Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

Home

Write to us at: (address is not clickable)

21-Feb-2006
The Assistant Webmaster Reviews "Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy"

Peter Schweizer's Do As I Say is a delicious bonbon, a quick read, meticulously researched, written with brio. On the surface, he's making the Zacharian point that liberal politics is a form of performance art, mere shtick, empty posturing, irrelevant even to the liberals' own life-choices. The dust-jacket summary: "Schweizer's conclusion is simple: liberalism in the end forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one pose in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their own lives -- their property, their privacy, and their children -- they jettison their liberal principles and embrace conservative ones." But Schweizer also makes another, more deeply cynical point, that the liberals' shtick, especially the S###sian "kick away the ladder now that I've climbed it" trope, is often taken seriously, and causes real harm to real people who aren't in on the joke, whilst enriching the liberals themselves. The author does a wonderful job of documenting instances of private conduct by leading liberals that directly contradict -- sometimes just hours or days after -- their pious public pronouncements.

Excerpts from the first chapter, on Noam Chomsky, give the flavor. Subsequent chapters cover Michael Moore, Al Franken, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Cl!nton, Ralph Nader, Nancy Pelosi, George S###s, Barbra Streisand, Gloria Steinem and Cornel West.

NOAM CHOMSKY

... To hear Chomsky describe it, the Pentagon has got to be one of the most evil institutions in world history... You might think that Chomsky, being a linguist, worked for the MIT Linguistics Department when he joined the faculty. But in fact, Chomsky chose to work for the Research Laboratory of Electronics, which was funded entirely by the Pentagon and a few multinational corporations. Because of the largess from this "menace to human life," lab employees like Chomsky enjoyed a light teaching load, and extensive staff, and a salary that was roughly 30% higher than equivalent positions at other universities. Over the next half-century, Chomsky would make millions by cashing checks from "the most hideous institution on this earth."...

.... Chomsky describes himself as a "socialist" whose goal is a "post-capitalist society worth living in or fighting for." He has called capitalism "a grotesque catastrophe"... This man of the people, who is among the top 2% in the US in net wealth, moved his family out of Cambridge MA -- hardly a working class district to begin with -- to the even more affluent wooded suburb of Lexington... He made the move around the time forced busing was being imposed on the Boston area; Lexington was exempt from the court order. Today, America's leading socialist owns a home worth over $850,000 and a vacation home in Wellfleet, MA, valued in excess of $1.2 million. And don't look for oppressed minorities in either neighborhood. This self-described admirer of the Black Panthers, who says intellectuals must combat "all forms of racism" and complains that America "excludes" blacks from large parts of the country, owns a home in a town with a black population of 1.1%...

... A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white shoe law firm Palmer and Dodge and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning," set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees... He has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions. Chomsky favors the estate tax and massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning...

... Over the years, Chomsky has been particularly critical of private property rights, which he considers simply a tool of the rich... Intellectual property rights are equally despicable. According to Chomsky, for example, drug companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing drugs shouldn't have ownership rights to patents. Intellectual property rights "have to do with protectionism," he argues... But when it comes to his own published work... It would not be advisable to download the audio from one of his speeches without paying the fee, warns his record company, Alternative Tentacles (did Andrei Sakharov have a licensing agreement with a record company?)... Go to the official Noam Chomsky web site and the warning is clear...

... In October 2002, radicals gathered in Philadelphia for a benefit entitled Noam Chomsky: Media and Democracy... For a fee of $15 you could attend the speech and hear the great man ruminate on the evils of capitalism. For another $35 you could attend a post-talk reception and he would speak directly with you. During the speech, Chomsky told the crowd, "A democracy requires a free, independent and inquiring media." After the speech... a writer for the lefty Philadelphia City Paper tried to get an interview with Chomsky. She was turned away. To talk with Chomsky, she was told, this "free, independent and inquiring" reporter would need to pay $35...