Summary
Title: Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy
Author: Lewis H. Lapham
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 1594200173
Pro:
• Very passionate and engaging style
• Places current government actions in a larger historical context
Con:
• Con: • More a polemic than an academic analysis of contemporary politics
Description:
• History of how dissent has been suppressed in America
• Argues that the suppression of dissent is part of a larger pattern
• Highly critical of the Bush administration and its actions
Book Review
In his book First Democracy, Paul Woodruff devotes an entire chapter to the value of debate, dissent, and reasoning to democracy. As Woodruff makes clear, tyrants rely upon an absence of debate in order to avoid having their decisions questioned; yet the absence of debate also magnifies their errors because they aren’t exposed to any problems in their reasoning or better alternatives.
Lewis H. Lapham, in his book Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, argues that America has regularly violated these democratic values and that it’s been getting worse recently.
This isn’t simply a matter of making public culture a little poorer: when debate and dissent are at all stifled, democracy itself is stifled because democracy is dependent upon debate for its existence. There can be no genuine rule by the people unless the people are actively engaged in public discussion about governmental policies. There can be no informed discussion about government policies unless people have adequate access to the relevant information. When people aren’t debating, then state officials are making decisions without the benefit of input from the people — and that’s closer to tyranny than to democracy.
One might hope that the media would provide an outlet for disparate and dissenting views — what other purpose do they have in a democracy if not to encourage and promote debate?
In America, though, the largest media organizations are controlled by corporations who appear more interested in defending the status quo than in debating new possibilities. Dissent and democracy are typically hostile to entrenched powers and the America media appears to show little interest in encouraging either.
Lapham’s book is a group of essays rather than a single book. There are footnotes, but the writing is more editorial in form than historical or academic — and it’s very passionate, to boot. Lapham is no disinterested observer commenting on American culture. Instead, he is passionately engaged in questions about the limits of government power, the failures of American education, and the importance of debate to a healthy democracy.
Lapham is critical of both the left and the right, but conservatives still come in for the most criticism — hardly surprising, given their hold on power for the past several years. Some conservative reactions to this book actually seem to reinforce Lapham’s message because they appear to be predicated on the idea that dissent like his is treasonous.
Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, by Lewis H. Lapham
Still, some criticisms are reasonable. Lapham’s book can’t be described as a closely-argued explanation of what is wrong in America. Instead, it’s a passionately argued condemnation of what Lapham sees as wrong with America. Even if he is right in all of his points, it’s hard to see how many people he will convince who aren’t already at least sympathetic to his general position.
Still, not every criticism of the political status quo needs to be an academic treatise that would survive the most careful peer reviews. Editorial broadsides against those in power or against common social assumptions have an undeniable place in American history — and they should have a place in contemporary American culture as well. Too often, we see defenses of power and people’s assumptions rather than critical, dissenting perspectives.
Quite a lot of what Lapham describes from American history should make you angry — and if you’re not angry, then you simply haven’t been paying attention. Then again, so many people not paying attention and not caring is exactly what has helped bring us to where we are now.
