Noam Chomsky: Obama Would Have Been A ‘Moderate Republican’

Obama may be sort of progressive in today's world, but would have been considered a "moderate Republican" a few decades ago, MIT professor Noam Chomsky told The Young Turks in an interview recently.

“Kind of a mainstream centrist with some concerns for liberal ideals and conceptions but not much in the way of principle or commitment,” Chomsky explained. “And on some issues he is pretty reactionary — civil liberties, for example.”

Chomsky said the rise of conservatism was a “reflection of the redesign of the economy since the 1970s,” when the more liberal policies first promulgated by Franklin D. Roosevelt were replaced with bank-friendly policies. Meanwhile, manufacturing jobs were increasingly sent overseas due to cheap labor in dev

“So you have these two tendencies getting started, and they have consequences. One consequence was the very sharp concentration of wealth. This is not a big secret, but since then, wealth in the United States has concentrated enormously. The concentration of wealth leads very quickly to the concentration of political power. By now it is so obvious you can’t even debate it.”