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• The Assault on Reason
Al Gore

Penguin (Non-Classics), 2008 - 320 pages

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   highly recommended  highly recommended






A Litany of Republican Abuses...and a Call to Reason

While George H. W. Bush has been jumping out of airplanes, Jimmy Carter has written numerous books (one will be reviewed below) and has continued working with The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization he founded with his wife Rosalynne to promote democracy, improve health, and resolve conflicts worldwide. Along the way, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Center. Bill Clinton, since leaving office, has written two books and now trots the globe buttonholing anyone who will listen to obtain funds for work in underdeveloped countries. Al Gore has been busy and productive, too. He has written books, including this recent one, won an academy award for his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth on the global climate crisis, and was recently awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (he shared it with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). We haven't seen such efforts and achievements from our former Republican presidents. Richard Nixon did write several well-received books on world affairs, but Gerald Ford retired to Palm Springs to play golf, and Ronald Reagan was advanced in age when he left office (still, couldn't he have dictated something to Nancy?). And what can we expect from the 12 years of the Bush Administrations?

Probably nothing as erudite, impassioned, and visionary as Gore's The Assault on Reason. This a complex and wide-ranging book, but it is held together by a main theme that underlies all of the discussion. Gore states it perhaps most succinctly two pages before the end:

The rule of reason is the true sovereign of the American system. Our self-government is based on the ability of individual citizens to use reason in holding their elected representatives, senators, and presidents accountable for their actions. When reason itself comes under assault, American democracy is put at risk.

On the issue of the necessity of "an informed citizenry," as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, there is a strain of thought in American letters that is deeply conservative (not to say elitist), perhaps best exemplified by Allan Bloom's 1988 book The Closing of the American Mind, which singled out higher education for "impoverishing the souls" of students. Gore is not in that camp and seems to truly believe that we can still govern ourselves intelligently given the chance and a more open system of dialogue, which he calls "the conversation of democracy." Indeed, he is almost too sanguine about the American voter, letting us off a little too easily with regard to our own responsibility to seek out information and become "connected" to our democracy. Yet, Gore presents a reasonable case for why so many people seem to have opted out of the public debate.

His principal argument is that we have moved from a print-based culture, which began in the late middle ages with the first printing presses and exploded during the Enlightenment of the 18th century, to a passive TV/film/video culture in which the "conversation" is essentially one way. He contrasts the activity of watching TV with the act of reading, in which, he says, we "co-create" the reality. With modern mass media technology, however, the images are so realistic and explicit that our reasoning shuts down, further cutting us off from involvement in public discourse. It also leaves us vulnerable to "propaganda" (polite term, advertising), and Gore cites the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith who, in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g., The New Industrial State) wrote that huge corporate advertising budgets had permanently changed the classical economic model of supply and demand because so much of "demand" today (Gore would include political acquiescence) is "manufactured" through extremely expensive, very slick, and emotionally persuasive 10- to 30-second TV spots.

Another theme is the use of "fear-mongering" by those in power to gain political ends--how many times have we been told over the past seven years that we are in a constant, endless "state of war" against global terrorism, which justifies increases in government (especially executive branch) power? Writing forcefully but without personal rancor, Gore provides an extensive, detailed, and disheartening dissection of the behavior of the current administration. Over time, the individual stories fade from memory (or not), but Gore's litany of secrecy, cronyism, deception, lawbreaking, spying, stonewalling, and disinformation, along with a strong dose of disdain for science, brings it all back in a comprehensive laundry list of horrors committed against the American people, detainees in this country and elsewhere, foreign countries (we've all but abandoned Afghanistan, which probably could be saved with our help, to concentrate instead on Iraq, which probably can't), against our system of government (disregard for legislation lawfully passed by Congress, pressure on the judiciary to promote a political agenda), and the world (refusal to sign treaties dealing with global warming, nuclear proliferation, or anything else that limits the power of the U.S. to flex its muscles on the world stage).

It's fair to ask what Gore thinks we should do to improve the situation, and he provides some discussion. One thing he recommends, somewhat paradoxically, is using TV more effectively to bring congressional debates to the American people--in prime time, and with the cameras allowed to show the usually empty House and Senate chambers rather than just the speaker. Gore also wants campaign finance reform. He would prefer to see public funding of campaigns, but he knows it's politically improbable, so he'll settle for more transparency with regard to funding sources. On the positive side, he sees interesting things happening on the Internet (which he expects to supplant TV as the primary mass medium, though it will take a while) that could alter the landscape of our politics and democracy. One of these is the rise of campaign fund raising on the Internet from lots of small contributors instead of just a few wealthy organizational "donors." Another is the rise of blogging, which he says returns some of the power and dignity to the individual in the political realm and helps to re-establish what he calls the "meritocracy of ideas."

Gore's recommendations might very well help, and the trends he sees may very well provide a path to reinvigorating American democracy, but the wild card is still the question of how passionately individual citizens want to heal and preserve the system that has served us relatively well for over two hundred years. Gore remains optimistic: "We are by nature a courageous and adaptive people. Our forebears overcame great challenges, and so will we." Let's hope he's right.

The Assault on Reason is a stimulating and inspiring mixture of current events analysis and political philosophy, with Gore showing an impressive grasp of world and American history (especially the early years of the republic) and a deep understanding of science and government. With a combined 24 years of service in the House, Senate, and Vice Presidency, he is one of the best political thinkers and practitioners America has produced in the past half century, and he is definitely worth listening to.



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Al Gore's movie

I saw Al Gore's movie and I found that he was right, so I also bought the assault on reason, it is a good book.









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An Assault on Reason

I agree with the points made concerning the decline in active reasoning among the electorate and have long appreciated the book by Neil Postman quoted by AG. The way contemporary students learn is very different then it was 30 years ago, as any of us still teaching know. This being the case, the argument that we essentially have to go back to be a nation of readers and thinkers - even if using new technologies to accomplish this - should seem obviously overly optimistic. AG argues the current administration and corporations that own the media take advantage of this to control the way people think enabling them to run things according to their political agenda. Agreed. AG argues that the current administration uses fear and emotion, also in this regard, religion, along with simplistic principles (not actually Christian but Manichean) to disrupt the rational discourse necessary to maintain our Republic. Agreed! Doesn't all this just mean the Republicans have properly understood current social dynamics and used them to win? What seems to be AG's answer to this? He couches the issues in simplistic and repetitive points to instill fear in all those who are afraid we are losing our Republic. Of course, he does it his way and the book turns out to be a good resource for those looking for a complete collection of liberal pap all in one volume. I will keep this book on my shelf next to my Ann Coulter collection where it belongs. At least Ann tells great jokes.


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Important Read for Everyone

For those of you less likely to read this book (largely out of Republican party affiliation), please disregard who the author is. As an independent, I was wary to pick this up, but I was intrigued. Certainly, there are the occasional potshots at the administration, but this book transcends the current administration and should not be seen as some attempt to begrudgingly say "Well if I had been President..." It addresses much more than the Bush administration and hits at the core issues our Founding Fathers intended for our country during its founding ("a well informed citizenry"). At a time when many more of us WATCH our news rather than READ and PARTICIPATE, we become increasingly subject to the powers that be. If anything this book is a message that our public, as a whole, needs to wise-up or we'll increasingly grow to become "non-participants" in our democratic process.


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The Assault On Reason

Fantastic. Al Gore has been sold short in the past by the Media & the American people. The book proves beyond a doubt that Al Gore is one of the most prominent visionaries of our time.


reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18



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