A very irritating and interesting exchange. Rational discourse can be tricky, but the idea isn't hard. It's like building a bridge, you use tools to form a construction that spans a gap. Chomsky is an expert in language, the most important tool. No doubt he can acquit himself with modus ponens and such logical tools. What he clearly lacks is "curiosity and goodwill." These are dismissed as the irrelevant "tone of the messenger" as if they were two modems communicating over a noisy line. Hostility and contempt are inimical to constructive discourse among humans. What's the point? I am curious about one thing: who was "the perpetrator of by far the worst crime of this millennium who did so, he explained, because God had instructed him that he must smite the enemy"?