[Peace-discuss] The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux

[E. Wayne Johnson]

I thought that the phrase "speak truth to power" had derived from the Welsh
/Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd/  "truth against the world" popularized
by Frank Lloyd Wright (along with its Trinitarian symbol /|\)
and perhaps originated with "Iolo Morganwygg.


It's a thin line between boldness and arrogance.

The admonition to speak truth to one another is certainly a very old one.

Helping people find the truth as opposed to telling them is akin to the
idea of teaching them to fish rather than giving them a fish.



On 9/9/2011 11:25 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [It is a great piece, as was the original, many years ago.  Last year 
> Chomsky answered a question form a journalist as follows. --CGE]
>
>
>
> Q. Finally, why have you criticised the formula 'to speak truth to 
> power,' which was used by the late Edward Said to describe the role of 
> intellectuals?
>
> A. That's actually a Quaker slogan, and I like the Quakers and I do a 
> lot of things with them, but I don't agree with the slogan. First of 
> all, you don't have to speak truth to power, because they know it 
> already. And secondly, you don't speak truth to anybody, that's too 
> arrogant. What you do is join with people and try to find the truth, 
> so you listen to them and tell them what you think and so on, and you 
> try to encourage people to think for themselves.
>
> The ones you are concerned with are the victims, not the powerful, so 
> the slogan ought to be to engage with the powerless and help them and 
> help yourself to find the truth. It's not an easy slogan to formulate 
> in five words, but I think it's the right one.
>
>
>
> On 9/9/11 10:05 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> It's a great piece.
>>
>> There seem to be 4 kinds of "intellectuals".
>>
>> 1) There are those who really understand what is going on and are 
>> willing to speak truth to power.
>>
>> 2) There are those who know the truth and have "sold their birthright 
>> for a mess of red pottage"
>> and have become pawns for the itching ear crowd.
>>
>> There are those who ain't quite woke up yet and 3) may or 4) may not 
>> be willing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/9/2011 8:41 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> Noam Chomsky - The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux: Using 
>>> Privilege to Challenge the State
>>>
>>> Since we often cannot see what is happening before our eyes, it is 
>>> perhaps not too surprising that what is at a slight distance removed 
>>> is utterly invisible. We have just witnessed an instructive example: 
>>> President Obama’s dispatch of 79 commandos into Pakistan on May 1 to 
>>> carry out what was evidently a planned assassination of the prime 
>>> suspect in the terrorist atrocities of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. Though 
>>> the target of the operation, unarmed and with no protection, could 
>>> easily have been apprehended, he was simply murdered, his body 
>>> dumped at sea without autopsy. The action was deemed “just and 
>>> necessary” in the liberal press. There will be no trial, as there 
>>> was in the case of Nazi criminals—a fact not overlooked by legal 
>>> authorities abroad who approve of the operation but object to the 
>>> procedure. As Elaine Scarry reminds us, the prohibition of 
>>> assassination in international law traces back to a forceful 
>>> denunciation of the practice by Abraham Lincoln, who condemned the 
>>> call for assassination as “international outlawry” in 1863, an 
>>> “outrage,” which “civilized nations” view with “horror” and merits 
>>> the “sternest retaliation”...
>>>
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