Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy | Noam Chomsky

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy | Noam Chomsky | Finally an explanation of why liberal democracies don't work like they're supposed to

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Failed States: The...

	Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy Noam Chomsky Metropolitan Books, 2006 - 314 pages average customer review:based on 98 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A review by someone who actually read the book

This first part is not a review of the book, but more a diatribe over something that bothers me about some of the reviews I have read on Amazon. I will give a brief review of my own afterwards.

I have read so many one and two star reviews of Chomsky's works that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual book being reviewed that it begs the question of whether or not the reviewer even read the book. Here is an example of this taken from a review by Mark bennet for this book, "[Chomsky] takes almost 700 pages to say close to nothing of use." Now, for me 320 pages do not qualify as "almost 700 pages". Seems like the kind of mistake made by someone unfamiliar with the actual work.

Another reads, "Chomsky and his ilk lick at the midsection of any machete wielding psycho with sufficient anti-American credentials." Wow, a very scathing dissection of the themes and conclusions of Chomsky's works from this reviewer. How could Chomsky write again after being discredited to this extent?

I could go and write reviews for books I have not read by Ann Coulter's or Sean Hannity's books that would even be more cogent than this slander, but I don't because that is intellectually dishonest. If I am going to review a book I will make sure to read it first. It's only common courtesy that every book reviewed should be read first, and I hope this practice becomes more common.

I apologize if I have simply wasted space here. Now for some brief thoughts of my own about this book.

I was skeptical coming into this book, but found the themes to be enlightening if not a little disconcerting. The fact that this country's policies are directed for the benefit of an exclusive elite while the rest of the masses are forced to bear the brunt of this policy is proven by the increasing numbers of Americans falling below the poverty line. Government domestic and foreign policy is directed at maintaining American hegemony abroad while maintaining the status quo here at home. The U.S spends millions of dollars abroad every year in an attempt to influence the elections of other nations; while here in the U.S. 30 million people do not have health coverage, millions of children are malnourished and American's wages have remained stagnate.

After reading this book I went back and checked out several sources and have read several of the books cited by Chomsky, and I have yet to find any discrepancies between how they are used in Chomsky's work and the original context. This is where any attack should be directed against Chomsky either the scholarship or the conclusions. The personal attacks that fill the reviews here on Amazon are the work of simple minds, but then again it's hard to mount a coherent attack on the scholarship of a book when you have failed to even read it.

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Finally an explanation of why liberal democracies don't work like they're supposed to

We all take for granted that politicians are untrustworthy and corrupt. And as I enter my mid thirties, I noticed it has been getting worse.
Why do democratic governments give vast sums of money to already profitable industries when some of their citizens are homeless and hungry. This prompted me to find out more. And this book explains it very well. Now I can see, that without any one person clearly having evil intentions, the combination of objectives, philosophies, self-interest, influence and funding have driven America down a morally sickening path against the will of it's people.

My wife is studying law in Australia, and I found it alarming to learn from her that Australia's lack of a bill of rights makes us one of the least democratic democracies in the world. Out of all Western Democracies it is currently the closest match to the US. It is no coincidence that our government has been implicated in a corruption scandal in Iraq, laws have been introduced to keep the majority of Government information secret from its people, and the press recently launched an attack on the government when Australia was found to have the third worst freedoms of speech of any democracy.
This book explains so well the mechanisms at work in our society that lead to this outcome.
Excellent Book.
P.S. It was interesting to read the sections about Paul Wolfrowitz - written before the scandal broke, and very accurate about his true character.

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Where the USA is headed

Chomsky gives an insightful view of America's past, present and future. This book should be required reading for every American who wants to take back control of our government from the present administration. If we do not learn from history we will relive it.

Chomsky Still Going Strong

At nearly 80 years old, Chomsky is still writing carefully argued, heavily documented analyses of American foreign and domestic policy, offering a detailed but not complicated framework for understanding an enormous range of policies at home and abroad. He has lost neither his intellectual powers nor scathing irony, exposing doctrinal illusions, hypocrisies and extensive atrocities of what he has called the greatest country on earth. Neither his premise nor conclusion is that America is evil, as anyone who took the trouble to read the book would know, especially if by 'America' we do not restrict ourselves to the concentrations of state and economic power, but include the public at large.

As he has said in the recent past, America is the greatest country on earth, and its leaders have been committing and continue to commit atrocities and crimes that they should stop. What those crimes and atrocities are, why they are committed, and why they should stop are all detailed in this devastating criticism of state and business-sponsored doctrinal illusions supported by a complicit corporate-owned media. No evil people, just powerful entities doing what they always have: America is no exception, and is in fact less vicious than some others and than it has been in the past, due mainly to popular civilizing forces, especially in the 1960s.

This book, combined with Manufacturing Consent (or a more recent media studies analysis of corporate media) will give you the tools to understand both the point of much foreign and domestic policy (notwithstanding the unquestioned assertions of our Dear Leaders) and why you haven't heard about it in the news.

People in other countries have access to this kind of information about our country that is systematically kept from us. Reading it should at a bare minimum help to understand why the U.S. is now widely considered the single greatest threat to world peace. Whether you end up agreeing or not, that alone is worth the investment.

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Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy