jimmoyer, no where once have I said that Chomsky holds all the answers we need. In deed he is an arm chair socialist, or political writer like them all. The few political writers who have been taken to action all have been bad ones in my view, such as Hitler and Stalin. I do not say nor claim Chomsky is right about everything, but he does highlight problems in our current governments be it soviet or American and I think if you sit down and read them you can easyly see he is on to something in some areas. However I do believe he is extremely critical of a human system bound to failurers and inhumanities at times and he offers little but a libertian system of anarchy to replace it with. But if our leaders were not blind, ignorant or just plane evil to the people they hurt while they are in power then we might come alone to actually fixing problems like pverity and international issues such as the middle east.
I think it is generally unfair for people to just discredit him with false agusations such as "He's a communists", "he's a hypocrit" when 1. It's just not true and I highly doubt that the person has actually read chomsky or the book in question himself, and two the history of political science is of the writer to be an arm chair political scientist and to just live his life and write. As I said I can think of very few writers who actually lived the life they wrote about and thought would be best for society because point in being that society did not exsist.
Besides that my main point for liking chomsky may not be in his writings about 9/11 or the USA, but the balls it took to write against the soviet union when most history/pol sci and many other professors were Marxists or at least marxist leaning.
My next point is many on the right are... ummm... right... That we shouldn't really go into Chomsky too much, he is no better then a Libertiarn, an Anarachist and such extremes could only spell danger which I do not think Chomsky himself can see. I do not doubt Chomsky was in favour the Mao's mini revolution, as it took power away from the communist party and into the hands of the students, which promoty killed intellectuals on the left and the right, communists and capitalists alike as well. But even if the ends justified the means, does any amount of death justify a percieved Utopia.. I do not think so and even though at the time Mao had believed he had unleashed true communism, it turned out that he unleashed a monster, which once was stopped was turned into nothing more then another type of Stalinism. So no the ends didn't even justify the means as the ends came out differently then expect and thus and means which murder, anarchy and subjection of any class or race are envolved are just wrong. I could fault Chomsky and Trotsky for this as well.
Now to answer your question, I think people like Jack Layton, are moderates on the left who are ready to work with the right for a better way to do things. Though the neo-cons and some conservatives would like to Demonize Jack Layton as a "Islamo-Fascaist", "Pinko" or anything else, I think he and the NDP in General are very, if not extremly moderate for the left and have actted so in Canada. Of course I do not say I believe in everything the NDP does is right because no matter what group you belong to you are going to disagree with some people in it, and even policy.
edit:didn't have time to check my grammer... Sorry
