[...] one must be cautious in assessing the political significance of the relative freedom from repression — at least for the privileged — in the Uni… - Noam Chomsky

Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way.

In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explains that “the very essence of the democratic process” is “the freedom to persuade and suggest,” what he calls “the engineering of consent.” “A leader,” he continues, “frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … Democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering … consent to socially constructive goals and values,” applying “scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs”; and although it remains unsaid, it is evident enough that those who control resources will be in a position to judge what is “socially constructive,” to engineer consent through the media, and to implement policy through the mechanisms of the state. If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society.

The principles of universal grammar provide a highly restrictive schema to which any human language must conform, as well as specific conditions determining how the grammar of any such language can be used. It is easy to imagine alternatives to the conditions that have been formulated (or those that are often tacitly assumed). These conditions have in the past generally escaped notice, and we know very little about them today.