by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has long been one of my favorite 'radical' minds and one of the reasons I like him so much is his relentless pursuit of the truth and his view that intellectuals have a responsibility. This responsibility extends beyond the intellectual elite, rather it encompasses entire advanced societies.
In the Western world at least, they have the power that
comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of
expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure,
the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil
of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which
the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of
intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the
“responsibility of peoples,” given the unique privileges that intellectuals
enjoy.
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