Re: [jboske] OFF-TOPIC: Sampson

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

(response private because off-topic)

> http://www.grsampson.net/CA_dissident.html

My attention was immediately caught by this sentence:

In the last few years, since the arrival in power of New Labour,
I had grown increasingly worried about the Orwellian way in which
government seems no longer satisfied to control our actions by
law, but seeks to look into our minds and insist on approved
thinking.

This is one of Chomsky's core political beliefs, which is quite ironic
considering how far Chomsky is from Sampson otherwise, both professionally
and politically (and Sampson holds Chomsky's views on politics and
linguistics to be inseparable).

I think that

[P]reference for members of one's own race over other races is
a biologically natural, universal aspect of human psychology.

would be a lot less controversial if it did not attempt to reify "race"
(a suspicious if not spurious concept to a biologist) but simply said
something like

Preference for people who look like oneself is a biologically etc.

-- 
"May the hair on your toes never fall out!" John Cowan
--Thorin Oakenshield (to Bilbo) jcowan@reutershealth.com