Saturday, November 22, 2003

Marriage is Dead, Get Over It



Brooks in the New York Times promotes marriage that is something that is good for everyone. He regards it as a way to promote long term relationships, which begs the question of why the institution of marriage is needed to promote relationships when there is nothing about the institution that enforces that commitment.



Brooks' notion of marriage is based on what he thinks marriage ought to be, not what it is.



These days, people will stay together if they are "committed" to each other. When they get tired of that "commitment", for whatever reason or for no reason, they will cast it aside, marriage or not.



So, I ask, what is the point? Marriage is an institution that is no longer worth defending.



Conservatives lost the battle on marriage many many years ago. There is no point in kvetching about the mop up operations.

Friday, November 21, 2003

How Noam Chomsky Thinks



This is an interesting snippet about Chomsky because it puts Chomsky's whole modus operandi in a nutshell:




The dust jacket [of Chomsky's book] bears the legend, which one can't be around a Chomsky fan for long without hearing:



"Arguably the most important intellectual alive" - The New York Times



This very old quotation from the newspaper of record is in fact truncated. The full quotation reads as follows:



"Arguably the most important intellectual alive, how can he write such nonsense about international affairs and foreign policy?



I've added the emphasis, because I think you will agree that the elision of the italicised passage does subtly change the meaning of the sentence.



And that's the way Chomsky does it. He leaves stuff out. He relies on the fact that his supporters don't know, don't care, or are too lazy to read up on history for themselves, and the things he leaves out are all important details that would totally change the meaning of his accounts. It is a dishonest way to write history, but it is a tactic he must use because the truth almost never supports his thesis.