While I despise Chomsky's politics and cannot believe that he is really the "top public intellectual", credit must be given where credit is due.
His work on linguistics has had a profound impact on computer programming languages (look into context free grammars...).
he is a great linguistic! but an idiot thinker though ;-)
I had to study Chomsky to get a teaching degree. Half of it was complete crap.His designer teaching theories ruined a generation of students.