Wikipedia says he's one of the most highly cited people in the world.
I 'know' him better through his ideas of grammars (Chomsky Normal Forms) and their applications to bioinformatics.
The article itself is interesting, a bit wordy. Chomsky is a well known academic in the sense that his work on linguistics is seen in many places from Psychology to Computer science.
The fact that he's also anti-government is new. I liked one line from the article (towards the end of page 1):
What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, ... They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.
If nothing else the article is a bit thought provoking and I think most people could use a bit more thinking in their daily lives.
When you say "The fact that he's also anti-government is new", I have to assume you mean the fact that he's opposed to the current administration, as Chomsky's opposition to the US government in general is long standing.
In my eyes, the article reads largely as a hagiography. The only "news" I see in it is that Chomsky compares the current situation in the US to the Weimar Republic. I am not an expert on either pre-WWII Germany, or modern US politics, but it seems contradictory to me to compare the US today with the effectively powerless Weimar government while simultaneously decrying the US as the most powerful government in the world. While there may be some parallels in terms of public attitudes, to me this seems like a more literate example of Godwin's Law (except not on Usenet).
You mention that Wikipedia states that "According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92 period, and was the eighth most-cited source." This seems like an argument to authority. It occurs to me that the period chosen ('80 - '92) corresponds to the Reagan and Bush administrations, and that these citations may therefore reflect the amount of discourse among administration opponents as much as they reflect Chomsky's intellectual stature.
To be clear, I would be just as unhappy about someone posting an article on HN reporting that Pat Robertson thinks that the Obama administration is massing troops in Cuba for a "socialist" overthrow of the US government. That would be "thought provoking" too. Of course, the bias among HN reviewers (and comments) makes this pretty unlikely. My own preference would be that political stories on HN have at least some technology angle, and a modicum of reporting, rather than just editorializing (for example, the recent stories about Wikileaks have both).
Come on - how can you ignore a guy who "combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship"! Moral autonomy - I think that means nobody can make him do the right thing?
> Moral autonomy - I think that means nobody can make him do the right thing?
No, that is not what "moral autonomy" usually means. Jumping on the sarcasm bandwagon without fully understanding what exactly you are ridiculing, is a good way to discredit yourself and ending up looking foolish.
Thanks for the downvotes! How can you simultaneously acknowledge that I'm being sarcastic and claim I don't understand what I'm ridiculing because I'm not defining it correctly? Of course that's not what the hagiographer meant by "moral autonomy" - but I thought it was funny.*
As far as understanding - I've never read any of his academic (linguistics) stuff and only one of his political books at the recommendation of one of my profs who is a big fan. I've read enough oped style commentaries in the local left wing indie paper to have a passing familiarity with his style and substance, however, to know that the revelation that the US is now close to Weimar Republic conditions isn't exactly a new thought for Chomsky.
* Posting purely political articles to HN definitely calls for sarcasm. Sarcasm and downvotes - I love that this place is still a refuge from reddit's endless political sniping and would prefer not to be commenting on a story like this...
What is the point of this "article", or posting it on HN?