Noam Chomsky seems to be an incredibly intelligent guy. One wonders, then, why his politics seems to be so terribly radical. I would tend to think that, as one gains wisdom and experience, one would tend towards some moderation. Noam, in some contrast, seems to be just a little to the left of Lenin. Well, maybe not that far, but he certainly is for suppressing his own country in favor of others.
His work on linguistics has been so complete that he has successfully developed a framework that usefully describes all languages, human and computer. By usefully, I mean the concepts have been used to make computer language development better. The breadth of work evident in this is such that it shows him to have a unique intellect. And yet he has meaningful contributions in psychology, too.
I suspect he has fallen into the trap that many people do. That trap is thinking that developing some authority in one area makes you qualified to render opinions in another.
The problem with Noam is that his opinions are so strong that, unless you tend to agree with his politics, you form a very bad opinion of him and you therefore might overlook his really useful work. Imagine if Einstein lobbied against capitalism and American foreign policy. Oh, wait...
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