'We are facing a massive assault on our liberties' (interview with Al Gore)

The Observer (U.K.) ^ | 11/05/06 | Henry Porter

[Pokey78]

HP: I wonder if you feel that a constitution like the American one makes people more aware of their rights.

AG: I think it does. Those who wrote the constitution were very steeped in the culture of the printed word and the essays that were written to define the theory of representative democracy. The debates and the Constitutional Convention were all re-capitulated in elaborate written accounts. The debates over each precise word actually did focus public attention then, and continue to influence public attention now, to individual rights.

HP: Is a constitution a way of putting certain rights beyond the reach of ambitious men?

AG: If I felt that was the principal effect of having a written constitution, I would say yes. If I were a citizen in your country, I would be in favour of it. But being a citizen of the US and seeing the shocking ease with which these principles have been violated in the US, I'm worried that the causes of this invasion of rights may be deeper.

HP: The public here and in America have been prepared to put these rights on hold to a degree.

AG: Well, they have, but [in America] these rights have been weakened since the Bush-Cheney administration chose to use the war against terror as a basis for both political argument in a partisan context and for an assault on the individual rights, including the right to be free of government eavesdropping. The conversation of democracy has been degraded, emotions and appeals to fear have been given a priority over reasoned debate.

HP: Has there been a pumping up of this climate of fear?

AG: Yes, sure.

[GSlob]

Well, it is amazing that AlGore was able to tell the interviewer from a hole in the ground. And the same powers of discernment in the interviewer [to be able to tell AlGore from a hole in the ground] are no less amazing.

[mickey blue eyes]

it/s a wonder Al didn/t remind them thet he invented the inter net

[Candor7]

Habeous Corpus is only for liberals.

[Goldie Lurks]

The Dem's have taken away many individual rights. Insects are more important than people from the viewpoint of some enviornmentalists. The *right* to parent our own children without governmental interference is slowly being eroded. Criminals appear to have more rights than victims of violent crimes. Gore has forgotten how many individual rights the Dem's have taken away from American citizens in their quest for political correctness.

[Westbrook]

Hey, Al, you smarmy piece of work.

Remember David Koresh?

How about Randy Weaver?

Kosovo, Al, remember that?

You and that hoss-faced Lurch impostor from Taxachusetts are a real pair.

Maybe when the Donkey Congress passes the Gay Marriage Act, you and Lurch can get married - to eachother.

Hey, if you really, REALLY can't wait, you can always "Make it in Massachusetts".

Remember that slogan?

It was invented by the PR minions of that other smarmy piece of work and FAILED presidential candidate, Mike Dukakis.

.

[highpockets]

I am serial.

[goresalooza]

"It would have better if your homegrown terrorists in the UK would have blown up those ten aircraft full of passengers. You see, those poor misguided yutes in the UK who were plotting this deserved their right to make phone calls to their cell-mates and helpers in America. It's Bush's fault that these calls were intercepted. It's another example of Bush ignoring the Constitution."

-----Bigfatalgore, to Brit interviewer

[jordan8]

Political correctness doesn't come out of a vacuum, it springs from the totalitarian tendencies of the left. Whatever the damage done to personal freedom in the name of anti-terrorism, it pales into insignificance compared to the raping of freedom and the Constitution carried out by the left, often in the name of racial and sexual equality, over the last five decades. Look at all that has been done, almost invariably favorable to the left, under the excuse of the "commerce clause."