Crazy Like Al Gore by Kevin

I think Gore is exactly correct here:

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution – our system of checks and balances – was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, “On Common Sense” ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America’s alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that “the law is king.”

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint

You cannot trust human beings with power, whether it be economic or political. They must be watched to ensure that they are using that power appropriately and only when justified. “Trust me” is not the mantra of a democrat.

Gore also notes that Bush intends his usurpation of the Constitutional order to be essentially permanent:

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, “Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

The Islamic terrorists cannot destroy our country or our way of life. 9/11 represented the most deadly, complicated, and powerful strike against this country that they have been able to manage, before or since and is probably represents their high water mark. It did nothing to weaken the country’s ability to defend itself and whatever affect it had upon the economy was short-lived. The terrorists simply do not represent a threat to destroy this country. Conservatives are panicking in the face of a threat that barely registers in historical terms. Murderers are of course to be defended against and brought to justice, but it does no one anyone could to pretend that a gang of murders is in fact the historical equivalent of Stalin.

Well, it does almost no one any good to pretend that al-Qaeda is a serious threat to the continued survival of our country. I rather imagine that an unscrupulous president with, or surrounded by people with, a long standing desire to expand executive power, might find that the threat of national destruction makes his or her arguments sounds more rational.

We really are facing a dangerous moment for our constitution. The government is in control of a party whose leaders make no secret of the fact that they think the Executive should be the superior branch and that laws take a back seat to that expanded power. Gore is calling for an outside investigation, because the Republican controlled Congress refuses to challenge the leader of their party. If he doesn’t get it, then this may be how the Constitutional order dies: in silence.