The following posts are Evan Coyne Maloney's responses to questions submitted by the members of Debate for America:


Question 1: How would he define "victory" in Iraq? How would he define
"defeat?"

When you're trying to forge a stable society out of a nation that's
been terrorized for a generation, victory can only be apparent in the
long term. In a decade, we should be in a good position to know
whether we've achieved our goals in Iraq.

If, ten years from now, Iraq is a democratic country that respected
the individual rights of its citizens, that would be victory to me.
If Iraq reverted to despotism, if Iraq became a sham democracy that
held meaningless elections, if Iraq treated women the way the Taliban
did, or the Saudis and Iranians do, then it would be a sign of defeat.

People expect Iraq to be stable immediately, and it isn't possible.
For a little historical perspective, here's a passage from Life
Magazine:

That's from 1946. You hear the same things about Iraq today, don't you?

I think the only way to achieve world peace is to ensure that every
person lives in freedom. True liberal democracies do not start wars
against other liberal democracies. Tyrants create the conditions that
foster war. To prevent war, we need to end tyranny. We won't be able
to do it ourselves, it can't all be done at once, and it won't
necessarily require military action in every case. But if this world
made a concerted effort to bring about worldwide freedom and liberty
for every person on this planet, in 100 years, despotism would be
dead. And if it were, we'd be a hell of a lot closer to achieving
world peace than if we just held hands, chanted, and marched around
with pleasant-sounding slogans on signs. When it comes to bringing
about world peace, those actions achieve nothing except boosting the
self-satisfaction of the participants.

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Question 2: What is your position on gutting social security to set up
personal accounts?

I will assume from the choice of the word "gutting" that the
submitter of the question opposes personal accounts. I should point
out, though, that the idea of personal accounts was good enough to
earn the support of President FDR--the original architect of Social
Security--so I find it interesting that so many defenders of Social
Security's status quo oppose the idea so vehemently.

I suspect that the submitter may be mistaken about the nature of
Social Security itself. Many people believe that as they pay into
Social Security, that money is set aside for them so they have it
when they retire. Not true. Money that you pay into the system is
immediately paid out to current recipients. The system today is one
big economic and demographic gamble, and to support it is to place a
lot of blind faith in unpredictable variables aligning perfectly
decades from now.

You see, there is no money being set aside for Social Security, and
there never has been. There is no such thing as a "Social Security
Trust Fund" that holds any money. If there's nothing there in the
first place, then I don't see how there's anything to "gut."

Instead, personal accounts would allow people to accumulate money
under their name, rather than placing their futures in the hands of
politicians who are always looking for new places to find money. To
me, this is obviously better than the current situation.

If you're currently retired, you probably don't mind Social Security
as it exists now. You probably only care that you'll get yours, which
you will. That's the problem with giving control over your money to a
political majority. If you're not in the majority, don't expect to
see your money. Perhaps you've heard the sayings, "Any government
that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul"
and "pure democracy is a sheep a four wolves voting on what to eat
for dinner." That's Social Security in a nutshell.

There are many people my age who are quite upset that we'll have to
be footing the bill as the baby boomer generation starts collecting
Social Security in larger numbers. Quite simply, the system will fail
for the same reason that pyramid schemes always fail. Eventually,
there aren't enough people paying into the system to satisfy the
demands of people who are drawing benefits.

The baby boomer generation is huge, much larger than any generation
behind it. Yet the generations behind it are comprised of the people
who will have to pay for the boomers. Mathematically speaking, the
system is doomed to fail. Who will be left holding the bag? People
who are currently in their 40s and younger. Is that fair? I guess
your perspective depends on whether you're the one who's gonna get
screwed.

If Social Security is left as is, my taxes will have to go up
substantially to pay for the next crop of retirees. Will my
retirement benefits go up substantially as well? Or will my benefits
be less--or even nonexistent--even though my generation will be asked
to pay more than any before it? I'll leave that as an exercise for
the reader.

The bottom line is, if you trust politicians with your money, then I
guess you'll like the system as is.

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Bart Hook
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Question 3: What are your thoughts about Fahrenheit 911? Farenhype 911?

I didn't see FahrenHYPE, so I can't comment on it.

As for Fahrenheit 911, it is a brilliant piece of political
propaganda. But it is also about as historically accurate as Austin
Powers.

(Rather than try to recount the flaws in Moore's work, I would
recommend that people read Christopher Hitchens and David Hardy, both
of whom have exhaustively fact-checked Moore's assertions.)

Michael Moore movies can be entertaining--I happen to think Roger &
Me is his best work--and viewers would be best served by appreciating
them as entertainment, and not as news. So, go see a Michael Moore
film...he could use the money!

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Question 4: Do you find it difficult getting projects financed and
distributed due to your conservative beliefs?

Financing and distribution are two different things. If anything, I
think I've had an easier time finding financing, because there aren't
very many conservative filmmakers. There are TONS of left-wing
filmmakers, and they're all putting out variations on the same
product and competing for the same financing. On my side of the
aisle, the field is relatively open, which makes things easier.

Distribution is entirely different, though. To date, I am not aware
of a single documentary film made from a clearly conservative
perspective that has gotten mainstream distribution. There might be
many reasons for that beyond the political environment that dominates
Hollywood, but I think it's pretty clear that any conservative
filmmaker starts with two strikes against him. And until I see the
day when a conservative documentary gets the same level of
distribution as--say--a "SuperSize Me", then I will continue to
assume that the political environment in Hollywood would make it less
likely for a right-of-center film to get a fair shake from major
distributors.

Still, I'm optimistic that there's at least one mainstream
distributor in Hollywood that recognizes they are a a business and
not a political entity. The potential market for films from a
different perspective is huge. All it takes is for someone with the
guts to take the risk. And when they do, they'll make a ton of money.

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Question 5: If neither party embraces the middle ground, do you think
that leaves the possibilty open for a third party making any headway?

I think the structure of our government makes it near impossible for
a viable third party to emerge. Parliamentary systems that award
seats proportionally based on a national vote are much friendlier to
third parties than our system. Given the winner-take-all nature of
our elections, an effective third party would have to get the highest
number of votes in a significant number of local districts in order
to be influential. This would be very difficult to do, because any
new third party is likely to draw disproportionately from one or the
other of the major parties.

If a third party emerged that was large enough to compete for a
significant number of offices, it would just ensure that the new
party and the philosophically closest establishment party would both
be consigned to permanent minority status. One bloc of votes would be
split between the two, and the other major party would end up with
all the power.

The only way that third (and fourth) parties would be viable is if
both major parties split around the same time. Although unlikely,
it's not inconceivable; the influence of each party machine has
declined steadily over the last 75 years. Fewer people vote straight
party-line tickets, fewer people identify with a given party, and
with 527s and the explosion in media outlets, less of the political
action is controlled by parties.

You can see ideological fault lines already where each party might
split. Democrats would likely split along economic policy lines: big-
government proponents like Ted Kennedy would go in one direction,
while more fiscally conservative Democrats like Gene Sperling would
go in the other. Republicans could split along social policy lines,
with social conservatives and the so-called "religious right" going
one way, and the more libertarian Republicans going another. It is
possible, probably not likely, but I think it could be a boon for
good governance. I'm not particularly happy with the Republicans in
Congress these days, but I'm pretty much stuck with voting for them
because, for me, the Democrats are not a viable alternative when it
comes to economic or foreign policy.

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Bart Hook
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Question 6: What's the most helpful advice you can give to me as an
American who is very anxious to make a difference, that can benefit us all as a nation?

Help spread the word, however you can do that the best. Maybe you e-
mail around underreported stories to your friends, maybe you start a
blog, maybe you try your hand at video production like I did. All of
these things can have a huge impact.

Don't forget, even though you might get your news from a multitude of
sources both online and off, most people still get all of their
information from the establishment media. If you believe that the
establishment press is rendering an accurate impression of the world,
then you don't have anything to worry about. But if you believe that
they're skewing the news to fit an agenda, then I'd encourage you to
do everything you can to help fill in the blanks that they're leaving
out. That can be as simple as introducing people to new outlets for
information.

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Bart Hook
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Question 7: Who were the five worst US presidents and why?

Any president who was in office for more than just a few months
amasses a substantial record, and not being a presidential historian,
I don't pretend to know the records of every president in enough
detail to give a meaningful answer to that question.

So, rather than pick five presidents as the worst, here are just two
relatively recent presidents whose legacies I believe had terrible
long-term impact on the country:

Franklin D. Roosevelt - While many credit him with pulling the U.S.
out of the Great Depression, there is an equally strong argument that
he may actually have prolonged it through some of his interventionist
policies. But what distresses me most about his policies is that it
set a precedent--still in effect today--that, by default, people
believe the government should interfere with the inner workings of
the economy. In my view and my reading of history, the government
more often than not just distorts the way the economy functions (or
malfunctions). Much of the government action intended to solve one
economic problem just changes the nature of the problem and transfers
the burden to a different constituency. Still, I have to give credit
to Roosevelt for being a dependable wartime leader. I wish today's
Democrats had his backbone in that department.

Lyndon Johnson - Medicare and Medicaid absolutely devastated the
health care industry. By effectively mandating that health care
providers sell their services for pennies on the dollar, Johnson
forced those providers to shift their costs to other paying
customers. That's why a hospital will charge you $8 for a single
tablet of Tylenol. That's also why you can't get a doctor to come to
your house, the way people did in the 1950s. Doctors have to make up
the lost money on mandated Medicare and Medicaid treatments by
jacking up the cost for everybody else and by increasing their
patient volume, which is why you're lucky if your doctor spends more
than 5 minutes with you whenever you visit. And if you hate HMOs,
blame Lyndon Johnson. They sprang up as a result of the market
disruption that his policies created. Many people complain about
today's healthcare system, and many of those complaints are rooted in
policies enacted by President Johnson.

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Question 8: Do you believe the government has the right to hold Jose
Padilla without charging him with a crime? Why or why not?

Well, I guess recent news has made this question moot. Padilla has
been charged.

However, the premise behind the question is an important one, and it
raises difficult questions for liberals and conservatives alike.

In this case, there are two competing interests. On the one hand,
nobody wants to live in a country where authorities routinely round
up citizens and hold them captive indefinitely without charges or
trial. I don't think that's a danger now, but I also do not want to
give the government the tools to do it in the future. On the other
hand, most Americans recognize the importance of not putting
artificial restrictions upon the people charged with protecting us
and fighting the war on terror.

In past wars, it was assumed that warring parties would capture and
hold enemy combatants until the war was over. The complication today
stems from the fact that we're fighting a war unlike any other in our
past. The historical precedents simply don't apply. There is no enemy
nation to surrender, and even if we fought radical Islam to the last
member, there is unlikely to ever be a formal end of hostilities.
There won't be specific "V" days as there were in World War II. We
won't know the moment that the war is really over; we will only
figure it out after a number of years without attack.

Because the scope of this war is harder to define, giving government
an unchecked ability to hold people until the end of hostilities
becomes more onerous. There will undoubtedly be people held who are
innocents, and that's an unfortunate side-effect of war: a different
form of collateral damage, if you will. Clearly, civil libertarians
who worry about the indefinite imprisonment of people have a
legitimate cause for concern. I will not dismiss them as some
conservatives unfortunately have.

On the other hand, there is a huge risk in believing that national
security should always take a back seat to civil liberties. After
all, if there's no America to defend, then it doesn't really matter
what civil liberties we have on paper. But the danger is more than
just the immediate risk to our security, the danger goes directly to
the point of whether we'll ever be able to win another war again.
There are a number of people who believe that this war should be
fought primarily as a police action, much in the same way that the
FBI fights the mafia.

The problem with that is, it's a purely defensive stance. It requires
a crime to be committed before any action is taken. Dormant terrorist
cells in the U.S. and elsewhere are often assembled because they are
comprised of "clean" people who will avoid detection. The very first
crime they commit may be setting off a nuclear device in a major
city. I think that after September 11th, a national consensus was
reached that we should not wait to be attacked in order to take
action. I'm sure the families of the 3,000 dead wish we had taken
action before that attack if we could have.

I will admit that I don't know how to strike the proper balance. It
is a very difficult question, and there are many people much smarter
than I who are stumped for an answer.

But I think we as a nation can come to some general agreements on
where to draw certain lines. For example, some people believe that
terror suspects who have been captured abroad should get access to
trials in American courts. I think this is absurd. Imagine what would
have happened if we fought World War II under the restrictions that
some people are trying to place on our current conflict.

Pretend you're an American soldier walking through a French town held
by the Nazis. There are ten German soldiers in the area, and one of
them shoots at you. You don't know who, so you can't fire back,
because if you hit the wrong person, you'd be denying them of their
rights. Instead, you have to capture all ten soldiers, bring them
back to the U.S., and somehow prove in a court of law which one of
them shot at you. Of course, you can't do that, because the only
witnesses are the other Nazis. Good luck winning a war with rules
like that.

Obviously, in World War II, we had less of a problem because our
enemies wore uniforms that were easily identifiable. We could assume
that if someone was wearing a Nazi uniform, we should fight them. But
our enemies now don't wear uniforms, and that alone gives them a
tremendous advantage.

It would be a shame to think that the U.S. would never be able to win
another war because our enemies have figured out how to use our own
rules and regulations to defeat us.

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Bart Hook
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I would like to take this time to thank Evan for taking the time out of a very busy schedule to answer a few of our questions.

[This will stay a read-only thread, but please feel free to discuss his reposes in this forum]

Bart

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