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user-inactivated  ·  4352 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The CIA has nothing on Noam Chomsky (no, really)

Politics. He did a great job arguing against the 'blank slate' school; he should have stuck to that.

Paul Johnson wrote a great book called Intellectuals, the last few pages of which deal specifically with Chomsky. Johnson decries, among other things, the 'celebrity intellectual', a modern development -- once you go down the path to intellectualizing for fame, you make a sort of mockery out of yourself.