Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy

by Lewis H. Lapham

Book Overview

Award-winning columnist Lewis Lapham issues an urgent new polemic about the strangling of meaningful dissent?the lifeblood of democracy?at the hands of a government and media increasingly beholden to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594200173
• ISBN13: 9781594200175
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading

Anyone familiar with Lapham's elegant style from HARPER'S will need no recommendation to pick up this book. For others, get your hands on a copy and prepare for a treat. Intelligent, wry, clearly reasoned -- forget the politics, the prose on display here is enough to send Ann Coulter off a cliff, should she unexpectedly display any sense of shame. And what Lapham's saying about how we've arrived at our current national crisis is tonic at such a toxic time. He's particularly good (and disturbing) at drawing historical parallels to our present decline. In a perfect world, GAG RULE would knock the political bloviators from both parties off the best-seller lists. In our imperfect world, do yourself a favor. Read it. Now.

Do We Deserve Democracy? Probably Not.

In another characteristically bleak journey down into the depths of his adjective-laden dark side, Lewis Lapham develops his thesis that the politically slothful and intellectually comatose citizens of the United States of America are about to forfeit their dwindling democracy due to general ignorance and a pervasive lack of participation. The usual culprits are here for the blaming: the failings of public education, the media, political extremists on both sides of the equation, apathy, the general ignorance of historical precedent as harbinger, etc. Lapham lays it down in his own inimitable and slightly awkward style, and as usual, his stance is firmly grounded in fact and perfectly logical and believable. The George W. Bush administration is horrifying and monstrous, but not so horrifying that it doesn't have any historical parallels in U.S. politics. While McCarthyism is an obvious and convenient comparison, closer parallels can be drawn with Woodrow Wilson's administration (corporate hegemony, war as diversionary tactic, the stifling of dissent, all on a grand scale), and this is all entertainingly called out by Lapham, which makes for interesting reading. Lapham blames public education for illiteracy in America, which he extrapolates out to those individuals reading and comprehending at a level slightly higher than 'functional' ("street signs and restaurant menus"), and estimates to be about 1/3 of the population. While our educational system does suck, I would like to see more causal emphasis placed on families - a topic that Lapham doesn't touch in this book. America's educational sorting machine is completely useless and superfluous, and is no longer even salvageable enough to be the focus of any real attention or concern, or even ridicule, so why bother? (there I did it, just when I was totally convinced that nobody on earth is capable of 'one-downing' the grizzled Lapham). Predictably, much of Lapham's bile gets slathered over the American 'news' media, which of course deserves nothing but scorn. What else is new? The people who will take the time to read this book are newshounds and cynics to a man, already happily singing and playing in Lapham's dour band. If this book were released on CD so that illiterate America could partake of its bitter pleasures, would they? I doubt it. People like Lapham - erudite, superintelligent, respected in their fields - I wonder if they feel empty and weightless (albeit with all their bills paid) as their copy goes to press. These writers are not going to change any hearts and minds. Lapham will have no fresh faces to cry out, "I told you so!" to after what remains of America's democratic system has been drained, dismantled, and replaced by an abomination of the court, only to control and manipulate illiterate Americans by then reduced to nothing but a horde of savages conscripted to do its preemptive will. Lapham understands that Americans are too lazy and cowed to be effective at doing

More Great Material from Lapham

This is a tight little book with a lot of new material. Lapham sometimes tends to recycle pieces from his "Notebook" column in Harpers (which is certainly not bad, because they are so good), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. He once again skewers the absurdity of our show-business politics, laying blame at all deserving doorsteps. In a time of rabidly partisan Bush and liberal bashing books, Lapham shines through with his historical and cultural approach, covering the deep waters of American dysfunction. Read everything that Lapham and Gore Vidal write, to get a sense of the Republic we have lost.

Elegant Essay, Among Best of 475+ Books on Future of America

This is an elegant essay, possibly the best single individual work I have read within the 475+ non-fiction books on national security and global issues including the future of America. It absolutely must be read in conjunction with Peter G. Peterson's "Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can do About It" as well as Tom Atlee's "The Tao of Democracy" and Bill Moyers' "Doing Democracy."Steeped in history and the relationship of dissent to democracy, the author provides a down-to-earth yet erudite condemnation of the ease with which America was led to war on Iraq by a small group of individual who were able to silence Congress, the media, and all other public interest organizations. From the first chapter to the last, the author follows the Will and Ariel Durant method of balancing easy to read general comments with equally easy to read detailed footnotes. Early on he singles out Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd as being among the few that stood up to the falsehoods and were grounded in reality, speaking out with integrity and courage.Two comparisons are drawn by the author between the Bush Administration's abuse of the law and their control, and the past: the American past, when the Sedition Act was used to jail dissenters and subvert new immigrant voters; and the German past, when Hitler and Goering pulled off a gradual castration of free voice and vote with incremental steps, all done gradually, incrementally, inconspicuously, until suddenly a state of totalitarian rule existed. As the White House officially considered postponing the Presidential election of 2004, perhaps canceling it all together, one's bones can only feel the chill of these two examples, both discussed calmly and carefully by the author.There is a solid strain of economic thinking woven throughout the book, and one can only conclude that the concentration of wealth and the crimes against the working poor now being perpetuated, can only lead to a Great Depression as the labor economy collapses and the technology economy is attacked by the combined ills of overdue break-down, deliberate sabotage, and a withdrawal of foreign credit. The author makes the point on page 85 that America has elevated capital above humans--capital votes in America, humans do not, in the one place where it really matters: the crafting of legislation that transfers wealth from the individual working poor to the privilege elite that own the military-industrial-prison complex.Gifted ideas and turns of phrase abound. The author is consistent with others I have read in lamenting the continuing decline of our educational system, designed to create conformist factory workers, and goes beyond the norm in suggesting that perhaps 70% of our national potential intellectual capacity is being "killed" by the mediocrity of our existing educational institutions. I agree with that. Our children survive school, much as we survive hospitals and corp