Michael J Totten interviews the author Benjamin Kerstein. He begins with the question, “What possessed you to spend three years writing about Noam Chomsky?”

To which Kerstein answers,

Chomsky is an absolutely shameless liar. A master of the argument in bad faith. He will say anything in order to get people to believe him. Even worse, he will say anything in order to shut people up who disagree with him. And I’m not necessarily talking about his public critics. If you’ve ever seen how he acts with ordinary students who question what he says, it’s quite horrifying. He simply abuses them in a manner I can only describe as sadistic. That is, he clearly enjoys doing it.

A little elaboration follows:

He is essentially the last totalitarian. Despite his claims otherwise, he’s more or less the last survivor of a group of intellectuals who thought systemic political violence and totalitarian control were essentially good things. He babbles about human rights all the time, but when you look at the regimes and groups he’s supported, it’s a very bloody list indeed.

And,

He makes people stupid. In this sense, he’s more like a cult leader or a New Age guru than an intellectual… Since he portrays everyone who disagrees with him as evil, if you do agree with him you must be on the side of good and right… I think people come to Chomsky and essentially worship him for precisely that reason. He allows them to feel justified in their refusal to think… His tone is very intellectual, in that he speaks in a very quiet, measured style most of the time. But the content is clearly driven by what can only be called a species of hysteria… He seems to be at heart an extremely angry man, and I would guess that his anger is driven by something that is ultimately not political.

From then on in it gets rather critical.

See also this, by the late Christopher Hitchens. And of course this.

Update, via the comments:

Via Simen, Daniel Greenfield talks us through the Victim Value Index:

Historical suffering transmuted into guilt is the gold standard of liberalism, but suffering is relative. In our wonderful multi-everything society, there are so many groups with so many claims to pain. Everyone agrees that the Heteronormative Caucasian Patriarchy of Doom is to blame for all of it, but that still leaves the question of dividing up the spoils of the system and all the privileges to be gained from denouncing privilege. A caste system doesn’t work without priority, and calculating the priority of privilege claims by the perpetually underprivileged is complicated. Without the Victim Value Index, understanding how these priorities work can be confusing, even for liberals. It’s particularly confusing for conservatives and libertarians who don’t understand the system and dismiss it as liberal insanity. It is insane, the way all cultural taboos are, but there is a method to the madness.

A. Barton Hinkle on Obama, pencils and who deserves what: 

A complex society is necessary for the creation of business, but it is not sufficient. Countless people made modern computing and the internet possible. But Elon Musk, not anybody else, made PayPal happen. And even if that were not so – even if Musk’s contribution to the creation of PayPal were no greater than the contribution from Phil, the goateed baristo at Starbucks with the Occupy Everything sticker on his car – Obama’s approach leaves a crucial question unanswered: Why should Phil, rather than Elon, enjoy the proceeds from PayPal’s success? Suppose you sell me a pencil. You didn’t make that. Still, I freely gave my dollar to you. How much right do you have to that dollar? That’s hard to say, but this is not: You have far more right to keep it than any third party has to take it away.

And Glenn Reynolds on two ways to pitch a campaign and Obama’s track record:   

The Obama administration sold its near trillion dollar “stimulus” plan by claiming that without it, unemployment would reach 9% while with it, unemployment would stay below 8%. Despite the bill, unemployment hit 10% and has, in fact, remained more than 8% for the past 42 months. The “stimulus” money, meanwhile, seems to have vanished into a welter of crony-capitalism deals of which the Solyndra debacle is only the most famous. And all that “hope and change” from the administration has turned to “attack and blame” as Obama and his surrogates launch one assault after another in an effort to turn the conversation to anything besides the economy. So much for the promised Bright New Day. With trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and the exploding national debt (which Obama called unconscionable when it was about half as big as it has become under his stewardship), it seems time for a Back To Basics approach. And that’s clearly the direction favoured by Romney, the turnaround artist who specialised in taking mismanaged entities and making them work. His choice of Ryan simply takes it to a new level. As Internet humourist IowaHawk tweeted on Saturday: “Paul Ryan represents Obama’s most horrifying nightmare: Math.”

Yes, it’s often fun to watch bluster collide with maths. 

Feel free to add your own links and snippets in the comments.

For newcomers, more items from the archives.

New, Leftwing Physics Discovered.

“Passive overeating” is a global pandemic, so Guardianistas want the state to stop us eating.

Setting aside the surreal wording and overt authoritarianism, there’s something vaguely unpleasant about a group of richer people – say, left-leaning doctors, columnists and academics – demanding constraints and punitive taxes on proletarian food. Taxes and constraints that would leave themselves largely unaffected.

Terrorising Coffee Drinkers for the Greater Good. 

Guardian hearts Occupier. Said Occupier hearts smashing other people’s stuff. 

Prior to smashing windows and hitting police officers with 8 foot long steel pipes, the Occupiers had gathered at an anarchist book fair, where leaflets and workshops promised a softer, fairer, fluffier world. (“Indigenous solidarity event with Native Resistance Network.” “Equal rights for all species.” “Children welcome!”) In this temple of warrior poets and ostentatious empathy, the “activist and educator” Cindy Milstein cooed over Occupy’s “direct democracy and cooperation”: “This compelling and quirky, beautiful and at times messy experimentation has cracked open a window on history, affording us a rare chance to grow these uprisings into the new landscape of a caring, ecological, and egalitarian society.” Occupy, says Milstein, is all about “facilitating a conversation in hopes of better strategizing toward increasingly expansive forms of freedom.” Its participants, we learn, are “non-hierarchical and anti-oppression.” See, it’s all fluff and twinkles. It’s just that some of the twinklers like to wear masks and balaclavas – the universal symbol of friendliness and caring – while trying to shatter glass onto Starbucks customers.

Because Artists Are So Dangerous. 

Bettina Camilla Vestergaard creates “an uninhibited space for creative thought and action.” Radical grass-tearing ensues.

Decenter was, we’re told, a place for artists who longed to escape “the choking effects of the market,” and who wished to air their “radical and uncompromising thoughts,” thereby creating “a more humanely oriented society.” You see, these precious flowers are choked by the market, implying as it does a reciprocal arrangement with the rube footing the bill. A parasitic relationship, in which the taxpayer has no say and is essentially irrelevant, is much more liberating.

And remember,

Cows Dig Jazz. 

Now waste your afternoon in the greatest hits. 

Once again, Zombie reports from Occupy’s moral wasteland. This time, the object of the protestors’ umbrage was a conference on how to combat child sex trafficking: 

If there’s one issue that unites Americans of all political stripes, it’s the sexual enslavement of children. Whatever our opinions on other issues, we all agree that sex trafficking and the prostituting of children is an outrage and a tragedy. Thus, conference attendees included liberal, moderate and conservative politicians; progressive non-profit organisations; law enforcement groups; religious leaders; and (according to the conference website) “social services, medical providers, mental health, education, probation, and community-based organisations.” In short: Everybody. Everybody, that is, except Occupy Wall Street, who somehow found a way to oppose the abolition of child sexual slavery.

This being Occupy, their thinking on this issue is knotty, dogmatic and a little confused:

Sex work, like all forms of work, can only exist within a society based on hierarchical economic systems like capitalism, which are protected by the police and patronising reformist organisations that keep exploited people from revolting. The pigs are the enemies of sex workers, and of all workers.

In the last nine years, the FBI – sorry, “the pigs” – have rescued over 2,100 children from coerced prostitution. But apparently we are all being “subjugated by the continued existence of capital.” And so, for the sake of the glorious revolution, no-one should object to the sexual molestation of thirteen-year-old girls. Or something. 

As Zombie notes,

The protesters’ main banner said “Fucking to survive is life under capitalism.” This sums up the nearly incomprehensible cognitive dissonance at the core of the Occupy Oakland Patriarchy philosophy. They manage to hold two mutually exclusive thoughts simultaneously: 1. We are sex workers and proud of it, and there is nothing wrong with prostitution, so stop oppressing us with your prudish laws; And, 2. The only reason we are compelled to have this degrading and unpleasant profession is that capitalism forces people to exchange labour for money – only a total anti-capitalist revolution can put an end to prostitution.

The Occupiers attempted to stop the conference topple the capitalist patriarchy with air-horns and the obligatory “bum rush” – i.e., scuffles and vandalism. Nothing in particular was achieved, of course, but the Occupiers seemed happy with their efforts. It was, they say, “one hell of a performance.” Their own post-protest report, which is truly a thing to behold, includes such gems as this:

We set out with the intentions of shutting the fucker down and started the event with the distribution of some dope literature, some inflammatory speeches, the harassment of mainstream media and of course the all-out taunting of the police. It got taken a step further when the crowd attempted to enter the lobby of the Marriott Convention Centre. This all resulted in a rumble with the pigs, the vandalised facade of the convention centre entrance with eggs and paint, and a march to and from Oscar Grant Plaza. We would say that this was a nice way to spend an afternoon and, for a brief moment, fulfilled our goal of shutting the fucker down.

Yes, “dope literature” and “a rumble with the pigs.” Now get with the hipster’s moral vanguard, you patriarchal squares.

Stephen Hayes on Wisconsin, high passions and the caring, compassionate left: 

Unions and other Walker opponents have certainly shown a willingness to do anything to win. Walker and his family have been harassed regularly. Unions and their backers have marched on Walker’s personal residence in Wauwatosa. His wife has been subjected to repeated verbal harassment. His sons have been targeted on Facebook. Walker himself has been compared to a variety of terrorists and, of course, to Adolf Hitler. He long ago stopped eating out at restaurants and has stepped up security for all of his public appearances.

Kristi LaCroix, a Kenosha teacher who appeared in a pro-Walker ad supporting the reforms, received so many threats that she later said she wished she’d never done the ad. When a student at Two Rivers High School showed up at school wearing a pro-Walker T-shirt, the head of the school’s technical education program, who is also the chairman of the local teachers’ union, sent an email to the business that produced the T-shirt noting that the company does business with the school and threatening a “loss of profits.” A reporter for a liberal Madison newspaper telephoned Ciara Matthews, communications director for the Walker campaign, and expanded the definition of “news” by publishing an entire article about the fact that she worked at Hooters to put herself through college. Another Walker staffer returned home one day to find his dog defecating blood. The veterinarian who treated the dog – at a cost of $1,500 – told him the most likely culprit was a high dose of rat poison, something he doesn’t have in his house.

John Aziz highlights the even more charming sentiments of Finnish eco-radical Pentti Linkola: 

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom… Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economic growth… A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organised on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her… Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

It’s for our own good, obviously. Yes, Mr Linkola is rather, er, hardcore, but he’s far from alone in the nature of his fantasies. 

And Thomas Sowell on when a person’s race gets reported and when it doesn’t:  

Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug. […] A wave of such attacks in Chicago was reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system.

On which, Heather Mac Donald is worth revisiting: 

In fact, the race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. As long ago as 1978, a study of robbery and aggravated assault in eight cities found parity between the race of assailants in victim identifications and in arrests – a finding replicated many times since, across a range of crimes. No one has ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased in their reports.

Apparently there are even significant racial variations in speeding offences. 

By all means add your own links in the comments.