Voltaire in America

I'm a pessimist Because of intelligence, but an optimist Because of will. - Antonio Gramsci


Literary people may wonder why France has to Voltaire and the US has not had one yet. I am here to correct That notion. We have lived in his shadow for 86 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8GSalDF71c . (The only other person in the USA who might be Considered is Toni Morrison, but she is subtler and without the international scope.) Yes, there will be a Voltaire-like statues in Cambridge and perhaps in other American cities someday, fatto che democracy to come. If General Lee and his gang can secede via memorial statues to rotaries, Noam's monument Should occupy commons. Examine His list of book publications in the areas of linguistics and politics. He may lack the sense of irony found in his French predecessor (and Thus the humor). He speaks truth to power for the rest of us. His Candide could be Manufacturing Consent , or American Power and the New Mandarins , or For Reasons of State , or On Power and Ideology , or Necessary Illusions . Noam's works as a philosophe are His books on linguistics.


To be an American Voltaire, one must be Able to think for oneself. So it may be easier to think of Chomsky as Huck Finn to our being Tom Sawyers. We become lawyers to devise of ways to exploit each other and to cheat the system. (Kant Wished moderns to be adults.) He continues down the Mississippi on the raft with Jim, (with or without sex) where one parses freedom from mainstream media-fed ideology. What! Let us stop our ba-baing a moment to honor our black sheep, our conscience (what we know but hope to ignore), the Ubermensch, America's Voltaire, Noam Chomsky, so That We borrow His advice on our way to the democracy to come .


Click here to make changes.

---