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violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances” is an international war crime. 24
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    That was the primary charge, but there were many others. So, for example, one of the main charges against Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, who was hanged after the war, was that he either permitted or was complicit in a preemptive strike against Norway. Norway really posed a threat to Germany. The British were there and were planning an attack on Germany. Compare this to what happened to Colin Powell when he was complicit in a preemptive strike against Iraq. Powell was not tried for having gone to the United Nations and producing fabricated stories calling for an attack on Iraq, where there was no threat at all, in fact not even a remote threat.
    So there are the principles of Nuremberg. But, of course, the practical outcome is quite different. The Nuremberg tribunal was the most authentic and significant of any of the international war crimes tribunals that have taken place, but it had fundamental flaws. And they were known to the prosecutors. For example, Telford Taylor commented on them right away. Effectively, he said, the tribunal defined war crimes as something you did and we didn’t do. 25 That was the criterion. So, for example, the bombing of civilian concentrations, urban bombing, was not considered a war crime because the Allies did much more of it than the Axis. In fact, German admiral Karl Dönitz was able to reject the charges against him because he got testimony from the British admiralty and from the American navy saying we did the same thing, so it definitely isn’t a war crime. 26
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    One of the things that you say about yourself, which often stuns people, is that you’re an old-fashioned conservative. What do you mean by that?
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    For example, I think Magna Carta and the whole legal tradition that grew out of it made some sense. I think the expansion of the moral horizon over the centuries, particularly since the Enlightenment, is important. I think there’s nothing wrong with those ideals. A conservative, at least as it used to be understood, is somebody who cares about traditional values. Today those values are regularly being thrown out the window. We should condemn that.
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    Then why are you seen as a wild-eyed radical?
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    Because holding on to traditional values is a very radical position. It threatens and undermines power.
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    A perennial question that you get at your talks is, “Well, there’s an election coming up, Professor Chomsky. What should I do? Should I vote? Should I stay at home?”
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    The first point is, I think you should spend about five minutes on the question. There are much more important questions, such as, “What should I be doing to try to change the country?” But the question about elections doesn’t take much thought, in my opinion. When we get to the presidential election—let’s put aside the primaries—you’re going to have a small range of choices. There will be two candidates, neither of whom you like. One will be plausibly much more dangerous than the other. If you’re in a so-called safe state, where you know how the vote is going to come out, you have choices. You can say, “Okay, I won’t vote—or I’ll vote for some party that’s trying to become an independent alternative, say, the Greens.” If you’re in a swing state, you have to ask yourself, “Do I want to help the worse candidate be elected or do I want to prevent that?” It doesn’t mean you like the other candidate. But, in fact, that is the choice. So you have to  ask, “Is it better to help the worse candidate to be elected?” You can make a case for doing that. In fact, there was an old Communist Party principle back in the  early 1930s: “the worse, the better.” If you get the worse candidate in, it’s going to be better, because