Primaries on this side of the pond and other tangents

What debates may come down to.

As the only American in my class, several of my classmates sporadically try to pick my brain on American politics. They want to know if all Americans really like Bill. If racism is an issue with Obama in the race. This morning, I had a good friends ask if individual Americans stick with their parents' party or commonly switch. All of them are good questions. They very often reveal the underlying political priorities in their own nations, and shed a brighter lightbult onto what's truly important to the American people. Or, more often than not, they accurately demonstrate just how many stereotypes are floating around about us.

So. They ask, I explain, and then I laugh at how out-of-the-loop I am as a current D.C. expatriate (it is an entity into itself, lemme tell ya). I did get excited, though, when I got an email today from the Federalist Society advertising their "Originally Speaking" Online Debate, this time with Presidential Candidates airing their views on Judical Philosophy. I'm fond of the program because I think it's a fantastic idea, and I always enjoyed following them while I was on staff there (hounding the debaters to follow their deadlines was another story).

Debates in general are a wonderful thing, if conducted properly. You have two opponents openly presenting their positions with an entire audience ready to inflict a fact-checking mentality upon them. You have education, enlightenment and some good old fighting going on at the same time. And it's all legit! What could be better?

In general, I've found the structure of Debates to provide an entertaining and fairly painless way to learn about the intellectual threads of a political issue. Unlike one person on a soapbox spouting out views, you have live interaction and clearly drawn battle lines (depending on how much interest and how many pacemakers are at the podiums or on the bleachers). You feel as if you're part of the human quest for truth while you're chasing after their trains of thought. After all, the practice in itself is as old as humanity (Adam and Eve were married; don't tell me they didn't debate). You see it continued with much success in Socrates' Dialogues and continued throughout philosophical and political history, with newspapers and podiums serving as the political, moral, and educational battlefields of the day.

The practice continues to the present moment, this time with Blog Comment Fields and online postings of content. So, with that tangent, you'll find directly below a link to Fed-Soc's posting of the Presidential Candidates' thoughts on the Judiciary Branch's role. To my disappointment, there is no element of debate in this one. With the exception of Ron Paul (surprise, surprise), most of the responses mimic each other in content (surprise, surprise). But there is no shock in that. They know their audience. The question is whether the audience really knows them.

The Federalist's Society's "Originally Speaking: Presidential Candidates on Judicial Philosophy"

At any event, do keep Judical Issues in mind when weighing presidential candidates. In many frightening ways, The Powers that Matter these days have shifted from the People´s hands to those of the nine in black.