Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, by Lewis H. Lapham (Penguin Books, June 28, 2005, Paperback; 192 pages, ISBN: 0-14303-502-9)

Reviewed by Stephen Wiley

Pamphleteering has a long history in shaping the American political landscape. Widely circulated, they give marginalized voices a platform to shape political ideology, often providing the needed catalyst to spark heated debate by offering insight into society as a whole. As Thomas Paine’s Common Sense proved, these pamphlets could bring about profound social change, though often at the expense of the author’s reputation and public standing.

Dissent is about challenging the status quo, about disrupting business as usual, about shifting the momentum of politics as usual. Since their hey-day in the 19th Century, pamphlets have been a key tool for dissenters.

Lewis H. Lapham, editor emeritus of Harper’s, continues this tradition with Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy. This slim edition calls attention to what he perceives as the government’s – in particular the Bush Administration – and a monopolized big media’s effort to suppress the voices of protest through a strategic and blatant disregard for our civil liberties.

The root premise of the book is an important reminder that we must continually guard our civil liberties against those that would curb them. It is not enough to expect our civic leaders and representatives to guard them for us; the citizenry must be vigilant in protecting that which makes our democracy great.

Unfortunately, Lapham has taken this important message and wrapped it in a revisionist’s historical context to draw a moral equivalency between the wrongs done during 200 years of American history and the Bush Administration’s actions since September 11, 2001. While the lessons of history should be studied and revisited to avoid making the mistakes of our ancestors, they do not make for an accurate substitute of the facts in current events.

For instance, Lapham writes, “The sinking in February 1898 of the American battleship USS Maine in Havana Bay and of the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland in May 1915 provided the early promoters of American empire with casus belli, like the one presented to the Bush Administration by the destruction of the World Trade towers in September 2001.”

While the sinking of the USS Maine served as a catalyst, it was not the sole cause for the Spanish-American War. The Navy battleship was sent to Havana Bay to provide protection for U.S. citizens while the Spanish government quelled riots by Cuban revolutionaries making a bid for independence. The blast that killed 266 and sank the ship hardened American resolve during diplomatic negotiations, but 2 months after the blast, when Spain hardened its position against Cuban independence, America intervened. Rather than a step forward for an American empire, the declaration of war on April 21, 1898 was a step against a Spanish empire.

Like the USS Maine, the Lusitania was one factor in a string of events that forced America into war. In the latter’s case: World War I. After the Lusitania was sunk in 1915 and the Sussex the following year in 1916, President Wilson issued the following warning to the Germans:

Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether.

The Germans ceased submarine warfare until 1917 when they severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. and attempted to provoke Mexico and Japan into attacking America. Congress officially declared war against German empire on April 6, 1917.

Lapham continues to use history as his backdrop for the media’s – or at least the conservative media’s – role in suppressing dissent. “Both the McKinley [Spanish-American War] and the Wilson [World War I] administrations were served by a warmongering press ascribing atrocities to Spanish viceroys (Cuban peasants fed to sharks) and to German generals (Belgian nuns roasted over burning coals), as promptly on cue as Fox News charged Saddam Hussein with the slaughter of Iraqi infants.”

Although the hundreds of thousands of bodies found in mass graves since the fall of Baghdad might support the notion of Saddam as mass murderer.

Beyond the rhetorical devices used to make his case, there is one over-riding issue to undermine the delivery of the premise that the supposed suppression of dissenting voices has contributed to the erosion of American democracy: not only does Lewis Lapham have a monthly platform for dissent in a column written for Harper’s, a well-respected magazine of literature and social commentary, but Gag Rule was published by a major publishing house. In fact, with the wide-spread success of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” on into the likes of the Cindy Sheehan / Moveon.org crowd, dissent has become its own cottage industry.

But these are critiques of the presentation, not the message: “To the extent that a democratic society gives its citizens the chance to speak in their own voices and listens to what they have to say, it gives itself the chance not only of discovering its multiple glories and triumphs but also of surviving its multiple follies and crimes.”

* this review was originally published on newtopiamagazine.net.