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Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
13:20 - "I invented homeland security"
http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

(top) link
After reading the text of the Gore speech (at Aziz's suggestion), yes, I acknowledge the many explicit details he outlines regarding the Patriot Act and its political overtones. But you know... I noticed something else about this speech. Namely, that it's probably not quite what MoveOn.org was expecting; their lavish praise of it (which is mostly what I was pointing at in my earlier post) has to have followed a few sideling glances and furrowed brows from those in the audience.

Gore's stance, in a nutshell, is that our efforts at shoring up homeland security are insufficient. That the moves we've made are secretive at best (if we give them the benefit of the doubt) and, at worst, smack of the gulag. His biggest beef is with the search-and-seizure and arrest-without-trial parts of the Patriot Act.

And you know, he's not going to get a whole helluva lot of argument from me on that. I don't like those parts of the Patriot Act any more than the next guy. A case can be made for their necessity in a shadow war, yes, and it's been pointed out that the infamous "library records snooping" clause that Gore flashes for the camera has never actually been invoked. But still, that's small comfort for the civil libertarians in the audience.

But that's just it. Gore's speech is designed to appeal to those for whom civil liberties and security are both paramount goals, and seeks to find a better balance between them than what's currently on the books.

Where Civil Liberties are concerned, they have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, “Big Brother”-style government – toward the dangers prophesized by George Orwell in his book “1984” – than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America.

Hmm. Anti-big-government. Anti-Big-Brother. Anti-Orwellian-Nation.

Sounds to me like he's more conservative than Bush in this speech.

I don't know what MoveOn.org initially thought of this speech-- obviously they lapped it up, because it was delivered in front of them directly, and was a broadside straight at Bush. But they must have realized at some point that what they were applauding was a libertarian's call-to-arms... not the self-blaming, dictator-supporting, Stalin-apologist agenda that's at the corner of the International-ANSWER-style Left that's usually so well represented at MoveOn.org.

This is why I think the 2004 election is going to be so interesting. To beat Bush, the Democrats are going to have to find ammo that will serve them. The economy apparently is no longer in their quiver. Iraq is not gaining traction as enough of a "failure" for the American people to blame Bush for it. What's left? Security and individual liberty... and in order to beat Bush, the Democrats have to effectively be better at both of those things than the Republicans are.

Can they stump for smaller, less invasive government and better, more effective security against terrorism without selling out the entire rest of their statist, centralist platform? Can they pursue these goals without, in effect, becoming Republicans?


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