[IP] Al Gore Speaks on Iraq MoveOn PAC
Photograph from Jan. 20th speech at NYU
Al Gore Speaks on Iraq
Monday, October 18 , 2004 at 12:30pm
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
Text of the speech, as prepared:
I have made a series of speeches about the policies of the Bush-Cheney
administration – with regard to Iraq, the war on terror, civil
liberties, the environment and other issues – beginning more than two
years ago with a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco prior
to the administration’s decision to invade Iraq. During this series of
speeches, I have tried to understand what it is that gives so many
Americans the uneasy feeling that something very basic has gone wrong
with our democracy.
There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that
there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship
to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information
that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies
that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the
President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough
to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second
group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so
profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical
analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups. I think he is
plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is
genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he
does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the
President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more
to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the
Bible. But it is crucially important to be precise in describing what
it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical
challenge or even debate. It is ideology – and not his religious faith
– that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has
caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his
belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that
exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the
interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the
original sin of this presidency.
The surprising dominance of American politics by right-wing politicians
whose core beliefs are often wildly at odds with the opinions of the
majority of Americans has resulted from the careful building of a
coalition of interests that have little in common with each other
besides a desire for power devoted to the achievement of a narrow
agenda. The two most important blocks of this coalition are the
economic royalists, those corporate leaders and high net worth families
with vast fortunes at their disposal who are primarily interested in an
economic agenda that eliminates as much of their own taxation as
possible, and an agenda that removes regulatory obstacles and
competition in the marketplace. They provide the bulk of the resources
that have financed the now extensive network of foundations, think
tanks, political action committees, media companies and front groups
capable of simulating grassroots activism. The second of the two
pillars of this coalition are social conservatives who want to roll
back most of the progressive social changes of the 20 th century,
including women’s rights, social integration, the social safety net,
the government social programs of the progressive era, the New Deal,
the Great Society and others. Their coalition includes a number of
powerful special interest groups such as the National Rifle
Association, the anti-abortion coalition, and other groups that have
agreed to support each other’s agendas in order to obtain their own.
You could call it the three hundred musketeers – one for all and all
for one. Those who raise more than one hundred thousand dollars are
called not musketeers but pioneers.
<snip>
<http://moveonpac.org/gore5/>
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