Assault on Reason

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The Assault on Reason

The Assault on Reason is primarily an assault on the Bush administration, according to a New York Times book review.

It is a political book [1] by Al Gore, who displays typical liberal deceit by claiming that it is not political.[2] In the book, Gore accuses President Bush of having an unprincipled hunger for power.


In the book, Al Gore discusses how he thinks that the American democracy has been undermined by the current administration's intrusions of power. While claiming that the book is not political, Gore attacks the current President and his administration relentlessly.


In a June 12, 2007, review for Reason magazine, Michael C. Moynihan wrote:

The Assault on Reason reestablishes Gore as America’s premier besserwisser and moral scold: the politician who both warns that we are scaring people to death and argues that Manhattan will soon be submerged beneath the Atlantic.[3]

ABC's Jake Tapper wrote:

"The Assault On Reason" is an assault on President George W. Bush -- 308 pages of professorially rendered, liberal red meat.

General critique of US politics

  • This volume moves beyond its criticisms of the Bush administration to diagnose the ailing condition of America as a participatory democracy — low voter turnout, rampant voter cynicism, an often ill-informed electorate, political campaigns dominated by 30-second television ads, and an increasingly conglomerate-controlled media landscape ... [1]
  • The book also critiques the growing occurrence of American citizens being turned away from world events as a result of extremely minor events (specifically, the death of Anna Nicole Smith) as an analogy to a person's immune system. Gore uses the immune system to describe how when the American continuously hears too much of a negative thing, such as the goings-on in Iraq, which Gore equates to the constant exposure of a bodily sickness the immune system, it can cause the people to overreact to a small occurrence such as the death of a celebrity, which Gore equates to the immune system collapsing in on itself when an easily combatible disease has not been immunized by the body.

False segue from general to specific

Gore's book quotes a general rhetorical question by Democratic Senator Byrd, which in itself raises a good point.

"Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?"

Byrd's inquisition seems to be somewhat contradicted when Gore claims that Democrats appear to be more reasonable than Republicans.

Notes

  1. Gore still says he has no plans to run for president, but his latest book, "The Assault On Reason," is so nakedly political and sharply critical it's hard to discern what his plans may be. ABC News
  2. "I'm not a candidate and this is not a political book, this is not a candidate book," Gore told Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. ABC News
  3. Free Speech for People Who Think Like Me, Michael Moynihan, Reason, June 12, 2007

See also

External links