While Reason Slept

For the past several decades, America has propelled itself into a cruel state of mass unreason. In While Reason Slept, Brier elegantly traces the history of America back to its founding principles, showing in no uncertain terms that the world as an idea of reason is not merely a fool's fable; it is a practical imperative. Beginning in the early twentieth century, however, America slowly began to shift away from a country of rational citizens and toward a country of irrational consumers. Brier persuasively contends that America's irrational transformation has its origins in the work of Edward Bernays, the forefather of modern propaganda (the "engineering of consent," as he called it) whose Freudian tactics of manipulation have been appropriated and expounded upon by every major influencer of the past century, from the Third Reich to Ronald Reagan to Facebook. But after diagnosing the principal causes underlying America's irrational state of affairs, Brier offers an optimistic solution for recapturing the Founders' vision of a rational Republic. If you are a citizen who hungers for reality; if you would rather travel the arduous path of justice than the reassuring path of comfort; if you would rather suffer agony in the quest for peace than sit with ease in the shadow of the cave--then this book is for you.