But James, it is a no-brainer to refute an argument with selective use of an opponents words, phrases, quotations, arguments and beliefs. Debaters are trained and hired to do just this as are propagandists, spin doctors, psychiatrists, journalists, scholars, historians, pr pros, courtiers, literary critics, philosophers, logicians, priests, lovers, indeed most of language and discourse is made up of such mongrelian fabrications. Chomsky, the linguist, knows this better than most, and certainly more than you, an amateur by comparison. He makes no apology for his attacks on apologists for the powerful, he is merely better at it than they are. Not much is worth doing more than helping lance the giants' scrota. You could learn from his linguistic studies and his prowess at detumescing opponents surely more than you can learn by attempting to ramrod him, for you are sure to do so at a level much more superficial than his multi-level critiques and in the process miss the bulk of his argumentative substantiation -- as demonstrated by the biased, blind, vacuousness posted by Dr. Hettinga. Dr. Hettinga is having his fun posting a cornicopia of light-weight straw-men disputation, aw shit call it what it is, lazy-minded inarticulate like that spewed all across Blueland by preachers of blind faith in yelling the same old. Chomsky is one smart SOB, his serious critics readily agree he is surely the intelligent man in the USA, and they learn from him far more than they learn from those who think as they do: beware the adoring choir's roundheels.