Al Gore wants to be president some day, and most people who want to be president give me the willies. The following is excerpted from a talk given by Senator Al Gore at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, WA, February 1992. It is within the boundary of political pragmatism. I admit it's on the outer edges of that boundary, but the definition of what is politically possible is expanding, because our ways of thinking are changing. Suddenly one plate moves over the other, submerges it, and the shock waves knock over buildings.
Ideas can move through history in the same way.
In Europe, the idea of communism came under enormous pressure from the idea of freedom, and that pressure built up along a fault line running right through Berlin. Not much of the change was visible on the surface until the idea of freedom reached a critical mass, and then suddenly and decisively it moved over communism, submerging it, and the shock waves knocked over the Berlin Wall - and all the political structures of Eastern Europe. That we have obligations to each other, and to those who come after us. That the future is not to be discounted, but to be believed in. That we are entitled to have faith.