Gore's MLK speech
"In the absence of rigorous accountability incompetence flourishes."
- Al Gore, 2006
Everyone must read or listen to this recent speech by Al Gore who unflinchingly describes the "constitutional crisis" that has developing in our country. Gore puts the dangers in perspective, claiming that our democracy is essentially decaying into "rule by a strongman regime" -- the "principal alternative to democracy throughout history", and the type of government that America was founded specifically to forever avoid.
Today we have a President who admits to authorizing thousands of wiretaps against American citizens without any court approval, who legimitized torture in American prisons, who has appropriated the power to detain American citizens indefinitely without access to a lawyer, and who is pressing for even more powers with the expanded Patriot Act. What happened to our checks and balances? How did we let this happen? Do we still have a functioning democracy, and if not how do we get it back?
A few passages deserve repeating:
"And indeed whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to gross mistakes and abuses. That is part of human nature. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes; dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded - it is human nature, whether for Republicans or Democrats, or people with any set of views.
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Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements - and these are no Federalist Papers.
And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages. The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.
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Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march -- when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?
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. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same."