Gag rule : on the suppression of dissent and the stifling of democracy / Lewis H. Lapham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lapham, Lewis H.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Freedom of speech--United States.

Freedom of speech.

United States.

Mass media--Political aspects--United States.

Mass media.

Mass media--Political aspects.

Government, Resistance to--United States.

Government, Resistance to.

War on Terrorism, 2001-2009.

Democracy--United States.

Democracy.

United States--Politics and government--2001-2009.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

178 pages ; 20 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2004.

Summary:

Dissent is Democracy. Democracy is in Trouble. Never before, Lewis Lapham argues, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream conversation, so marginalized and muted by a government that recklessly disregards civil liberties, and by an ever more concentrated and profit-driven media in which the safe and the salable sweep all uncomfortable truths from view. In the midst of the "war on terror" -- which makes the hunt for Communists in the 1950s look, in its clarity of aim and purpose, like the Normandy landings on D-Day -- we face a crisis of democracy as serious as any in our history. The Bush administration makes no secret of its contempt for a cowed and largely silenced electorate, and without bothering to conceal its purpose the government coordinates "not the defense of the American citizenry against a foreign enemy but the protection of the American plutocracy from the American democracy." Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard.

Contents:

1 An Audible Silence 1

2 Gag Rule 41

3 Mute Button 90

4 Democracy in Irons 130.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1594200173

OCLC:

54046609