Speeches to Wake-up by

Over recent months there have been some memorable speeches worth revisiting. They speak of truth, values, citizenship, responsibility, openness, and accountability. These are words to abide by.

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Excerts taken from a speech by Former Vive President Al Gore, delivered in Washington D.C., January 16, 2006:

"Al Gore On the Limits of Executive Power"

"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. 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, "Common Sense", ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that, in his phrase, "the law is king". "

There have of course been other periods in American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents. And when his successor, President Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses, in his first inaugural he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government you are supposed to be under the Constitution of our country. But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must also be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has accompanied these efforts by the Executive branch to dominate our constitutional system.
We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-must examine ourselves. We must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and hollowing out and degradation of American democracy! It is time to stand up for the American system that we know and love! It is time to breathe new life back into America’s democracy!
Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will" America’s based on the belief that we can govern ourselves. And exercise the power of self-government. The American idea proceeded from the bedrock principle that all just power is derived from the consent of the governed.

Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.
It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it."


The entire transcript is available here.

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From the Commonwealth Club of California, December 9, 2005
Here we have, from Scott Ritter former U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq, an excert from a speech given at the Commonwealth Club. The last half hour was open for questions.

Q- "How do we, as a nation, avoid the same mistakes we made in Iraq, in places like Iran, North Korea, and Syria?"

A- "If you're going to view this as a National Security problem we're probably just beating our heads against a brick wall. Because, we were sucked into this was in Iraq because of our fear and ignorance... because of what we don't know. And I would submit that we don't know, we "the collective", don't know much about Iran, Syria, and elswhere. Why? (And this is how we can empower ourselves) Because we stopped acting as citizens. That's the bottom line. Look in the mirror and ask yourself the following question: "Am I a citizen or am I a consumer?" Because the answer, honestly... we have become a nation that has walked away from our duties and responsibilities of citizenship. The preamble of the Constitution begins, "We the people". But we no longer act as "we the people". We the people, are'nt involved. We the people, aren't engaged. We're not out there acting as good citizens. We've wrapped ourselves in a cocoon of comfort that's derived from a life style that we have become addicted to. And what we do is we waddle down a path of relative prosperity. We don't want to rock-the-boat. And as long as we don't want to rock-the-boat as citizens we're not functioning as citizens. And if we don't function as citizens our National Security and Foreign Policy will be hijacked by those who have interests that are not necessarily the interests of the majority of Americans. And we will not be able to stop future conflicts. The only way to stop future conflicts is for we the people of the United States of America, to start injecting ourselves into the processes of government to ensure not only do we elect the right people to office, but we hold them accountable for what they do in our name."


The speech in it's entirety may be heard here. (Requires Real Player)

Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Hardcover), 2005. Foreword by Seymour Hersh. ISBN 1560258527