[R-G] Chomsky Packs Irish Room

[Anthony Fenton]

http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2009/02/12/News/Chomsky.Packs.Irish.Room-3626701.shtml
Chomsky Packs Irish Room
By: David Kete
Posted: 2/12/09
"The United States has been committed, for a long time, to undermining  
democracy, while calling it 'promoting democracy.' This is the age of  
Orwell, so the U.S. calls it 'promoting democracy,'" Noam Chomsky said  
at the beginning of his lecture about the Obama administration's  
affect on U.S. politics. These few sentences were the first of many  
critical points Chomsky made throughout his lecture in the Irish Room.

Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, and scientist, came to campus  
Tuesday afternoon to address the issue of Obama's election and its  
impacts on this nation and the world. While Chomsky is notable for his  
accomplishments in linguistics and philosophy, he is also known for  
his unconventional political views, and he used this lecture to focus  
on the current political and economic situation.

Larissa Jones, president of Psi Chi, the national psychology honors  
society and A&S '09, was the driving force behind the effort to bring  
Chomsky to campus. The event was sponsored by Psi Chi, and is their  
first major campus-wide event as an organization at BC. "Not many  
people know about our organization, so we wanted to bring a speaker  
that many people would enjoy to put our name out there," Jones said.  
She noted the importance Chomsky has had in the field of psychology  
and said that this work was a large part of the reason for bringing  
him to campus. However, he kept mainly to political issues, at Jones's  
request, because she believed that this would attract more people.  
"This topic will relate to a wider audience, so that more of the BC  
community can enjoy the event," she said.

The crowd at the event flowed out the doors of the Irish Room. Chomsky  
began by congratulating President Obama on his election that was, he  
said, "inconceivable 30 or 40 years ago." Then he began an analysis of  
Obama's campaign, selection of Cabinet, and early presidential  
policies from a different perspective than most political analysts.

He spent the remainder of the lecture discussing topics ranging from  
the political situation in Bolivia to an offhand comment about  
toothpaste to remarks about the impact of the Internet to definitive  
statements about the foundations of the U.S. economy. At the end of  
the brief lecture, Chomsky took a few questions, and then concluded  
his lecture, leaving all those in the audience pondering his atypical  
political thoughts.

Chomsky's main comments concerned the current economic crisis, why he  
thinks it developed, and what he thinks Obama has begun doing about  
it. Chomsky described Hans Ferguson's investment theory of politics  
and said, "Elections are occasions in which groups of investors  
coalesce to invest and control the state, and you can predict from the  
investments what the policy is going to be. This is a remarkably good  
predictor..."

Chomsky said that Obama's record as president, with his cabinet  
selection and first few policies, has been consistent with this  
theory. "The massive contributions to the Obama campaign were from the  
financial industries, which much preferred Obama to McCain." Chomsky  
said, "Everything that has happened since just accords with this. The  
first thing Obama did was select his cabinet … Rahm Emmanuel, his  
chief of staff, was … probably the recipient of more funding from the  
financial services industry than anybody in the House, and he himself  
has a background as an investment banker."

Chomsky said that Obama's leading economic adviser, Robert Rubin,  
served Bill Clinton as Secretary of Treasury and had as his main  
accomplishment the undermining of the Glass-Steagall Act, "which was  
new deal legislation that protected commercial banks from risky  
investments, separating them from investment firms." He said that the  
undermining of this law led directly to the coalescence of Citigroup,  
which Rubin immediately joined upon leaving office with Clinton.

Chomsky said that Citigroup was allowed to take part in risky  
investments because of the ending of this legislation, which allowed  
Rubin to make a windfall upon taking his position with Citigroup and  
also led to its demise and bankruptcy.

Chomsky said that by appointing Rahm Emmanual and Robert Rubin, both  
of whom have strong ties to the investment banking industry, to top  
advisory positions, Obama will not be fundamentally different in his  
handling of the economic situation. Chomsky said that Obama will most  
likely do what needs to be done get through the crisis but end up  
leaving the economy in the hands of the same people who brought it  
down in the first place.

"The people who destroyed the economy are the ones being called upon  
to do something about it," he said. "When you are put into office by  
the financial services industry, that is your constituency, so you  
have got to do what you can for them."

Aside from this particularly relevant talk about Obama's presidency  
thus far, Chomsky deviated into some other areas such as the recent  
political situation in Bolivia, a country that he said, "elected a  
poor peasant, one of their own, to implement policies that they  
designed. That's democracy." Chomsky said the small, Bolivian version  
of democracy is an example of the true practice of democracy. He  
described Bolivia as the polar opposite of the better-known American  
brand.

At the end of the lecture, several students raised questions regarding  
Obama, the U.S. economy, and the Israel- Palestine conflict. Chomsky,  
after giving his responses on these topics, left to another round of  
thunderous applause. "Chomsky sounded too much like a conspiracy  
theorist," Jason Goode, A&S '11, said. "He offered a lot of good  
insights into contradictions between what we see and what is actually  
happening in the world. But at the same time he seemed a little overly  
cynical."