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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

People who disagree with Chomsky usually characterize his views as this review does, as blind, wholesale demonization of the United States.

Chomsky's views are in fact the ultimate form of patriotism. he expects more of our nation and isn't sentimentally attached to the kind of hero and "good guy" stories that so many people need in order to be able to sleep at night.

Anyone who truly cares about America will read as much Chomsky as they can and will take action to make the US live by the values that supposedly guide its existence. There are some very inspiring things about the US, but also a very ugly side that much effort is undertaken to hide from view.

So please watch Manufacturing Consent with an open mind and observe the incredible patriot Chomsky for a while before you have the knee-jerk reaction that the reviewer would like you to have.

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Al Franken describes it best in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:

"They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do, but in a differenct way. You see, they love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. [We] love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old everything mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes mommy is bad. Grown-up love means understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow."

President Obama's war on whistleblowers is generally an attempt to silence the stories that present the US in an unflattering (though true) light. Just mentioning this in case anyone thinks that Franken's quote indicates that the mainstream left actually shares Chomsky's principled stance.

As a 'mainstream lefty', I feel pretty safe in saying that Obama has generally been considered by many of us as right of center.

Agree. In another time, he would be a moderate Republican, in the time when the Republican party allowed moderates.

Well this may be true, but the mainstream left gives Obama a TON of slack on many of his worst policies.

Obama is not "mainstream left" or any other kind of left. He's best characterized as a moderate conservative. In Canada, where I live, Obama's beliefs would be considered to the right of our Conservative Party, which is considerably to the right of the Canadian mainstream but managed to win the last election because the centre and centre-left votes were split among three or four parties.

No disagreement here. I used that term b/c in the US the mainstream left broadly supports Obama and many consider him to be part of it.

Manufacturing Consent is unavailable for streaming via Netflix. It is available via DVD.

It is also available on Amazon Instant Video: http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Noam-Chomsky-Med...

Last time I checked it was also available on Hulu Plus.

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