As for vigilantes, I was rather surprised at the approach taken in the rounds I heard. Both sides seem to want to portray vigilantes as either some sort of saints who step in when tyrants rule the land, or as the KKK lynching everyone in sight. In other words, complete vilification versus complete sanctification. Granted that there are all sorts of vigilante examples one can come up with, and that one could conceivably just concentrate on the ones supportive of one’s position, this hardly seems the best strategy. (For that matter, this is often an approach taken by debaters regardless of the resolution, and it always strikes me as less than optimal as a strategy.) Vigilantes are, by common definition, people taking the law into their own hands. As such, they are inherently outlaws. The issue ought to be if their becoming outlaws is somehow warranted. One could address this question on a philosophical basis, or one could look at practical situations, depending upon one’s taste for such things. I don’t know what I would do myself, and I hesitate ever to suggest too specifically what one ought to or ought not to run, but nevertheless, the weighing of harms (there are rights violations on both sides of the resolution) at least allows for comparing apples to apples.
In the event, it was much of my usual complaint, specifically cases where the contentions bear no connection to the framework, hence the contentions are quickly discarded and the entire round is about the framework (yawn), and the less-than-a-minute neg (quite an advocacy that allows you), always a personal bugbear for me. The fact that there is a typo on the official NFL ballot, the group that almost always misspells words in the headings of their emails, was also of the usual complaint persuasion. I am less bothered by educators who can’t spell than educators who can’t spell-check…
I also judged a hint of USX, which was problematic for me, as we were in the final round and the top three or four were hard for me to separate. I did mostly agree with the other judges, according to JV, and better still, everyone I liked qual’d in either USX or FX, so no extempers were harmed by my participation in the event. I always claim that I like extemp, and after watching this round, I remain unshaken. A good extemper has to be smart and speak well and stick to the topic; I wish more LDers were like that.
I also judged a bunch of PF, which deserves its own entry tomorrow. Meanwhile, I will point out that the Panivore, our Northeast novice champion, made top speaker at Woodward, an accomplishment worth crowing about. She also plowed her way through to quarters in her panivorous way. It was peachy of O’C to chaperone her and the People’s Champion for the weekend. I love the fact that we are all willing to help each other’s teams around here. Makes doing this job a lot easier, and a lot more fun.
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