Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.
Noam Chomsky[Antonio] Gramsci's words and actions explain their assessment, though I think we should refrain from using the term "model intellectual" for him or others.
Noam ChomskyThe Republican Party has pretty much abandoned any pretense of being a traditional political party. It's in lockstep obedience to the very rich, the super rich and the corporate sector. They can't get votes that way so they have to mobilize a different constituency. It's always been there, but it's rarely been mobilized politically. They call it the religious right, but basically it's the extreme religious population.
Noam ChomskyBy a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate.
Noam ChomskySuppose that I see a hungry child in the street, and I am able to offer the child some food. Am I morally culpable if I refuse to do so? Am I morally culpable if I choose not to do what I easily can about the fact that 1000 children die every hour from easily preventable disease, according to UNICEF? Or the fact that the government of my own "free and open society" is engaged in monstrous crimes that can easily be mitigated or terminated? Is it even possible to debate these questions?
Noam Chomsky