re: #558 Nimed

Yeah, but that “only” is a pretty big only. Incidentally, there’s an interesting debate on Israel between Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz on youtube.

I’ve had my first real contact with Chomsky’s ideas as a Cognitive Science undergrad. He is a god in the field, and not just in Psycholinguistics — his academic work is really extraordinary.

As to his political opinions: he can be a very good, albeit quite ruthless, critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, and there’s something to be said about his Propaganda Model. But he really is too harsh and rigid on some stuff. And not just Israel. For instance, he is still a staunch defender of a pretty radical left-libertarianism, which is a political philosophy that has arguably been tried and failed… in Israel (in some kibbutzim). And his political opinions colors his view of every political issue he writes about.

So what do we do ban him? I think it’s odd that there is this self-censorship of Chomsky while people will defend Glenn Beck and Mark Steyn to this day. Chomsky is rigid yes. But he was also interviewed by William F. Buckley back in the day. Today, I doubt he would be even touched by these so called conservatives. Chomsky is radical to many people, yes. He even criticizes the New York Times which is a frequent right-wing meme. He also spoke at West Point. Having known radicalism, he isn’t that radical.