Flutterby™! : The Assault on Reason

Columbine had a link to an excerpt from Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason. There's nothing there that you haven't seen before, about the rise of media manipulation in politics (complete with a bit of mea culpa) and the lack of public discourse, and how the internet may have the opportunity to bring back political discussion and citizen ideas, but it is interesting to read stuff like:

Unfortunately, the legacy of the 20th century's ideologically driven bloodbaths has included a new cynicism about reason itself—because reason was so easily used by propagandists to disguise their impulse to power by cloaking it in clever and seductive intellectual formulations.

coming from Al Gore. No matter what your stance on global warming, he certainly did a bang-up job in bringing it to the fore as a matter of public discourse, maybe he can do some of the same things in terms of awakening people from their stumbling through responding to the emotional messages and narratives that politicians are presenting us, to looking at their actions and how the stories we get told differ from the end results.