Appearing on Democracy Now! on Tuesday, U.S. scholar and MIT professor Noam Chomsky responded to comments made by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) during Monday’s tea party debate, suggesting Paul had said nothing controversial at all, despite the audience’s negative reaction.

He agreed with Paul’s assessment about al Qaeda’s stated motives for attacking the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001: it’s not American freedom or the nature of its society, it was U.S. policies that drove them to such a savage attack.

“What he said is completely uncontroversial,” Chomsky said. “You can read it and go in the documents. You can find it in polls. Maybe people don’t like to hear it.”

He concluded that many Muslims around the world had opposed the U.S. “not because they hate our freedoms, but because they opposed murderous and brutal policies.”

This video is from Democracy Now!, broadcast Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011.