Challenging Chomsky?

Happy New Year Everybody.
The last few weeks have been spent at a blistering pace, tempered by a trip to London - highly stimulating but monetarily prohibitive - heavy drinking and new year's resolutions, most of which have already either been broken or reneged upon. High on this year's list is to achieve something in the realm of music. Any potential collaborators out there?

Had the pleasure of attending Noam Chomsky's talk in O'Reilly Hall, UCD yesterday. Surveying the plush surroundings before our hero took to the stage, I could not but be struck by the irony of five lines of reserved seats. Chomsky is an unrelenting Democrat, surely this overtly elitist manouevre would grate upon his crusading activist soul?

The talk was highly entertaining, anecdotally informative and generally well-constructed and well-received. That said, Chomsky told me very little I didn't already know. However, my heart was indeed stirred by his response to Thomas Kador's question regarding the creeping totalitarian attempts to stifle public protests in the West. Kador asked was there anything we ourselves could do to pull a King Canute and stem the tide. Chomsky's response is still ringing in my ears, and serves as an excellent starting point for anyone trying to take on the system. Simple but highly efficient.

Ignore Them.

I nearly leapt to my feet to explode with rapturous applause.

I have, however, one unsettling observation to make. Out of all the questions offered to Chomsky, who had spoken at length about rejecting conventional wisdom regarding the exigencies of geo-political conflict, no one offered him a challenging question. No one put it to him that his own views might be as problematic in practice as those of the neoliberals are in theory. But this is more a slight upon ourselves, and serves to reinforce the image of Chomsky as the Cheerleader of the Left. It would have been nice if even one of us had the courage to take the Chom on. Personal ignorance regarding the subject matter prevented me from asking a question. But surely someone like Vincent Brown or Sean O'Rourke, two veteran broadcasters known for their deadly incisiveness, could have tabled something that might have at least shook the man on the podium? Alas no. O'Rourke was anonymous, while Brown tottered about taking candid photos and acting like a besotted groupie who had at last neared his idol.

Perhaps the problem with challenging Chomsky is that his views, to any thoughtful person, are not controversial, but highly rational. The United States is a highly volatile influence upon the world. Its actions are hypocritical, even immoral. It's promotion of democracy and freedom finds its nearest rival in the Sunday Independent's promotion of the integrity of the press. Both forces achieve the exact opposite effect of that stated, which, conveniently, is the effect desired by both forces in the first place.

So why is the world the way it is? Why can't we all just get along? Chomsky did awaken within me a very salient point; the timespan of change. If we really wish to make a difference, a national day of protest is but the beginning. The civil rights movement did not begin with Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, nor did it end with the legislation drafted by the Johnson administration. The worldwide national day of protest in 2003 was a good beginning in terms of changing public perception of the war in Iraq. Another is mooted for March 18th of this year. I urge you all to be there.