The So-called Debates

The state of American politics really has my dander up. Watching the third and final Presidential debate of the 2004 election season, it was more obvious to me than ever that everything in these debates is premeditated, planned, and scripted by the Debate Commission (which, for those of you who haven't read my previous article, “The Two-headed Monster (U. S. Politics),” was formed by the Democrat and Republican parties in the early 1980s, to deliberately and blatantly keep third-party Presidential candidates from being allowed to participate in debates).

You've just read the beginning of my post...and here is the rest of it.

These so-called “debates,” which the Democrats and Republicans would like us to believe are impartial, open, and democratic debates for the benefit of the American people and a healthy part of a democratic society...are anything but any of those things. If these “debates” were truly democratic, there would be no pre-scripting of the debates. When a moderator willingly and openly admits to pre-screening the questions and choosing the order in which they are asked, then even the “town hall debate” (much less the other two) was not openly democratic.

United States citizens should be allowed to stand up in a debate hall, ask any question of the politicians, and expect an honest answer. Not only that, but the person who posed the question should be allowed to make further comment on it, especially for clarification.

To have a moderator pre-screen the questions is nothing less than CENSORSHIP, it is a violation of our individual right to freedom of speech, and it should not be allowed. We, the people of the United States of America, should be outraged at this egregiously unconstitutional behavior on the part of the Democrat and Republican parties.

Furthermore, we should be outraged at the new and frightening appearance of “free speech zones” within our nation's borders. Any time a person tries to voice his or her opinion and gets arrested simply for trying to do so when they are “outside of a free speech zone,” it is an ugly and inexcusable violation of our Constitutional right to free speech, and we should be furious.

There have been several examples of this in the past few years, and I will give a recent one as an example. During the second of the three 2004 Presidential debates, two of the third-party Presidential candidates, Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and David Cobb (Green) attempted to enter the debate hall in order to serve the Debate Commission with court orders, allowing Badnarik to debate alongside George Bush and John Kerry. Badnarik and Cobb clearly identified themselves as Presidential candidates, declared their intent to serve papers and obtain participation in the debates, and then stepped through the line of police officers.

Both Presidential candidates were immediately arrested, handcuffed, and shoved into the back of a paddy wagon. They were then taken to a jail house, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell, where they spent some time with several college students, who had been tackled by police and arrested for walking through the non-free-speech zone on their way back home.

It's a sad day in America, when two upstanding Presidential candidates--who have the legal right to debate in a Presidential election year--are denied not only their right to debate, but also their very basic and critical Constitutional right to free speech...and when they try to exercise those rights, they are handcuffed, arrested, and jailed.

Thanks to the folks at FMNN, Michael Badnarik was interviewed regarding his (and David Cobb's) experience. If you'd like, you can watch the video of his interview by clicking here.

Also, if you like, you can click here to watch a debate between David Cobb and Michael Badnarik.