Comments

I am not sure if it is reason that really is at the base of Gore's complaint. And if it is then I am not sure I agree with him. But Friedman and Dowd are on to something that is more fundamental than policy. I think what we are debating is principles. What are the principals that are most important? I think both sides have gone overboard to make their points. The right has taken security to justify their every policy to the point were our security is potentially being harmed. The left wants to be a great equalizer to the point that they seem to want to ignore issues that are real, like culture, personal responsibility. Both seem to ignore real research that questions their previously held beliefs.

But calling Al Gore a bigot doesn't really help. And certainly doesn't help further the discussion.

What if the "reality" is that people are sinners? What if the "reality" is that God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins? What if the "reality" is that the only hope of progress in this world is more people need to embrace that "reality?" What if a group of people decided we need to change the world for the better but we should ignore all religions? They would never get it right!

"Gore's complaint, assuming the rest of the book goes on in this vein...."

Perhaps you should read the book before "analyzing" what Gore might be complaining about.

I don't want to make apologies for left-wing hysteria over evangelicalism in America, but I've got to say I don't quite follow why Mr. Guthrie has so much animosity towards the former vice-president.

Why is Mr. Guthrie so shrill and unhinged?

Besides not having read the book, on what basis does Mr. Guthrie lump the former Vice President--a lifelong Baptist--in with atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens? Seems like bearing false witness to me...

Good grief. How can CT post something like this? No wonder people think of us Christians negatively. Perhaps reading the book before jumping to conclusions and comparing him to other writers would be a good idea. There is not a single quote from Gore's book in a blog entry that proposes to be about the book.

This is the second time in two weeks that I've had to comment on questionable postings by Mr. Guthrie. Since when does "a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith" constitute a bashing of religious belief? And as others have asked, did he actually read the book? I would bet a cup of fair trade Rwandan coffee that Mr. Gore does not bash Christian belief in his book.

If Mr. Guthrie needs evidence for society's lack of interest in reason, he can watch prime-time TV for an evening, where Brittany Spears in her underwear garners as much discussion as the federal budget crisis. Or he can visit any state university and witness how dumbed-down some of the courses have become. Better yet, he could read some works written by conservatives, such as Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" or Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism" who also observe an assault on reason.

As I wrote before on this blog, Mr. Guthrie writng sometimes sounds more like narrow fundamentalism than the well-reasoned evangelicalism that many of us normally expect from CT. And yes, many of those narrow fundamentalists that give Christianity such a bad name also criticize books before reading them. So to Mr. Guthrie I just ask, please think more carefully before you write.

Hey, Folks,

Mr. Shrill and Unhinged here. Since Al Gore's publisher did not send a review copy and since the book was being released yesterday, I had a decision to make: comment for the blog, or don't. Since I believed timing was of the essence, I decided to stick my neck out and say something, given the "shrill and unhinged" way the book is being promoted. Read this copy from Amazon.com if you think I exaggerate:

"A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration [sic] of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason.

"At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.

"We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest [sic] in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.

"How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.

"Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking."

Given that bashing religious believers has become a major revenue stream in publishing these days, let's just say I will be surprised if this tome doesn't indulge in a bit of the same. If you hit a dog with a newspaper enough, he will flinch even when you don't. It may be that I am guilty of an unwarranted flinch in this case--but time will tell.

Of course, if the book doesn't slander conservative Christians, I'll be the first to apologize to Mr. Gore, who has become something of a secular prophet of doom and is enjoying more popularity now because of it than he ever had as vice president.

Wow, I had no idea there were so many Goracle fanatics that read Christianity Today. Go figure.

...and if Gore writes critically of Dobson, Wildmon and Perkins and their cynical attempt to manipulate evangelicals with divisive rhetoric (not to mention their ongoing disparagement of environmental and social justice advocates), will you consider that to be a "slander of conservative Christians?" If so, then you may as well accuse Campolo, Wallis, McLaren, Danforth and John McCain of same. And if not, then I look forward to reading your mea culpas after you read the book.

Even in the amazon comments, I don't see where there is an unfair attack on religious conservatives. It sounds to me like it is what it says, a look at the lack of reason within politics.

The facts speak: by listening to George Bush and the American Media, people thought (and still think) Iraq was behind 9/11. If there were any evidence at our country's lack of "reason", this counts. And again, I don't know why I as a theological conservative would feel hostility about this because of my religion. I'm still not making the connection. Where is the proof that "angry" Al Gore hates religious people?

I still don't understand why you felt you had to write a review of something that you admit that you haven't read. This is a fast paced world, but it does not excuse people from doing their basic job. If anything this shows that "lack of reason" in action. You felt you had to make a statement about something that you hadn't read, just because it was coming out. And blaming the publisher for not sending you an advance copy does not excuse the blind attack. The man spent 8 years as a vice-president. He should deserve at least enough respect to read the book before trashing it. And a post-apology is not enough. How many people will read the first but not the second. This is about Christian love. We as Christians should be loving. Trashing a book, whether by a Christian or not, without read it is not loving.

I certainly don't care for most of Al Gore's politics, but I'd have to agree with the above posters that simply cutting and pasting from Amazon.com does not consitute good journalism. These types of outburts are demonstrative of the blind partisianship that has clouded Evangelical thinking for some time--fotunately we seem to be finally crawling out from under some of this.

And I think Beth and Guthrie miss the point by a mile; it's not about supporting or fighting Al Gore, it's about taking responsible biblical stances on ideas. Pre-emptive bashing should be far below CT's standards and any good points that happen to be made are lost in the slop.

From where are the Friedman Dowd and Wills quotes taken in the original post?

This article should be removed. First of all it is not a piece of considered journalism, just a rant. The author starts with an insult, and then adds to the insult (of us the readers) by admitting that he has not read the book.

Nor have I - and nor shall I - but come CT - we can do better than this. Recently we have seen some great articles, but simple left/right political bashing has no place here...

Precisely, Alan. I could feel the vitriol coming off Mr. Guthrie's post on Al Gore. While I personally haven't reached any sort of resolution on global warming or any of the issues that Gore talks about, I am of the persuasion that neither the right nor the left has an exclusive stranglehold on the truth. Because of that, both sides spend far too much time and energy insulting the other, instead of listening, and finding the truth, wherever it may lie. It is incredibly frustrating to me when I see things like this in CT, which I've long held in high regard as being well-informed and balanced in its perspectives.

Per Stan's follow-up post, it seems pretty clear that the wrong decision was made; those do not seem like good reasons to me at all. It's almost comical because this is the kind of short-circuiting of reasoned debate that Gore is discussing in the book--jumping to conclusions without having all the facts. If you don't have first-hand knowledge, don't post (take the recent Engadget fiasco that dropped $4 billion off Apple's stock; certainly this is not as extreme, but it fits in the same category, I think). And is marketing copy really a good place to draw conclusions from for a book "review"? If reviewing a book means reviewing marketing copy, I need to stop reading book reviews. And so what if bashing religious believers is a "major revenue stream"? We should then react like this?

Is Mr. Guthrie trying to say that Saddam Hussein and 9/11 ARE linked? If so, he is even way behind the last of the dead-enders at the RNC! It is a false debate to put reason and religion at loggerheads. Mr. Guthrie's rant seems like nothing more than a pre-emptive strike to discourage any Christian from reading Gore's book. If Mr. Guthrie is not in the employ of the RNC or Fox News, then why is he doing that? One week, we get Hugh Hewitt defending a believer in heretical books of the Bible (imagine the outrage against, say, Barack Obama, if he had said that the Gospel of Thomas deserved a read--plain hypocrisy to sell books and keep on the "inside"). Now, we get an attack on a book that the reviewer hadn't even read! If we are supposed to judge people by their fruits, this smells pretty rotten!

For what's it's worth, here's the entirety of the Friedman quote. Taken in context, it's clear that his beef isn't with Christian faith, but of the intertwining of faith and politics:

But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?

...

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends.

Maybe I'm just plain stupid, but I don't see what all the ruckus is about over the post Stan Guthrie did. Fact is, EVERYBODY that knows Al Gore knows what side of the fence he sits on. Everybody that has ever listened to what Al Gore has to say knows that his viewpoint is on the extreme-LIBERAL left side of the fence. Birds of a feather flock together, and that buzzard has been successfully FEASTING on Americas ignorance for years. Slanted liberal media, and the fact that the American public in general refuses to do their OWN homework to find out the facts have made politicians like Al Gore what they are today. ACCOUNTABILTY is a word that the Clinton administration successfully removed from liberal politics, so my quetion is this: After YEARS of hearing what the likes of Al Gore has to say, why would you care anyhow? EVEN IF he said what you wanted to hear and you called him on it, he'd changes his stance (as we've seen most liberals do lately) with the "that was then, this is now" sort of logic. I gotta say, in absolute defense of what Stan Guthrie had to say, the point I got from him was just what I had to say... Al Gore has said it many times before, and many different ways - we know what to expect from him when he opens his mouth (when that sort of stuff comes out of me, I usually flush the toilet!).

Uh, Christopher, there are plenty of blogs for your kind of vituperative writing--freerepublic.com or frontpagemag.com, for example. It's kind of nice that the CT blog is a place where Christians of various political beliefs can discuss their differences rationally and politely. It's not up to me to say who can post what, but I just hope your future posts can be a little more tempered; otherwise I fear this blog will just sink into the depths of coarse name-calling as so much of the rest of interactive media has done.