[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/3/2003 12:54:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>
> > Now, I think both of them are very important figures,
> > because they are extremely influential. One is the
> > single most cited living intellectual. The other
> > edits the most important magazine of th Left. They
> > influence opinion. But they are also indicators of
> > opinion - and the fact that people who believe what
> > they believe are so adulated by a fragment of the
> > political spectrum - and so completely immune from
> > criticism from _their own side_, as opposed to from
> > the other side, tells us something really important
>
> Chomsky is one of the most important thinkers of our time but it his
> contributions to linguistics not his political views that have
> influence.
You evidently haven't had any sort of political discussion with some of
the people I end up in political discussions with.
Granted, the ones big on Chomsky are pretty far off to a fringe, but
there *are* people who take his political views very seriously. And a
number of them are activists. So while his political views may not make
a big impact except at a local level, there are localities where his
views are influencing things at least somewhat.
I haven't read anything of his, but I don't entirely respect him, on the
basis of 2 incidents about 4 decades apart that I heard about
second-hand, in which someone asked a question about something that
might challenge him, and instead of taking on the *argument*, he tore
(rather viciously in both instances, apparently) into the *asker*, which
is a great way to get onto the "Julia has less respect for you now"
list, especially when I have no other data about the personality of the
person in question.
Julia
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