I, for one, also think that this is the best country in the world. No other country that I know of is based on as sophisticated a conception of rights and law as the United States. When it comes to constitutions we are state-of-the-art technology. As far as I know, it's really only in this country that we constantly ask ourselves basic questions like "Where does the right to vote come from?" as the Supreme Court justices did in the Bush V. Gore case, for example.
Most countries seem not to consider rights as such. They look on politics in terms of obligations the ruling class has to the ruled and vice versa. They see "rights" as that which the citizen can demand from government - positive obligations - instead of what they really are: negative obligations. I've also found that people in the rest of the world seem not to understand the idea of legal precedent. They feel it's somehow undemocratic.
I think that Chomsky sees the United States as man's best try so far at a decent society based not on cultural or religious self-identification but on the idea of self-government based on consent and protecting individual freedoms first and foremost. What naitonal legal system is closer to an anarchist concept than the libertarian United States?
Of course Chomsky is appalled at our external behavior. He believes that there is only one standard of ethics and those should be the same inside and outside the country. Obviously, our laws and constitution don't apply outside the country and it's really very difficult to extend self-government by consent outside national borders (the boundaries of that consent), but I hope he can keep reminding us for many years that we should try and extend those ethical covenants to everybody.
Noam Chomsky is a great American.