Al didn't get the memo from the Tea Party!

Al Gore's Call for U.S. 'Arab Spring' Uprising Not Well Thought Out

Mark Whittington, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Aug 4, 2011 "Contribute content like this. Start Here."


COMMENTARY | Former Vice President Al Gore, without a hint of irony, recently suggested that what the United States needs is an "Arab Spring"-style uprising in response to the debt ceiling deal. There are several problems with his thesis.

The first problem is there has already been a peaceful uprising against the federal government, active since the spring of 2009. It is called the tea party, which shares a lot of aspirations with some of the people who protested in Cairo and are now fighting to overthrow a variety of dictatorships from Libya to Syria.

Gore, of course, dismisses the idea that the tea party is the sort of rebellion that is needed. He believes, or at least said he believes, according to the Daily Caller, that the tea party is financed by a shadowy conspiracy of right-wing corporations and people seeking to destroy the government and get it out of the way for them to run rampant. This assessment would no doubt be a surprise to members of the tea party, who believe it is a spontaneous, grassroots popular movement that is beholden to no one.

The "America Spring" Gore imagines would involve people taking to the streets to demand more government, more taxation, and more spending. That is quite the opposite of a freedom movement. Attempts to jump-start such a movement, such as the "Coffee Party," have failed repeatedly.
Gore is also not thinking things through when he uses the "Arab Spring" metaphor. So far, while the Egyptian uprising has overthrown Hosni Mubarak, the country now is run by a military junta that is promising democracy at a later date.

Moreover, the Egyptian uprising has resulted in the trials of a number of former Mubarak government officials on the charges of corruption and human rights violations. This includes the former president himself, who has had to suffer the indignity of being wheeled into a court room in a hospital bed in an iron cage.

If an "Arab Spring" did overthrow the U.S. government, one wonders who would share an iron cage in the revolutionary courts that would follow and whether Gore would like it. One suspects he would not.

Sources: Al Gore: We need an American 'Arab spring', Jeff Poor, Daily Caller, August 3, 2011


Egypt's Hosni Mubarak Faces Trial in a Hospital Bed Surrounded by an Iron Cage, Mark R. Whittington, August 3, 2011