Chomsky's Golden Rule: Comparison and Cosmopolitanism

Noam Chomsky's rhetoric is emphatically cosmopolitan: written as if for instant translation with an absolute minimum of the vocal markers of location or nationality. Nevertheless it is a rhetoric, and its signature device is national comparison—more precisely, the comparison built as an imperative into the Golden Rule: that the United States should do unto other countries as it would have them do unto it. While appreciative of this point, this essay argues that the place of the United States in Chomsky's comparisons undermines both Chomsky's apparent universalism and his self-declared anarchism. The essay tries to re-direct Chomsky's readers toward a cosmopolitanism that would be both qualified and empowered.