Synergies with some of the Finkelstein content - found this rather interesting blasting of Chomsky's political contributions:

"Chomsky's sort of been the poster boy for the Problem With The Left for angry non-leftist liberals for a while now (Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens have both done some heavy hitting), and I do think that many of the things he says are outrageous and seriously irritating. But I must admit that I'm rather of two minds about the man. On the one hand, he is one of the most brilliant thinkers of the twentieth century. First he invents linguistics. Then he revolutionizes it--over and over again. His thinking has deep implications for philosophy of language, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology--all things I care very much about."

Chomsky, 'the scientist'. Great. But then:

"And this brilliance, I feel, ought to carry over into his political writing, too [...] We're talking about one of the towering geniuses of the twentieth century. This guy is, if not quite like Newton or Kant or Einstein, at least like Hume or James or Russell. He's invented entire new scientific disciplines that now flourish in the world's greatest universities. Among philosophers and linguists he is universally admired--if not always agreed with--for his thinking. His name's going to be in the intellectual history books for a long, long time."

What's this sick heroism? Brown-smelling "völkischer Realismus"? How about, not quite like Nietzsche but at least like Schopenhauer, or not quite like Gramsci but at least like Althusser. Interesting comparisons, some weird notion of value involved (not quite a hummer but as good as any SUV etc.). Anyway. It continues:

"So I guess you could say I'm conflicted. I have a hard time believing that someone so smart and so committed to finding the truth could be wrong about the world. But I do."

Point: with a history of ideas as above under the belt, seeing NC's truth might be rather tough, yes.

Will leave you with following amusing critique of Paul Berman's Chomksy-blasting (looks strangely familiar, think we've been through this before):

"After 9/11, Berman continues, Chomsky was similarly doctrinaire and deluded. He found the "entirely predictable" attacks by Al Qaeda "the reply of oppressed people from the Third World to centuries of American depredations." Chomsky, Berman scoffs, "had no basis at all," in his ridiculous bestseller 9/11, "to attribute these centuries of Third World motivation to bin Laden."

No; but then, he didn't. The "terrorist atrocities," Chomsky noted in 9/11, were "a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all sides." The likely perpetrators were "extreme Islamic fundamentalists," "murderous...religious elements" who "for 20 years have caused great harm to the poor and oppressed people of [the Middle East]"; not surprisingly, since the latter are "not [their] concern." Al Qaeda has "little concern for globalization and cultural hegemony," and bin Laden himself "knows virtually nothing of the world and doesn't care to." There is not a word in 9/11 ascribing Third Worldist political motivations to bin Laden or Al Qaeda. Berman had no basis at all to attribute this absurd misreading of their motives to Chomsky.

In ten pages, Berman manages to make more, and more serious, errors of fact and logic than Chomsky has made in 10,000. An impressive performance."