Conservative? and Chomsky

Oni writes:Just say it, say I'm right...

Crash writes:Propagandists still have to communicate clearly with their audience. More so than other writers, I would think, since the intent is to motivate and influence as many people as possible.

Chomsky on "Conservatism" writes: "The political policies that are called conservative these days would appall any genuine conservative, if there were one around to be appalled. For example, the central policy of the Reagan Administration - which was supposed to be conservative - was to build up a powerful state. The state grew in power more under Reagan than in any peacetime period, even if you just measure it by state expenditures. The state intervention in the economy vastly increased. That's what the Pentagon system is, in fact; it's the creation of a state-guaranteed market and subsidy system for high-technology production. There was a commitment under the Reagan Administration to protect this more powerful state from the public, which is regarded as the domestic enemy. Take the resort to clandestine operations in foreign policy: that means the creation of a powerful central state immune from public inspection. Or take the increased efforts at censorship and other forms of control. All of these are called "conservatism," but they're the very opposite of conservatism. Whatever the term means, it involves a concern for Enlightenment values of individual rights and freedoms against powerful external authorities such as the state, a dominant Church, and so on. That kind of conservatism no one even remembers anymore."Interview by Adam Jones, February 20, 1990 [15]"There are no conservatives in the United States. The United States does not have a conservative tradition. The people who call themselves conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation or Gingrich, are believers in -- are radical statists. They believe in a powerful state, but a welfare state for the rich."Interview by Ira Shorr, February 11, 1996 [16]

Straggler originally writes: Propagandists take words that have positive connotations for those that they wish to motivate and re-appropriate those words to meet their own ends through subtle redefinition. No?

CF writes:No, of course not.

CF writes:I just don't yet understand how gobbledygook, which is what you produce when you start using words completely at odds with their definitions, would be effective at emotionally manipulating an audience to support a political agenda. Can you elaborate? Be specific.

CF writes:In point of fact approximately 140 million Americans describe themselves as "conservative." Noam Chomsky is just one guy. Isn't he kind of outvoted, here?

Crash writes:I think what we don't agree on is that this would be a form of propaganda anybody would try to use, since it would render your point unintelligible to use terms radically at odds with their accepted definitions.

CF writes:Chomsky isn't using the original definition.

CF writes:And "prick"? I thought my messages to you were especially polite.

Crash writes:By Chomsky, as I've proven.

David Cameron conservative party leader and Prime Minister of the UK writes:My values are Conservative values. Many people wrongly believe that the Conservative Party is all about freedom. Of course we care passionately about freedom from oppression and state control. That’s why we stood up for Georgia and wasn’t it great to have the Georgian Prime Minister with us here, speaking today? But freedom can too easily turn into the idea that we all have the right to do whatever we want, regardless of the effect on others. That is libertarian, not Conservative - and it is certainly not me.For me, the most important word is responsibility. Personal responsibility. Professional responsibility. Civic responsibility. Corporate responsibility. Our responsibility to our family, to our neighbourhood, our country. Our responsibility to behave in a decent and civilised way. To help others. That is what this Party is all about. Every big decision; every big judgment I make: I ask myself some simple questions. Does this encourage responsibility and discourage irresponsibility? Does this make us a more or less responsible society? Social responsibility, not state control. Because we know that we will only be a strong society if we are a responsible society.

CF writes:They don't seem to be talking about the same thing at all. Did you notice that Chomsky was talking about the United States and that David Cameron is in the UK? Just wondering.

CF writes:So, David Cameron is more proof for the notion that libertarianism isn't conservativism. Check.

CF writes:I really can't help it, Stragg, if you're determined to read every single post of mine in the same asshole voice.

Mod writes:Forget Chomsky and Cameron

Mod writes:That's real conservativism!

Crash writes:Cameron is talking about Burkean conservatism.

Benjamin Disraeli writes:"A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy"

Straggler writes:Sounds like something Chomsky might say to describe his anti-statist use of the term "conservative" doesn't it?

Crash writes:I've not yet seen any evidence that Chomsky is "anti-statist" except perhaps in name-only.

Crash writes:No, it's the fact that he's a socialist that makes him a liberal.