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 Sunday, November 9, 2003
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Gore discusses the questions many of us have been asking. He runs down almost every single one of the liberties that this Adminstration is in the process of trampling. You can almost make a list of the amendments that are being tossed out the window. Declaring citizens enemy combatants. Sneak and peek entry to homes. Adminstrative subpoenas. Bugging client-lawyer conversations. Running background and credit checks on anyone without any need to demonstrate criminal behavior.
He nails this Administration and its Bizarro world view of privacy. In a democracy, the state is open and the people are private. But this Adminstration increasing believes that the state is private and the people are public. As he said: By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. Because so long as the government[base ']s actions are secret, they cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people must be transparent to the people. After all the rhetoric from this Adminstration, startingly little has been done to really make us safe. We actually had everything in place to catch the 9-11 plotters, if the anlaysis had been properly done. Putting up more screeners at the airports or getting our credit card numbers is not going to do much to protect us from terrorists. But who will protect us from a feckless government?
Well, if this is still a democracy, we will have to protect ourselves. And the first way to do this is to actually demonstrate some courage. Another quote: Almost eighty years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote 'Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. . . . They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.' Those who won our independence, Brandeis asserted, understood that 'courage [is] the secret of liberty' and 'fear [only] breeds repression.' We have one of the largest standing armies ever and the most powerful. For a nation that bestrides the globe, we sure are allowing this Administration to cow us and make us afraid. Why is this Adminstration following the well-marked path delineated by Hermann Goering?
If this Adminstration continues down the path it is going, if it continues to abuse our rights as it continues to lie, if it continues to provide for its corrupt friends will starving those less fortunate, it will be the beginning of a horrible time in the US, if not the world. Augustus probably felt he was doing the right thing consolidating power but it led to Nero and Caligula. Will the same happen here? I chose to believe that we have made some moral gains over the last 2000 years. We are the power behind the throne and we will not allow this to happen. I just keep having a nightmare that many people in Germany in the early 30s felt the same things. Some of the worst monsters of the 20th century were democratically elected. 2:54:36 PM 
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Just continuing proof of how far off the media can get. Instead of sending a Canadian citizen to Syria to be tortured for a year because we did not have any real reason to hold him, we should have sent him to Gitmo. See, if the government thinks you are a danger, even if it has no proof, they should be allowed to incarcerate you anyway. Call you an enemy combatant and be done with you. What sort of imbecile writes this sort of thing? Do they have no concept of a slippery slope and the abuse of power? No wonder even our friends are beginning to distrust the US! 2:22:04 PM
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