Gore
2000
or
Gore
1984?
4/9/99
The campaign to elect Al Gore as President in the United States in 2000 has recently gone online, with a web site featuring news, issue positions, mailing lists, pictures of the Gore family, and a town hall forum for visitors to express their views, at times even joining the Vice President for a "live chat." At least one portion of the web site, however, seems to have less in common with the ideals of a new century than with the "newspeak" of George Orwell's 1984, in which government slogans such as "war is peace" and "freedom is slavery" were used to redefine the people's perception of reality. The News and Issues section of the Gore 2000 web site proclaims that Al Gore has been champion of "progressive ideals," including, among other things, "tougher punishment." Two weeks ago, a report released by the Washington, DC-based Justice Policy Institute revealed that the 1.8 million inmates in US prisons and jails include 1 million people whose offenses were nonviolent. (See the Week Online's coverage at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/084.html#million.) Overall, the US has the second highest incarceration rate in the world, second only to Russia, and nationally, 1 in 3 young black men are in prison, jail, on probation or on parole -- on any given day. The severity of mandatory minimum drug sentencing and conditions in US prisons have been criticized by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Given the current status of crime and punishment in the US, it may stretch things somewhat to classify even tougher punishment as a "progressive ideal." Visit the Gore campaign's online forum at http://www.gore2000.org/townhall/ and let the candidate know you're on to his word games! (Note: DRCNet is non-partisan and does not endorse or oppose political candidates at this time. We do encourage candidates to take more thoughtful positions on drug policy and crime issues.)
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