Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:42:51 PM
I don't even know where to start with this columnists glowing review of his new book. Or is it even a review? The way I read, it looked more like a way to bash President Bush and confirm once again that Al Gore was robbed in 2000.
The tentative, calculating, painfully moderate approach of the past was gone, along with all of the baggage of the Democratic Leadership Council that he had helped to found. He was no longer the same politician who could comfortably have Joe Lieberman as his running mate. And in the years that have followed his Iraq speech and his endorsement of Howard Dean for president in the 2004 race, Gore has continued to speak out not only on global-warming but also against the erosion of civil liberties, media consolidation, denigration of science by the federal government, and right-wing threats against the judiciary, developing themes that he examines closely in these pages.
He talks about standing up and fighting all these consolidations , and denigrations, and the evil republicans. Good for him.
What he is telling us today — with the moral authority of a man who many believe was wrongly barred from the presidency — is that American democracy and indeed American society are in danger from the authoritarians of the right. Without much polite varnish, he warns that self-serving plutocrats and self-righteous theocrats have nearly banished reason from the public square; their machinations disable us as we try to confront the enormous problems that threaten our future. According to Gore, Americans cannot adequately protect the nation from terrorism because our ideas about national security have been distorted by fear and falsehoods. Nor can we address what he calls "the carbon crisis," potentially "the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization," because the truth about global warming has been obscured by industrial and government propaganda.
How much more right wing bashing can you fit into one paragraph. Oh.. and "moral authority"? Where exactly does he get his code of moral ethics? Nobody is sure, but this explains some of his feelings:
A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush's public kind of faith. "It's a particular kind of religiosity," he said. "It's the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it's not going to be the source of your salvation.
Please. He is comparing President Bush's openly spoken religious faith to that of Wahhabiism? And Bush grabbed on to his faith to help him through one of the toughest times in American history, and that it's not real? That his faith is not the source of his salvation? Do not most people, regardless of their faith, do the same thing? What church teaches him that you shouldn't hold faith tight, because it's not the "source of your salvation". Despicable!
Well, if you ask me, I think he has taken a literal hold of the proverbial "tree trunk", chasing after his
man-made global warming binge. And, unfortunately, that has become his religion.