"Chomsky describes himself as a "socialist" whose goal is a "post-capitalist society worth living in or fighting for."(13) He has called capitalism a "grotesque catastrophe" and a doctrine "crafted to induce hopelessness, resignation, and despair." When speaking about class struggle, Chomsky uses terms like "us" versus "them." Them includes "the top ten percent of taxpayers" (the bracket he himself occupies). Us, he says with truly audacious dishonesty, includes the other 90 percent. He further polishes his radical credentials by boasting about how he loves to spend time with "unemployed working class, activists of one kind or another, those considered to be riff-raff."(14)

Yet this man of the people, who is among the top 2 percent in the United States in net wealth, moved his family out of Cambridge, Massachusetts--hardly a working-class district to begin with--to the even more affluent wooded suburb of Lexington, where he was even less likely to mingle with blue-collar types. Moreover, he made the move around the time forced busing was being imposed on the Boston area; Lexington was exempt from the court order. Today, America's leading socialist owns a home worth over $850,000 and a vacation home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, valued in excess of $1.2 million. Chomsky's home on the Cape is smack in the middle of a state park, which prevents any condos from going up nearby and obstructing his view. And don't look for oppressed minorities in either neighborhood. This self-described admirer of the Black Panthers, who says intellectuals must combat "all forms of racism" and complains that America "excludes" blacks from large parts of the country, owns a home in a town with a black population of 1.1 percent"