The responsibility of intellectuals, in the words of Noam Chomsky

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUALS: The linguist and renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky explores the idea of using privilege to challenge the state, making a number of important historical points to compliment his usual thematic undertones: those associated with what he might have us believe is a great governmental conspiracy. Regardless, it's an excellent (albeit long) esssay, with a number of intriguing passages, including the following:

The honorable term “dissident” is used selectively. It does not, of course, apply, with its favorable connotations, to value-oriented intellectuals at home or to those who combat U.S.-supported tyranny abroad. Take the interesting case of Nelson Mandela, who was removed from the official terrorist list in 2008, and can now travel to the United States without special authorization.

Twenty years earlier, he was the criminal leader of one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups,” according to a Pentagon report. That is why President Reagan had to support the apartheid regime, increasing trade with South Africa in violation of congressional sanctions and supporting South Africa’s depredations in neighboring countries, which led, according to a UN study, to 1.5 million deaths. That was only one episode in the war on terrorism that Reagan declared to combat “the plague of the modern age,” or, as Secretary of State George Shultz had it, “a return to barbarism in the modern age.” We may add hundreds of thousands of corpses in Central America and tens of thousands more in the Middle East, among other achievements. Small wonder that the Great Communicator is worshipped by Hoover Institution scholars as a colossus whose “spirit seems to stride the country, watching us like a warm and friendly ghost,” recently honored further by a statue that defaces the American Embassy in London.

Chomsky goes on to explain similarly interesting cases, finally returning to the death of Osama bin Laden, which served as the original starting-pont for the entire essay.