Mar 10, 2016 4 min read

You would think the so-called debates that are staged during the primary season would be an opportunity for candidates to conduct a lively discussion of the nation’s problems and their possible solutions.

Imagine spirited conversations based on these questions:

• How do we improve the lot of the poor and the income of the struggling middle class without sabotaging our economy?

• Can we forge a national energy policy that ensures our future energy needs are met, the grid is protected and the environment not damaged?

• As the Middle East disintegrates, what actions should the United States take, and what will be the consequences of those actions?

• Can we forge a policy that allows the immigrant labor our economy has come to depend upon while still protecting our borders?

• What role should the federal government play in the education of the nation’s youth, and how do we keep them from falling behind the rest of the world?

• What concrete steps can we take to make our representative government function better?

If you’ve expected to hear thoughtful argument on these topics from presidential candidates, you have been deeply disappointed. Rather than propose plans, most of the candidates pander and perpetuate political myths. Some of these myths are repeated so often by the candidates on both the left and right many Americans perceive them as fact. We hear these myths in “man on the street” interviews on radio and TV and read them in letters to the editor and online comments.

Here are a few:

• “America is in trouble.” Really? Our economy is in far better shape than just about anyone else’s at the moment. Sure, even though employment is now better than 95 percent, we still have problems with low wages and inadequate benefits; but this is not Spain, where 40 percent of its workers are idled. It is not Greece or Libya or Syria or Chad. These are countries with trouble.

• “Free trade agreements have been a disaster.” It is true that hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost to countries overseas as a result of these agreements, but we enjoy the advantages of free trade and low tariffs many times, every day, from the fruits and vegetables we eat to the cars we drive. That the shoes you bought for $60 did not cost $300 is a benefit of free trade, which has also improved the lives of the people in Brazil or Malaysia who made them.

• “Our rights are being taken from us.” What rights? Free speech, freedom of religion or of the press? The right to bear arms? Of peaceable assembly? If any of these constitutional rights have been rescinded, we don’t know what they are or who is supposed to have taken them.

• “Our Constitution is being torn apart.” The last time the Constitution was amended was in 1992. There have been just six changes to the document since 1933.

• “It’s time to take America back.” From whom, we wonder. Who took it? Increasingly, a large number of Americans believe the politicians took it, or the government took it. The feelings of so many are we should either have a much smaller, weaker federal government, or – just the opposite – we should be lead by an autocrat not afraid to use muscle around the globe and at home to silence his critics.

A variation on this phrase is, “We need to return America to what it once was.” This is exemplary of the myth that things were better in the past than they are now. They are certainly different. The world is different and its people are more mobile.

Our population naturally reflects this change. We should accept that change and turn it to our advantage rather than fight it.

If we could return America to what it once was, instead of the diversity we now know, the United States would have just three types of inhabitants: natives expelled from their lands, white people and the slaves they own.