Noam Chomsky
Noam Avram Chomsky is an American linguist and political commentator. As a linguist, he revolutionized understanding of language aquisition and development. A commited humanist, his scathing, erudite attacks on American foreign policy are too numerous to list.
Steven Robert Allen writes that "It's often been said that Chomsky is to linguistics what Einstein is to physics. His 1957 treatise, Syntactic Structures, initiated the so-called Chomskyan Revolution; in that book, Chomsky proposed a new linguistic theory which defined language as an innate human faculty hard-wired into our brains. Consequently, in Chomsky's view, there is a kind of "universal grammar" underlying all languages."
- further, "Linguistics aside, though, what lifted Chomsky to the level of cult figure is his political theorizing and relentless activism in defense of the victims of U.S. foreign policy. Politically, he embodies a rationalist, anti-authoritarian strand of leftist thought positioned in sharp contrast to Marxism and Leninism, which he calls libertarian socialism."
What his critics call a conspiracy theory, Chomsky calls "institutional analysis." In dozens of books, he has meticulously documented the historical development and specific abuses that have led to the bastardized corporate-controlled democracy Americans currently edure. [1], [2]
In the book, Understanding Power (ISBN 1565847032), "a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions, Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades... And as he elucidates the connection between America's imperialistic foreign policy and social inequalities at home, Chomsky also discerns the necessary steps to take toward social change. With an eye to political activism and the media's role in popular struggle, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy." [3]
