As my homework for a
Draft Al Gore meetup, I had to read through all of Mr. Gore's recent speeches to summarize his positions. It was a depressing task. Gore seems to believe that American Democracy is already dead and there's no chance to resurrect it for at least another ten years.
While much of the language that he uses is clearly leftist, I was struck by how conservative Mr. Gore's policies really are. He *never* recomends any new government programs. All of his recommendations are about discontinuing Republican programs and restoring the democracy we had before Nixon. Isn't the definition of
Conservative someone who thinks things were better in the old days? The only hopeful thought he expresses is that someday the Internet will replace television and then people can be free again.
Join me below the fold for some choice quotes. I have bolded the parts likely to be most pleasing to Kossacks.
Based on
the Draft Gore speech archives
- War on Terrorism
- “When imperial Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt did
not invade Indonesia.” (9'05)
- The pre-emptive war doctrine “violates UN article 51” (9'02)
- The AUMF was “much too broad” and “severely damages the war against
terrorist networks” (9'02)
- Round-up of 1200 Arab-Americans was “little more than a cheap and
cruel political stunt by John Ashcroft” Gore quotes Jesus:
“whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto
me.” (11'03)
- “this war is predicted by the administration to ‘last for the rest of
our lives’ ... over time it will begin to resemble the ‘war’ against
drugs” (11'03)
- “there is still no serious strategy for domestic security that
protects critical infrastructure such as electric power lines, gas
pipelines, nuclear facilities, ports, chemical plants and the
like.” (11'03)
- Constitutional government
- The suspension of Habeus Corpus is “both wrong and fundamentally
un-American” (8'03)
- “a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness
that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as ‘inalienable’ can
now be instantly stripped from any American by the
President” (11'03)
- “White House officials themselves leaked the name of a CIA operative
serving the country, in clear violation of the law, in an effort
to get at her husband, who had angered them” (11'03)
- “A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure
of our government.” (1'06)
- Gore quotes Harold Koh: “If the President has commander-in-chief power
to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to
sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license
summary execution.” (1'06)
- “Leadership means inspiring us to manage through our
fears. Demagoguery means exploiting our fears for political
gain.” (2'04)
- American Fascism
- “Somewhere along the line, the Republican Party became merely the name
plate for the radical right in this
country.” (2'04)
- Gore quotes George Akerloff: “What we have here is a form
of looting.” (8'03)
- It is “a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a
totalistic ideology” (8'03)
- The Bush admin “has developed a highly effective propaganda
machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one
central doctrine that all of the special interests agree
on” (8'03)
- Bush admin has “exploited public fears for partisan political gain and
postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually
weakening not strengthening America... fostered false impressions and
misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative
presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy... used
unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability”
(11'03)
- “It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so
much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they
did.” (1'06)
- “the fear campaign aimed at Iraq was timed for the kickoff of the
midterm election campaign of 2002” (2'04)
- “in every case there was a determined disinterest in the facts; an
inflexible insistence on carrying out preconceived policies regardless
of the evidence concerning what might work and what clearly would not; a
consistent bias favoring the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the
broader public interest; and a marked tendency to develop policies in
secret, avoid accountability to the public, the Congress or the Press;
and a disturbing willingness to misrepresent the true nature of the
policy involved.” (2'04)
- Admin's goals: “to create a class of permanent prisoners; to make
it possible to imprison Americans without due process; to totally
sequester information not just from the people, but from the congress
and the courts -- all justified by recourse to
fear.” (2'04)
- “The politicization of law enforcement in this administration is part of
their larger agenda to roll back the changes in government policy
brought about by the New Deal and the Progressive
Movement” (11'03)
- “every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to
harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the
President.” (10'05)
- When Nixon became President, “it marked the beginning of a big change in
America's politics... In many ways, George W. Bush reminds me more of
Nixon than any other previous president.” (2'04)
- “my father was defeated by the politics of fear... In his speech that
night, he stood the old segregationist slogan on its head and defiantly
promised: ‘The truth shall rise
again!’” (11'03)
- The Total Information Awareness project
- It is “right out of George Orwell's 1984” (8'03)
- “the mass collecting of personal data on hundreds of millions of people
actually makes it more difficult to protect the nation against terrorists,
so they ought to cut most of it out.” (11'03)
- The Plutocrats
- “The new technologies of surveillance ... are being widely used
not only by the government but also by corporations and other
private entities... [This is] relevant to the new flexibility
corporations have been given to share information with one another about
their customers.”
- “The administration did not hesitate to use economic fear of recession
as a means to put in place its tax cuts, massively benefiting the
wealthiest while loading debt on the rest of the country for
generations to come.” (2'04)
- “It used fear of energy shortage to build an energy policy made to
order for the oil industry at the expense of the rest of
us.” (2'04)
- “It uses fear of the problems of old age to contrive an illusory drug
bill that essentially transfers billions from the people to the pockets
of vast pharmaceutical interests.” (2'04)
- “Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the
main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue
is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money
will continue by one means or another to dominate
American politics. And ideas will no longer mediate between
wealth and power.” (10'05)
- “too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to continued
access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good side
of those who have the money to give” (1'06)
- Mainstream media
- “The leadership of the Republican party is augmented by its links
to the corporate ownership of the conglomerates that control most
of our media.”
(2'04)
- “drug-addled hypocrites, compulsive gamblers, and assorted religious
bigots mascarade as moral guides for the
nation.” (2'04)
- “The Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel
that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters
that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were
somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special
interests in order to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next
re-election campaign.” (10'05)
- “there is no ‘meritocracy of ideas’ on television. To the extent that
there is a ‘marketplace’ of any kind for ideas on television, it is a
rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that
exclude the average citizen.” (10'05)
- Gore quotes Jurgen Habermas: what has happened =
“the refeudalization of the public
sphere.” (10'05)
- “The news divisions -- which used to be seen as serving a public
interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network -- are now seen
as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to
advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a
small part.” (10'05)
- “one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is
that they don't trust the news media
anymore.” (10'05)
- “Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the
voters are, in effect, purchased.” (10'05)
- “it is television delivered over cable and satellite that
will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the
next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's
democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that
America's democracy is at grave risk.” (10'05)
- “We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all
citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose
the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they
use” (10'05)
- Nuclear weapons
- “This administration ... wants to embark on a new program to build a
brand new generation of smaller (and it hopes, more usable) nuclear
bombs. In my opinion, this would be
true madness” (8'03)
- The PATRIOT Act
- “What about the right to consult a lawyer if you're arrested? ... Now,
whoever is in custody has to assume that the government is always
listening to consultations between them and their
lawyers.” (11'03)
- “I belive that the Patriot Act has turned out to be, on balance, a
terrible mistake, and that it became a kind of Tonkin Gulf
Resolution” (11'03)
- The Courts
- “DeLay has said, ‘Judges need to be intimidated,’ adding that if they
don't behave, ‘we're going to go after them in a big way.’ Moreover, a
whole host of prominent Republicans have been making
similar threats on a regular basis.” (4'05)
- “What is involved here is a power grab -- pure and
simple.” (4'05)
- Climate Crisis
- “the principal cause of global warming is our civilization's
addiction to burning massive quantities carbon-based fuels, including
principally oil” (8'03)
- Quotes Churchill: “The era of procrastination, of half measures, of
soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its
place we are entering a period of
consequences.” (9'05)
- “We must disenthrall ourselves with the sound-and-light show that has
diverted the attentions of our great democracy from the important issues
and challenges of our day.” (9'05)