Noam Chomsky on Social Engineering Projects – Covert Action Part 6 (1993)

December 10, 1993 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FNoam-Chomsky%2Fe%2FB000AP81EC%3Fqid%3D1278217605%26sr%3D1-2-ent&tag=doc06-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

Social engineering is a discipline in political science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. In the political arena, the counterpart of social engineering is political engineering.

For various reasons, the term has been imbued with negative connotations. However, virtually all law and governance has the effect of changing behavior and can be considered “social engineering” to some extent. Prohibitions on murder, rape, suicide and littering are all policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behaviors. In British and Canadian jurisprudence, changing public attitudes about a behaviour is accepted as one of the key functions of laws prohibiting it. Governments also influence behavior more subtly through incentives and disincentives built into economic policy and tax policy, for instance, and have done so for centuries.

In practice, whether any specific policy is labeled as “social engineering” is often a question of intent. The term is most often used by libertarians, free-market thinkers, and traditionalists as an accusation against anyone who proposes to use law, tax policy, or other kinds of state influence to change existing power relationships: for instance, between men and women, or between different ethnic groups. Political conservatives in the United States have accused their opponents of social engineering through the promotion of political correctness, insofar as it may change social attitudes by defining “acceptable” and “unacceptable” language or acts. The right (i.e. the social conservative movement) has itself been accused of social engineering due to its promotion of Abstinence-only sex education, the English-only movement, Sodomy laws and state sponsored school prayer.

Orrin Grant Hatch (born March 22, 1934) is a Republican Senator from Utah.

Hatch is a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, where he serves on the subcommittees on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure and Taxation and IRS Oversight. Hatch is also on the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Impeachment Trial Committee on the Articles against Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. (Vice Chairman/Ranking Member), and the Joint Committee on Taxation. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Although a conservative Republican, Hatch is noted for his willingness to cross party lines to get legislation passed. He notably formed a longstanding legislative partnership with the late Edward M. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts.

The Alliance for Progress (Alianza para el Progreso) initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between North and South America.

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