>> If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky could, I suppose, be taken as a heretic. After all, he did write an introduction for a book that denied the Holocaust. He also traveled to Lebanon and had hail-fellow-well-met meetings with the leaders of Hezbollah.
He also demands that people divest from Israel -- a nation he has criticized -- while owning several million dollars of real estate in the U.S., a nation he has criticized a lot more -- to worldwide applause. Indeed, in a poll a few years ago -- Europeans rated him the world's most important intellectual. Anti-Americanism and anti-semitism (often, not always, dressed up as anti-Israeli sentiment) are some of the most widely accepted normative beliefs in the world today.
All of these would be criticized by many on the American right, but, with the partial exception in developed countries of Holocaust denial, most of the world's people would have no problem with them.
You seem to see Chomsky as a heretic. I see him as a prime example of something Eric Hoffer wrote about over a half-centruy ago in _The True Believer_: the formerly creative man who has lost his powers and who compensates by becoming a fanatic. Chomsky's books are international bestsellers. Chomsky's MIT faculty peers made him an Institute Professor. I'm a fan of your writing PG, but I'm sorry, I'm missing the heretical heroism. YMMV.
[15] By this I mean you'd have to become a professional controversialist, not that Noam Chomsky's opinions = what you can't say. If you actually said the things you can't say, you'd shock conservatives and liberals about equally-- just as, if you went back to Victorian England in a time machine, your ideas would shock Whigs and Tories about equally.
Well, I stupidly did not follow the link to the notes, and hence missed that. In my defense, I think pg would have done better to pick a different example. The context, indeed the whole essay, is about "what you can't say". For the reasons stated, Chomsky either says things that a lot of people in the world agree with or things that are horrific (praise of Hezbollah). Neither of these puts me in mind of Galileo.
My suggestion to pg: use George Orwell as an example.
The history of Jewish anti-semitism goes back at least to Josephus, who sold out his fellow jews to the Romans. Karl Marx, whose early writings were filled with anti-semitic hate. Etc. Etc. (I should add, BTW, that I'm not Jewish, just a friend of Israel who's never been there.)
>> ...and is critical of some of Israel's policies.
Well, that would certainly explain his hanging out with the mass murderers of Hezbollah and fronting books on Holocaust denial.
>> The New York Times Book Review said he is "arguably the most important intellectual alive."
This discussion provides great source material for investigating the things you can't say, and what happens when you say them. You fall down a rabbit hole. Or rather I do, and I get very confused when I am down there.
On the face of it, Israel is a state which controls a group of non-citizens through the use of tanks, walls, and laws (they are non-citizens with the limits on legal rights that go with that).
Yet there is a group, including brilliant people, who label objections to any of these policies as anti-semitic, even when those objections come from Jews, and indeed even when they come from Israeli Jews.
It is hard to believe hearing these responses that they are "honest," because it looks so much like exactly what you would do if you had a plan to shut up your opponents. It is enough to make me question the very nature of rational discourse.
And indeed as I read this, I wonder will this comment be downvoted? And if it is, will that be because it is too political, off-topic somehow? Or will it be because the agreed upon fantasy that dictates what can and cannot be said is on the wrong side of this comment?
I would agree that anti-Israel opinions are not anti-Semitic, I would agree that anti-Pakistan opinions are not anti-Islamic. I would agree that anti-Napoleon comments are not anti-French. I would agree that anti-Nazi comments are not anti-German. I would agree that anti-Bush comments are not anti-American. etc.
Yet there is a group, including brilliant people, who label objections to any of these policies as anti-semitic, even when those objections come from Jews, and indeed even when they come from Israeli Jews.
Brilliant people also have self-interests.
It's my impression that debate about Israel is much more open in Israel itself than it is in the US. Here you can't utter so much as a whisper indicating that you think their current policies may be un-optimal without being slapped with all kinds of labels.
Excellent observation about the larger openness of the debate in Israel. I have seen that as well. Indeed, when in Israel I have talked to people on both sides of the issue and never had it suggested to me THERE that I was anti-semetic for my opinions.
The closedness of national debate may be something which varies across the world, and the U.S. may be on the more-closed-than-you-woulda-thought side of that. As I read some other comments in this thread about not being able to discuss capitalism, I was thinking "they sure can in Europe." I think the Europeans are a little less self-conscious about their kinkinesses :)
I think many European countries have stricter laws against hate speech than the U.S. Which on the face of it may make us U.S.ians think we are doing better at this free speech thing. When in fact it may just be that we do a better job of unofficial suppression of free speech than the foreigners do. It reminds me of Fred's explanation of the high gun-murder rate in the U.S. in the great movie Barcelona. "It is not that Americans are more violent than Europeans, we are just better shots."
Chomsky could, I suppose, be taken as a heretic. After all, he did write an introduction for a book that denied the Holocaust. He also traveled to Lebanon and had hail-fellow-well-met meetings with the leaders of Hezbollah.
He also demands that people divest from Israel -- a nation he has criticized -- while owning several million dollars of real estate in the U.S., a nation he has criticized a lot more -- to worldwide applause. Indeed, in a poll a few years ago -- Europeans rated him the world's most important intellectual. Anti-Americanism and anti-semitism (often, not always, dressed up as anti-Israeli sentiment) are some of the most widely accepted normative beliefs in the world today.
All of these would be criticized by many on the American right, but, with the partial exception in developed countries of Holocaust denial, most of the world's people would have no problem with them.
You seem to see Chomsky as a heretic. I see him as a prime example of something Eric Hoffer wrote about over a half-centruy ago in _The True Believer_: the formerly creative man who has lost his powers and who compensates by becoming a fanatic. Chomsky's books are international bestsellers. Chomsky's MIT faculty peers made him an Institute Professor. I'm a fan of your writing PG, but I'm sorry, I'm missing the heretical heroism. YMMV.