Comments by "cchris874" (@cchris874) on "Noam Chomsky: The Passing of William F. Buckley | Big Think" video.

  1. The funny thing is, in the one interview he did w Buckley, it appears that Chomsky does seem to find Buckley's humor worth a few sincere chuckles. This was at a more modest phase of Chomsky's career.Today, acknowledging any virtue or value of his opponents seems absolutely taboo. There is no generosity, good will or civility it seems, witness his dreadfully atrocious sportsmanship in the Sam Harris e-mail exchange. Only Norman Finkelstein attempting to verbally dismember Dershowitz on video surpassed that performance. At the end of his book, Intellectuals, Paul Johnson cautioned humanity about public intellectuals, bemoaning a "heartless tyranny of ideas." That just about sums up the elder Chomsky.
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  2. I'd say by Chomsky standards he is classy here. But then he really couldn't get himself to say even one positive about Buckley. I know WFB really outraged a lot of people, and I'm not a fan in particular, but for goodness sake, what conservative today has his comedic gifts, verbal sophistication and a grasp of history and politics. I thought he held is own fairly well for most of the discussion. It's hard to imagine any conservative today matching that performance.
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