Is Noam Chomsky one of your favorite intellectual giants? You know that he espouses anarchism, don't you? What is anarchism anyway? Yes, you in the back there waving your hand frantically. A state or condition of no arches. Hmm. Well not exactly. Actually, very few know what anarchism is. Maybe that's why Noam Chomsky likes to call himself an anarchist. He can formulate his own nomology.

Some Buddycom members were interested in linguistics in their university days. Those members remember the text book. The name Noam Chomsky was written in bold letters on the front and back in yellow and blue. The name didn't seem to have any special significance. Every time the linguistics professor uttered the name of the author, the old song, North to Alaska popped into mind, in particular the line about the place which was, "just a little southeast of Nome." Fully one third of the final examination for that particular course dealt with glottochronology, the members have reported. Starbucks employees have a deep appreciation for linguistics. Buddycom members have commented that in society at large, a profound understanding of either linguistics or glottochronology and a crisp five dollar bill will get one a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Noam Chomsky's textbook had excelled in several areas in ways that other textbooks had been found lacking. Description of the production of language sounds and explanation of the points and methods of articulation were very well presented. 1, 2, 3. Point of articulation, method of articulation, voiced or voiceless. P. Bilabial stop, not voiced. B. Bilabial stop, voiced. R. Coninuant, voiced. But where is the point of articulation? German umlauted A? Don't trip us up with technicalities. The text was used as a reference for later courses in Chinese, Portugese, German, French, Japanese and Spanish phonetics. Swahili was skipped for some strange reason. We hear through the grapevine that Noam has finished with phonetics and now is concentrating on syntax.

What is involved in the publishing of one of Noam Chomsky's three hundred books? Noam's grammar, vocabulary and syntax would ostensibly, not need correction. After all he has written the book as it were in that regard. How, one might wonder, could the radical political works of an avowed anarchist not only survive but emerge unscathed while crossing editor's chopping blocks in democratic America. Is America really that tolerant? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the tolerance is an illusion, a social construction of reality. Publishers have been known to be quite selective in their choice of what they will or will not publish. If one takes the contrarian viewpoint, light may be shed on a seeming incongruity. Noam may be nothing more than a noma, a gangrenous ulceration of the mouth, to the proletariat, a fungosity to be shunned. A societal perversity? A scatalogical rather than a pornographic impropriety. At the same time he is an unsung hero to the meanies he condemns. Professor Chomsky has said that it is the responsibility of an intellectual to tell the truth, which he certainly does uncompromisingly. What can be done with the truths that Noam Chomsky so prolifically and so clearly describes? Were his political writings interpreted from the contrarian viewpoint, they would make excellent practical guides not only for politicians, but in fact for all the movers and shakers in the military-industrial complex who wish to maximize Machiavellian success. Could that explain Noam's value to and remarkable success in American democratic society? It may be that this is how Noam has been nol-prossed in the court of American opinion. Noam's nomography is useful for nomothetically formulating the nomisms necessary for the regulation and control of an American nomistic society in a manner as regular as a hypophrygian mode.

Click a Noam Chomsky cover for reviews and pricing of some of his hundreds of books. Anybody who would write hundreds of books couldn't be worth a hoot. Could they?

Federal News Information Syndicate

Noam Chomsky at MIT