Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley Debate : Part 2 of 2

As a side note: How much does William F. Buckley love himself!

I like the respective analogies of the farmer, fertilizer and bayonet. They perfectly illustrate the differences between the two arguments and, indeed the two world views. Buckley likes to simplify situations leaving out nuance and circumstance and debates from that point as if Chomskys pragmatism is completely irrelevant. Just the same, there is nuance between the circumstances in 1990 and the period they are debating, there is nuance in EVERYTHING.

Buckley is a fucking twat.

Chomsky just refuted his own opposition to the 1990 war on Iraq. Here he said that intervention to overthrow an occupying foreign regime is acceptable.

I thought his point was that there is a conceptual difference between an intervention in the case of a country occupied by a foreign military and one that is not. Even so, it seems quite possible, in the abstract at least, for military intervention to be morally acceptable and yet not in the intervening power's interest.

no wonder americans are so dunb when this is the kind of format used for a 'debate'. this interviewer is a prick. i'd like to hear what he sounds like without that bass boom effect from the control room.

I highly recommend you to read Chomsky's "Turning the Tide" where he explains very neatly how that so-called Soviet "imperialism" in Latin America was not only over exaggerated by the US but purposefully promoted.

As a corollary, I would also recommend LeoGrande's "Our Own Backyard"

true dat

Actually JFK also thought the Berlin Wall was a good idea