There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
Noam ChomskyRead
If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of morality in supporting any societal policy as it should align with the inherent nature of humanity.
Noam Chomsky asserts that regardless of the type of policy one supports—be it reform or regression—there is a moral basis that underpins that support. Each individual or group advocates for a policy because they believe it aligns with what is fundamentally good for humanity, suggesting that true moral action stems from an understanding of human nature and its inherent needs.
In practice
During a discussion on social reforms, one might use this quote to emphasize the underlying moral responsibility of policy makers.
There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.
The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it's hardly a traditional political party anymore.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them – acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't even wish to be, and don't even wish to taken for being.
I expect we shall be told, that the Militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defence...The facts, which from our own experience forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion.
Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.
If my eyes could show my soul,everyone would cry when they saw me smile.
In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.
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