New Gorey Details

Listening to National Public Radio today on Sirius satellite radio, I stumbled across a Martin Luther King Day conference, at the the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall in Washington. I did not recognize the voice of the man speaking, live, to a very enthusiastic crowd. He was effectively, intelligently, and factually tearing down President George Bush's recent public foray into dangerous political waters: admission of usurping and bypassing American Constitutional laws protecting the freedoms and rights of U.S. citizens. The speech's polemic concerned Bush's revelation a couple of weeks ago that he is aware and has authorized wiretaps and other illegal surveillance techniques on his own countrypeople.

Is this something new? Are all the political espionage movies and books that proclaim illegal spying, in the name of "democracy", as a good thing, merely works of fiction based on... fiction? Or would one suppose that this has been going on for years, and that we just have never been informed publicy about it?

What's all the fuss about? I am 100% in favour of using any means possible to snare "the bad guys": those we perceive as terrorists, criminals, politicians on the take... whomever. BUT of course the question here is: who gets to decide who is "bad"? Until Watergate and Nixon's ignominius resignation, we all felt pretty secure that the powers that be knew who was good and who was bad, and acted accordingly, in line with our generally accepted consensus of right and wrong. But that's all changed now.

Is it a big leap, or a short step, to compare the possibilities of potential abuse in American government with those underhanded and filthy techniques employed by the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Ida Amin? In all of those cases, the people of the countries they "led" were misled into believing it was all good, all good. In retrospect, with the lessons of history in our heads, we can surely see how wrong, and how bad, and how corrupt those regimes were. Is the America of today any different?

Yes, it is. So far, there is no open threat of violence against those who disagree or will not tolerate the government in power. People like Al Gore will not be assassinated, murdered, or simply caused to disappear by the U.S. military for taking a bold and powerful public stand against the Bush regime. At least, not yet. Aye, and maybe that's where we must look ever more cautiously: not yet. Because the laws that people like Gore are revolting against are truly scary. They are not revolutionary in concept; they are historical in viewpoint, and they stem directly from the same kind of thinking that made men like those mentioned above such dangerous tyrants: they give the government the power to detain any person for any reason, for an indiscriminate length of time. Without providing them, as guaranteed in the Constitution of the U.S. and many other developed countries, the right to an attorney, nor even a phone call, nor even a notification to their family that they have been detained. Nor are those detained even given the right to hear the charges against them, let alone defend themselves. All in the name of National Security.

What if it was your father? Or son or daughter? Or friend. We in the Western world express disgust, dismay, and righteous indignation when we hear that a citizen of any country has been detained against their will on seemingly trumped up charges, in so-called developing countries, and so-called third-world countries.

On the other hand, Gore is running again for President in 2008, and it's pretty easy to take shots when you're on the other side. So, who do you believe? Who do you believe?

(You can read the text of Al Gore's speech today at http://www.algore04.com/)