Books
In 1995 Tassano published The Power of Life or Death: Medical Coercion and the Euthanasia Debate (Duckworth). The book had a Foreword by Thomas Szasz, an American psychiatrist well known for his libertarian views on mental illness.
The Power of Life or Death was essentially an attempt to bring free-market and libertarian ideas into the discussion of medical treatment, and in particular the treatment of the terminally ill. Despite its radical agenda the book received serious, if guarded attention from the medical profession, the British Medical Journal, for example, commenting: ‘We would not recommend this book as comfortable bedtime reading. ... If you like an intellectual challenge this one is for you.’
More recently Tassano has turned his attention to modern culture in general, in a book entitled Mediocracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture (Oxford Forum, 2006). The book argues that both ‘dumbing down’ in the popular media, and the obscurantism increasingly prevalent in academic discourse, are manifestations of the same underlying ideology: one which appears to be egalitarian but is in fact designed to privilege a paternalistic elite and exclude those who might criticise it. In this he sees strong parallels with communism.
Read more about this topic: Mediocracy
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