Believe it or not, there are

subjects that interest me besides the presidential race and the debates.

But they can wait.

We go through this drill only

once every four years, and what's at stake, after all, is pretty important.

It's worth being the focus of our attention for a few months.

The debates are over now, but

at this writing I haven't seen the final one. We went to press Tuesday

afternoon, about six hours before the debate.

But I'm willing to stick my

neck out and make some predictions before the fact that you will be reading

after the fact.

I predict, for instance, that

you didn't hear the word "freedom" or the word "liberty"

very often if at all during the final debate. You didn't hear it much

during the first two, so I think I'm pretty safe.

You probably heard words like

"security" and "safety" and "our children"

quite often. And you heard a lot of arguments about whose programs would

do the most for whichever ethnic, economic or ideological group was being

discussed at the moment.

It's almost as if we're living

in a dream inspired by the likes of movie producer Stan Kubrick ("Clockwork

Orange"), in which we're all slaves and we're given the right to

choose which plantation will own us.

The Gore Plantation promises

to keep us two percentage points above the poverty level when we're old,

without any need for hard work or financial planning on our part, while

the Bush Plantation will only keep us one and a half percentage points

above poverty when we're old.

At least the Bush Plantation

will give us the right to invest some of our retirement money ourselves,

but the Gore Plantation is doing a good job of scaring us into the belief

that doing our own investing just might be too risky.

Slaves ought not get too uppity.

It only causes problems.

The Bush Plantation is also

having a hard time explaining why it only wants to spend a little over

$700 billion for new programs to make us safer, more secure and more comfortable

in our slave quarters. The Gore Plantation is much more generous. It wants

to give us $2.2 trillion in new goodies.

Here's how it works. You go

out and work on the plantation and earn "better living" points.

You can take your better living points to the plantation owner's basement,

where all manner of things are stored, and buy food, or a warm blanket,

or wood for the pot belly stove in the slave quarters, or a nice rocking

chair to set on the front porch of the slave quarters.

Work harder and longer and

you get more points. Only thing is, the master of the plantation takes

points away from the slaves who work the hardest and longest and gives

them to the ones who work less, or uses them to put fresh paint on the

plantation house or a new fence for the north 40. The more points you

earn, the more points you have to give up.

The master doesn't want you

to get enough points to buy all that stuff for yourself. Instead, in the

Gore and Bush plantations, the master will take care of your food, blankets

and front porch sittin'. All you have to do is give most of your points

to the master.

It really makes more sense

to work less and let the master take care of your security, comfort and

safety, doesn't it?

I'm painting Bush with the

same strokes I'm using on Gore here. Obviously, I'm leaning toward the

ultimate conclusion that Bush is the lesser of the evils.

Bush's promises to spend your

money for you so you will be more secure and more comfortable are at least

tempered by his promise to let you keep a little more of your money and

make your own decisions about how to spend that little bit.

And he wants a Social Security

structure in which you can control and invest a little bit of your retirement

money yourself. Just a modest little "risky scheme."

Just once, when Gore starts

that donkey manure about Bush wanting to "squander" the surplus

by "giving it away to the wealthiest Americans," I would like

to see Bush spit fire and launch into a passionate defense of freedom.

I would like to see him force

Gore to explain just exactly what is wrong with people keeping their own

money. Let me repeat the key phrase: THEIR OWN MONEY.

That's right. It's not the

White House's money or Congress' money. It's not being given away. People

who worked and invested, took risks and made smart decisions to earn their

own income might be offered the chance to keep some of that income and

spend it or invest it to keep the economy humming, and that possibility

just gives Gore the hives.

Bush and Gore apparently both

want bigger government and more spending. The only difference is that

Gore wants it bigger quicker, and he believes our money belongs to him.

It would be nice if a candidate

would come along who would truly free us slaves, but I wonder if such

a candidate would have a chance.

Have we been on the plantation

so long that we are afraid of freedom?

Maybe so.