The Assault on "The Assault" : Mark Buchanan (subscription req)

Most people have reacted enthusiastically to Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason.” He seems to have hit a nerve with his assessment of what ails our democracy – the unchecked power of special interests backed by big money, the pervasive influence of mindless and addictive television, and the relentless triumph of image and style over content, which makes us read more articles about John Edwards’ haircuts than about our failing education system. “Gore understands our problems,” as one reviewer put it, “as does no other politician of our time.”

But not everyone shares that view. And judging from some of the more negative reviews now beginning to appear, the idea of trying to improve our public discourse and our government’s policies by the collective application of reason – and even science – comes pretty close in some peoples’ minds to communism or totalitarianism. It’s an assault on human freedom, an inhuman attempt to stamp out human virtue and sensitivity.

snip

Ironically, of course, these reviews actually illustrate Gore’s central point. They cast him as a liberal monster who aims to suppress free speech, or they make fun of his writing, his sighs or his professorial manner, rather than focusing on his arguments. They aim to win with image and rhetoric, not content.

snip

Many people seem to think that science should have boundaries. They’re O.K. if it stays in the familiar realms of physics, chemistry, biology and geology. But there’s an innate distrust when science begins poking around our lives, thoughts and behavior, and near alarm at the idea that science might possibly show that we, like the rest of nature, obey law-like regularities – even if we might learn from them and in so doing help ourselves.

read the whole thing its quite refreshing...
http://buchanan.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/the-assault-on-the-assault/

It's a start to maybe having a decent discussion, he is proving the point, and that is a good thing!:) :kick:

didn't realize it was subscriber only.

heres another snip :)

The science philosopher Lee McIntyre several years ago published a scholarly book entitled “Law and Explanation in the Social Sciences: Defending a Science of Human Behavior,” in which he argued that there’s no reason to think that human social science has to be essentially different from the rest of science, although many social theorists have been saying as much for years. His arguments, as he relates in his most recent book, “Dark Ages,” met with irate and emotional criticism, and intense resistance, though not many strong counterarguments:

(The counterarguments) were so weak that I became convinced that even their advocates did not really believe them. …The threat, it seems, is one to human freedom and autonomy-the notion that we are “special” in the universe. It is taken to be an insult to human dignity to suppose that one can study our behavior with the same methodology that one uses to study all the other matter in the universe. It degrades us and robs us of our uniqueness. It is somehow to make us less than human.

Maybe this deep-seated fear has nothing to do with the resistance to Al Gore’s proposals, which after all only aim to help us understand how we got ourselves into this predicament, in which the knowledge we create as a society, often at immense cost, so often fails to influence our policies. But I do wonder if it isn’t reflected in the intense criticisms of his world view, which some see as sterile, lacking in emotion and virtually inhuman.

Of course, they could certainly say as much about everything I’ve written about in this column over the past month. I’ve described a number of examples – some more convincing than others, to be sure – of how collective social patterns can “well up” in human groups, following processes that often operate outside of the field of human awareness. Of course, there’s no threat to morality or human autonomy, to values or emotions, in any of this, for there’s no contradiction between individual freedom and patterns that emerge in regular ways at the level of many people.

Our understanding of the human world is still relatively backward, I think, in part because the philosophy of man and society got off on the wrong track centuries ago and has been stuck with some damaging preconceptions, the worst of which is that man is somehow essentially different from the rest of nature and stands apart from it; that we can’t, or shouldn’t, use science to understand and help govern ourselves and our societies. This idea is still very influential. And it’s one of the key ideas, I suspect, that, although hidden, now stands in Al Gore’s way.

...finished the book, and their logical fallacy machine is starting to crank out the propoganda.

Al Gore has ripped away the curtain, and the right wing extremists are pissed as hell that we can see who the Great and Powerful Oz really is.

I know Gore's a bright guy but can he actually write? Is his book worth reading? I have an Amazon voucher left over from my birthday and I was thinking of getting "Assault" with it.

but usually never get around to reading them. I have a big stack on the coffee table and more on the shelves.

"Assault on Reason" I am reading! In fact, I had to go buy a second copy Thursday because I gave my first copy away to a student - political science major - who is in my psych class.

I've learned things about current events I am shocked that I did not know -- I knew that DeLay was in on gerrymandering Texas so the GOP could get more Congressional seats, but I had no freakin' idea that they managed to get Homeland Security and two other Federal Agencies to help track down Democrats to force them back to Texas so they would have quorum and the Texas Republicans could shove the gerrymandered maps down the voter's throats.

I've gotten insights that I should've had before - regarding why the GOP is blurring the line between church and state.

I'm am learning new tidbits about neuropsychology that I hadn't seen before -- and I teach college psychology. :eyes: It is a little irritating to read a politician who knows things about your field that you don't. I think I have company, though, in that I've heard climate scientists say the same thing about Gore -- he has such a tremendous grasp of the breadth of the field that they learn from him.

Finally - he is PASSIONATE - Gore at his best.

Now - if he could be just as passionate on TV. Damn.

A final bit: He is demonstrating a profound commitment to truth and he still has a way to get to the whole truth about the U.S. and militarism. I think he is reserving his criticisms of Dems who voted for the Iraq War Resolution, for war funding - because he, himself, actually went to war - Vietnam - because he thought he had to for the sake of his political career. If Gore repudiated careerism as it impacts U.S. militarism he would be the most amazing force for progress that I could imagine.

I have a stack of books next to my bed that I haven't got around to reading.

I knew about the quoram incident (the blessed Molly Ivins).

Right, that goes on the Amazon order then!

Ever heard of the "bigger fool" concept on the stock market or the fact that paper money's value is based on faith? (if people stopped believing in the value of paper money it would have no value, it would just be paper) its the same thing with the style and image and rhetoric thing. People have allowed it to win argments, and now it has gained trading value that outweighs reason. To fight it we MUST in the name of GOD stop doing things like "backing candidates because they can win" instead of backing the people we believe in...because when we say a candidate "can win", it usually means the candidate has image/rhetoric appeal. Everytime we do this we up the VALUE of image by placing our faith in its value, just like we can raise the value of a stock by buying it. To devalue bullshit we must stop accepting it as currency and investing in it.

Thanks for the thread Jim4Wes.