>Not quite. The indenpendence of syntax from semantics
>does not render all sentences semantically equivalent.
Liberals don't argue that the primacy & independence of procedural justice render the contents of all speeches & actions equivalent either, though. Some kinds of political speech and action, for instance, are 'nonsense,' i.e., fall outside the pale of liberal rationality (see John Rawls' discussion of rational choice and rationality of the parties in the original position, for instance).
>Chomsky doesn't draw political conclusions from his
>linguistic work; instead he seems to rely mostly on a
>naive moralism illustrated by comparisons, e.g., the
>US gov't and press damn A for doing this to B, but
>when C does the same thing to D, the US and its press
>look the other way.
>
>But again, I have to qualify that, for his essay on
>Skinner, to me at least, *hints* constantly that an
>infinite productive capacity for language justifies
>the notion that human being are free entities.
I think that what you describe above is a political conception of sorts. Chomsky seems to me to be committed to the idea that the essence of human nature is defined by creative freedom and that the political ideal for us should be to develop our capacity for creative freedom autonomously, so the goal is human self-realization. His objection to behaviorism, for instance, derives from the fact that he thinks that behaviorism -- or materialist determinism in general or only the crude reductionist varieties of it? -- makes human autonomy non-existent or at least incomprehensible.
Yoshie