"Yesterday and today, my friends and I visited Tanh Hoa province. There we were able to see at first hand the constructive work of the social revolution of the Vietnamese people. We saw luxurious fields and lovely countryside. We saw brave men and women who know how to defend their country from brutal aggression, but also to work with pride and with dignity to build a society of material prosperity, social justice, and cultural progress. I would like to express the great joy that we feel in your accomplishments.

"We also saw the ruins of dwellings and hospitals, villages mutilated by savage bombardments, craters disfiguring the peaceful countryside. In the midst of the creative achievements of the Vietnamese people, we came face to face with the savagery of a technological monster controlled by a social class, the rulers of the American empire, that has no place in the 20th century, that has only the capacity to repress and murder and destroy.

"We also saw the (Ham Ranh) Bridge, standing proud and defiant, and carved on the bills above we read the words, ‘determined to win.’ The people of Vietnam will win, they must win, because your cause is the cause of humanity as it moves forward toward liberty and justice, toward the socialist society in which free, creative men control their own destiny.

"This is my first visit to Vietnam. Nevertheless, since the moment when we arrived at the airport at Hanoi, I’ve had a remarkable and very satisfying feeling of being entirely at home. It is as if we are renewing old friendships rather than meeting new friends. It is as if we are returning to places that have a deep and personal meaning.

"In part, this is because of the warmth and the kindness with which we have been received, wherever we have gone. In part, it is because for many years we have wished all our strength and will to stand beside you in your struggle. We are deeply grateful to you that you permit us to be part of your brave and historical struggle. We hope that there will continue to be strong bonds of comradeship between the people of Vietnam and the many Americans who wish you success and who detest with all of their being the hateful activities of the American government.

"Those bonds of friendship are woven of many strands. From our point of view there is first of all the deep sympathy that we felt for the suffering of the Vietnamese people, which persists and increases in the southern part of your country, where the American aggression continues in full force.

"There is, furthermore, a feeling of regret and shame that we must feel because we have not been able to stop the American war machine. More important still is our admiration for the people of Vietnam who have been able to defend themselves against the ferocious attack, and at the same time take great strides forward toward the socialist society.

"But, above all, I think, is the feeling of pride. Your heroism reveals the capabilities of the human spirit and human will. Decent people throughout the world see in your struggle a model for themselves. They are in your debt, everlastingly, because you were in the forefront of the struggle to create a world in which the chains of oppression have been broken and replaced by social bonds among free men working in true solidarity and cooperation.

"Your courage and your achievements teach us that we too must be determined to win–not only to win the battle against American aggression in Southeast Asia, but also the battle against exploitation and racism in our own country.

"I believe that in the United States there will be some day a social revolution that will be of great significance to us and to all of mankind, and if this hope is to be proven correct, it will be in large part because the people of Vietnam have shown us the way.

"While in Hanoi I have had the opportunity to read the recent and very important book by Le Duan on the problems and tasks of the Vietnamese revolution. In it, he says that the fundamental interests of the proletariat of the people of all the world consists in at the same time in safeguarding world peace and moving the revolution forward in all countries. This is our common goal. We only hope that we can build upon your historic achievements. Thank you."

-

Noam Chomsky, originally delivered on April 13, 1970 in Hanoi while he was visiting North Vietnam with a group of anti-war activists. Broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, and published in the _Asia-Pacific Daily Report_ of the U.S. government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 16, 1970, pages K2-K3.

---

I first came across a quote from this speech in the book "DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION: Second Thoughts About the Sixties", by Peter Collier & David Horowitz. I had read the book several years before, & was reminded of it during a debate I was having with some Chomsky fans (on the Usenet newsgroups alt.politics.libertarian, alt.fan.noam-chomsky, etc.) about Chomsky’s cover-up of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Re-reading "DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION" reminded me that he’d also made a speech cheering for the Viet Cong from Hanoi during the Vietnam War. This was additional evidence of Chomsky’s Commie sympathies, so I quoted the bit from his speech which had made it into "DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION" in my Usenet debate.

One of my opponents, a Chomsky defender & self-described "anarchist" of the anti-capitalist variety, Dan Clore, immediately denied that Chomsky had ever made any such speech, & called David Horowitz a "notorious liar". He also accused Horowitz of using a fabricated quote from the socialist historian Ronald Radosh about Chomsky’s alleged policy of keeping quiet about the negative aspects of North Vietnam that Chomsky had seen on his tour of the country. Unfortunately, Collier & Horowitz didn’t indicate what their source for Chomsky’s Hanoi speech was, so I kept looking. I found the primary source in the book "POLITICAL PILGRIMS: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society", by Paul Hollander. Then, with the irreplaceable help of Stephen Denney, an archivist with the UC Berkeley Indochina Center, I was able to obtain a transcript of the entire speech, which I have provided above.

lung is nice. every year all the lungs have a picnic. all the lungs come to the picnic. there is lung, and lung, and another lung, and some more lungs and lung. there is giant lungs and tiny lungs. (tiny lung is secret. shhh.) there is grownup lung (she has bumps) and even poor little norinco lung who doesn’t get out much. we play with norinco lung but we have to be careful because she is frail and breaks too easy. then dean fixes her. we are sad about norinco lung but maybe she has fun anyway we hope she does although she can’t tell us if she does or not because she can only say one thing. but she is lung too and we love her.

we are all in a big field or a forest in the sunshine and we run around and we play and we fly. giant lung swallows us and we fly out of her mouth. grownup lung combs her hair. tiny lung is in the grass. we give donuts to the engineers and they give donuts to us. the sun is shining and the sky is blue and we are happy.

at the end of the day we all sit around dean and he tells us stories and holds us in his lap and gives us donuts. then he tells us our story, the story of lung. we know the story because we are lung and dean is lung and we remember the story from long ago. the story is secret but if you watch and listen very carefully you will know it anyway. before anything was, lung was, and lung is the dragon (lung means dragon) and lung rides the winds. lung sat beneath the chariot once and lung once knew the matters pertaining to the chariot and someday lung will know them again. once upon a time “that which has no end” asked “the book” for workers and the book said “I give you 22 workers, namely the 22 letters that are in me and give to each his own” and the 22 letters made the first lung who serves that which has no end and whose name lung knows but does not say. then lung made a donut. the righteous could make a donut if they wished.

then lung sleeps on the grass and lung dreams. sometimes lung dreams about a donut. sometimes lung dreams about you. sometimes lung dreams about a lung who dreams about you. do you dream about lung? who is dreaming who? are you dreaming right now?

the next morning lung wakes up and all the lungs go back what they were doing until the next picnic. there will always be a picnic and there will always be dean and there will always be sunshine and grass and another donut for lung. lung hopes that you will have all the donuts you want and all the sunshine too.

lung says “be happy” and “be nice” and “hi”. lung is your friend.

Near the end of the month of August, my year has been filled with worthy books, but I’ve just finished what I think is the book of the year, so far.

“From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life — 1500 to the Present” by Jaques Barzun (2000, Perennial Books, 877 pages in the paperback).

Barzun has generally arranged the period at hand around "four great revolutions — the religious, monarchical, liberal, and social, roughly a hundred years apart, whose aims and passions still govern our minds and behavior." He has done this with imposing critical presence, yielding at his age of 94 years the results of seven-odd decades of study and reflection.

My first reading has produced 27 distinct headings in my customary personal index of the work, with 61 entries among them: about average for a book of this length. However, these represent my own abstractions from a book brimming on nearly every page with memorable aphorism pegged to the idea of the past as knowable fact and useful knowledge. This is a true history: the author’s critical outlook does not stamp events with an exclusionary framework in order to make its case. (Students of Toynbee, Spengler, et. al., should take note.)

I found the implicit conclusion of the book’s title held in *suspense* — den�uement — revealed with plain observation in the final chapters. The whole project carries the added charm of a straightforward conversational style quite rare in these times of self-conscious impenetrability parading as depth and wisdom. Barzun has things to say, not prove. It is not a paradox that what he says proves the contention of his chosen title. I endorse William Safire’s estimate of the book as "a stunning five-century study of civilization’s cultural retreat."

I also found a great deal of room for dispute with some of the course of study. For example, I cannot regard 1789 as more valuable than 1776: the French Revolution’s grip on world imagination has never made sense to my understanding of the American Revolution as the highest political expression of Enlightenment philosophy. Barzun verges on pre-occupation with European affairs though parts of this book, and his emphases on France nearly irritated me several times. People who know my view of that ridiculous country might wonder at my tolerance. However, there are, I suppose, highlights necessary to this work, and Barzun treats them with literary power equal to his erudition, so my interest easily survived the ordeal.

Apart from strict material considerations, there are matters of form here that intrigue and delight. Barzun mounts a practical defense of idiosyncracy. "Techne" is introduced on page 4 with an end-note shortly instructing that the word is "short and exact; ‘technology’ is neither." "Techne" it is, then, throughout the book, and a considrate reader need not be confused with the useage. What we have is a positive assertion of judgment refreshing amid contemporary deserts of moral agnosticism. One might disagree with various judgments, as I have, but I had to applaud the exercise of judgment, throughout (and of which the above is a trivial but interesting example).

The text is arranged with quotations on page margins reminiscent of magazine "pull-outs": "sentences lifted out of the article to lure the reader." Citations from authors throughout five hundred years, Barzun calls them "add-ins": they free his own original text from gratuitous bits to introduce quotes, and as he explains in his "Author’s Note": "This small innovation also permits juxtaposition for contrast and emphasis. By the end, the reader may find that he has been treated to an anthology of choice morsels." It’s true.

Numbers are variously interjected with marks, thus — (<295, 410>) – in order to direct the reader to pages where a topic has been previously introduced or carried forward. This is a sort of organic index present throughout the book.

The comprehension of this book is wonderful. Dozens of important figures lost to contemporary view are rescued, if briefly, from everlasting obscurity in the glare of those notables come down to the present day. Events appear within precisely specialized context (e.g.: the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt, World War I) for their impact on cultural forces: intellectuals and institutions. "Movements" in the arts (painting, literature, music, theater, sculpture) are connected to their sources and effects on "culture", a word not employed to describe, say, the mood of a local police department or membership of some country club. What we’re talking about is something finely relatable as "the well-furnished mind", on the world scale.

Most important: *consequences* are tallied.

I’ve found this book fairly unsettling. In consideration of the early 18th century, Barzun says that, "When decadence is not anxious, it is the best of times," and I can take the observation in stride. I note, however, that a sensible mind is not arbitrarily manufacturing anxiety in objectively troubled times, and maintain that troubles are the natural end of decadence fulfilled. By way of simple observation instead of positive assertion of a "philosophy of history", affairs at the end of the 20th century are illuminated as troubled, in fact. However, the rolling tide of conditions and events naturally threatens hope for the future in terms of a single human being’s life, and despair can draw uncomfortably near from this account.

In his final chapters, Barzun correctly illustrates, in superb depth, the contest between dissolution of the nation-state and advance toward world super-state as it stands today. The individualist ontology must be alarmed here, but the rift is open to exploit by courageous and adroit dedication to principle.

No matter the "cultural retreat", there is still, I think, a good fight to be won, and Barzun’s masterpiece can serve the effort with its recitation of the uniquely eminent course of a hailed and maligned era. I maintain that the best purpose of history is to demonstrate the reasons between what is and, by way of deduction, what should be, and this book cannot be over-rated as a wealth of them.