Bush Gored

In a forceful MLK Day speech, Al Gore connects the dots: the wiretapping and harassment of King was one of the factors that lead Congress to enact the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), the very law George Bush violated when he authorized wiretapping of citizens who've committed no crime. He says, "At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."

And that's just the beginning. Gore went on to blast Bush for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power: now a president can imprison Americans for life without charge or warrant, he can intercept email and phone calls, he can torture suspects and fly them to countries where torture is legal, he can launch war on false pretenses and suffer no one's wrath. "If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?," Gore asks.

Here's the clincher:

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws...

And he notes how the Republicans do it:

...by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

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.

While Gore's speech feels like he's campaigning (two words for you: Gore-Feingold), such political labeling ignores the fact that he's saying what needs to be said. Please, oh please, watch or read his important speech.

Worth highlighting: Gore quoted George Orwell, a thinker quoted frighteningly often during the Bush era:

[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

And: Gore quoting Lincoln:"We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."