Ok. I found this line in Gore's speech particularly powerful: "Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others." I think it speaks of a very human truth, and much of what we have seen supports it. When we assume that people will avoid human nature, and not abuse their power to simply further their own ends, we step off the cliff. As has been shown, time and again, throughout history, people who are given power can and often will abuse that power, to get what they want, get others to do what they want, etc. That is why we need to challenge authority when we feel it is being used against us, not for the greater good, but for the good of the authority itself. It doesn't matter if said authority fails to see it's own abuse of pawer as such, as, for example, Bush might believe he is doing the right thing in manipulating us into a war he feels is right. The abuse of power itself is the first step to a lesser path.
Published on Friday, May 28, 2004 by the New York Times A Column That's Already Been Posted Once by Bob Herbert Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company link
Gore's a loon and even liberals admit that he should be sent to the funny farm. Anybody who thinks his rant-that-makes-Howard-Dean- seem-well-adjusted was a great speech is either just as crazy as he is or desperate to latch onto anything anti-Bush, no matter how crazy. BY JAMES TARANTO Thursday, May 27, 2004 2:25 p.m. EDT Guilty Gore Goes Gaga "It is now clear that Al Gore is insane," writes the New York Post's John Podhoretz. "I don't mean that his policy ideas are insane, though many of them are. I mean that based on his behavior, conduct, mien and tone over the past two days, there is every reason to believe that Albert Gore Jr., desperately needs help. I think he needs medication, and I think that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely." Maureen Dowd of the New York Times agrees. When he delivered a speech to the far-left outfit MoveOn.org yesterday, she writes, "Mr. Gore hollered so much, he made Howard Dean look like George Pataki." She says the erstwhile veep represents "the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party." Well, give Gore credit for helping liberals and conservatives find common ground in this era of polarization. Pretty much everyone agrees Gore is nuts. OK, we did get one e-mail in Gore's defense, from a reader whose name we'll withhold because that's the kind of compassion we practice here at Best of the Web Today: Al Gore spoke the truth, the real truth, and American truth. The hate speech that we are exposd to on a daily basis comes from the likes of you and the rest of you lying fascist scum that contaminate this country. You are the Republican taliban. This charming missive pretty much captures the tone and spirit of the Gore speech, though our correspondent at least understands the virtue of brevity. Gore's speech, by contrast, ran more than 6,500 words. Maybe he's hoping for Fidel Castro's job. How did things go so terribly wrong for Al Gore? When he ran for president in 1988, he was a fresh-faced, moderate "new Democrat." He lost the nomination to the electrifying Michael Dukakis, but he was only 40 and his future looked bright. Yet he never lived up to his potential, and today he is a pitiful, though scary, old man. An Associated Press account of yesterday's speech notes that "Gore, who served in Vietnam, predicted greater problems for America's involvement in Iraq." The AP apparently means to suggest that Gore suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, since the Vietnam reference is otherwise a complete non sequitur. But according to WebMD, "symptoms of PTSD usually occur within three months of the traumatic event." True, "they can occur months or years later"--but three decades later? We've got a better theory: Gore, in our view, has cracked under a crushing burden of guilt. To explain why, it helps to remember that a desperate anger pervades Gore's entire party at the moment. That's not surprising. For the first time in half a century, the Democrats are out of the White House and have a majority in neither house of Congress. A decisive GOP victory in November would leave the Dems a minority party for a very long time. Oh, they put on a brave face, noting excitedly every Bush swoon in the polls. They say the president is manifestly incompetent and John Kerry will beat him easily. Maybe they'll even turn out to be right. Who knows? Certainly some Republicans are spooked about Bush's re-election prospects. But the shrillness and hysteria of the Democrats' rhetoric tells us they are far from confident. Still, the immoderation of Gore's words, combined with the fury of his tone, puts him in a class by himself, or very nearly so, even among angry Dems. And while political candidates routinely engage in hyperbole in order to stir up the party faithful, Gore isn't running for anything. Dick Gephardt stopped ranting about Bush's being a "miserable failure" when he left the presidential race. Gore has nothing to gain by sacrificing his dignity in this way. How did the Dems come to such a pass? In large part, it's Gore's fault. The Democrats held the White House in 2000, at a time of apparent peace and prosperity. They should have won the election that year, and they surely would have had they only had a decent candidate. But instead they had Al Gore. Even he came close enough to winning that he was tempted to try to steal the election. There's a telling line right at the beginning of Gore's speech: George W. Bush, he says, "has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon." Here Gore is engaging in what psychologists call "projection": attributing one's own faults to others. The most dishonest president since Richard Nixon obviously is the one who was impeached for lying under oath--the president, that is, whose No. 2 was none other than Al Gore. Gore would have become president had Bill Clinton resigned after his 1998 impeachment, or had 17 Democratic senators voted to convict him in his impeachment trial. President Gore likely would have been re-elected in 2000, since he would have had the advantage of incumbency and been free of the Clinton taint that (unaccompanied by the Clinton charm) hurt him so much in the "red" states. Instead, party discipline held, and the Senate acquitted Clinton. This was another missed opportunity for Gore. Had he publicly broken from Clinton and called on the president to resign, other Democrats might well have followed his lead. Instead, he appeared at a White House rally immediately after the impeachment vote and described Clinton as "a man who I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents." Thus it was Al Gore, more than anyone else, who assured the election of George W. Bush as president. And if Gore actually believes all the paranoid nonsense he utters about "global warming," "an unprecedented assault on civil liberties," the "American gulag," the "catastrophe" in Iraq and so on, he let down not only his party but his country and the world, which will soon be destroyed thanks to Bush's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty. That's more guilt than anyone should be forced to endure. link
In the case of Gore, that is true. I've rather enjoyed the meltdown of recent years of those on your side. The farther you guys are out of power (with Congress and the White House in GOP hands), the more hilarious you become.
Gore gets fired up once in a political speech, and conservatives *literally* call him "insane." Bush invades two sovereign nations and wages perpetual war on the world because he thinks God told him to, and he's a pillar of level-headedness and respectability. Also, I find it very insteresting that criticism is directed at the passion of Gore's speech, not the facts.
I haven't read the six page thread. Can anyone brief me? In six pages, has any dissenter addressed the merits or is it all about how "crazy" he is? We're regularly called on in this forum to take a serious look at positively nutso conservative emails while nutso liberal emails go unposted. Just wondering, while we respond to everything that hits giddyup's mailbox, if anyone at all addressed the merits. I'm guessing not.
You know, that speaks as much to the insanity and paranoia of the right as it does to the insanity and paranoia of the left. I saw an interview last night with a liberal political commentator who likened conservativism to a mental disorder. This past week, I saw a conservative pundit who branded liberals as people without any shred of moral decency and honor. What the **** is up with that? I'm as tired of people branding me and people like me as crazy and idealisic as I am conservative friends of mine being labelled crazy and unrealistic. You know, the REAL problem in America is the people on both sides of the political aisle who each think that they are completely right and the other side is just nuts. Not only is that completely un-intellegent by its very supposition, but it is completely ignorant of the fact that there is a great complimentary nature to our differences that has been of great benefit to all of us. But, it is so much easier to just keep telling yourself you are right ("you" in general, not bama) and scream at anyone who disagrees than it is to actually, honestly consider an opposing opinion. That's the brave thing to do and the tough thing to do, but it also demonstrates great capacity for understanding and an even greater capacity for learning. And, if there is one thing we need more of, it is intellegent people leading the debate, not people who just want to be heard over the din of stupidity even if what they are saying makes absolutely no sense.
Because there wasn't a dime's worth of substance there. It was just the paranoid ramblings of a failed man.
did you read jeff's post? it's pretty hard to make a speech that has NO substance. how is gore paranoid? he asks how we got from a french periodicals headline declaring that we're all americans now, to the photos of abu ghraib and becoming the most hated country in the world. you might say that this is the price one must pay for freedom and security, but can't one question the methodology behind the madness?
I don't have time to dissect every bit of this whacko fringe speech, but needless to say, it played well with out-to-lunch, quasi-socialists at Moveon.org. That tells you all you need to know.
