Noam Chomsky is Not Dead

As of this writing, Noam Chomsky is not dead. I do not want him to be dead. I am 37-years-old. For almost 20 years, Noam Chomsky has been an intellectual lighthouse to me. Sometimes I was close. Sometimes I was far away. But, intellectually, it felt like he was always guiding me to harbor.

Noam Chomsky is in his early 90s, now. As with all of us, his death is inevitable. It may seem morbid, but, when it has felt like you have only one great light guiding you home, you want to prepare for when that great light goes out.

This blog is my attempt retrace and understand what Noam Chomsky means to me. A lot of people I know have never heard of him other than from me. Those that have- most of them regard him with some level of suspicion. Even people who once embraced him and his thinking as fully as I did have recently told me he is "on the outs" with them over what he has said regarding this issue or that.

It is not simply that I always think Noam Chomsky is right. It is that, in reading and listening to Chomsky via books, articles, interviews, documentaries, etc., I acquired a way of seeing the world that has been profoundly useful to me. Whether his opinions were right or wrong is mostly besides the point. His opinions always seemed guided by principles that profoundly resonated with me.

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