Broadcast live. The guests on this high-voltage Firing Line Special all oppose sanctions.

Broadcast live. Mr. Buckley frames the question by reminding us that government's derelictions range from the murderous to the risible.

As Mr. Kinsley introduces the question, "President Bush doesn't talk much about drugs any more [having made them a year and a half earlier the centerpiece of a prime-time televised speech] and his first drug czar, William Bennett, has wandered off, and so has the attention of most Americans.... But unlike that other war [in the Persian Gulf] the drug war goes on."

A (mostly) new cast of characters for this debate on, essentially, Political Correctness.

A high-voltage debate that goes beyond the narrow question of the "Religious Right" to examine the whole place of religion in American life.

President Clinton, Mr. Kinsley reminds us, "campaigned on a vow to 'end welfare as we know it.' " Would he be on the Affirmative side in this debate?

If all this high-priced legal talent couldn't debate, who could? A splendid session on a topic of deep concern.

The topic before the house tonight is vouchers. Should parents be able to choose which school their child attends? And if so, should they be assisted with taxpayers' money?

The captains of the two teams lead off with clear statements of the opposing positions.

Mr. Buckley begins cautiously: "I engage this subject thus formulated with some reluctance, because it is too easily misunderstood to be saying that political affiliations are the key to progress."

There presumably are Americans who want to lift the embargo on Cuba because they like Fidel Castro, but they are not represented in this debate. Instead, all the participants agree that Castro is a tyrant whom the world would be better off without.

As WFB frames the question in his opening statement, "We tend to date the modern welfare state to 1965, with the Great Society policies of President Lyndon Johnson. In constant dollars we have spent $5 trillion on welfare, yet the percentage of the American people technically below the poverty line is about the same.