The Assault on Reason by Al Gore is a strong defense of reason, although not in the context of reason vs. religious faith. Gore has religious faith; his concern is that we are becoming less and less a "well-informed citizenry," which has profound implications for the survival of our democracy. Our Founding Fathers relied on an engaged public that freely debated the issues, but several things have happened to undercut this ideal. Radio and later television, which are one-way media with large barriers to entry, have largely displaced print, which encourages two-way discourse and which, as Gore writes, "begat the Age of Reason which begat the age of democracy." Also, for example, political professionals have honed their messages to short-circuit reason by appealing to emotion.

Gore especially excoriates the Bush administration because of its assault on reason by its excessive secrecy, its lack of openness, its politics of fear, and its disregard of science. He gives many examples on which he bases his accusations, but one stands out in my mind that shows Bush's "lack of curiosity about any new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he is supposed to wrestle with on behalf of the country." Gore describes the warning signals that the FBI and the CIA were picking up in the summer of 2001 and notes that the only ones he recalls as vice-president that remotely resembled those that Bush was receiving were the Y2K threats and the less specific warnings regarding the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In each case, "these warnings in the President's Daily Brief (PDB) were followed immediately, on the same day, by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the White House" with appropriate people to prevent the attack. "By contrast," he writes, when Bush "received this fateful and historic PDB ['Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.']," he did not convene the NSC, bring together the FBI and CIA, or ask follow-up questions, but he did dismiss his CIA briefer with the comment, "All right. You've covered your ass now."

This is a hard-hitting book that conservatives will likely dismiss as a hysterical screed by the loser in 2000. Maybe Gore would have liked the book to prompt a draft for another run. In any case, for anyone concerned about the health of our democracy, there is too much here to dismiss so easily.

--Earl Wunderli