Political Debate When I Was a Wee Lad

[KenH]

From 1962: what political debate was like when I was a wee lad and the debates were much more over political philosophy than they are today, which have pretty much devolved into the two political wings of the Duopoly yelling at and investigating each other and running HUGE budget deficits in the 21st century.

"The state therefore has two natural functions, functions essential to the existence of any peaceful, ordered society: to protect the rights of citizens against violent or fraudulent assault, and to judge in conflicts of right with right. It has a further third function, which is another aspect of the first, that is, to protect its citizens from assault by foreign powers. These three functions are expressed by three powers: the police power, which protects the citizen against domestic violence; the military power, which protects the citizen against violence from abroad; and the courts of law, which judge between rights and rights, as well as sharing with the police power the protection of the citizen against domestic violence.

…

But since this institution must possess a monopoly of legal physical force, to give to it in addition any further power is fraught with danger; that monopoly gives to the state so much power that its natural functions should be its maximum functions."

- excerpt from Frank S. Meyer's In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Maybe it mattered in the days of radio or pre-radio. But TV ushered in a brand new era.


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Kennedy was generally seen as winning the debate and he ultimately squeaked through with an election victory. But the real lasting winner of that first debate was the medium through which most people experienced it: television.​