These seem like big troubled times and Noam Chomsky joins us to give us his take on everything from the Occupy Movement to the Arab Spring.

Academic and polemicist Noam Chomsky. (AP)

Noam Chomsky has been calling for decades for a kind of revolution. For Americans and everybody else around the world to wake up to how power is used and abused, and how people need to take it back. It was a lonely road he often walked in this country when times were good and the Cold War was won and bubbles were big.

Today, a lot of bubbles have burst. And the rebel Noam Chomsky has people listening who might never have paused to think. It’s a deep, fierce critique he offers, of American capitalism today, of American foreign policy and more.

This hour, On Point: the rebel, Noam Chomsky.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Noam Chomsky, intellectual, social critic, and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT.

From Tom's Reading List

Chomsky writing in Tom Dispatch "Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated — Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact."

Chomsky writing in Al-Akhbar "In the 2011 summer issue of the journal of the American Academy of Political Science, we read that it is “a common theme” that the United States, which “only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal – is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay.” It is indeed a common theme, widely believed, and with some reason."

Chomsky writing in Salon "The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead — because victory won’t come quickly — it could prove a significant moment in American history."

Dissent "During their surge to prominence last fall, the Occupiers seemed to render that question moot. They set up camp in scores of cities and thrust the problem of economic inequality onto front pages, home pages, and into the center of political debate. It was as if, in a startling rewrite of Beckett’s great play, Vladimir and Estragon had not been waiting in vain: Godot decided to show up after all. Alas, by late winter (as I write) few of the occupations still exist, the non-left media have mostly lost interest, and activists appear divided and dispirited about what should come next."

Video: Chomsky on Education

Noam Chomsky discusses the purpose of education and the impact of technology.