>> ANNE: Many, many years ago back when the
acronym CD meant certificate of deposit and
not compact disc, I was a Linguistics graduate
student at the MIT here. And it was way late
in November when the [INDISTINCT]. I just
returned from New York City where I did my
very first linguistics paper conference and
it was very late one Thursday night. I was
walking on front of Building 20 which no longer
exists. And as I was walking across because
I'm going to go to hear Noam Chomsky speak,
and I'm thinking about how we're about to
have this birthday party for Professor Chomsky.
So graduate students were putting together
a surprise birthday party to celebrate his--what
was it, half a century of living, 50 years?
So, I'm thinking about this and then I noticed
this figure coming out from the parking lot,
and he was approaching me. And I think he's,
"Hi Anne." I was, "Oh, it's Professor Chomsky,"
and he says, "How was your talk?" Then I looked,
and I said, "It was really good. I enjoyed
it. It was nice, but I was so formal, maybe,
it felt so old like I was really feeling old."
And I pulled back from there to here. And
he said, "To them, it's fighting words." So,
here he is.
>> CHOMSKY: She reminds me a little bit of
a--they moved us, after they destroyed Building
20 which Anne was talking about which was
a great mistake. It was a wonderful, old building,
contemporary World War II building, which
was the best building on campus by far, movable
walls, squirrels climbing up inside the walls,
you know, windows falling out, noises from
the garbage being taken out behind our windows,
but terrific place to work. They put us in
a fancy, new building. You can't miss it if
you walk on campus. And the first seminar
I had to give there, maybe, 30 people, I noticed
I couldn't hear any of the students which
then surprised me all that much. But they
couldn't hear me which surprised me a little
more until somebody finally pointed out to
me that the ceiling is 30 feet high. And we
asked why they can't put up an acoustic ceiling
and they said, "Well, that would interfere
with the decor of the building." And so, therefore,
tough luck, you just won't hear each other.
That's what's known as progress, I think.
So I'll try to make myself heard but as I
say, India is the place to be.
>> MALE: The first question, Mr. Chomsky,
comes from Christas Gudrov [ph]. How have
your ideas on universal grammar changed over
the years? Are you more or less convinced
of the theory now than you were initially?
>> CHOMSKY: Well, there's a lot of confusion
about the notion, universal grammar. Universal
grammar had a traditional meaning but in--not
only linguistics, the last 50 years or so,
it has had a technical meaning which is not
unrelated to the traditional meaning but it's
not identical either. Universal grammar is
just the name for the theory of the genetic
component of the language faculty and, transparently,
there's some genetic component, right? Now,
there's a reason, say, why my granddaughter
reflexively identified some part of her environment
as language-related, which is no small trick--nobody
knows how to duplicate that--and then, more
or less, reflexively picked up the capacity
that we're all now using whereas her pet,
say, kitten or chimpanzee or song bird or
whatever it may be, with exactly the same
inputs, couldn't even take the first step,
can't identify part of the environment as
language-related, obviously, not the later
steps. Well, there are two possible answers
to how that happens. One is it's a miracle.
The other is there's--she has some specific
genetic capacity that's like the capacity
that had her grow arms and not wings, let's
say; just some fixed--or had a mammalian visual
system but not an insect visual system. Now,
this is not controversial for anything except
human higher mental faculties. For some reason,
when people investigate human higher mental
faculties, they have to be insane, you know.
You can't accept the approach that we take
to everything else in the world, the kind
of methodological dualism. Everything else
in the world we study by the standard methods
of science, but when we talk about human higher
mental faculties, we have become mystics.
So, therefore, there's a controversy about
the existence of universal grammar which is
like--which means a controversy about whether
there is some genetic property that distinguishes
humans from everybody else which leads to
these--to the ability to doing what we're
now doing. But there shouldn't be any controversy
about that. The only question is: What is
it? Well, there have been theories about it
from the 1950s when these studies began up
to the present and it's a living field so
it kept changing. So, in that sense, yes,
my views about universal grammar keep changing.
So when Anne walked into my office as a graduate
student and told me I was wrong about everything,
so, okay, my views changed, you know. But,
in that sense, sure, there's going to be constant
change until the field disappears or is dead
or something. And there's a long way to go.
These are not trivial questions. There's sort
of general tendency of change and not every
linguist would agree by any means; so that's
personal opinion. In the early stages, when
the first question was asked seriously, about
50 years ago, as to how we are capable of
doing what we do all the time, how are we
capable of understanding, producing expressions
which we've never heard, which may have never
been, other than the history of the language
and doing it over an infinite range or where
there is strange properties that they have
as soon as you look up on how do we do it.
The only answer seems to be that each of us
has a highly intricate computational system
in the brain which yields these very specific
results. But that then poses a paradox because
it must be the case that we all--all humans
have the same genetic capacity with marginal
variation. The reason is if you take a child
from, say, a hunter-gatherer tribe in the
Amazon and the child is raised in Cambridge,
Mass., it will have made this--become a graduate
student studying quantum physics at MIT with
no difference from anyone else and conversely.
So we all have the same capacity. And it's
more or less understood why. The capacity
developed very recently in evolutionary time
and probably in some window between 100,000
and 50,000 years ago, something like that,
and that's just the flick of any eye. So whatever
happened never changed except extremely marginally.
So we're all fundamentally identical for all
practical purposes. Human genetic variation
is very slight anyway; the superficial differences
are not very profound. A foreign--an outside,
extraterrestrial observer looking at us the
way we look at frogs would say there's only
one human and one language with minor variations.
So, on one hand, it's got to be uniform. On
the other hand, it seems to be the case that
each particular language had a highly intricate
and complex system of rules, computational
system, and they're very different from one
another. And that is a paradox, in fact, a,
you know, serious paradox. Well, over the
years, there have been efforts to deal with
it, to try to overcome the paradox. A major
step was taken and when views on universal
grammar, at least for many of us, did change
radically was around 1980.
ANNE: I was still there.
CHOMSKY: You were there, yeah. It's her fault.
When a different view of the matter sort of
crystallized, what's called--sometimes called
the principles in parameters view. The picture
that the principles, the fixed principles
which were really embedded; nobody has to
acquire them. They're part of universal grammar.
And then, there's a number of options that
can be taken, called parameters, that the
child has to pick up from experience and they
have to be pretty simple. You have to be able
to pick them up from limited evidence because
that's all there is. And so, for example,
in some languages like English, the--it's
called the head-first language, so the verb
precedes the object and the preposition precedes
the object of the preposition and so on. Other
languages, like, say, Japanese, are almost
mirror image. The verb follows the object;
the postpositions, not prepositions, and so
on. So languages are virtually mirror images
of each other and you have to set the parameter.
The child has to set the parameter which is,
"Am I talking English, or am I talking Japanese?"
And that can be determined from very simple
data. So that's a reasonable choice of a parameter.
And the hope was that you could find some
finite set of parameters like a finite switch
box, where you set the switch, the child has
set the switches one way or another and can
do it on the basis of fairly simple data.
And then once this enters into the predetermined
system of principles, you get things which
superficially look very different. They are
actually almost identical or just differing
in superficial choices. Well, if you could
work that out, you would have solved the paradox.
It's a long way to work that out. But that
made it possible at least to confront the
issues seriously without facing an immediate
knee-yourself contradiction. And it set off
a lot of the really rich period of research
and inquiry, nothing like it, in thousands
of years of the history of the study of language
in the last 25, 30 years of a wide variety
of typologically different languages, new
questions at a depth that could never have
been proposed before, sometimes the answers
leading to new questions and so on in a very
lively period. And it also raised another
question: What about the principles? Where
do they come from? And that's a fact of the
choice of parameters: Where do these things
come from? If they're in universal grammar,
if it's part of the genetic endowment, then
it had to evolve somehow. But not a lot could
have evolved because it's too recent, you
know. You go back 100,000 years, there's,
as far as we know, nothing. Humans had the
same anatomy, anything that's preserved in
the fossil records are about the same, you
know, hundreds of thousand years back. So
some small change must have taken place in
the brain which somehow allowed all of this
to suddenly blossom and pretty soon after
that, again, in evolutionary time, like, maybe,
a couple of tens of thousands of years which
is no time at all, humans started leaving
East Africa where we all come from as far
as anyone knows. So some small groups developed
this system and then spread it all over the
world and, now, they're all essentially the
same. But what evolved in that short period
of time cannot have been very complex. You
know, I wouldn't expect a series of extensive
stages, like say, development of limbs, you
know, millions of years. Therefore, what you
predict is that some other principle external
to language, maybe some principle of nature,
principle of computational efficiency or something
like that which is not specific to language,
interacted with a small mutation which just
gave rise to the universal grammar. But that
sets forth a new goal of research to ask--to
see if you can determine, like, the principles
themselves do really have the intricacy that
they appeared to have, but are actually the
result of application of non-linguistic, in
fact, non--maybe, non-human principles, like
general principles of computational efficiency
to whatever small change took place. And the
small change was probably the capacity to
carry out recursive enumeration, basically,
the capacity that gives you the number system,
for example, to take two things, two objects
already constructed in the mind and make up
a new object out of them and then keep that
process up indefinitely so you get an infinite
array of possible expressions, each with some
semantic interpretation and some mode of externalization,
speech or sign, whatever it may be; well,
that would be--and the goal would be to try
to show that was essentially instantaneous—-once
the small mutation took place given the--this
operation, recursive enumeration operation,
that allows you to create a discreet infinity
of expressions--structured expressions. Well,
that's at least the feasible picture; the
trick is to show that it's true or how close
it is to true and can you cut away at the
apparent complexity of the principles and
show that they can actually be accounted for
in terms of general principles of the hold
for organisms--generally perhaps and maybe
even elsewhere in the physical world, and
that are instantly or almost instantly applied
once the original move is made to whatever
small move it was to produce the capacity
for recursive enumeration. Well, that's a
goal, you know. It's far from being attained
but the last 15, 20 years, there's been considerable
progress towards it. But there's a lot of
things that it seemed, 20 years ago, you had
to assign to genetic endowment. It now have
been rather plausibly shown to be possible
consequences of just application, particularly
the principles of computational efficiency
to a system which had only the ability to
construct an infinite hierarchy of expressions.
And that, we don't know enough about the brain
to know how might that happen but that could
have been a very small mutation-—just changing
something in somebody's genome and then spreading
through the small breeding group. So that,
in that respect, it's a goal, you know, and
steps have been taken towards it. But you
would expect that something like that ought
to be true, just from the-—what's known
about the history of evolution of Homo sapiens
in very recent times without much opportunity
for selection that had any effect-—maybe
a small effect but not much. So, that's, I
think, that's the tendency of thinking, at
least my thinking and some other—-many others,
on how theories of universal grammar have
changed. But the idea that there is universal
grammar that exists, that can't be controversial
unless you believe in magic, not for the elementary
reasons that I mentioned.
>> MALE: This is from Robin Green. And we
can actually have local questions as well,
but this is one from Robin Green who says,
"You are well-known for your criticism of
our current generation's lack of insight and
sense of history but what do you see in the
younger generations that you personally find
energizing and encouraging?"
>> CHOMSKY: I don't know if I had that criticism
of the younger generation. So, I'm not sure
I accept the premise of the question; although
I think it is a very sad fact about our culture,
our general culture, that it's extremely insular,
ingrown, lack of knowledge of the world, of
history and so on and that really goes way
back and I think it's probably less true now
than it has been in the past; but it is certainly
true. And in United States, it's dramatically
true as compared with comparable societies.
There's some obvious reasons for that. The
United States is very different from any other
industrial society in many respects. For one
thing, I mean, there's talk about, you know,
there's debate about the American empire--is
there one, isn't there one and so on. There
shouldn't be any debate. This is the one country
in the world that was founded as an empire--that's
what George Washington called a "nationed
empire" when the country was founded. And
the goal, as Washington put it, was to drive
the indigenous population--the savages as
he called them--away; they will disappear
just like the wolves who they are identical
with, except in shape. Thomas Jefferson, for
him, "We are going to drive them behind the
stony mountains where they belong and then
the country will be free of blot or mixture,
red or black..." It didn't quite make it but
that was the goal. "And then this will be
the nest from which the entire hemisphere
is populated by members of our superior race..."
You'd read later of Walt Whitman, others--some
hideous racist comments which were just taken
for granted. So, yes, it's an empire and it
extends--supposed to extend everywhere. Back
in the, you know, 1820, roughly around then,
the principle was laid down that--as modern
historians put it-- that "expansion is the
path to security. The only way to be secure
is to expand." At that time, the argument
was that's why we had to conquer Florida to
defend ourselves from what were called "the
runaway slaves and the lawless Indians" who
were a threat because there were in our way
so we have to expand. And then on to the present,
the main scholarly book on the origins of
the Bush doctrine which approves of it; John
Lewis Gaddis, historian at Yale, traces it
back to that moment and says, "Yeah. That's
the right principle. Expansion is the path
to security," and, now, that means expanding
over the whole world and, you know, space
and the, you know, the galaxy or whatever.
That's the only way to be secure and to ensure
that the empire rules the world. So it's unusual
country in that respect. I mean, the British
wanted to be an empire. They modeled themselves
on Rome; but the United States had a different
picture from the origins. Furthermore, once
the native population was, you know, driven
beyond the stony mountains as Jefferson put
it, it was, the country--the continent was
open, you know. They were very rich, you know,
very rich in resources. Ultimate security,
nobody ever had comfortable security all to
us, you know, where the waves of immigrants
are and there's no reason to look anywhere
else. It's essentially homogenous. So you
travel in Europe, you don't have to go very
far to hear completely different languages.
We go back 50 years. It was even more so before
the unifying effects of television and national
states. Just, you know, plenty of people in
Europe can't talk to their grandmothers because
they speak a different language. But even
now in Europe, you don't have to go very far
to see different cultures, different languages,
you know, and so on. In United States, you
go from Boston-Los Angeles and you have so
nothing changes. You have slight difference
in accent, maybe the cars or superhighways
are faster out there but--so there's every
reason to expect people to be insular and
you see it dramatically. I mean... people
are just unaware of what's happening on the
outside world. Actually, this changed significantly
after 9/11. It had an interesting effect in
the United States. One of the effects was
to engender fear. That was the first attack
on American soil since the British had burned
down Washington in 1814. People mentioned
Pearl Harbor but it's irrelevant. That was
an attack on a U.S. naval base, and would
have amounted to a colony and, by our standard,
incidentally, a very legitimate attack. I
couldn't explain that if it's not obvious.
But that wasn't an attack on a national territory.
In fact, there has been none except tiny forays;
you know, Pancho Villa got a couple of miles
into the country or something. But here was
an attack on the national territory--the kind
that other countries face all the time-—and
it did engender fear. That's not what's supposed
to happen but it also opened a lot of minds.
So, I think, since then the insularity has
declined and more people are curious about
the world and even about history and that's
largely an effect of the 1960s. The 1960s
had a highly civilizing effect on the society
and that's why they're almost universally
condemned as a terrible period, the time of
troubles and so on. You are going to hear
a lot about that this year because it's the
40th anniversary of 1968--it's the 40th--do
the arithmetic--but a lot of talk about the
1968, a terrible time. Actually, it was a
terrible time. It civilized the country. You'll
see it's so in MIT like, say, when I got here,
if you walked down the halls at MIT, what
you saw was well-dressed, differential, white
males doing their homework, no political meetings
advertised. You know, you do your work, you
build the electrical circuit, you know, build
the bridge, whatever it is. That's a little
bit of a caricature but that's pretty much
what it was. When you take a look down the
halls now, it's totally different; half women,
third minorities, informal relations, a lot
of activism, all kind of topics and that's
symbolic of what happened in the country.
And that's a consequence of the civilizing
effect of the '60s which is, of course, very
frightening to elites. People are supposed
to be passive, apathetic and obedient. In
fact, one of the major studies of the horrible
effect of the 1960's by liberal internationalists,
incidentally, condemned the era for its excess
of democracy. The book is called "The Crisis
of Democracy." There was too much democracy
in the 60s. The people who are supposed to
be passive and apathetic and obedient like
minorities, women, the young, the old, what
are called the "special interests"; that is
the whole population except for the corporate
sector. We're supposed to be passive, apathetic
and obedient. They weren't doing it. They
were trying to enter the political arena to
press their demands, you know, change the
society. It was intolerable. We have to have
more moderation in democracy. And, particularly,
we're concerned about what they called "the
institutions responsible for the indoctrination
of the young"--their phrase--meaning schools,
universities, churches and so on. They weren't
indoctrinating the young properly and that's
why we got all these excesses like the women's
movement and the opposition to aggression
and all sorts of terrible things. But the
country did change and positively and it has
changed a lot since then and that has—-going
back to recognizing history, it did that too.
At the time, let's give you a personal example,
just not on typical--I had a daughter in fourth
grade in 1969--I remember the time precisely
because of the context-—and this is in Lexington,
which is called a very progressive town, you
know, professionals, academics, everybody
votes for McGovern, you know, all that sort
of thing. I have been looking through her
school textbook one day; it was called "Exploring
New England." The structure of the textbook
was there's a young boy. His name is Robert,
and he's being taken through colonial New
England by an older man who shows him the
glories of New England, and I was curious.
I was wondering: How are they going to handle
the massacres, you know, like the terrible
massacre the Pequot massacre--in which the
colonist waited for the men to leave the village
and then went in and slaughtered all the women
and children and old men and when the men
came back, they were frightened and they all
fled, you know, so they got rid of the Pequot--so
how did they handle this, you know? So I looked
at it and it was described accurately but
with praise and it ends up with Robert, the
young boy, saying, "I wish I were a man and
had been there" you know. Well, you know,
I sort of couldn't believe it. I showed it
to my wife. She was appalled, went to talk
to the teacher. The teacher couldn't see what
was wrong with it, you know. That was 1969,
and you couldn't have a textbook like that
in any corner of the country today. It's inconceivable.
There's some recognition of the horrors of
the past. Incidentally, the founding fathers
were well-aware of it. John Quincy Adams,
for example, I talked about that hapless race
of Native Americans who we are exterminating
with such merciless cruelty and so on. But
then it sort of disappeared and it just became
an empty continent full of a few scattered
hunter-gatherers and if we kill a couple of
them, that's fine, and so we drive them over
the stony mountains. But, by now, that's gone.
You know, there's at least some appreciation
of it and also of slavery and other things.
So there's more understanding of the history.
There's more understanding of the outside
world; though it's still pretty insular and
I think it's getting better. So I think the
next generation will be even better in this
respect.
>> MALE: A question from Trevor Sarah--probably,
maybe it ties in--due to the Internet, mass
media is increasingly becoming more distributed,
blogs, independent news, et cetera. How does
the Internet media impact propaganda model
described in "Manufacturing Consent"?
>> CHOMSKY: Well, literally, the propaganda
model described in "Manufacturing Consent"
does a gnarly hold of the Internet. I mean,
that's a model that's concerned with the intuitional
structure of the media. Okay, the media, the
institutional structure is major corporations
selling audiences to other businesses to simplify
it. And that's not true with the Internet.
So it doesn't reply directly but it's not
completely inapplicable. So though the Internet,
like almost the entire Hi-tech economy is
a product of the state sector, I mean, contrary
to illusions, the United States is very far
from a free enterprise market economy. I'm
sure all of you--people know that things like
computers, the Internet and microelectronics
and biotechnology and I'll go on across the
list, come out of the state sector, places
like MIT. In fact, for long periods, the Internet
was in the state sector for about 30 years
or more before it was handed over to private
enterprise for profit. But the Internet, nevertheless,
there is a question and, in fact, it's a live
question now about keeping the Internet neutral,
the neutrality of the Internet. So will the
few private systems that have control of access
to the Internet, once it became privatized,
will they be able to use that control to differentiate
access to yield preferred, say, you know,
fast, easy access to the places where they
want you to go and make it harder and, you
know, more devious and so on for the place
that I don't want you to go. So that neutrality
is a big issue. People know more about this
than I do. So we'll kind of talk about it.
But in that respect, in that corner of the
system, yes, the propaganda model still holds,
but other than that, it's been at least in
its early years, a very free system. When
it was under state control, like control of
the Pentagon, it was totally free. That's
an illusion that many people have. The Pentagon
is, I mean, actually, we know that here, MIT
was like, you know, maybe 90 percent Pentagon-funded
up until the early '70s and it was the periods
of the greatest freedom. No classified work,
complete, free interchange. You wrote anything
you wanted; nobody cared because the generals,
unlike many economists were well-aware that
the--it's the state sector that's providing
a large part of the initiative, the dynamism,
the inventiveness and so on; that keeps the
hi-tech economy going. So they didn't put
many constraints in. As it gets more corporatized,
there's more constraints. But for a long time,
it was just in the Army. It was the Military.
You know, it's ARPANET. That was the former
Internet. And just to give you an illustration
on how it worked, the United States was--I
had another daughter who was living in Nicaragua
in the 1980s, and the United States was carrying
out a major terrorist war against Nicaragua,
practically destroyed the country. Communication
was impossible. You couldn't go by phone.
You know, the mail wasn't going and so on.
But I could communicate with my daughter through
the Pentagon system. Since I'm in the MIT,
I was on the ARPANET and she found some place
where she was on the ARPANET. So thanks to
the Pentagon, we were able to communicate
during a period when the US was trying to
destroy the country. That's an indication
of how free it was. And the question is, "Can
it be kept free?" So, yes, that's a problem.
But there are other issues that arise with
the Internet that are serious. It's undoubtedly
a tremendous contribution. If you're into
research, for example, it's just fantastic.
I probably do 50 Google searches a day or
something like that. And you could get things
that you'd really--I haven't been in the library
for a long time, but thankfully, I have some
friends and colleagues who go to the library
for me. But a lot of it, you have to go to
the library for--you can just pick up quickly,
a matter of fact, a lot more. If you want
to find out about information about, you know,
say what's going on in world news and so on,
yes, if you know where to look, you can find
it. A much wider array of information is available.
All of that is positive but it also has a
negative side; in fact, a number of negative
sides. Imagine, say that you're a biologist,
and you have now available every article that's
been published all over the world on the field
that you are interested in and you spend your
time reading those articles. But the end result
is you're the worst biologist in history.
It's a total waste of time. In order to become
a serious biologist, you have to know what
you're looking for. If you're flooded with
massive information and you sort of try to
wade through it, you're totally paralyzed.
You have to know what to look for, you have
to know the framework of understanding, you
know, some background conception of what's
going on. The framework can't be rigid like
you have to be willing to let it modified;
but it's indispensable. If you don't have
it, you're just flooded with meaningless information.
What the problem is that the people--a large
majority of people who are using the Internet
do have a framework but it's the framework
that comes from the indoctrination that they've
been subjected to. Normally, what the propaganda
model applies to and it also generalizes to
the academic, you know, to the schools and
the colleges and to the general intellectual
community. There is an intellectual community
which the media are a part which I do have
time to talk about it if you like, but it
does give an extremely skewed picture of the
world. I could illustrate it from this morning's
newspapers if you want. In fact, you can always,
when I give talks on the media, I usually
never prepare them for the very simple reason,
that morning's newspaper gives all the evidence
you need. It never failed yet in Europe or
here. So I could talk about it. But it is
an extremely narrow doctrinal universe and,
in fact, the participants have it internalized.
If you want to see a good example of that,
do a Google search and find a program, an
interview with Charlie Rose, you know, the
intellectual man's interviewer. He interviewed
the most respected correspondent in Iraq,
you know, John Burns, who's kind of like the
dean of the foreign policy--foreign correspondents.
It's a very interesting interview and he asks
Burns various questions about reporting in
Iraq, and Burns expresses quite clearly and
I'm sure unconsciously the doctrinal framework
that shapes coverage and interpretation. To
put it simply, we have to be cheering for
the home team so--because the home team is
perfect. You know, that's the picture. So
what he says is--you have to get it in his
words but the picture is that the United States
is certainly, since the Second World War has
been the major force in the world and protecting
human rights, freedom, justice, all kind of
wonderful things and history is irrelevant,
we don't look at that, that's boring; but
that's the nature of the United States, like
its essence. And he says if the outcome of
the Iraq War was that we would lose our willingness
to intervene all over the world with force
to protect human rights and everything the
way we've been doing for the past 15 years,
then there will be dark days. Okay, that's
the picture. It's not unlike the picture that
you would have heard from a correspondent
at Pravda in 1985 about how Stalin was defending
democracy and human rights and so on against
the fascist attack, and I probably would have
believed it. I'm sure John Burns believes
it. But if you look at the actual coverage,
it confirms pretty well of what he describes.
If that's the approach you take towards using
the Internet, you might as well be reading
some local tabloid. That's what you'll find.
If you have a different framework of interpretation,
of understanding, you'll find other things,
whether it's science or public affairs or
anything else. And that--to achieve that requires
something way beyond access; it requires understanding
and that comes out of other factors.
>> MALE: On frameworks, Bryan Clint writes
"Politicians are adept at changing public
opinion by inventing new phrases such as "enemy
combatants" and "enhanced interrogation techniques";
does this expose some flaw in humans that
we reason based on surface words rather than
their underlying meanings?
>> CHOMSKY: I don't think it's a flaw of humans
and I'm not sure how much to determine--you
see there's two different questions you have
to distinguish here. So go back to the propaganda
model. That is a discussion of what the media
are doing as institutions. And, in fact, it
generalizes to the intellectual cultured much
more broadly. But there's a separate question,
and that is how much are people influenced
by it? That's quite a separate question. Okay,
so to what extent do people accept and internalize
the doctrinal system that's, say, described
by John Burns? Well, the answer is pretty
complex when you look. And say, for example,
say, take to Vietnam War. It's far enough
back so we can think about a little bit objectively
perhaps. If you look over the Vietnam War,
there was never in the mainstream--never is
a strong word; but close to never, like 99.9
percent. A principal critic of the war, New
York Times correspondent C.J. Chivers, who
was there recently talks about "booming Grozny."
It used to be rubble. Now, it's booming. They
have electricity run by Chechens. Of course,
the Russians are on the background, but a
great success. I mean if Petraeus could achieve
anything remotely like that in Iraq, he'd
probably be crowned king. But we don't praise
Putin; at least we shouldn't. We condemned
it even though it succeeded in their terms
like the Germans succeeded in Vichy, France--it
was a French-run society and, more or less,
stable; but we don't praise it. However, for
ourselves, we take totally different principles.
We never, almost never permit or can't even
think of a principled critique of our own
crimes. You can test it. But what about public
opinion? Well, there you got a striking gulf.
So, for example, when the Vietnam War ended,
everyone, you know, serious analysts had to
write a commentary on it and the most interesting
ones, as always, or way out on are the ones
at the left extreme of the mainstream. So,
say, take Anthony Lewis of the New York Times
who's about as far as we can get and, you
know, not be from Neptune or something. But
he wrote a critical commentary; he said the
Vietnam War began with, like, blundering efforts
to do good. Notice that that's mostly tautology.
Since we carried it out, it was efforts to
do good, period; no further discussion necessary.
That's by definition. It was blundering because
it didn't entirely work. So, it began with
blundering efforts to do good, but he says,
by 1969, coming back to the date, it was clear
to most of the world that it was too costly
to ourselves, okay? That's the left end of
the critical spectrum. You can search and
see if you could find anything that goes beyond
that. But what did the public think? Well,
we know. In 1969, it happens, the first general
polls were taken of public opinion on the
Vietnam War. General, important ones, the
Chicago Counsel on Foreign Relations, they
continue to be taken up till today quadrennially.
In 1969, 70 percent of the public said the
war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not
a mistake. Try to find that anywhere in mainstream
discussion. Okay? Good exercise. And those
figures persist up until the latest polls,
a little vacillation, but basically, there's
a huge gulf between public opinion and intellectual
elites, the doctorinal managers. And that's
true on a lot of other issues. That's true
on the Iraq war. That's true on the threat
to invade Iran. That's true on national health
care. That's true on relations with Cuba.
You know, just run across the list. And it
turns out there's a huge gulf between public
opinion and intellectual opinion; hence, doctrine,
media and so on. So that does raise a question
about the extent to which the public actually
accepts this. To what extent they do, so I'll
take your example, just like enemy combatant.
Well, what's an enemy combatant? Well, actually
one of them is coming up for trial. I think
it may be the first trial from Guantanamo.
It turns out it's a kid who was picked up
as an enemy combatant when he was 15 years
old because he did something, maybe threw
a stone or did something, maybe shot or something,
an American soldier, okay, so therefore we
have to try him and maybe sentence him. He's
been in Guantanamo for years now. Who knows
what will happen to him? What kind of a framework
is that? I mean if the United States was invaded
by Iran, let's say, and some 15-year-old kid
tried to do something to the invaders, is
he criminal? I mean, the framework, the conception
is kind of like in outer space; unfortunately,
it's real. And what was the other term you
asked?
MALE: Enhanced interrogation.
CHOMSKY: Yeah, enhanced interrogation, it's
just another word for torture. Like there's
a huge fuss now about Guantanamo. Delegations
are taken there by the Army to show how beautifully
the prisoners are treated, and there's books
and articles about is there torture and so
on and so forth. It's all totally beside the
point, entirely beside the point. As soon
as you hear that those who are captured are
taken to Guantanamo, you know it's a torture
chamber. There is no other reason for sending
them to Guantanamo. Why not send them to a
security prison in New York, let's say? Okay?
It's perfectly safe, they'll never get out
and so on. Well, the problem is if you send
them to New York, automatically, you start
getting the whole civil rights system coming
in. Did they have lawyers? You know, can they
be tortured? Are they told the charges against
them and so on? You send them to Guantanamo,
you can do anything you like. So, therefore,
as soon as we hear the word Guantanamo, we
know it's torture chamber without the investigations,
without the inquiries, anything and then you
can ask a further question: What's U.S. doing
in Guantanamo? I mean, actually, the reason
they chose Guantanamo was because they can
pretend that the U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction,
because it's in Cuba. Okay? So the courts
don't have jurisdiction, and there's big debates
about that. But the debates are ridiculous,
of course. I mean, what is the U.S. doing
in Guantanamo in the first place? Well, it
turns out, if you look back, that there's
a treaty between the U.S. and Cuba, which
Cuba signed at gunpoint. It was under military
occupation. And the treaty has absolutely
no validity by any standards you could think
of, and the treaty allowed the United States
to use Guantanamo--it's a big port--as a calling
station for the Navy. It didn't say anything
about keeping prisoners there so we're violating
the illegal treaty that we forced on Cuba.
And, in fact, why is the United States--it
leads to a further question. Why does the
U.S. hold on Guantanamo altogether? Well,
for one thing, it is a major port, a naval
base for controlling the Caribbean and South
America. But there's another reason. It prevents
Cuban development. That means that the eastern
end to the island is blocked from development.
So if you want to strangle and destroy Cuba,
which we've wanted to do since 1959 for reasons
that are explained in the internal record
because of--and we go back to the Kennedy
and Johnson administration, because of it's
successful defiance of U.S. principles going
back to the Monroe doctrine and the Russians.
The Monroe Doctrine stated we're going to
run the hemisphere. That was the goal of the
founding fathers. As I said, Jefferson, it's
the nest, we're the nest from which we'll
people the whole continent getting rid of,
you know, the red men and the Spanish speakers.
And Cuba is carrying a successful defiance
of this, and that's intolerable so, therefore,
we have to seriously punish the people of
Cuba as we've been doing with terrorism, economic
strangulation and so on. Incidentally, an
opposition to popular will here; a large percentage
of the American population, that's around,
that's usually around two-thirds think we
are under normal relations with Cuba. But
holding on to Guantanamo is part of the strangulation
of Cuba, ensuring that they can't develop
into the island which we have based for trade
with Europe and so on and so forth. Well,
all of these questions are the ones that would
be in headlines in the free press, and not
whether this particular 15-year-old shot an
American soldier invading his country. So,
yeah, there's a lot hidden behind the word
"enemy combatant." And, in fact, you can just
take about almost anywhere of political discourse.
You almost pick it at random. I mean, it has
two meanings. It has its literal meaning and
it has its doctrinal meaning. And the two
have, usually, almost nothing to do with each
other. So it takes aggression, an important
term. It has a technical meaning. It was defined
at the Nuremberg Tribunal, and it was then
accepted internationally. But what it means
is the obvious thing: sending military forces
into another country, you know, not at their
request or something. Okay, that's aggression.
And that's the term we used, applied to anyone
else. Like the Nazi war criminals, the primary
reason they were hanged was because of the
crime of aggression. And, incidentally, which
is defined more carefully. It defines--the
Nuremberg Tribunal defines aggression as the
supreme international crime which encompasses--which
differs from other crimes in that it encompasses
all of the evil that follows. So the initial
aggression in Iraq encompasses the sectarian
warfare, the destruction of the antiquities,
the millions of refugees. Everything that
happened since is encompassed in the initial
act of aggression. Justice Jackson, the American
justice at Nuremberg gave a passionate declaration
to the tribunal. He said that, "We're handing
the defendants a poisoned chalice, and if
we ever sip from it," meaning if we are ever
guilty of the same crimes, "we must suffer
the same punishment or else the whole trial
is a farce." Okay? Again, this should be the
headlines, except for one problem: The United
States cannot commit aggression by definition.
We don't commit aggression. Take a look at
the front page of the Wall Street Journal
today, the big lead article, "Iran still—-U.S
claims Iran is still sending arms to Iraq."
Maybe true. Is Iran the only country sending
arms to Iraq? Well, Condoleezza Rice a little
while back was asked on television, "What's
the solution to the Iraq problem?" She said,
"Simple, just end the flow of foreign fighters
and foreign arms, then it's over." Nobody
batted an eyelash, for good reason. We--our
forces are not foreign. They are indigenous.
Wherever they are, they are indigenous. If
we invaded Canada, we would be there by right.
And if a Canadian, a 15-year-old kid threw
a stone at an American soldier, he'd be an
enemy combatant, and we send him to Guantanamo.
And it follows from a very elementary principle.
It's the one on which the country was founded,
we're a nationed empire; expansion is the
path to security; we are indigenous everywhere.
We own the world so, therefore, the questions
can't be asked. And if you look at commentary
and debate and discussion, we find that that's
internalized. Nobody points to it. It's just
part of our picture of the world, you know.
And that infects everything. That's why every
term, like the terms we used has, from an
outside point of view, it sounds like you're
talking about a bunch of madmen.
>> MALE: Marie Bingham writes, "There has
been a lot of discussion about the detrimental
effects of e-mail, instant messengers, and
this phone text messaging and the like on
syntax and grammar, especially English, do
you feel this is the case or these changes
are just a part of natural evolution of language?"
>> CHOMSKY: Well, I have experience with it
having two 15-year-old grandsons. When my
grandson comes over to the house to do what's
engaging, what's called doing his homework,
you know, Sunday evening. Of course, everything
is put off till the Sunday evening. He sits
there with his computer in front of him, earplugs,
listening to something that's called music.
Don't ask me to describe it. And while he
is doing this thing called homework, he is
meanwhile text messaging to about 15 friends
in a form which I can't even read. You know,
it's just a few letters and you know. It's
not doing anything to the language. I mean
I think that's a mistake. The language is
robust enough so it won't be affected by that.
But I think it's doing something to the minds.
You know, the--the kids are just stimulus-hungry.
They can't set aside, like, my own children,
let's say, you know, they go to the library
and pick up 10 books and come home, and go
off into a corner and read the books. I actually
have a granddaughter in, grew up in Nicaragua,
and now in Mexico, and when she comes to visit,
it's the first thing she does, 10 years old,
go to the public library, come back with a
stack of books, go off in a corner and read
them. It's almost inconceivable for a kid
that age here. I mean, maybe there are some
but, you know, they're just--they have to
be stimulated constantly by noise, by visual
imagery, by what's called interchange with
friends, although the interchange are so superficial
that it's shocking, you know, to take a look
at it when they decode it for you. And I'm
sure that's having an effect. It's having
an effect on children growing up, and I don't
think a good effect. But it's not really an
effect on the language. That's not going to
change. I mean, it's true that if you look
over the history of language, teenage--teenagers
generally tend to develop around sort of argot,
you know, way of talking. And I mean, it's
one of the sources of innovation and change
in language because the teenagers grow up
and, you know, they get what--they sort of
develop this peer group, separation from the
adult world, those have some effect on what
the next stage of the language is though not,
you know, not like on the syntax or anything
like that. But this I think is serious and
it's having--and I think one should be concerned
about the effect on the children. I can see
the differences on, say, my grandchildren
who grew up here and the ones who grew up
south of the border, you know. And I suspect
that's fairly general. As for e-mail, it is
a mixed blessing. I mean, I think it's a great
thing. On the other hand, I spend maybe five
or six hours a night just answering queries
and comments. So I'm not sure if it's the
best way of distributing energy but...
>> FEMALE: Well, thank you very much for coming
here.
