Al Gore
American politician and social activist.
There are three misconceptions in particular that bedevil our thinking. The first: isn't there a disagreement among scientists as to whether the problem is real or not? Actually... not really.
Of course, the popular vote was in my favour, and the outcome in the electoral college was not driven by an effort to count every vote that was cast, because the counting was truncated by a Supreme Court decision. In the American system, unfortunately there is no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution.
Given those two remaining alternatives, I took the advice of Winston Churchill, who said that the American people generally do the right thing after first exhausting every available alternative. Choosing to live under the rule of law seemed to be the only alternative remaining, even though I strongly, strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision. Historians and scholars will put that decision in its own separate category.
I believe this is a moral issue. It is your time to seize this issue. It is our time to rise again, to secure our future.
Old Habits plus Old Technology have predictable consequences. Old Habits, that are hard to change, plus New Technology can have dramatically altered consequences.
If yesterday marked the five month anniversary of the darkest day in American history, today the Day After must mark the anniversary of one of the greatest days in American history: because on September 12, a bruised and battered nation began to fight back. Some fought back by rushing to aid and rescue the few surviving victims of the tragedy and to aid and comfort the grieving and bereaved.
We have created a wealthy society with tens of millions of talented, resourceful individuals who play virtually no role whatsoever as citizens. Bringing these people in with their networks of influence, their knowledge, and their resources is the key to creating the capacity for shared intelligence that we need to solve our problems.
This is a time of great opportunity for our country. Our economy is the envy of the world. Living standards are rising and the gap between the rich and the poor is closing for the first time in 20 years. America is a powerful engine for the global economy, because we have met our responsibility to balance our budget, to begin paying down our debt, and to embrace our role in supporting free markets and economic growth among all nations.
I'm very familiar with the importance of dairy farming in Wisconsin. I've spent the night on a dairy farm here in Wisconsin. If I'm entrusted with the presidency, you'll have someone who is very familiar with what the Wisconsin dairy industry is all about.
Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens sooner or later to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.
We have everything we need, save perhaps, political will. But, you know what ... political will is a renewable resource. ... The solutions are in our hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen.
This is an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an opportunity to find our better selves and in rising to meet this challenge, create a better brighter future a future worthy of the generations who come after us and who have a right to be able to depend on us.
Please don't recount this vote.
But as Al Gore says, if denial aint just a river in Egypt, despair aint just a tire in the trunk.
The same dark spirit of domination has led them to for the first time in American history imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.
They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.
The day I made that statement, I was tired because I had been up all night inventing the Camcorder.
Making mistakes in centuries and generations past would have consequences that we could overcome. We don't have that luxury anymore.
Parson Al winning the Nobel Peace Prize was as predictable as his Oscar for Best Documentary, and represents the final debasement of a once-prestigious award.
What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.
These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America it is also an illusory goal in its own right.
Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.
A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.
I've kind of fallen out of love with politics. ... Whatever experience and talents I've gained over the years I think it may well be that the highest and best use of that is to try to bring enough awareness of the solutions to the climate crisis and enough of a sense of urgency that we come together across party lines on behalf of our children.