Tags for this video have been changed from 'chomsky, vote, obama, election' to 'chomsky, vote, obama, election, the real news, paul jay' - edited by fissionchips

When i was at University, Chomsky was likened to a god in the area of political science and history.

I'm sure conservatives would label his comments here as socialist or communist.

How can it be socialist when every other capitalist country in the world has a nationalised health care that works better than the US?

I'm not sure conservatives know what real socialism is. It's just a word they were told as children to scare them under the bed.

i've seen more spines in jellyfish, noam.

Is it me or does he always sound like he's choking on a penis when he talks? Om Nom Nom Chomsky.

Pretty much none of the western countries can call themselves capitalist these days. And countries like Singapore don't have free healthcare afaik

A voice in the wilderness. Too bad people are too stupid to understand anything more than a soundbite. As illustrated above.

"The word 'democracy' does not appear once in the constitution." - The US Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It.

Republic appears a lot though...

They don't pay attention to popular opinion? Maybe they should? Because the popular opinion means that the populous had numbers above those who wont listen.

A republic is a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch,[1][2] but in which the people (or at least a part of its people)[3] have impact on its government.[4][5] The word originates from the Latin term res publica, which literally translates as "public thing" or "public matter".

Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek δημοκρατία ([dimokratia] (help·info)), "popular government"[1] which was coined from δήμος (dēmos), "people" and κράτος (kratos), "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC.[2] In this form, there were no defined human rights or legal restraints upon the actions of assembly, making it the first instance of "illiberal democracy."[3]

So what are the differences between Republic and Democracy? Minute at best, in a republic a minority of people can have power or all people can have power. In a True Democracy the majority has power.

However we do not have a True democracy because we have the electoral college, which means that the popular vote means a lot and means nothing in terms of the actual winner of the presidential race.

We have a bullshit system called a Democratic Republic, these too words live to destroy each other. There can be only one if use of the definitions apply.

Either the people have supreme power or they do not. The people of the united states clearly do not have supreme power, just look at the passed 8 years.

The problem with Chomsky is every other word out of his mouth is a lie or distortion. No one who knows his shtick has the time to correct him so usually they just ignore him.

I'm not sure conservatives know what real socialism is. It's just a word they were told as children to scare them under the bed.

A socialist believes that people live (and work) to serve the State and that the State--not God, nature or the virtue of human birth--is the source of inalienable rights.

What it means at street level is some pencil-pusher in a cubicle decides whether your living freely is in the budget; if it ain't, you're screwed.

^ So just get out of America if you hate it so much, QM.

Your pitiful arguments are hurting the troops.

>> ^imstellar28:
i've seen more spines in jellyfish, noam.


either of you two (gwiz, johnald) care to explain why you downvoted this? am i not allowed to state facts lyrically or was this a strictly biological criticism?

choosing the lesser of two evils is undeniably cowardly. here is an explicit example which proves this: someone walks up to you with a gun and says "i'm going to kill your wife or your son, make a choice" what would you call the person who complies and picks either? a coward? what do you call the person who refuses to make a choice, and instead trys to tackle the gunmen? brave? exactly. please try to argue otherwise

In simple terms, a republic protects the rights of the minority by instating a constitution that gaurantees them certain protection regardless of the consensus will of the majority. In a true democracy, a majority vote could divy up the belongings of the minority with impunity. Very mob-like.

Republican and Democrat are names of political parties trying to push certain agendas, they have no correlation to the lower case government types. They both have historically shown on-and-off regard for the constitution. FDR confiscated gold, LBJ went to war without congressional declaration. Bush suspended rights of suspected combatants to due process and also failed to declare war (the reason we have that is because it enables total subversion of the whole rights thing. Want to arrest a political dissenter? Why not label them a terrorist?).

Not to mention the hundreds of programs created by both that are not authorized by the constitution as government functions. Although, to some degree, I have to agree that our constitution is poorly worded in many places and has numerous loopholes. For example, it bans "cruel and unusual punishment" without defining it. The 10th amendment is cast aside as a truism from its wording even though it was probably intended to restrict federal powers to those expressly given by the constitution. That was a real barn burner. Document just got way too fancy, many libertarians have made a dream constitution to replace it. Most of them start with "THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHALL NOT..." haha. Try slipping around that wording.

>> ^imstellar28:
>> ^imstellar28:
i've seen more spines in jellyfish, noam.

either of you two (gwiz, johnald) care to explain why you downvoted this? am i not allowed to state facts lyrically or was this a strictly biological criticism?
choosing the lesser of two evils is undeniably cowardly. here is an explicit example which proves this: someone walks up to you with a gun and says "i'm going to kill your wife or your son, make a choice" what would you call the person who complies and picks either? a coward? what do you call the person who refuses to make a choice, and instead trys to tackle the gunmen? brave? exactly. please try to argue otherwise


Your logical experiment assumes success where the historical record shows failure.

The last two third party candidates, Nader and Ross Perot, simply ruined it for their party, allowing Bill Clinton to take the presidency from the Republicans, and allowing Bush to take the presidency from the Democrats.

Bravado is tempting, but not always rational.

Chomsky deserves respect even if one disagrees with him. He's always open for reasonable debate, which is more than can be said for most people of any political stripe.

^whatever he has done in the past to deserve respect, his comments here aren't one of them

imsteller, it's apples and oranges. You presented a false dichotomy, where there is a true third option. When voting for the US president, there is no third option.

^your view is a self-fulfilling prophecy. its only unlikely because people like you keep saying its unlikely.

how do you think jessue ventura got elected? there is a third option you just aren't willing to take it. don't use the "improbability" of a third party candidate as an excuse to vote for evil. you voluntarily support evil, stop pretending otherwise.

... so his point is that both parties are 'essentially the business party', however there are differences enough to make the 'lesser of two evils' a reasonable choice along with not voting or voting for a third party.

While I agree with a lot of what he is saying he is making the classic leftist mistake, namely calling their opinions the working class opinion. Public opinion is exactly that which is reflected in elections thus proving him wrong. Everyone in the working class does not want a welfare system despite it being in their best interest.

I just want to say from the title that I fucking HATE the argument first fed to me in 2000 about picking the lesser of two evils. It was again a sad bit of rational in 2004 to choice between two inferior pathetic candidates and it seems that now that Bush is finally leaving it will become a staple in how Americans think about voting. I refuse to vote for evil of any kind, period. A democracy or hell a republic if thats what you wanna call it should never choice between two evils because you are still going with evil. Now you might say the consequences would be far greater if we didnt but i say we stand for good or nothing at all. This type of logic is repeated in my parents and many old people i have talked to. They now say and i quote "When you get older you realize its not about voting for who you want in office, its about voting against who you dont want in office". Is this what the great "Democracy" has become? It fills me with untold sadness.

The fallacy in advocacy of 3rd party candidates is that any remotely serious candidate must be statistically mainstream, thus disqualifying the candidates 3rd party advocates are passionate about.

The only reason most people think there's a hidden majority that agrees with their views is because they ignore or dismiss everyone who disagrees with them