Noam Chomsky is, to put it mildly, a polarizing figure. For a particular species of left-wing campus activist he's a kind of guru, someone who has penetrated the veil of illusion and seen reality as it really is. For certain conservatives and "serious" liberals he's an ayatollah of anti-Americanism, a kind of ritual hate figure.
While A conservative blog for peace says:
Noam Chomsky: Apparently his criticisms are spot-on but he doesn’t offer a good alternative
To which my response is that the same could be said of Amos, and most of the other Old Testament prophets.
When Christians in South Africa sent out a four-page document called A message to the people of South Africa, which pointed out that apartheid was both a heresy and a false gospel, the government responded that they were so negative -- criticising government policy and ideology without offering anything to put in its place.
So the South African Council of Churches and others set up the Study project for Christianity in Apartheid Society (Sprocas).
Sprocas produced six reports of about 200 pages each, cost an enormous amount in having commissions and preparing papers and writing proposals, and probably no one in the government read the reports, except perhaps the Security Police, to see who they could ban, detain, harass or persecute next.
The idea that you should not criticise evil until you can offer a practical alternative is a monstrous cop out.
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Noam Chomsky is a linguist and political commentator who has been critical of US foreign policy in recent years.
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