All hail Caesar!
Jul. 13th, 2004 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amari_zI swear that I never intended this journal to become my political soap box, but the world sucks so much right now, its the main thing on my mind.
I though this was an excellent speech by Gore. I haven't been able to figure out, through, where he gave it and to what audience.
It brings forth really well a lot of issues I've been mulling--I hope a lot of people have--about how we're playing with fire in letting this administration blatantly trample on the basic structures that the US Constitution creates and that it was exactly the type of difficult situation we face today that the founders were concerned with when they set out the form of the federal government. Our commitment to our imperfect democracy is only really tested in times of trouble, and this country is being tested and we're failing badly.
We should be absolutely terrified that our Constitution will soon truly be worth only the paper it was written on.
Here's a sample:
I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has come back into "the city" and declared that our nation is now in a permanent state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and every individual citizen.
The references to the city are to Rome and the comparison to Julius Caesar are frighteningly fitting.
I though this was an excellent speech by Gore. I haven't been able to figure out, through, where he gave it and to what audience.
It brings forth really well a lot of issues I've been mulling--I hope a lot of people have--about how we're playing with fire in letting this administration blatantly trample on the basic structures that the US Constitution creates and that it was exactly the type of difficult situation we face today that the founders were concerned with when they set out the form of the federal government. Our commitment to our imperfect democracy is only really tested in times of trouble, and this country is being tested and we're failing badly.
We should be absolutely terrified that our Constitution will soon truly be worth only the paper it was written on.
Here's a sample:
I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has come back into "the city" and declared that our nation is now in a permanent state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and every individual citizen.
The references to the city are to Rome and the comparison to Julius Caesar are frighteningly fitting.
