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The primary issue, as I see it, is moral responsibility for one's political behavior. Are we responsible for the reasonably knowable consequences of our discretionary acts? Yes, except in systems of pure fatalism or pure proceduralism. May immediate harm be outweighed by more compelling considerations (such as the opportunity to provoke a crisis—sacrificing a generation of pawns—to create the preconditions for revolutionary change)? In theory, yes, but at great risk. Nader rejects this responsibility. He relies instead upon a thin conceit that Gore and Bush are the Bobbsey twins. Cowardly and dishonest. --Ron K
GORE/BUSH DIFFERENCE #19: Gore Would Not Attack Iraq First Without U.N. Support
"Great nations persevere and then prevail," Gore said. "They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism."
GORE/BUSH DIFFERENCE #18: Bush Allows EPA To Delete Global Warning In Report
GORE/BUSH DIFFERENCE #16: Bush Nominates Conservative Judges, Dems Don't
GORE VS. BUSH: Difference #15, Bush Wants To Remove Federal Worker Protections
NYT
GORE VS. BUSH: Difference #14, Bush Rolls Back Clinton/Gore's Health Privacy Protections
GORE VS. BUSH: Difference #13, BushAdmin Ships Prisoners To Torture Countries, Blocks UN Vote
"While facilitating the transfer of detainees to Middle Eastern countries that use torture, the US tried unsuccessfully to block a vote in the United Nations this week on the UN Convention Against Torture, which it has signed and ratified. "
DIFFERENCE #12 BETWEEN BUSH AND GORE: Bush Is Against Workers' Rights
DIFFERENCE #1 BETWEEN BUSH AND GORE: John Ashcroft
Politex, It's unfortunate that Matt Schweder posed his monologue as "Bush/Gore", rather than "Republicans/Democrats", since that was the main message Nader was trying to convey. Would Gore have chosen Ashcroft as AG? Maybe not. The real point is that without the support of many "liberal" Democrats (Feingold, Dodd, etc.) in the Senate, Ashcroft would not have been confirmed. --Joe Glombiak
"Maybe not"? Come on, Joe, please get real. Ashcroft's to the right of the Republican Party and Gore might have selected him as A-G? Obviously, that question's the "real point." As for Nader not framing the "no difference" distinction as being between Bush and Gore, he began doing it in the Summer of 2000 (see below) and continued it in his documented speeches throughout the campaign. --Politex
RALPH NADER, THE SCOURGE of Motown, the hardest-working man in the activist business, Mr. Unsafe at Any Speed, is back. Well, yes, he was back last time, during the 1996 campaign when he passively accepted the Green Party nomination, but this time he's really back. In this second bid for the presidency he plans to raise $5 million (a thousand times more than he spent four years ago), get on the ballot in at least 45 states, and pull 5 percent in the election—which would qualify the impoverished Green Party for federal subsidies next time around. Of more immediate interest, at least to Al Gore, are Nader's respectable poll numbers: 7 to 10 percent in California as of June, 6 percent nationally. If California tips Green enough, Bush could win the state and the whole damn election. Which, Nader confided to Outside in June, wouldn't be so bad. When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: "Bush." Not that he actually thinks the man he calls "Bush Inc." deserves to be elected: "He'll do whatever industry wants done." The rumpled crusader clearly prefers to sink his righteous teeth into Al Gore, however: "He's totally betrayed his 1992 book," Nader says. "It's all rhetoric." Gore "groveled openly" to automakers, charges Nader, who concludes with the sotto voce realpolitik of a ward heeler: "If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win."
--Outsider Magazine August, 2000
UNITED NATIONS -- Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments...including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran....to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences.
The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.
...This alliance shows the depths of perversity of the [U.S.] position," said Adrienne Germaine, president of the International Women's Health Coalition. "On the one hand we're presumably blaming these countries for unspeakable acts of terrorism, and at the same time we are allying ourselves with them in the oppression of women." --Washington Post, 06.17.02