This article examines the assumptions that underlie Noam Chomsky's politics and argues that his analysis of US foreign policy since World War II may best be situated within the realist tradition in international relations. Chomsky's left realism has not been adequately understood or addressed by IR scholars for both political and disciplinary reasons. In opposition to most classical realists, he has insisted that intellectuals should resist rather than serve national power interests. In contrast to most political scientists, he has also refused to theorize, critiquing much of the enterprise of social science in terms of what he sees as highly suspect power interests within the academy. Hostility to Chomsky's normative commitments has consequently prevented IR scholars from discerning key aspects of his project, as well as important historical and theoretical continuities between radical and realist thought.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in social scientific literature on the topic of "religious violence," much of it arguing that there is a uniquely intense and disturbing connection between religion and political conflict and bloodshed. In this article, I challenge mainstream accounts of "religious violence" with an illustrative example from the 16th century of the theoretical and empirical problems with all such essentialist claims. The terms employed in the construction of "religious violence" might today just as easily be applied to the violence of the putatively "secular" nation-state. Furthermore, framing the debate in these sharp binary terms, as William Cavanaugh compellingly demonstrates, is itself part of a political project that had a very particular historical beginning and that conceals as much as it reveals about the nature of violence, both in the past and in the present.

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On August 6, 1824, William Lloyd Garrison, not yet twenty years old, penned a letter to the Salem Gazette opposing John Quincy Adams's bid for the presidency and endorsing the candidacy of a dedicated Georgian, United States Senator William Crawford. There is no mention in the document of the slavery issue and no hint that the young Garrison viewed the Constitution as anything less than a triumph of the founding fathers. The “high and exalted character” of the elections proved the Federalist Party “worthy of its great leader, the immortal WASHINGTON” and spread “vigor and strength throughout the political fabric of our constitution and government,” Garrison wrote. “It is peculiarly gratifying, too,” he declared,to observe the dignified course pursued generally by the few sentinels of freedom, who advocate and uphold those principles, which were promulgated by the Father of his Country, and sanctioned by JAY and HAMILTON, and AMES, with a host of other distinguished patriots.Garrison went on to stress the civic duty of voting, arguing that although no citizen was legally required to support any of the presidential candidates, reason “dictates that we should” so as not to upset “the peace of the Union.” Federalists should make pragmatic political choices, he wrote, and not squander their votes on ideal but unlikely candidates.