[lbo-talk] Chomsky: USA "best country in the world"

[Kelley]

At 09:51 AM 11/3/03 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
>>Actually, Chomsky's been pretty consistent over the years, in both his
>>written and oral output, about the many positive feelings he has about the
>>US, and there are many positive things about the US that -- surprise! --
>>progressive forces have had a hand in creating.
>>
>>I don't think he's looking for rightwing converts. I think that's the way he
>>really feels.
>
>I think I've said before that one of the first times I ever talked to 
>Noam, maybe 10-12 years ago, I said something positive about Germany, and 
>he replied, "Germany? Have you ever seen how small their houses are?"

in the five years i've been around, about once a year. :)


>It's fine with me to find good things about U.S. life and culture. I do 
>myself, and I've taken some shit here for it. But the "best country in the 
>world"? What does that mean? Noam himself is one of the great chroniclers 
>of its crimes - should that enter into some accounting of good and bad? We 
>have mass poverty, immature politics, an often idiotic public culture. 
>Calling in the "best" should be something for know-nothings, not 
>well-educated cosmopolitans.

maybe because he takes seriously the distinction between nation and 
country? i agree that "best" is problematic, but why conflate country and 
nation?

at Chuck0's infoshop: PATRIOTISM, n. 1) The inability to distinguish 
between the government and one's "country";

http://www.infoshop.org/nightwatch.html