Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Noam Chomsky

Some Thoughts on Epstein’s Non-moral Virtues

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On November 17, 2025

13 Comments

Obviously, Epstein was scum of the lowest order; a blackmailer, a pimp, a pedophile, and a traitor. (Working with Mossad to blackmail American politicians was surely treason. And given that Israel is a genocidal, religious ethno-state, possibly the most evil country in the world, well…)

But like many effective evil people, Epstein had his virtues. I found this mix of documents from Noam Chomsky particularly interesting:


And, as Glenn points out:

For what it’s worth, I very much doubt that Chomsky had sex with underage girls. And that’s the thing, Epstein was not a one-note pimp and blackmailer, he was a charismatic social chameleon. What Chomsky wanted was intellectual conversation, inside information on politics, and to meet and converse with interesting scientists and scholars (and money, everyone wants money).

So that’s what Epstein gave him. Among scholars, Epstein was scholarly. Among artists, an aesthete. And yet, he was best friends with Donald Trump, who is the philistine’s philistine, a man who is not just without culture, but whose taste can only be described as tacky. A man who thinks a golden shitter is classy and who has probably never read a book.

People of great evil have virtues. Those virtues are morally neutral but real. Epstein was extremely smart and charismatic, and he was able to read people like a book and give them what they wanted. They all thought he was their friend, even as he used them. (And who knows? He may well have actually felt friendly towards a few of them. Certainly, his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell appears to have been genuinely affectionate.)

Hitler was extremely brave and, until he burnt out on amphetamines, intelligent. Genghis Khan was brave, a military and organizational genius, and routinely made his former enemies into his most important subordinates (Subotai, for example), and none of them ever betrayed him. He inspired an insane level of loyalty.

Bravery, intelligence, loyalty, energy, and even certain types of honor are all virtues, but they are morally neutral virtues; they amplify whatever you are, making you more effective. Without bravery and energy, being good or evil doesn’t matter: the person is ineffective. With them, they become saints or monsters.

Epstein appears to have had genuine charm and social ability, as well as a surfeit of brains. That’s what made him so effectively evil. The wealth and generosity with it didn’t hurt, of course, but he was so valuable to Mossad, and many others, exactly because of his gifts.

This lesson, that evil is often comes wrapped in an attractive and impressive package is one we regularly forget. Fair enough, in the Age of Trump — a dribbling idiot who was voted for despite his known leering at teenage girls, his “grab them by the pussy” comment, rape, and his long record of stiffing people who worked for him is the opposite. Any idiot should have known he was self-serving scum who would betray his followers repeatedly.

But we’ve also had plenty of attractive evil. Reagan. Bill Clinton (not his wife, she has the charisma of dead flounder), Obama — the purveyor of hopium. Clinton and Obama were energetic, smart, and charismatic. Reagan was stupid, but charismatic, with a folksy charm that made people think he cared about them, when all he wanted to do (other than an admirable hatred of nukes) was hurt everyone who wasn’t rich. (And then there’s Tony Blair, who now looks like Satan after a debauch, but once seemed so shiny.)

Evil is often attractive. Seductive. We are warned about that often in myth, but again, and again, we forget. Let Epstein remind us.

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Noam Chomsky Owns Sam Harris and Indicts Bill Clinton

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On May 2, 2015

47 Comments

Picture of Noam Chomsky

Picture of Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky had a private email session with Sam Harris about Clinton’s bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory which Clinton allegedly believed was also manufacturing a nerve agent. I really recommend reading the entire exchange, which is hilarious and horrifying on multiple levels. First, because Harris just doesn’t get that Chomsky is smashing him flat and asks for permission to publish it. Second, because the sort of ethical reasoning Chomsky uses is so alien to so many people in the world (and, sadly, especially to Americans).

To put it simply, Clinton’s destruction of that factory meant that many people didn’t get the drugs they needed to survive. So they died. The number of people who died was much larger than the number of people who died in 9/11. Harris just doesn’t seem to get it, he thinks “intent” matters more and that Clinton deserves the benefit of the doubt. Chomsky points out that any intelligent person would have predicted the effects of bombing that factory and Clinton did it anyway.

If he did it without malice, well, that means he felt nothing even though he had to know he was killing all those people. Feeling nothing about mass murder–and that’s what it was–is arguably worse than murdering someone you acknowledge as human, as having worth.

(There is also a a brief discussion of the Iraq sanctions of the 1990s, which were a terrible crime, as well.)

The point I want to emphasize is this: If you knowingly do something which a reasonable person knows will lead to large numbers of deaths, you are on the hook for those deaths. It may be the “least worst option” in some cases (though not, I think, in either of these cases), but you are still responsible.

A reasonable man (and Clinton is a brilliant man, famed for staying up all night doing research, right down to reading all the appendices and footnotes, unlike many executives), is responsible for the effects of his actions that a reasonable man forsee.

This is Ethics 101—it is also Democracy 101. If you cannot understand this, you cannot hold your legislators and executives responsible.

Chomsky also dismisses questions of motives as irrelevant; virtually everyone says they have great motives, including the Japanese during their mid-20th century wars. At the end of the day, you can only judge with reasonable expectations and by results. Everything else is BS.

I will finally note something a lot of people don’t seem to understand, because they have been exposed more to propaganda about Chomsky rather than his own writings or his seminal work in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Like him or hate him, Chomsky is one of the great geniuses of the 20th century. Even at age 86 and slowing down, getting into the intellectual ring with him is like trying to bear hug a grizzly. It is unlikely to end well for you

It sure didn’t for Sam Harris.

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