Dr. Gonzo
“An American Heresy”
Remarks by Al Gore as delivered April 27, 2005
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you very much.I want to thank (Sarah) and her daughter (Madeline) for that wonderful introduction and for (Sarah’s) commitment to the agenda that she cares so deeply about.
And to all of you for joining with her in fighting for what you believe in in this country and doing it according to the rules and within the American system.
I want to thank also Ben Brandzel for being the emcee and for all the work he has done. Adam Ruben and Justin Ruben have also done a tremendous amount of work on this event. And Tom Matzzie, the Washington director and Eli Pariser is not here, but I want to thank him as well.
Four years and four months ago, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a bitterly divided five to four decisions, issued an unsigned opinion that the majority caution should never be used as a precedent for any subsequent case anywhere in the federal court system. Their ruling conferred the presidency on a candidate who had lost the popular vote and it inflamed partisan passions that had already been aroused by the long and hard fought election campaign.
I could not have possibly disagreed more strongly with the opinion that I read shortly before midnight that evening, December 12, 2000. But I knew what course of action best served our Republic.
And even though many of my supporters said they were unwilling to accept a ruling which they suspected was brazenly partisan in its motivation and simply not entitled to their respect.
Nevertheless, less than 24 hours later, I went before the American people to reaffirm the bedrock principle that we are a nation of laws not men. There is a higher duty than the one we owe to a political party, I said on that occasion, “This is America and we put country before party.”
The demonstrators and counter-demonstrators left the streets and the nation moved on as it should have to accept the inauguration of George W. Bush as our 43rd president.
Having gone through that experience, I can tell you, without any doubt whatsoever, that if the justices who form the majority in Bush versus Gore had not only all been nominated to the court by a Republican President but had also been all confirmed by only Republican Senators and party line votes, America would not have accepted that court decision.
Moreover, if the confirmation of those justices in the majority had been forced through by running a rough shod over 200 years of Senate precedents and have been engineered by craft partisans’ decisions on narrow party line votes to break the Senate’s rule to procedure, then no feat imaginable could have calmed the passion arousing our country.
As Aristotle once said of virtue, respect for the rule of law is one thing, it is indivisible. And so long as it remains indivisible, so will our country. But if either major political party is ever so beguiled by a lust for power, then it abandons this unifying principle, then the fabric of our democracy will be torn. Continue reading
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