/lit/ - Literature

Anyone who cannot appreciate the brutal intellectual force of Chomsky is deluded. Just because he is a bit pathological in his quest to prove that the country that has afforded him the freedom to make a fortune arguing that the country he lives in is the most unimaginably Evil Empire in history doesn't mean the man doesn't also know everything. No matter what inquiry he pursues, you get the sense that he will read more, know more, and think more, and more directedly, than any other intellectual would have the patience or mental energy for.

The critique of Chomsky is that he does not offer solutions. He disputes this vigorously of course, but I'll just say this. He knocked B.F. Skinner around pretty good, but he has never done what B.F. Skinner did -- propose concrete solutions to problems -- such as he does in his novel, Walden Two. Chomsky has no vision. He could never write something like that, a novel that shows, using a narrative mode, how the system could be reorganized so that political entities could be prosperous without committing "atrocities" (Chomsky's favorite word).