The other Anarcho-Syndicalist.

Chomsky is from the Americas. His mum and dad were Jewish Immigrants from Ukraine which back then was part of the Russia Empire. His dad, William, decided to leave Russia in 1913 to avoid being conscripted. William found work in a Baltimore Sweatshop. He went to University. When William's son, Noam Chomsky was ten he wrote an essay on the Anarcho-Syndicalist movement that briefly thrived in Barcelona before being crushed by Franco's fascists. The crux of the Anarcho-Syndicalist argument is that a person's productive life is central to his being and people should be in control of their own productive lives. Fascists don't believe that.

I Can't Help It

Call me a blasphemous amateur, it won't stop me from saying that in Western thinking the Continental Idealists and the Anglo-sphere of analytic empiricism all claim the testament to their heritage is in the Ancient Greece of Plato and Aristotle. So be wary of Greeks bearing Gifts. But there are distinctions to be made. From the Swedes, south through the People's Land of Germany and the novelists of Russia and Poland to La Belle Dame Sans Merci of Revolutionary France, these are The Continental Thinkers. The second theme is the small Island of Britannia, its attachments and memories, including the landmass of North America. These are the shopkeepers and chamber of commerce thinkers, practical minds that prefer not to talk with their hands and who would rather everyone else learn English. Chomsky is an Analytic Philosopher from the Americas who may have emerged from a clash between Behaviorism and the peculiar faiths of Anarchism, who found solace in humility and a distant contact with Kant's understanding of transcendence. Kant's transcendence submits us people to a structure that gives the phrase "I can't Help it" to both Lili Marleen's search for love, Chomsky's grasp of grammar or syntax and Kant's own understanding of morality.

The look and Sound of Words. Magister Ludi

The Uganda Flag. A collection of hairpins and a couple of bangles. A Hippo resting on a cloud. A series of Italian prints with church qualities. And a country courtyard, a print which became the centerpiece of a mind game that decorates the unfinished pages titled The Tenant's Agreement. Sometimes you have to admit these things so in Conversations with Baxter the better game was Hesse's Glass Bead Game. OK so Hermann Hesse wrote in German, but I wonder who else really wishes the master of the glass bead game wasn't called a Magister Ludi. Even for the future, it just sounds cretinous.

"Of Course Your Guinea Pig Goes to Heaven."

It's hard work for an analytical empiricist to demonstrate the potential for trueness without the custard pie utterances of idealists that sound so restful. Russell, essentially, answered the question what makes a good philosopher by suggesting the person had to be nice, humble, decent, curious, questioning, aware of limitations. If they were angry, or bitter or a power mad megalomaniacal creep, then not much chance of something worthwhile emerging.