One of things I find immensely frustrating about American journalists is their inability to ask appropriate follow up questions to get candidates and politicians off their talking points or at least expose them as skip deep especially in debates.
Last night, I watched the GA gubernatorial debate which featured Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel. Based on the answers he gave to a number of the questions posed to him, it was clear he is an extreme version of what most of us think of as libertarian. He wanted to eliminate all taxes because, as he said, any time the government takes your money, you are not free. He also wants to eliminate all non-violent crime laws. As all libertarians do, he wants to end all gun and business regulations. He plans to end public school because public schools are a monopoly and are like Wal-Mart? I am not really sure what this comparison was. Maybe it had something to do with Wal-Mart being a monopoly meaning you can only purchase goods from them and that’s bad? He supported the one left-wing libertarian idea of bodily autonomy as they do. All I could think was this guy made Ron Paul seem not out in far right field.
I decided to check out his website just to see whether he fleshed out his ideas more fully. Shockingly, he didn’t because they never do. He had a link to buy a series of children’s educational books for homeschooling called the Tuttle Twins. Based on a cursory check of them and reviews on Amazon, I came to the conclusion these books are less educational tools and more indoctrination tools into the far-right libertarian theocratic philosophy.
Getting back to the thesis of my diary, debates need to designed to allow for follow-up questions from the moderators. Without the ability to further press candidates on what the possible effects of their policies are, voters cannot learn what whether or not these candidates know how their policies affect people. For instance, take Hazel’s no taxes at all policy. Someone should have asked how will he fund the police, the fire department, or the legislature. Maybe he will just eliminate those things or make it voluntary donations. Since he wants to eliminate all regulations on businesses, someone should have asked him if 5 year old children should be working in factories or retail stores 12 hours day or if businesses forcing people to work 7 days a week is cool with him. Should businesses be held liable for poisoning people with tainted food or lead paint?
The Socratic Method would do wonders in exposing the ideas, both good and bad, so the voting public truly understands the choices they have when voting for candidates. So would more than an hour for a debate. Now I realize only a small percentage of the people who will vote in any given election will watch these debates, but we should be starting somewhere.
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