When I heard Burleigh talking to Kim Hill one Saturday morning some years ago, he spent an awkward five minutes or so engaged in denouncing Noam Chomsky. It was awkward for two reasons: 1.) embarrassingly, he became worked up and high-pitched during his rant, and 2.) even more embarrassingly, t was clear that he had clearly not read much or anything by Chomsky; his comments were indistinguishable from the wandery ruminations one hears from lonely right wing drunkards in the small hours of the morning on New Zealand commercial talkback stations, if one were bored enough or silly enough to tune in.

That was what led me to read his polemic Sacred Causes.