Al Gore Defends Democracy Against Fear

It wasn't all that long ago that our nation's punditocracy had more respect for former presidents, senators, representatives and even vice presidents. Throughout our history we have sometimes asked advice from the wise men (and women now) who could help us in troubled times. I don't know if Al Gore qualifies as a wise man simply because he's still a viable candidate for president but his speech offers some wise counsel that we now need.

The right wing media is spending considerable energy dismissing Al Gore as a crank and that is a strange way to treat the majority of Americans whose votes were cast for the vice president in 2000. Here's a video of the speech from Americablog. And a transcript of the speech from Raw Story. I'm putting up a permanent link on the sidebar for Gore's speech. This is the battle cry for the year 2006.