The wrong debate.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

In May 2013 I wrote a piece titled, “What this conservative believes.”  In 17 paragraphs of one to two sentences each I stated what I think of as the core beliefs of conservatism.

With that in mind, I am convinced that the highly spun and elaborately staged presidential debates of the recent past – Thursday night included – are way wide of the mark.

Rather than seeking to land gotchas, one liners and zingers, the candidates should be debating the points set forth in my piece of 11 years ago.

Of those 17 points, I’d have picked three for last night.

First is the U.S. Constitution. Conservatives cleave to the Constitution because of the express limitations it places on government. Liberals and progressives chafe against those limitations even as they expend vast amounts of energy seeking to circumvent them.

Which is correct?

Is the Constitution the bedrock document that guarantees the freedom of ordinary citizens that conservatives believe it is, or is it the 18^th century anachronism that is standing in the way of an overdue fundamental transformation of the country that liberals and progressives believe it is?

Let the sides debate.

Second, there’s laissez faire, free-market capitalism. Eleven years ago, I wrote:

I believe that for all the admitted faults of free-market capitalism, it has nevertheless done more to lift humankind out of poverty than any other economic system ever devised.”

Despite a mountain of evidence to support that belief, liberals and progressives vehemently reject the very idea. They believe instead in a centrally planned, highly regulated economic system in which most economic decisions are made for the citizens rather than by the citizens.

Until this question is resolved, we’re going to be at each other’s throats.

Let’s debate it.

Third on my list is the role of government. In my original piece I said:

I believe that government is at once necessary and dangerous. I believe that governments are constituted of humans and that humans can never be trusted not to abuse power over other humans. Thus, I believe in the smallest government possible consistent with defending the peace and enabling the free conduct of commerce.”

I believe this to my core. I further believe that to a large extent, government has been the root source of most of the suffering that mankind has endured throughout history.

But liberals and progressives believe that government is a benign, beneficent force that makes the lives of ordinary citizens better. They believe that because they don’t believe in the sovereignty of the individual. Progressives therefore don’t believe that left to their own devices, that millions of free citizens will make millions of discrete personal decisions that will aggregate to a free, happy and prosperous nation.

Put that on the floor, Jake Tapper, and let the candidates duke it out.

Presidential debates in America have devolved into mere spectacles and are now largely a waste of time.

Are we a nation of free, self-governing people? Or are we a nation of vassals governed by aristocrats?

Let’s have that debate.