I'll just use the beginning and end of the piece. Read it all.
The pursuit of "dominance" in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. . . .
We as Americans should have "known then what we know now"- not only about the invasion of Iraq but also about the climate crisis . . . and about many other fateful choices that have been made on the basis of flawed, and even outright false, information. . . . But the larger explanation for this crisis in American decision-making is that reason itself is playing a diminished, less respected, role in our national conversation.
If this is a foretaste of The Assault on Reason, then it is book well worth reading. Americans are challenged from without and within, and reason and principle and truth are their surest defences against tyranny and poverty.
For too long the First Amendment has been used as cover for lies, hate speech, zealotry and fear porn. The assault on reason by Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity and others was part of a political calculus reinforcing the GOP assault on democratic governance and the fabric of the Constitution. It's time to stop the rot.
Americans deserve the leadership they get. Americans deserve George W. Bush because they were asleep in front of their fear-spewing TVs while he eroded their rights at home and slaughtered innocents overseas.
If Americans want to deserve better, they will need to wake up and demand better. We've had a further lesson this week from our Congress that if we do not pay attention and demand accountability they will sell us out again and again and again.
Americans were complacent when they allowed the Bush mafia to steal the election in 2000. Gore is possibly the best president we've never had, and a better man for losing his country and his office to a criminal conspiracy. By leading us back toward reason he displays a grace toward a weak and fearful America few others would.
For those who needed a reminder, this is what a spine looks like:
It gets stronger with exercise.