Moonbat alert: Chomksy condemns Bin Laden kill.

[Joey McGee]

facepalm

so not only did you not answer his question, you broke rule 4. nice!

 

[stokes234]

Regarding the previous claim about Chomsky being "widely respected".

Can anyone name some qualified historians who consider his work reliable historical scholarship?

What? From "respected around the world" to being considered reliable by historians? Have your goalposts send us back a postcard.

On a related note, according to wiki he is most likely the most cited living author.

 

[DC]

Regarding the previous claim about Chomsky being "widely respected".

Can anyone name some qualified historians who consider his work reliable historical scholarship?

He is superior compared to you.

 

[Virus]

What? From "respected around the world" to being considered reliable by historians? Have your goalposts send us back a postcard.

On a related note, according to wiki he is most likely the most cited living author.

A claim that originates with his publisher.

 

[Joey McGee]

The idea that historians ignore Chomsky holds water. Let's peruse the article, "Why Do Historians Ignore Noam Chomsky?" By John H. Summers a Harvard historian. (I tried and failed to like him, sorry)

Noam Chomsky has written more than 30 books over the last three decades. Yet neither the Journal of American History, nor the American Historical Review, nor Reviews in American History has reviewed them

Academic history pretends he does not exist.

The article is cute. Dude whines about his hero being slighted as well as he whines about his job

 

[stokes234]

And why does this matter? Are people ineligible to be political commentators until historians start citing them? Has Chomsky ever claimed to be doing important historical research?

 

[Virus]

So what's he doing? Non-important historical research?

 

[stokes234]

So what's he doing? Non-important historical research?

No, he's a political commentator.

 

[Joey McGee]

Summers is claiming he does, enough to warrant "one big forum on "Chomsky and the History of American Foreign Policy" The article was mirrored on chomksy.info which is an endorsement of a sort.

If you don't think his complete exclusion from academia means something, then you don't think that his "Academic achievements, awards and honors" section of wikipedia means something.

 

[stokes234]

Summers is claiming he does, enough to warrant "one big forum on "Chomsky and the History of American Foreign Policy" The article was mirrored on chomksy.info which is an endorsement of a sort.

If you don't think his complete exclusion from academia means something, then you don't think that his "Academic achievements, awards and honors" section of wikipedia means something.

Well, for one thing, I don't accept that Chomsky has been completely excluded from academia. I just don't think he's a historian. Likewise, Stephen Hawking hasn't been completely excluded from academia, though I doubt anyone would claim he was an important historian. Basically, you're all barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Joey McGee]

Well, for one thing, I don't accept that Chomsky has been completely excluded from academia.

Academic history, great nitpick

I just don't think he's a historian.

Nitpick on what a "historian" is .

People who do the same work as Chomsky are taken seriously(which is the point of this discussion if you'll remember) by historians all the time, Summers actually made a case for this with evidence to the contrary so "I don't like it" won't really suffice as an argument.

You were just telling us how being "most cited" means something right?

 

[stokes234]

Academic history, great nitpick
Nitpick on what a "historian" is . People who do the same work as Chomsky are taken seriously(which is the point of this discussion if you'll remember) by historians all the time, Summer actually made a case with evidence to the contrary so "I don't like it" won't really suffice as n argument.

You were just telling us how being "most cited" means something right?

I'm still not seeing how any of this means Chomsky is a historian. He's mostly cited for his work in linguistics and cognitive science, as I understand. This tells us is that he is intelligent enough to come up with new theories in science. It doesn't prove much else, though I wasn't trying to prove anything else.

Who are the people that do the same work as Chomsky and get cited by historians all the time? It would be helpful if you could also come up with a point to your arguments, since nobody has yet explained to me why your opinions in politics are unimportant if you aren't cited by historians.

 

[Joey McGee]

Who are the people that do the same work as Chomsky and get cited by historians all the time?

Why haven't you read the article but are still talking to me about this?

It would be helpful if you could also come up with a point to your arguments

Everyone is talking about Chomsky's reputation, that he isn't taken seriously by academic historians affects his reputation

since nobody has yet explained to me why your opinions in politics are unimportant if you aren't cited by historians.

No one has claimed this, straw man and nitpicking, always hand in hand...

 

[stokes234]

Everyone is talking about Chomsky's reputation, that he isn't taken seriously by academic historians affects his reputation

Is he taken seriously by interpretive dancers? Quantum mathematicians? Aeronautical engineers?

 

[Joey McGee]

Is he taken seriously by interpretive dancers? Quantum mathematicians? Aeronautical engineers?

This is funny.

What do you disagree with Summers about?

ETA:

This is what it pretty much comes down to, I'm quoting one of his biggest critics here Oliver Kamm

almost no academic historians, economists or political scientists have since considered it worthwhile to do this – not because, as Chomsky claimed of a group of Berkeley professors (Chronicles of Dissent, page 347), “[t]hey know they don’t have either the competence or the knowledge to respond, so the only thing to do is to somehow shut it up”, but because Chomsky’s political writings were early on shown to fall outside the canons of scholarly research.

Spoken like a truther, again

Kamm wrote a critical article of him a few years later, Chomsky's reply included

"the lengths to which some will go to prevent exposure of state crimes and their own complicity in them"

Yes Chomsky, this is why Kamm is criticizing you. By the way who was that "New Atheist" lecturing a grieving mother on how she won't see her dying child in heaven?

And people honestly wonder why people don't take him seriously... hilarious. So long thanks for all the laughs!

 

[stokes234]

This is funny.

What do you disagree with Summers about?

The entire premise that your reputation as a political commentator and thus your ability to contribute to discussions such as that in the OP depends on having been reviewed by historical journals. Well, it's actually you making that argument - unless you weren't intending for your point to extend to cover political commentary, and were just making a passing remark about Chomsky not being a historian, in which case I refer back to my point about interpretive dancers.

 

[Virus]

So you agree that his handling of historical sources isn't considered reliable?

 

[stokes234]

So you agree that his handling of historical sources isn't considered reliable?

No. I don't accept that in order for your handling of historical sources to be deemed reliable, you have to be reviewed by american history journals. If this was the case, it would cause the creation of a catch-22 in university history courses around the world, whereby nobody could pass their degrees because their lack of reviews in american history journals proved that their handling of historical sources wasn't reliable, but in order to prove they were reliable they had to pass their degree to earn academic recognition that would bring enough attention to their work to get it reviewed by an american history journal. This would, as i'm sure you'll agree, be a disaster for everyone.

 

[Childlike Empress]

This is funny.

What do you disagree with Summers about?

Your hyper-selective quoting is indeed funny. What do YOU disagree with Harvard historian Summers about? Maybe this?

Is Chomsky left out because he is not a professional historian? The journals have reviewed such nonhistorians as Robert Bellah, Randall Collins, Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Richard Rorty, Edward Said, Garry Wills, and John Updike because the books in question show a strong historical component. Chomsky, in any case, presents his evidence with an extensive record of citation, and keeps the rhetorical content of his writings extremely low.

Or this?

The journals, by excluding one of the most influential voices in contemporary political discussion, betray a selective commitment to intellectual freedom. For one of the lessons we have learned from those post-liberal ideas is that censorship involves subtle relationships between culture and social processes. Silence can be produced and sustained as easily as argument.

What Summers talks about is btw only the US landscape of historians. Around the world he is not isolated at all, but, as mentioned, the most cited living author, and that is not only due to his works in linguistics.

I can go to the next mainstream bookstore here in Germany and will find a dozen of his political books.

 

[angrysoba]

One of the most tedious criticisms of Chomsky is, "He should stick to his day job as a linguist and keep out of politics because he's not qualified."

It's only slightly more tedious than the increasingly commonplace, "It used to be said that no matter what shortcomings that Chomsky had when talking about politics, he still had many valuable things to say about linguistics. But that Chomsky not only isn't qualified to talk about politics but even major linguists now realize he was completely wrong about that too."

Of course, both comments are usually made by those who have no more qualifications than Chomsky in politics or history and decidedly less when it comes to linguistics.

Generally speaking when it comes to politics, just about everyone feels entitled to speak their mind and should be able to.