Louis Proyect wrote:
> A rite of passage for apostates
> peculiar to U.S. political culture is bashing Noam Chomsky. It's the
> political equivalent of a bar mitzvah, a ritual signaling that one has
> "grown up"--i.e., grown out of one's "childish" past. It's hard to pick
> up an article or book by ex-radicals--Gitlin's Letters to a Young
> Activist, Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism--that doesn't include a
> hysterical attack on him. Behind this venom there's also a transparent
> psychological factor at play. Chomsky mirrors their idealistic past as
> well as sordid present, an obstinate reminder that they once had
> principles but no longer do, that they sold out but he didn't. Hating to
> be reminded, they keep trying to shatter the glass. He's the demon from
> the past that, after recantation, no amount of incantation can exorcise.
>
one wonders what marc cooper's latest opinion about chomsky is ;-).
--ravi
