----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad DeLong" <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 5:33 PM Subject: RE: Alterman on Chomsky
> >What is there to apologize about?
> >Did you not read this article?
> >
> >His Right to Say It
> >Noam Chomsky
> >The Nation, February 28, 1981
>
>
> I think Pierre Vidal-Naquet got it right when he wrote:
>
> "The simple truth, Noam Chomsky, is that you were unable to abide by
> the ethical maxim you had imposed. You had the right to say: my worst
> enemy has the right to be free, on condition that he not ask for my
> death or that of my brothers. You did not have the right to say: my
> worst enemy is a comrade, or a 'relatively apolitical sort of
> liberal'. You did not have the right to take a falsifier of history
> and recast him in the colors of truth.
>
> "There was once, not so long ago, a man who uttered theis simple and
> powerful principle: 'It is the responsibility of intellectuals to
> speak the truth and to expose lies.' But perhaps you know him?"
>
>
>
>
> Brad DeLong
===================
Brad, you obviously have the dept. phone # at MIT where NC works, why don't you deal with him directly? Or are you unwilling to risk losing an argument with someone who is your intellectual equal? Isn't disintermediation what the new economy is all about?
Ian