Chomsky can't even have a email dialogue with Sam Harris without becoming oozing contempt and incivility for no discernible reason.
Civility is overrated. It is also the usually first complaint at hand to dismiss people, rather than their arguments.
I would put that to an 87 year old academic who's vast library jammed in his head makes discourse with Sam (who I've listened to his podcast and doesn't typically source arguments and occasionally comes across as an ideologue) a little frustrating. Or maybe he's just old and crotchety.
Its always interesting to learn something new from the "tolerance" brigade.
I have no trouble discerning a reason for the tone of Chomsky's responses; when given the benefit of the doubt -- despite Chomsky clearly expecting that he was about to have his time wasted by in the professional equivalent of message-board trolling -- he proceeded with what was clearly the exact thing that Chomsky expected and which made him reluctant to engage at the outset.
Personally, I think Chomsky showed admirable restraint for the way his time was being wasted.
I don't know Chomsky personally so I can't speculate about his interaction with Harris, but it is unfair to judge a man on the basis of a single interaction.
That said, though, his joint podcast with Dan Carlin was actually pretty good link here --> http://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-293-sitting-do...
Harris's single skill lies in persuasively making arguments that contain significant logical leaps.
It might help with discern a reason.
There is a certain level of social decorum most people keep that prevents no-holds-barred exploration of ideas. On the tails of the bell curve faith-based orthodoxy and intellectual orthodoxy.. rude but incredibly sharp instruments of exploring thought.
I'm not advocating for being an asshole... but rather for a select few we should try to see through the incivility to the ideas they're contributing.
Hitchens was inflammatory, but also flexible in his thinking.
Buckley was an interesting case. To some extent, he was more acerbic towards those he mostly agreed with than those who he had further ideological skirmishes with. For instance, he was friends and associates with Galbraith, but infamously brutal towards Rothbard over his non-interventionist views on foreign policy.
Buckley probably realized that without vigorous pruning of the anti-Semites, libertarians, Randians and John Birchers, American conservatism would collapse into a fairly terrifying fringe movement; something which has been borne out since his passing.
At the start of his interview with Chomsky he threatens that if Chomsky loses his temper he (Buckley) will "smash [Chomsky] in the goddamned face."