "intellectual dishonesty". One may technically only speak or write the truth and still be intellectually dishonest. We call a writer or a critic intellectually dishonest if he never reads or addresses dissenting opinions, even none of the information he presents is factually incorrect.

And I'm not claiming that exposing Chomsky's falsehoods will resolve anything with regard to Chomsky himself. Much better men than I have done so much more directly and not once that I'm aware of has it changed Chomsky's opinion on much of anything. Rather, by exposing his contradictions, I hope to elucidate certain interesting points that are worthy of discussion in and of themselves (as with the case of socialized medicine in this instance) and possibly, as an ancillary benefit, to cause those who are more interested in the truth than Chomsky himself to think more rigorously about what he is saying.

As a good friend was and is fond of saying on message boards: "Never forget the lurkers" - those that are not actively involved in the debate, but rather are observing it and forming their own opinions based on those observations.

Someone is intellectually dishonest when they willfully evade the truth. It is sometimes difficult to pin this down to a literal lie.

Now the horrible news:

Chomsky started blogging yesterday...

Kickass. Probably the best short argument against universal healthcare I've had the pleasure to read. I'm quite annoyed that I didn't come up with it myself.

BTW, have you read Bruce Sterling's HOLY FIRE? I think you'd like it. Medical science has advanced to the point where whole bodies can be regenerated. One interesting angle he takes is that all drugs are legal, but abusing them is pretty much a death sentence because you will be excluded from medical services if you're discovered.

Update: National Public Health Care is a blessing. As a Canadian citizen I can attest to its ongoing benefit: As a low-income wage earner with a terminally ill family member I am grateful for the governmentally subsidized care of my sister. All hospital and medical costs are fully provided for -- the cost to our family is none. We belong to one of the wealthiest nations in the world...there's more than enough money to go around. If a small portion of some of the trillions of dollars that go into the annual US military budget were used to create a similar program in the States, it would provide access to free health care for the millions of Americans who presently have none. Why has America fallen so far behind?

Update: National Public Health Care is a blessing. As a Canadian citizen I can attest to its ongoing benefit: As a low-income wage earner with a terminally ill family member I am grateful for the governmentally subsidized care of my sister. All hospital and medical costs are fully provided for -- the cost to our family is none.

I don't recall ever saying that it wouldn't be/isn't a blessing to some. In any public policy decision there are always winners and losers. You happen to be one of the winners. Good for you. However, if we're going to argue by anecdote, I know several Brits who hate their socialized medicine, not because of the higher taxes, but because they simply can't get treatment, what with the extensive waiting lists, shortage of doctors and nurses, and general bureaucratic malaise of the system. One of their greatest fears is getting some dread disease and dying while waiting for their treatment to get approved by the requisite 12 different bureaucrats. I'm not saying the experience of people I know is any more valid than yours, but I'm not sure exactly why it should be any less valid, either.

If a small portion of some of the trillions of dollars that go into the annual US military budget were used to create a similar program in the States, it would provide access to free health care for the millions of Americans who presently have none. Why has America fallen so far behind?

By the same token, one could argue that if a small portion of the trillions of dollars that are annually confiscated from American citizens by the IRS were left in the hands of those that earn it, millions of Americans who presently lack insurance could afford it. To me, simply not taking as much money seems a hell of a lot easier than building an entire bureaucratic infrastructure virtually from scratch, but then I'm weird like that.

Fundamentally, though, I think you missed my main point. I wasn't arguing against socialized medicine because I think it will do a less effective job of keeping people healthy than the current system. That's something for economists and doctors to argue about, and I'm neither one. My objection is precisely on the grounds stated in my post: socialized medicine means my lifestyle becomes public policy. I'm not trying to live forever; I'm trying to live happily. And when every lifestyle choice I make is subjected to public and state scrutiny, that makes me unhappy.

"But," you say, "that's not what really happens. I can still smoke and have gay sex and drink until I pass out." Maybe so, but it's early yet. Public school teachers used to have quite a bit of freedom to choose the curriculum they thought best, too.

Oh, and one last point. The last thing in the world you, as a low-income Canadian and beneficiary of Canada's national health care system, should want is for the U.S. to adopt a Canadian-style system. Right now, the U.S. is subsidizing the cheap prices you Canadians get on pharmaceuticals. If the U.S. adopts the same sorts of price controls Canada has, the pharmaceutical companies are likely to go out of business. Permanently.