"It was, of course, what we would call a radical movement, because the Gospels are radical."
This is refreshing, and quite accurate, as I recall things. I hadn't associated the coup in Brazil with Vatican II, but that certainly makes sense. As you review the history of the Kennedy administration, of its activities in Latin America and central Africa, its not looking much like a great flowering of liberalism. If Noam Chomsky has noticed that the Gospels are radical, that certainly makes it safe to point that out in blog brawls, doesn't it? I'd point out that large swaths of even Leviticus are quite radical as compared to the would-be radicalism of, say, the Fabians and even lots of "Marxist" groups.
Chomsky on liberation theology. Excellent.
ReplyDeleteJust hearing Chomsky call Jesuit priests "leading Latin American intellectuals" was worth it.
Note: It happened again, I'll never get used to this.
ReplyDeleteHere is a comment RMJ left that got deleted when I tried to post it
Adding: I teach Carolyn Forche's poem "The Colonel" almost every semester; and I have to try to put that in historical context (the history Chomsky mentions here).
There is absolutely no knowledge of that in any of my students. None. Not even a hint of what life was like in Central America under Reagan, much less why.
Also didn't know about this reaction to Vatican II. Again, my thanks.
Is it wrong of me to listen to this and consider Hitchens no more an intellectual than Palin?
ReplyDeleteI'd call that having an insight. Hitchens got by, to a great extent, on his silver tongue, on the one hand, and his spewing acid on the other. Palin gets by on what are considered, by some, to be good looks which she uses like a former beauty queen, and her spewing acid. Neither of them had or has any honest use for information, which is what I'd consider the ground level requirement for being a real intellectual, as compared to a flashy, trashy zeitgeist surfer, something else they had in common. And in the case of the latter day Hitchens, it was the same wave.
DeleteI'm no intellectual, had to practice too many hours to have read enough to be one, but I can tell a bad one when I see it.
The silver tongue makes you think he must be smart; the spewing of acid makes you feel superior to the target: it's a winning combination.
DeleteWhenever I read anyone on the internets tell me how clever or "devastating" Hitchens was about, frankly, anything, I consider how truly ignorant they must be to think so.
Palin's looks don't quite make up for her lack of eloquence but if she looked more like Phyllis Schlafly (who she might as well be, otherwise) she'd never find anyone in TeeVee interested in pointing a camera at her.