Al Gore's diatribe against all things Bush, ostensibly a case for clear thinking and facts, instead engages in the sloppiest logic since Philosophy 101 freshman year. I've decided to call this book Al Gore's Assault on Reason by Richard in Japan
(conservative)
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Al Gore Wages an Assault on Reason
A book review
As We All Know, Democrats Are the Reasonable Ones
… Until They Start Explaining Themselves!
Sometimes a book or movie has an unintentionally appropriate title. How fitting, for example, for Al Franken to label one of his books Lies. Michael Moore's TV show "The Awful Truth" had the review built right into the title. By changing it from plural to singular, his book Stupid White Men likewise would constitute truth in advertizing. Liberals are not the only ones: Ann Coulter seemed to be practicing honesty when she chose the title Slander, and autobiography in calling her latest book Demonic.
However, the champion of this category would have to be Former Vice President Al Gore's diatribe against all things Bush,The Assault on Reason. While ostensibly making a case for clear thinking and facts, Gore instead engages in the sloppiest logic I've seen since Philosophy 101 in freshman year. Here then is my review of the book I've decided to call Al Gore's Assault on Reason (Penguin Books, 2007).
To get a quick glimpse of the extent of Gore's personal vendetta against Bush, flip first to the Index and count the total number of entries under "Bush, George W." The answer is 118 -- more than all entries beginning with the letters J, K, and L put together. That's not even including other references elsewhere in the alphabet, such as "War-making, Bush's abuse of"; "Judiciary, Bush's assaults on"; and the dead giveaway "Reason, Bush's lack of". Anyone seeking objectivity -- look elsewhere. Gore will never forgive Bush for winning the election in 2000; the rest of his life is payback time, and this book is the down payment.
Since the average reader is treated as incapable of reaching the right conclusion on the basis of facts and logic, Gore leaves nothing to chance. The tone is set right away on the front cover -- the words "WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE" in a gold disc demand our honor and respect. Likewise, the blurbs on the jacket: "... wrongly barred from the presidency ... -- Los Angeles Times" and "... devastating precisely because Gore has been so close to the pinnacle of American politics .... -- Bloomberg.com" call for our sympathy even before the opening whistle has been blown.
Sadly, the objectivity of the book does not improve once Gore begins to lay out his arguments.
In a nutshell, Gore contends that logic, fairness and civility in public discourse have seen their last days;
that this is a recent development;
and the blame rests entirely on the Republicans in general and Bush in particular.
I don't know where to begin setting him straight on those ideas. Politics has never been beanbag, and as a second-generation Senator he should know that. From the angry backlash against Joseph McCarthy through the bitter accusations of the Vietnam era to the cruel taunts against Ronald Reagan, Gore's whole life has been witness to the depths to which people can sink in order to win. Had he been truly observant, he might have noticed that the lion's share of these incivilities were committed by Democrats.
I am the first to admit that both sides play rough, and sure, sometimes the Republicans need to dial it back. I would be more charitable to Gore's argument should he at least tsk-tsk at unfair attacks on Republicans, such as Kanye West's "George Bush doesn't care about black people". Instead he mentions only Republican transgressions, and even then, they are thoroughly innocuous incidents which he describes as if they were unforgiveable. Join me now, on the emotional rollercoaster that is a liberal taking offense at the thoroughly inoffensive.
He writes, "When the White House became upset with coverage by CBS television news, [Bush] engaged in the theatrics of personal intimidation by ... carrying under his arm ... a book by a right-wing conservative attacking CBS as biased. (p. 125) Yes, you read that right. I had to check that quote several times to see if I missed something when I transcribed it. Gore claims the mainstream media was cowed at the sight of Bernard Goldberg'sBias, probably the same way a vampire recoils at the sight of a bible. The same media that earlier ambushed Candidate Bush with a pop quiz on current events in Pakistan, according to Gore, was terrorized at the sight of President Bush reading a book. A few years later Dan Rather attempted to influence the outcome of a presidential election by issuing a story based on falsified documents, giving credence to the accusations of bias against Rather's employer CBS, and neatly disproving Gore's assertion of "personal intimidation".
This wasn't even his most ridiculous example of sounding a false alarm. Here's more of what Gore considers "dangerous statements" and "threats", this time directed against judges in federal courts:
Tom Delay: "We seat the courts, we can unseat the courts. We have the power of the purse." (p. 230)
Republican congressman Steve King from Iowa: "... When their budget starts to dry up, we'll get their attention. That's not my preferred method. My preferred method is to have them respect the Constitution and the law. But they are counterproductive to this country and if we're going to preserve our Constitution, we must get them in line." (p. 230)
Activist James Dobson: "... Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the Ninth Circuit doesn't exist anymore and it's gone." (p. 231)
Any reasonable person would read these quotes and consider them to be tame, even harmless, expressions of political opinion. In Gore's world, however, they are the rhetorical equivalent of a brick through the window. He writes "Through such threats, many Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges might well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of congressional retribution." (p. 231)
He seems to believe that these judges are so faint of heart that a public discussion on constitutional checks and balances is as scary as finding a horse's head in your bed. Sadly, this is not typical of the reasoning Gore brings to his writing.
No. It gets worse.
Turning to the cases of unauthorized hazing and photographing of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, for which several Army personnel were rightly punished, Gore manufactures a consensus on how the rest of us are allowed to feel about it, much the same way he did on global warming: "The damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. Remember how shocked each of us was when we first saw those hideous images?" (p. 152) If I may answer that question? No, I don't remember being shocked. Believe it or not, I've seen a human pyramid before. Maybe I'm jaded, but it takes more than a man wearing a dog leash to shock me, and I think I'm much more representative of the average American than Al Gore.
Then there was this gem: "... If the U.S. military begins to torture its captives with impunity, our troops will have to learn to expect the same treatment if they are captured." (p. 174)
News flash, Al. We're fighting against an enemy that doesn't follow the Geneva Conventions.
For the record, I don't advocate torture, and I'm not sure that "enhanced interrogation" is a good idea. I think it's far more likely that a detainee will say what he thinks his torturer wants to hear, true or false, just to get the torture to stop. Confessing under torture just in time to stop the next terrorist attack only happens on TV shows like "24". Having said that, I've heard of no treatment of terrorist detainees, up to and including waterboarding, that is as bad as how they would treat us if the roles were reversed.
Two examples will suffice:
We sometimes smeared their faces with fake menstrual blood. They routinely shed real blood.
We once gave a prisoner a funny haircut.They routinely behead their prisoners, even civilians. Ask Daniel Pearl. Ask Nick Berg.
For pure illogicality, I would have to go with this exchange earlier in the book: Complaining of measures taken in the name of Homeland Security since 9-11, he writes "Now, if it wants to, the federal government has the right to ... keep a list of everyone you send e-mail to or receive e-mail from and everyone you call on the telephone or who calls you ...." (p. 134ff)
The punchline is what comes next. A mere five pages later he has shifted gears and accuses the Bush administration of missing a chance to have prevented the 9-11 attacks in the first place. He describes, in some detail, how the hijackers could have been tracked down, starting with their purchase of airplane tickets just prior to the 9-11 attacks, then checking their associations with known or suspected terrorists: "...With Mohammed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist (Khalid) Almidhar, analysts could have added Atta's phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so, they would have identified four other hijackers ...." (p. 140ff)
Do you see the hypocrisy? A MERE FIVE PAGES after criticizing the Patriot Act for looking at phone calls and emails of terror suspects, Gore blames the president for failing to do THE EXACT SAME THING to the nineteen eventual hijackers!
My next point doesn't really belong in this review; it's more of a pet peeve. Remember when Christine O'Donnell, running for the Senate in Delaware, said that the words "separation of church and state" did not appear in the Constitution or First Amendment? She was right. Here, Gore is lamenting the ignorance of civic knowledge among his fellow citizens. Citing a survey of college students' knowledge of American government, he writes "an overwhelming majority, 72.8 percent, could not correctly identify the source of the idea of 'a wall of separation' between church and state." (p. 256) He says no more about it, and the internet link he provided as his source no longer functions, so I can't tell what either he or americancivilliteracy.org thinks the correct answer should be. In fairness to Gore, I don't know what he believes, but I suspect he would tell me that the Bill of Rights guarantees a separation of church and state. If so, he would be wrong. The First Amendment protects RELIGION FROM GOVERNMENT, not the other way around.
I can't resist ending with this quote, which doesn't so much show Gore's lack of knowledge or lack of logic as his lack of a competent editor. He wrote "... former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who's from my home state and didn't know better ...." (p. 242)
The way that sentence is constructed, it implies that anyone from the state of Tennessee is not expected to understand a given concept! I certainly don't believe that about the citizens of the Volunteer State, but in the case of Gore himself, I think his lack of understanding has been demonstrated fully.
(c) Kublai Khan Unlimited 2011.
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