Today marks the 97th birthday of Noam Chomsky, known both for his status as “the father of modern linguistics” as well as his prolific political commentary.

I’m aware that as the opinion editor of an editorial page that tilts libertarian he’s an unusual figure to highlight, but he was intellectually influential to me ever since I read a booklet of his (“9/11”) sometime in 2002 (I would’ve been 11). Though I came to identify more with thinkers like Milton Friedman, Chomsky is still someone whose writings and speeches I return to.

The story of Chomsky entails covering two very different tracks.

The first is his contribution to the field of linguistics and by extension cognitive science over the course of an academic career based mainly at MIT from 1955 through the 2000s. To utterly si

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