You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Noam Chomsky: 2012 GOP Candidates Views are “Off the International Spectrum of Sane Behavior”

StorySeptember 19, 2011
Watch Full Show
Listen
Media Options
Listen

MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the position of the Republican presidential candidates on issues such as climate change and calls them “utterly outlandish.” “I’m not a great enthusiast for Obama, as you know, from way back, but at least he’s somewhere in the real world,” Chomsky says. “Perry, who’s very likely … to win the primary and win the nomination, and maybe to win the election, he’s often in outer space.” [includes rush transcript]

Related Story

StoryAug 12, 2011Bipartisan “Super Committee” Turns to Cutting Deficit with “Extraordinary” Powers
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to wrap for a minute by asking you two quick questions. One is about politics in this country. Do you see a big difference between Obama, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry? Do you think there would be a drastic change in policy if a Republican were to win in 2012 and if it were Perry or Romney?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I must say that politics in this country now is in a state that I think has no analogue in American history and maybe nowhere in any parliamentary system. It’s astonishing. I mean, I’m not a great enthusiast for Obama, as you know, from way back, but at least he’s somewhere in the real world. Perry, who’s very likely—very likely to get the—to win the primary and win the nomination, and maybe to win the election, he’s often in outer space. I mean, his views are unbelievable. Bachmann is the same. Romney is kind of more or less toward the center. These are—the positions that they are taking are utterly outlandish.

I mean, as you mentioned before, I just came back from Europe, where people just can’t believe what they’re seeing here, what people are saying. I mean, take one of the really crucial issues for the human species: doing something about environmental catastrophe. Well, you know, every single one of the Republican candidates—maybe not Huntsman, but every major one—is a climate change denier. It’s kind of ironic in the case of Perry. He says there’s no global warming, while Texas is burning up with the highest temperatures on record, fire all over the place, and so on. But it doesn’t matter, it’s just not happening. In fact, the one who has conceded that maybe global warming has taken place is Michele Bachmann. I heard a statement of hers in which she said, “Well, yes, maybe it’s happening. It’s God’s punishment for allowing gay marriage,” or some comment like that. I mean, this—what’s going on there is just off the international spectrum of sane behavior.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned activist, public intellectual, linguist, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author. His latest book, 9-11: Was There an Alternative?, that question referring to the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Up Next

Bipartisan “Super Committee” Turns to Cutting Deficit with “Extraordinary” Powers

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top