The Daily Dispatch

Tim Donovan has an interesting piece over on Salon encouraging the Left to keep our focus where it matters.

He includes this quote from Noam Chomsky.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine. Benevolent, friendly, nice to the children, even nice to their slaves. Caring about other people. I mean, as individuals they may be anything, but in their institutional role, they’re monsters, because the institution is monstrous.

Read the article: Noam Chomsky was right: Why the Koch brothers are obscuring the real enemy – Salon.com.

Professor Chomsky speaks on American politics’ descent into madness.

If the bonds and associations established by the Occupy movement can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead – because victory won’t come quickly – it could prove a significant moment in American history.

Read More: Noam Chomsky, A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age? [TomDispatch]

Noam Chomsky on America’s Declining Empire, Occupy and the Arab Spring. [AlterNet] - Last year, the Occupy Movement rose up spontaneously in cities and towns across the country, radically shifted the discourse and rattled the economic elite with its defiant populism. It was, according to Noam Chomsky, “the first major public response to thirty years of class war.”

Chomsky: How the Young Are Indoctrinated to Obey. [AlterNet] - Forty years ago there was deep concern that the population was breaking free of apathy and obedience. Since then, many measures have been taken to restore discipline. Read more.

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands. The naive might call that democracy, but that’s because they don’t understand. The sophisticated understand that that’s the crisis of democracy.

- Noam Chomsky

From a Lecture at the University of Wisconsin on 15 March 1989