Gore Vidal, interviewed by Doug Henwood

part one

Doug Henwood Thank you for joining us, Gore Vidal.

Right now we have a lot of liberals wagging their fingers telling us, "I
told you so," about the George Bush regime, that people who said there
was no difference between the two parties are now saying it's enormously
big. How in the wake of the reaction to September eleventh do you read
that kind of "no difference between the two" argument?

Gore Vidal Well, Bush acted more quickly with repressive legislation
to push us further along the road to a police state, which Clinton, two
years after Oklahoma City, launched when he signed a special piece of
legislation, the Anti-Terrorist Act, which removed a number of our
freedoms as enumerated in the Bill of Rights. It was a bad bill.

Then in the wake of 9-11, the Bush people, particularly Ashcroft, they
were ready with, they had all sorts of terrifying totalitarian
legislation ready, which was promptly passed. The USA PATRIOT act it
was called, went through Congress without any debate, and many people
said many congressmen never read it. Then when they began to look and
see what was in it, you know, the decapitation of the first-born, I
believe, was in there, or something like it, it was filled with....

H The liberals would have waited for the second-born...

V Well, they would wait till the last-born perhaps, thus doing away
with contraception, which is causing their constituents such worry.

Anyway, it was created, the bill, and now it's being corrected, I don't
know what state it's in now and I don't think anybody does. But we are
losing our liberties, and there is no doubt about it. And every day
there are more and more examples, as Ashcroft gleefully says that he
single-handedly suspended the confidentiality between lawyer and client,
"if it's a terrorist situation." And now he's trying to lock up a woman
who, a woman laywer who's worked for a terrorist, which it seems it has
got the legal profession quite angry.