Democracy itself is in grave danger Part 1

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/24/gore_speech/

 

" Democracy itself is in grave danger "

Former Vice President Al Gore charges that the Bush administration's use of

executive power goes beyond the pale. America's greatest challenge today, he

argues, " is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism. "

Editor's note: Following is the full text of a speech by former Vice President

Al Gore to the American Constitution Society at Georgetown University on June

24.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

 

 

 

 

June 24, 2004 | When we Americans first began, our biggest danger was clearly

in view: we knew from the bitter experience with King George III that the most

serious threat to democracy is usually the accumulation of too much power in the

hands of an executive, whether he be a king or a president. Our ingrained

American distrust of concentrated power has very little to do with the character

or persona of the individual who wields that power. It is the power itself that

must be constrained, checked, dispersed and carefully balanced, in order to

ensure the survival of freedom. In addition, our founders taught us that public

fear is the most dangerous enemy of democracy because under the right

circumstances it can trigger the temptation of those who govern themselves to

surrender that power to someone who promises strength and offers safety,

security and freedom from fear.

 

It is an extraordinary blessing to live in a nation so carefully designed to

protect individual liberty and safeguard self-governance and free communication.

But if George Washington could see the current state of his generation's

handiwork and assess the quality of our generation's stewardship at the

beginning of this 21st century, what do you suppose he would think about the

proposition that our current president claims the unilateral right to arrest and

imprison American citizens indefinitely without giving them the right to see a

lawyer or inform their families of their whereabouts, and without the necessity

of even charging them with any crime. All that is necessary, according to our

new president is that he -- the president -- label any citizen an " unlawful

enemy combatant, " and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that

citizen's liberty -- even for the rest of his life, if the president so chooses.

And there is no appeal.

 

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the curious and discredited argument from

our Justice Department that the president may authorize what plainly amounts to

the torture of prisoners -- and that any law or treaty which attempts to

constrain his treatment of prisoners in time of war is itself a violation of the

constitution our founders put together.

 

 

What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush's assertion that he has the

inherent power -- even without a declaration of war by the Congress -- to launch

an invasion of any nation on Earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he

wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States.

 

How long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current president's

recent claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he is no longer

subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as commander in

chief.

 

I think it is safe to say that our founders would be genuinely concerned about

these recent developments in American democracy and that they would feel that we

are now facing a clear and present danger that has the potential to threaten the

future of the American experiment.

 

Shouldn't we be equally concerned? And shouldn't we ask ourselves how we have

come to this point?

 

Even though we are now attuned to orange alerts and the potential for terrorist

attacks, our founders would almost certainly caution us that the biggest threat

to the future of the America we love is still the endemic challenge that

democracies have always faced whenever they have appeared in history -- a

challenge rooted in the inherent difficulty of self-governance and the

vulnerability to fear that is part of human nature. Again, specifically, the

biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and

steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.

 

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew

intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not

only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the

long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also

worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become

particularly potent -- that is, when war transformed America's president into

our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might

somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate

checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

 

That is precisely why they took extra care to parse the war powers in the

Constitution, assigning the conduct of war and command of the troops to the

president, but retaining for the Congress the crucial power of deciding whether

or not, and when, our nation might decide to go war.

 

Indeed, this limitation on the power of the executive to make war was seen as

crucially important. James Madison wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, " The

Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that

the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to

it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the

legislature. "

 

Next page | The greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how

we react to terrorism

1, 2, 3, 4, 5