Dear Professor Chomsky,

An unmistakable indicator of the quality of your work is the chorus of hatred and moral panicking it brings about among intellectual communities with a long tradition of subservience. One couldn’t find a better example of this than Eastern Europe where the prevailing perception of the intellectual is that of an educated agent at the service of “higher interests” that the “herd” cannot be expected to grasp. Large sectors of apologists of state socialism turned propagandists of neoliberalism: there’s a common thread and it’s called mindless conformism.
You deserve the highest of credits for showing that dissent is not a passion of some eccentric minds but the basis of intellectual and moral integrity. An attitude in scarce supply where I come from.

Thanks to both your linguistic theory and political writings I have learned about human nature and society things that my own sociological curriculum wouldn’t have taught me.

Thank you for the inspiration and Happy Birthday!