Chris Hedges, Fundamentalism, Intellectual Self-Defense, Literacy, Max Blumenthal, Normand Baillargeon
In Baillargeon, Normand, Blumenthal, Max, Education, Electoral Politics, Fascism, Hedges, Chris, Journalism, Religion on March 4, 2010 at 6:10 am
Noam Chomsky once advised that citizens of democracies take courses in intellectual self-defense. To this end, Professor of Education Fundamentals Normand Baillargeon has written the appropriately titled A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense (Seven Stories Press, 2007), a compact and accessibly written guide to the detection and treatment of things sneaky and mendacious.
Drawing on works by critical thinking heavies like Chomsky, Carl Sagan, and James Randi, Baillargeon covers language and logic; statistics, probability, and data presentation (what he calls “citizen mathematics”); the scientific method; and media criticism (including an introduction to Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model). Read the rest of this entry »
Eugene V. Debs, Socialism
In Debs, Eugene V., Electoral Politics, History, Labor, Socialism on December 2, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Eugene V. Debs addresses a massive crowd in Chicago, 1912 (Source: Indiana State University)
It’s sad that so many people take the silly back and forth about President Obama’s alleged “socialism” seriously. If the name Eugene Victor Debs was as well known as it should be, such nonsense would be recognized for what it is.
Nick Salvatore is the author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (University of Illinois Press, 2nd edition 2007), a fascinating and engaging biography of the socialist leader and presidential candidate and a detailed history of the early radical American labor movement.
Lenny Flank edited Writings of Eugene Debs: A Collection of Essays by America’s Most Famous Socialist and Reds,White and Blue: An Anthology of American Socialism and Communism 1880-1920 (Red and Black Publishers, 2009).
Both generously took the time to answer some questions about their books.
G&R: How did Eugene Debs define socialism and how much was his vision influenced by Marx and the European movements?
Nick Salvatore: EVD read Marx and some of the more popular European socialists, but they were never a driving force for him. His understanding of socialism for America owed more to an effort to maintain American democratic values in an era of industrial corporate development. Read the rest of this entry »
Francis Fox Piven, The War at Home
In Electoral Politics, Foreign Policy, Piven, Francis Fox on November 1, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Renowned sociologist Frances Fox Piven is the author of Why Americans Don’t Vote, and, with Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor, Poor People’s Movements, and The New Class War and is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York. Prof. Piven talked about her new book, The War at Home: The Domestic Cost’s of Bush’s Militarism (2004 The New Press).
GR: In your book you argue that the new wars are motivated as much by domestic goals of the right as by international goals. Could you tell me a little bit about what you mean by that?
Francis Fox Piven: I suppose that the first point to be made is that the usual explanations of foreign wars in terms of international relations or international threats or international aggressive goals have been very weak. Just what it is that we’re trying to accomplish by this aggression — the idea for example that the United States needs to enlarge its military footprint and the impact that has, doesn’t seem to be very persuasive because the United States has the largest military footprint by far in the world. The idea that we did it for gas and oil, even that — while it is true that we didn’t invade a country that produced figs, but one that produced oil, we wanted the oil — the costs of this aggression on the one hand and trends like the shattering of American soft power and multilateral relations and the rather uncertain gains that have been made in terms of energy supplies, all of this makes it seem a kind of illusive and unsatisfactory explanation. Read the rest of this entry »
