Creating Equal:
My Fight Against Race Preferences
by Ward Connerly
Posted on 08/03/2007 11:37:35 PM PDT by neverdem
The former vice president’s new book is itself an assault on reason.
The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore (Penguin Press, 320 pp., $25.95)
The most surprising thing about The Assault on Reason, Al Gore’s current bestseller, is that for a little while it actually makes some sense. The first few dozen pages, while hyperpartisan, mainly excoriate a dumbed-down, trivia-and-celebrity-obsessed culture, and in the age of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who could disagree?
But Al Gore is like one of those guys at a party with whom, once you get a few drinks in him, you never know what’s coming. He’s liable to strip to his underwear or start spewing expletives or waddle over with an outstretched hand and ingratiating smile and suddenly go for your ear like Mike Tyson. For just beneath that aging prep-boy facade, there’s an unmistakable anger and bitterness; where Bill Clinton has always seemed too comfortable in his skin, Gore has often seemed inclined to burst out of his, like some demented political version of the Incredible Hulk.
For me, the defining Al Gore story is the one that Ward Connerly, the longtime crusader against racial preferences, tells in his autobiography Creating Equal. Having been invited to the Clinton White House as part of a group of largely black conservatives to counter criticism that Clinton’s vaunted Initiative on Race was getting input from only one side, Connerly held forth on the great damage that he believed affirmative action and other well-intended policies had done to the ideal of a colorblind America. Clinton, he says, listened attentively, even sympathetically, and later threw his arm around him in brotherly solidarity. But Gore visibly seethed—and afterward, when Connerly offered his hand, he seized it in a vicelike grip and, smiling coldly, kept squeezing, until there was no doubt in Connerly’s mind that he was trying to hurt him.
The Assault on Reason is like that. Yes, it’s logically inconsistent and self-serving and unbelievably sanctimonious, but there’s a lot of that going around. What ultimately makes the book so disturbing is that something pretending to be a brief for reason and comity is so unbelievably small and mean-spirited. It is less an argument than an extended tantrum. Reading it is often like being locked in a room with a madman.
Even more than most partisan commentators today (and of course there are more than a few on the right), Gore is blind to how recklessly he abuses facts and applies double standards, not to mention to his own viciousness. He continually rails, for instance, against those who use “fear” and “simplistic nostrums disguised as solutions” to sway an inattentive and emotionally malleable public, causing it to “overreact to illusory threats and underreact to real threats”—this from the man behind the global-warming frenzy, who consistently downplays the menace of international terrorism.
He describes his conservative adversaries as nothing less than monsters, who hold their views not out of genuine conviction about what’s good for the country but because they are wholly indifferent to the general good. Moreover, he piously adds, the Right “often manifests a complete lack of empathy toward other Americans whom it identifies as its ideological enemies.” Yet a little further on, he’s applauding the special-interest groups on the left as “advocates of a broad and effuse public interest who rely mainly on the force of argument and the rule of reasoning,” regretting only that they lack “access to the same supplies of concentrated wealth” as those on the right. He bemoans “hatred as entertainment,” reserving special venom for the “Limbaugh-Hannity-Drudge Axis,” yet cites the likes of Paul Krugman and Joseph Wilson as decent and fair-minded commentators.
Most bizarre of all, he insists—indeed, this is his main point—that “the public sphere is simply no longer as open to the vigorous and free exchange of ideas from individuals as it was when America was founded” (this on page 26), and then manages not to discuss the Internet for another 230 pages. When he finally does, he blithely contradicts almost all of the alarmist claptrap that came earlier, proclaiming that “broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy.”
That The Assault on Reason has sold well is surely because Al Gore is now a name brand with whom a certain stripe of leftist is eager to identify. One is reminded of a recent marketing survey of Prius owners, which revealed that as many as 50 percent of those buying the Toyota hybrid do so because, unlike the Honda and Ford hybrids (which can be mistaken for regular Civics and Escapes), the Prius is immediately identifiable as a badge of virtue. Rest assured that this book, a similar emblem, will spend a lot more time on Hamptons coffee tables than at the beach.
Algore betrays the truth and plays on our fears.
Bump for later.
I wonder how much of this anger has been directed at Al's son, it could explain some of his need for solace in drugs.
“Nuttier than a squirrel turd,” as one FReeper says.
HAHAHAHAHA!
Global citizen? Then let him relocate to elsewhere on the globe and annoy someone else!
On some level I agree, but Al Gore has long been an adult and responsible for himself. I know many people with equally poor upbringing who have opened their minds and allowed a little light and air in.
Undoubtedly that is true but I doubt that any of those you know were subjected to the level of "indoctrination" Al Gore was.
Geez! Am I defending Owl Gore?
A red diaper baby for sure(Al Gore).. Must have been Hitlerys subliminal message, to us all, by choosing him.. for BILL..
I think it was George Carlin who quipped about somebody flunking out of divinity school, "They caught him cheating. During the exam he was looking into the soul of the guy sitting next to him."
Actually, I have read some accounts that he was smoking so much dope at Vanderbilt that he couldn't even pass the courses in their Divinity School.
I have a feeling that this book will be like Mein Kampf. Not to compare Gore to Hitler but about how the book was sold. Many people bought Hitler’s book but few read it. It was a standard gift for weddings and everyone had to have one displayed so people could see they owned it.
Gore’s book might be the same. No one reads it but they want other people to know how well read they are in the areas of environmentalism and politics.
I agree, he's like Carter. People think they're great humanitarians but deep down, both Carter and Gore can't comprehend that the American people didn't and don't like them.
I have seen the horror (Michael Yon's OpEd in the NY Daily News)
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Thanks for the ping!
thanks neverdem and Ernest for the pings (two topics, but...)
A Big Problem For Democrats (Joseph Farah On Democrats’ Defeatism Alert)
Worldnetdaily.com | 08/06/2007 | Joseph Farah
Posted on 08/06/2007 1:17:24 AM EDT by goldstategop
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1876916/posts
Creating Equal:
My Fight Against Race Preferences
by Ward Connerly
As far as the reviews go, it seems clear to me that Al Gore is so off the radar for conservatives in the sense of ANY MINUTE CREDIBILITY that there is almost no reviews by freelance conservatives.
Next for your reading entertainment is "A Message From Al Gore" bit that starts off with the sanctimonious:
I've dedicated my book, The Assault on Reason, to my father, Senator Albert Gore Sr., the bravest politician I've ever known. In the 1970 mid-term elections, President Richard Nixon relied on a campaign of fear to consolidate his power. I was in the military at the time, on my way to Vietnam as an army journalist, and I watched as my father was accused of being unpatriotic because he was steadfast in his opposition to the War--and as he was labeled an atheist because he dared to oppose a constitutional amendment to foster government-sponsored prayer in the public schools.
Let's review some of the keywords sure to convulse liberals: Nixon, fear, consolidate, power, War, atheist, government-sponsored, prayer, public schools. Not to mention, if you didn't know, Al was in Vietnam. At least it was nice to see that Al found a government-sponsored program he didn't support.
To the right of this message is a a picture of contemplating, and noticeably thinner Al Gore (file photo?)
Next we get a fawning, leading interview hosted by Amazon. A snip:
Amazon.com: Of all I've read and seen on climate change, I don't think anything has had quite the impact on me that those vivid maps of shrinking coastlines did in An Inconvenient Truth. You've spent years trying to communicate the threat of climate change and you've learned how to use compelling images to tell that story, but in this book you're very wary of the power of visual images to overwhelm reason with fear. How do you spur people to action in a crisis like this without using fear?
Gore: I often open the slideshow by talking about the "climate crisis." The English meaning of the word "crisis" conveys alarm, but the Chinese and Japanese expressions use two characters together: the first means danger, but the second means opportunity. The animations do help to convey some of that sense of danger--but the opportunities are enormous.
Neeedless to say the rest of the interview is softball after softball.
By the way I would like to know who the "I" is that is conducting this interview. Since when has an interviewer been accorded complete anonymity by just using the name of their employer? Traditionally the interviewer is identified at the beginning of such interview THEN wears the mantle of the name of the publication they work for.
Anyways I love Amazon but this really ticks me off and has me looking at other retailers for items I would have otherwise automatically bought from them.
I agree 100%. I am still truly frightened that but for a few thousand confused seniors in Florida he might have been the leader of the free world.
logically inconsistent and self-serving and unbelievably sanctimonious
So in other words in just the same old leftwing crap.
How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: (and Found Inner Peace) (Paperback)
by Harry Stein
http://www.amazon.com/Accidentally-Joined-Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy/dp/0060936975/ref=sr_1_1/103-7964298-8869406?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186404948&sr=1-1
Amazon.com
Conservatives aren’t born—they evolve. And for Wall Street Journal ethics columnist Harry Stein—once vilified in The Village Voice as “a well-known asshole”—that evolution began with the birth of his daughter. But Stein’s memoir on transforming from bleeding-heart liberal to someone who gets junk mail from Patrick Buchanan isn’t a sappy tale of fatherhood; it’s a witty, intelligent account of how one man began to think for himself. “I remember when I was called a fascist for the first time,” Stein writes about a dinner conversation in which he sided with Dan Quayle over the Murphy Brown/single-motherhood controversy. While alienating his left-leaning friends, Stein takes to task The New York Times, AIDS hysteria, men-hating feminists, and Bill Clinton, just to mention a few bastions of liberalism that contributed to his social makeover. As if to prove he didn’t start out this way, Stein spends a great deal of time trying to convince the reader of his liberal roots. His wife, a former story editor for a major motion picture company, once belonged to a group called Women Against Right-Wing Scum. His sexual escapades as a single man (including a trip to a New York “swap” club) make up a whole chapter. He also writes of his admiration for Tennessee Williams (whom he once interviewed) as if to say, “See, I am not a homophobe.”
(snip)
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