Last night at a sparsely attended Sailor’s meeting—our plebes have apparently all gone on shore leave, except for Zip—the Panivore gave a little lecture on theory, at my request. The thing is, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what theory is all about, but if you try to suss it from reading what most people write about it, it’s totally inaccessible. The writers assume you already know what they’re talking about, so it’s all abbreviations and jargon, not to mention just basic incoherent presentation. I’m reminded a little of the old pomo days, where the problem often wasn’t as much the content (although that was a problem) as the presenters’ ability to make sense of the content. There are clear analyses and there are befuddled analyses. The difference between the two does not necessarily mark the understanding of the analyst (although it may), but it sure as hell marks the ability of the analyst to explain it to someone else. If I were to go by most of what I’ve read on theory, with a couple of exceptions, I would have no choice but to dismiss it. There are some good sources aimed primarily at policy—as always, policy was there first—but these fail for me at the point where the substance of the argumentation is policy- rather than values-based.
So the Panivore grabbed the bull by the horns last night and gave us a most clear and understandable breakdown of a theory shell. (Right off the bat, I have to say that the word shell is confusing, in that a shell suggests that the whole case will be inside it, rather than a standalone argument. Which, by the way, is the only thing I knew independently about the subject before Sophie’s lesson, i.e., the definition of the word shell.) By the time she was done, I felt a hell of a lot smarter than when she had begun. I realize that my innate antipathy to theory may have been misplaced. If theory is an attempt to rein in bad argumentation, and it provides the tools to do so, that’s a good thing. There has to be some way of answering arguments that are unanswerable because of their innate abusiveness, and theory seems to be that way. It provides debaters with a structural understanding of what they are doing (complete with nicknames and jargons and abbreviations) that was not a part of the activity a decade ago. Of course, abuse of theory, or at least misuse of theory, will be as rife as abuse/misuse of everything in the activity, at least for a while. If arguments are reasonable and within normative concepts of the rules of LD (which I’ve discussed here at great length in the past), theory doesn’t have a play, although that may not stop a lot of people from tossing it around If arguments are not reasonable and within normative concepts of the rules of LD, on the other hand, then it does.
Of course, the Panivore’s examples were reasonable and introductory ones where theory made sense, hence my acquiescence to the concept. Still, it’s a foot in the door. I do not like being apart from what is going on in LD. And whether I favor something or not is beside the point. If the train is going to Manhattan, my desire to go to Chicago instead should not be so stubborn that I refuse to look at a map of NYC. The train is going to go where the train is going to go. As with the old pomo stuff that is now mostly ashes on the campfire of forensics (now there’s a crappy metaphor), some still survives. Derrida may have retreated into the mists of his original incoherent babblings, but Foucault has become, rightly, canonical. Theory is now enjoying its initial wide explosion. It too will no doubt find its way into the canon. If it actually does have the result, as it claims, of limiting argumentation to educational and fair ends, that would actually be a good thing.
Moral of the story: you learn something every day.
Other moral of the story: if I ever start an institute, I’m making the Panivore top instructor.
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Blogging vs blogging theory
I’ve said this before but I’m going to say it again. In the unlikely event that I am judging a round that you are in, please try to actually debate at least as much as you talk about debating. The last I heard, this activity was called “Lincoln-Douglas Debate,” not “Lincoln-Douglas Describe What You Have to Do and Then What Your Opponent Has to Do, And if There’s Any Time Left Over, Do It.”
Jeesh.
Debate theory, whatever that is (it’s handed down by tribal lore for the most part, making it difficult to understand if you happen to either not be a member of the tribe or didn’t happen to be sitting with your little drum by the campfire that night), has a nasty habit of pushing debating off the page entirely. A debater thinks, before writing a case: this is what I have to do to win. After thinking about this, the debater mentally adds: this is what my opponent has to do to win. In other words, consciously or unconsciously, our debater has laid out the theory of the round at hand. But here comes the problem. Rather than doing what it is that the debater thinks needs to be done, instead the debater writes up what would need to be done if a debate were to ensue along the links of the thinking so far. The debater writes up what the debater’s side has to do, and what the opponent’s side has to do, and six minutes of content later, the case is written. There’s only one thing wrong with this scenario: the debater never actually does the doing of it. He or she merely talks about doing it.
Jeesh again.
The delineation of burdens for the sides is hardly a new business, but somewhere over the last couple of years it has gone from a clear-cut, well-defined statement of a sentence or two into the entire body of the case. In defending or attacking economic sanctions, sides might elect not to discuss the harms and benefits of economic sanctions, preferring instead to spend their entire constructive time discussing how, if there were any harms or benefits of economic sanctions, their side would, by default, have to win. Huh? At the point where no argument is made that strongly proves that there are, indeed, the harms or benefits, all the talking about who wins or loses predicated on the existence of harms and benefits disappears. You’re not debating sanctions anymore. Frankly, I don’t know what you’re debating. So the question becomes, how can you win a debate on economic sanctions if you never actually spend any time arguing for or against economic sanctions? In a word, you really can’t. You end up relying on the exegesis of the structure of a hypothetical case about sanctions to convince a judge to vote for you, spending all your time on discussing that hypothetical case rather than presenting a real case. All the judge can do is marvel at your understanding of what the debate would have been, if you had ever done it. But you didn’t. At which point, no matter how you slice it, the judge flips a mental coin, if he or she is even marginally buying what you’re selling, or votes for the opposite side, if that side did, by some quirk of forensic recidivism, actually present a strong position for or against sanctions.
Try this: My burden in writing this blog entry is to convince you that something bad is happening, explain as best I can why and how it’s happening, and show why it’s results are bad. My burden is to provide a clear analysis of the thing as best I can, with examples, and demonstrate the impacts of that thing. Okay, those two sentences are, in essence, the theory of this entry. I could go on at much greater length discussing how I have to convince you, how examples work, how impacts work, etc., but I’ve taken a more classic approach. Look at the entry from the beginning. I started with, I hope, an eye-catching opening. Then I go into an explanation of exactly what I’m talking about, capping it with a prediction of what will happen vis-à-vis the judging when it does occur. A classic essay, if I do say so myself, as compared to this paragraph, with is the discussion of an essay. This paragraph has no content relative to debate: all its content is relative to essay-writing, and to the success or failure of my essay writing away from the body of the essay itself. This is the same as theory, which has no content relative to the resolution: it’s all about debating, not economic sanctions. And here’s the crux of it: My ability to convince you that I am right or wrong is not affected one way or another by this paragraph, because it contains no real arguments.
Theory has its place, of course. But its place is not front and center, every round. Have all LD judges lost the ability to follow a discussion of content in favor of a discussion of discussion? Maybe the thing is that theory arguments, removed from the need to pay attention to contentions, make the judge’s job a lot easier. Who would win if there were a debate is a lot easier to adjudicate than a lot of facts and arguments juxtaposed against one another. Maybe theory isn’t some grand development of LD after all. Maybe it’s just lazy debating and lazy judging.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. It’s not easy defending or attacking economic sanctions, and the topic was no doubt selected because of its richness. Defending or attacking how one’s opponent looks at a debate round, on the other hand, is virtually rote and almost inevitably topic-agnostic.
Give me the old-fashioned resolution any day of the week.
Jeesh.
Debate theory, whatever that is (it’s handed down by tribal lore for the most part, making it difficult to understand if you happen to either not be a member of the tribe or didn’t happen to be sitting with your little drum by the campfire that night), has a nasty habit of pushing debating off the page entirely. A debater thinks, before writing a case: this is what I have to do to win. After thinking about this, the debater mentally adds: this is what my opponent has to do to win. In other words, consciously or unconsciously, our debater has laid out the theory of the round at hand. But here comes the problem. Rather than doing what it is that the debater thinks needs to be done, instead the debater writes up what would need to be done if a debate were to ensue along the links of the thinking so far. The debater writes up what the debater’s side has to do, and what the opponent’s side has to do, and six minutes of content later, the case is written. There’s only one thing wrong with this scenario: the debater never actually does the doing of it. He or she merely talks about doing it.
Jeesh again.
The delineation of burdens for the sides is hardly a new business, but somewhere over the last couple of years it has gone from a clear-cut, well-defined statement of a sentence or two into the entire body of the case. In defending or attacking economic sanctions, sides might elect not to discuss the harms and benefits of economic sanctions, preferring instead to spend their entire constructive time discussing how, if there were any harms or benefits of economic sanctions, their side would, by default, have to win. Huh? At the point where no argument is made that strongly proves that there are, indeed, the harms or benefits, all the talking about who wins or loses predicated on the existence of harms and benefits disappears. You’re not debating sanctions anymore. Frankly, I don’t know what you’re debating. So the question becomes, how can you win a debate on economic sanctions if you never actually spend any time arguing for or against economic sanctions? In a word, you really can’t. You end up relying on the exegesis of the structure of a hypothetical case about sanctions to convince a judge to vote for you, spending all your time on discussing that hypothetical case rather than presenting a real case. All the judge can do is marvel at your understanding of what the debate would have been, if you had ever done it. But you didn’t. At which point, no matter how you slice it, the judge flips a mental coin, if he or she is even marginally buying what you’re selling, or votes for the opposite side, if that side did, by some quirk of forensic recidivism, actually present a strong position for or against sanctions.
Try this: My burden in writing this blog entry is to convince you that something bad is happening, explain as best I can why and how it’s happening, and show why it’s results are bad. My burden is to provide a clear analysis of the thing as best I can, with examples, and demonstrate the impacts of that thing. Okay, those two sentences are, in essence, the theory of this entry. I could go on at much greater length discussing how I have to convince you, how examples work, how impacts work, etc., but I’ve taken a more classic approach. Look at the entry from the beginning. I started with, I hope, an eye-catching opening. Then I go into an explanation of exactly what I’m talking about, capping it with a prediction of what will happen vis-à-vis the judging when it does occur. A classic essay, if I do say so myself, as compared to this paragraph, with is the discussion of an essay. This paragraph has no content relative to debate: all its content is relative to essay-writing, and to the success or failure of my essay writing away from the body of the essay itself. This is the same as theory, which has no content relative to the resolution: it’s all about debating, not economic sanctions. And here’s the crux of it: My ability to convince you that I am right or wrong is not affected one way or another by this paragraph, because it contains no real arguments.
Theory has its place, of course. But its place is not front and center, every round. Have all LD judges lost the ability to follow a discussion of content in favor of a discussion of discussion? Maybe the thing is that theory arguments, removed from the need to pay attention to contentions, make the judge’s job a lot easier. Who would win if there were a debate is a lot easier to adjudicate than a lot of facts and arguments juxtaposed against one another. Maybe theory isn’t some grand development of LD after all. Maybe it’s just lazy debating and lazy judging.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. It’s not easy defending or attacking economic sanctions, and the topic was no doubt selected because of its richness. Defending or attacking how one’s opponent looks at a debate round, on the other hand, is virtually rote and almost inevitably topic-agnostic.
Give me the old-fashioned resolution any day of the week.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
You can't not not handle the truth: A) True? B) False? C) All of the above? D) None of the above?
The problem with the allegedly trick question, “True or false: One of the Beatles was left-handed” is that it does not stand to LD resolutional analysis. The theoretical trick is that the answer is False. Most people know that Paul McCartney was left-handed, but they don’t know that Ringo was also left-handed. The answer that the trickster is thinking is that not one but two of the Beatles were left-handed, hence the trick of the statement not being true, but the thing is, if two of the Beatles were left-handed, that means that one of the Beatles was left-handed and another one of the Beatles was left-handed, so in fact, the answer is True, because one of the Beatles was left-handed. True or false: one of the states in the US borders the Atlantic. This is true. The fact that more than one border the Atlantic does not remove any one of them from its bordering position.
Of course, this is idiotic noodling. Language is often a precision instrument, where we do our best to express our meanings with the exact words that do so. George Washington was a Virginian is a statement that precisely expresses the fact that a given person lived in a certain place. There is nothing arguable about those words (provided that the statement is true). George Washington was not a New Yorker, on the other hand, is not as precise a statement. Saying what something is, the first statement, eliminates the possibilities of what it isn’t. Saying that GW was a Virginian precludes that he might have been a French, a Turk or Proossian (or perhaps I-tal-i-an). He was a Virginian. He came from Virginia. But if the only statement we have to go by is that GW was not a New Yorker, then he could have indeed been a French, a Turk or Proossian (or perhaps I-tal-i-an, although despite all those temptations to belong to other nations—I’m sorry. You give me Gilbert and Sullivan and I have no alternative but to run with them.)
Anyhow, it’s easy to see the difference between inclusive and exclusive statements. One statement includes a fact, the other excludes a possibility. Inclusive is much more manageable than exclusive, at least in these cases.
I only point this out because it’s been going through my head as I put together Bean Trivia questions both for next week for the Sailors and for the Lex RR. It’s what I do, you know?
--
There’s a different linguistic—and theoretical—problem with Jan-Feb. “Economic sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives.” What the affirmative needs to do is, of course, explain why sanctions ought not to be used. This is very clear. The only thing offered to the affirmative is that they support the non-use of ES. Anything else they do is beside the point. All the aff can do, I would imagine, at least if aff wants to win, is argue against ES. ES bad, ES ineffective, whatever (there are many potential tactics to support this strategy). It is, notably, no ES, at all times, no exception. If the neg can demonstrate any situation where ES ought to be used, theoretically that would win for the neg.
For the negative, on the other hand, the opposite position is not necessarily that ES ought to be used, although that is a perfectly good position if one wishes to run a strong argument. If the best defense is a good offense, a good offensive position for the neg might be that ES serve an important purpose in foreign policy. (It is, in fact, the status quo in the US, where we believe that the nations of the world uniting against Iran, using the tool of ES, can convince that country to abandon its nuclear position. This doesn’t make the position right, but it does demonstrate that it is part of the FP discourse.) But the language of the rez is such that the neg might claim that it need not run a clearly offensive position. The neg, rather than claiming that a position counter to “ought not be used” is “ought to be used,” a clear affirmation of using ES, can counter that the negation of the phrase is, instead, “ought not not be used.”
I ought not shoot my gun.
I ought shoot my gun. versus I ought not not shoot my gun.
There is a big difference between shooting my gun and not not shooting my gun. Shooting my gun sends a bullet out of the barrel. Not not shooting my gun discusses the possibility that I might shoot my gun without actually shooting it. Ought not not shoot means that I ought not claim not to shoot my gun.
That, in short, is the proposed theoretical substrata of a potential neg that wishes, rather than to take a strong position on its side of the resolution, to simply dangle the “possibility” of a strong position on its side of the resolution versus a forced strong position by aff on the other side. Frankly, this seems weak to me, or at least weaker than the straightforward do it versus don’t do it.
One can go further, of course. Aff can theorize (preemptively?) that being forced to disclaim all ES is somehow unfair when all neg has to do is claim potential ES, or for that matter, only the one ES necessary to negate. I might be convinced to buy the former position, but not the latter. If the argument is that something is categorically wrong versus its not being categorically wrong, that’s a fair debate. I’m not going to use them but I’m going to potentially use them, on the other hand, is just word games. In realpolitik, not supporting a claim is the equivalent of not making the claim. If everyone knows you’re not going to use your nukes, for instance, your nukes might as well not exist. You don’t rattle your saber unless you are willing to use it.
The good and the bad, in other words. Run a strong offense on both sides, or not. People will tell me that not running a strong offense, and running an evasive offense,
is better debating. I think I’d be hard-pressed to grant that, to tell you the truth.
Of course, this is idiotic noodling. Language is often a precision instrument, where we do our best to express our meanings with the exact words that do so. George Washington was a Virginian is a statement that precisely expresses the fact that a given person lived in a certain place. There is nothing arguable about those words (provided that the statement is true). George Washington was not a New Yorker, on the other hand, is not as precise a statement. Saying what something is, the first statement, eliminates the possibilities of what it isn’t. Saying that GW was a Virginian precludes that he might have been a French, a Turk or Proossian (or perhaps I-tal-i-an). He was a Virginian. He came from Virginia. But if the only statement we have to go by is that GW was not a New Yorker, then he could have indeed been a French, a Turk or Proossian (or perhaps I-tal-i-an, although despite all those temptations to belong to other nations—I’m sorry. You give me Gilbert and Sullivan and I have no alternative but to run with them.)
Anyhow, it’s easy to see the difference between inclusive and exclusive statements. One statement includes a fact, the other excludes a possibility. Inclusive is much more manageable than exclusive, at least in these cases.
I only point this out because it’s been going through my head as I put together Bean Trivia questions both for next week for the Sailors and for the Lex RR. It’s what I do, you know?
--
There’s a different linguistic—and theoretical—problem with Jan-Feb. “Economic sanctions ought not be used to achieve foreign policy objectives.” What the affirmative needs to do is, of course, explain why sanctions ought not to be used. This is very clear. The only thing offered to the affirmative is that they support the non-use of ES. Anything else they do is beside the point. All the aff can do, I would imagine, at least if aff wants to win, is argue against ES. ES bad, ES ineffective, whatever (there are many potential tactics to support this strategy). It is, notably, no ES, at all times, no exception. If the neg can demonstrate any situation where ES ought to be used, theoretically that would win for the neg.
For the negative, on the other hand, the opposite position is not necessarily that ES ought to be used, although that is a perfectly good position if one wishes to run a strong argument. If the best defense is a good offense, a good offensive position for the neg might be that ES serve an important purpose in foreign policy. (It is, in fact, the status quo in the US, where we believe that the nations of the world uniting against Iran, using the tool of ES, can convince that country to abandon its nuclear position. This doesn’t make the position right, but it does demonstrate that it is part of the FP discourse.) But the language of the rez is such that the neg might claim that it need not run a clearly offensive position. The neg, rather than claiming that a position counter to “ought not be used” is “ought to be used,” a clear affirmation of using ES, can counter that the negation of the phrase is, instead, “ought not not be used.”
I ought not shoot my gun.
I ought shoot my gun. versus I ought not not shoot my gun.
There is a big difference between shooting my gun and not not shooting my gun. Shooting my gun sends a bullet out of the barrel. Not not shooting my gun discusses the possibility that I might shoot my gun without actually shooting it. Ought not not shoot means that I ought not claim not to shoot my gun.
That, in short, is the proposed theoretical substrata of a potential neg that wishes, rather than to take a strong position on its side of the resolution, to simply dangle the “possibility” of a strong position on its side of the resolution versus a forced strong position by aff on the other side. Frankly, this seems weak to me, or at least weaker than the straightforward do it versus don’t do it.
One can go further, of course. Aff can theorize (preemptively?) that being forced to disclaim all ES is somehow unfair when all neg has to do is claim potential ES, or for that matter, only the one ES necessary to negate. I might be convinced to buy the former position, but not the latter. If the argument is that something is categorically wrong versus its not being categorically wrong, that’s a fair debate. I’m not going to use them but I’m going to potentially use them, on the other hand, is just word games. In realpolitik, not supporting a claim is the equivalent of not making the claim. If everyone knows you’re not going to use your nukes, for instance, your nukes might as well not exist. You don’t rattle your saber unless you are willing to use it.
The good and the bad, in other words. Run a strong offense on both sides, or not. People will tell me that not running a strong offense, and running an evasive offense,
is better debating. I think I’d be hard-pressed to grant that, to tell you the truth.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Critiquing the K
In a comment, LA Coach says:
As a policy debater that became an LD coach, I started off with a number of the same questions that your student had, including the use of kritiks.
The conclusion I came to was similar to yours, but with two significant caveats: the threshold of compelling need and the value of discursive critiques.
One of the most interesting arguments I've seen about torture warrants is the argument that we shouldn't be debating it at all. From both an educational and a moral standpoint, there are solid arguments that debating that topic will actually be detrimental to the long-term moral development of our students, which (to me) is a compelling reason to write a critique of it. While this is a well-documented argument, I happen to think that the threshold for interesting and compelling critical arguments is low enough that I'm happy to listen to them when they're well presented. Kritiks that are presented badly, however, get no sympathy.
Secondly, I think we need to take a step back and seriously consider the value of kritiks of discourse in LD. I don't mean simply "don't say X" arguments, but I do think there's value to helping students regulate the language used in rounds. I got so fed up with hearing about the Holocaust that I taught my novices a simple H-Triv kritik, and had a long talk with them about when it was appropriate to talk about the Holocaust, and when it might be appropriate to run the K. I suspect it didn't get through to all of them, but it did challenge some of my students to think about that larger issue and I believe they actually gained something from learning a kritik that isn't specific to the any resolution.
Ultimately, you're exactly right to say that Ks are an individual judge thing, but I wonder if there isn't some value to keeping them around as a lesser argument. I don't want to hear Nietzsche every round, but I think there may be a more topic-specific (or round-specific) space for them to permanently hold.
I promoted this to entry caliber for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m on board with the argument on torture warrants, because it is not particularly unfair nor unresolutional. I would accept this (argued well) as a legitimate position. To be honest, even though it’s obviously a critique of debating torture, I don’t think I would be considering it as such in the round, as much as I would be considering it a reasonable argument about the subject. I tend not to think in academic terms; don’t wrestle me to the ground to explain the difference between tonalism and impressionism, for instance. I know it when I see it, but I’m not thinking about it. Half of what today is referred to as theory debate used to be called definitional debate: same arguments, different label. The same muck that attended the one today attends the other. So it goes.
I am coincidentally curious about the Holocaust, or any extreme debating. Around here such is almost completely unheard of except at the rankest amateur levels, i.e., novice meetings, where the offending soul who brings up Hitler or the like is figuratively thrown out the window after we explain why that level of analysis is counter-productive. Are we just lucky around here?
Anyhow, in agreement with the comment, I wish there were more discussion of what is and isn’t valuable in critiquing a resolution. So much of what we do is soooooo vague. And I have often come out against the idea that judges can maintain wildly different views of the activity just because they don’t want to subscribe to an accepted orthodoxy. I’m not sure whether we have an accepted orthodoxy or not (although I know we have rules, and some judges and debaters are perfectly willing to flout them, which is a different business altogether).
The other thing is, how much critiquing is really going on in policy anyhow? I have no idea.
As a policy debater that became an LD coach, I started off with a number of the same questions that your student had, including the use of kritiks.
The conclusion I came to was similar to yours, but with two significant caveats: the threshold of compelling need and the value of discursive critiques.
One of the most interesting arguments I've seen about torture warrants is the argument that we shouldn't be debating it at all. From both an educational and a moral standpoint, there are solid arguments that debating that topic will actually be detrimental to the long-term moral development of our students, which (to me) is a compelling reason to write a critique of it. While this is a well-documented argument, I happen to think that the threshold for interesting and compelling critical arguments is low enough that I'm happy to listen to them when they're well presented. Kritiks that are presented badly, however, get no sympathy.
Secondly, I think we need to take a step back and seriously consider the value of kritiks of discourse in LD. I don't mean simply "don't say X" arguments, but I do think there's value to helping students regulate the language used in rounds. I got so fed up with hearing about the Holocaust that I taught my novices a simple H-Triv kritik, and had a long talk with them about when it was appropriate to talk about the Holocaust, and when it might be appropriate to run the K. I suspect it didn't get through to all of them, but it did challenge some of my students to think about that larger issue and I believe they actually gained something from learning a kritik that isn't specific to the any resolution.
Ultimately, you're exactly right to say that Ks are an individual judge thing, but I wonder if there isn't some value to keeping them around as a lesser argument. I don't want to hear Nietzsche every round, but I think there may be a more topic-specific (or round-specific) space for them to permanently hold.
I promoted this to entry caliber for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m on board with the argument on torture warrants, because it is not particularly unfair nor unresolutional. I would accept this (argued well) as a legitimate position. To be honest, even though it’s obviously a critique of debating torture, I don’t think I would be considering it as such in the round, as much as I would be considering it a reasonable argument about the subject. I tend not to think in academic terms; don’t wrestle me to the ground to explain the difference between tonalism and impressionism, for instance. I know it when I see it, but I’m not thinking about it. Half of what today is referred to as theory debate used to be called definitional debate: same arguments, different label. The same muck that attended the one today attends the other. So it goes.
I am coincidentally curious about the Holocaust, or any extreme debating. Around here such is almost completely unheard of except at the rankest amateur levels, i.e., novice meetings, where the offending soul who brings up Hitler or the like is figuratively thrown out the window after we explain why that level of analysis is counter-productive. Are we just lucky around here?
Anyhow, in agreement with the comment, I wish there were more discussion of what is and isn’t valuable in critiquing a resolution. So much of what we do is soooooo vague. And I have often come out against the idea that judges can maintain wildly different views of the activity just because they don’t want to subscribe to an accepted orthodoxy. I’m not sure whether we have an accepted orthodoxy or not (although I know we have rules, and some judges and debaters are perfectly willing to flout them, which is a different business altogether).
The other thing is, how much critiquing is really going on in policy anyhow? I have no idea.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
So what's that LD thing all about?
I received this from a student I know, and it’s worth sharing.
I am a Public Forum debater by choice, and have had some modest success on the circuit. However, as a rising senior whose partner is graduating, I am left in a quandary.
He goes on to report that he’s been reading pretty deeply into the likes of Dworkin, Arendt, Zizek, etc. This guy’s no dummy.
Thus, I turn to LD, which is where I'd like to ask for help; I have a few questions regarding the structure and nature of LD, and regarding cases.
I’m game. I’m probably going to be wrong, but I’m still game.
What are five things you would tell every LD novice that don't relate to debate universally?
Even if you never argue them, you have to master the canon of Locke and Mill. The 2nd Treatise is the best explanation of Social Contract you can get, and On Liberty is the best defense of personal freedom.
I’m sort of lost after the first one. Judge adaptation applies to all disciplines, as does knowledge, research, etc. The key thing about LD that separates it from the other debates is the concept of value, that it is values debate. Understanding ethics, therefore, is the core. This doesn’t mean that there’s agreement about morality or law or any of that stuff, but you’ve got to know what they’re all about. And then you’ve got to argue, always, from the point of view of that value. If the V is justice, your case has to demonstrate justice or that lack thereof.
And I consider it bogus that people argue things like, there is no such thing as justice, or morality, or whatever. Perfect justice, universal morality? Maybe not (although both can be arguable). But an attempt to be more just, or more “right” or more truthful, even if we can’t achieve completeness in these abstract areas, is better than being less just, less right or less true. If there is a lesson to be learned in LD that transcends LD it is that ethics matter for your entire lifetime. They matter to the entire lifetime of the human species. Not a bad way to spend a few hours in high school, in other words.
How do impacts work?
Can I have practical impact turns? (I heard an LDer at NFLs run that conscription was key to industrial development - can I run "capitalism bad" turns against that, where the impacts are democracy, environment, and dehum?)
Simple answer is yes. An impact is, of course, merely the jargon for the result of something. So if I claim that Y is the result of X, I need to demonstrate it clearly with some link from X to Y. If you have a link from X to H, that at the very least makes my link non-unique. If you can prove that your link from X to H always happens and not my link from X to Y, then you’ve simply proven that you’re right and I’m wrong.
I’m wary of the word “turn” in debate, which is used willy nilly, usually to mean “refutation.” A turn is a very specific argument that proves that the original argument is not only false, but works for the opposite side. Half the rounds I see, every other word out of the debaters’ mouths is “turn.” To which I respond, “taint.”
How prevalent are kritiks?
How willing do you find circuit judges to vote on them, if well explained?
On the negative, can I kritik the V/VC structure?
Can I run two kritiks in the NC, one of the V/VC structure, and one of the resolution itself?
This guy is definitely gung-ho. Kritiks are a personal thing among judges. Some like them, some don’t. I don’t, particularly, because I feel that they don’t really argue the content of a resolution, and to not argue the content of a resolution would require an awfully big reason against, and I seldom hear it. Usually people run kritiks because they’re smart and they’ve read something like Nietzsche that could theoretically undermine virtually any position on any resolution, and they figure this will win them some rounds. Originally kritiks were directed by small policy programs against big policy programs, demonstrating that the smaller programs were, by default, unable to compete. The kritik was a tool to level the playing field. Interesting. Nowadays the kiritik is a tool to blitz the opponent semi-unfairly. Or at least that’s the way I see it.
You don’t see many Ks around here anymore, to tell you the truth. A few Nietzsche cases were abroad for a while, but the novelty wore off quickly. Worse, people who didn’t understand how to run the K were trying it, execrably. That is, if your case is a kritik of morals on the grounds that the ubermensch is beyond good and evil, you can’t run this for 5 minutes and then reply line by line to the aff. The ubermensch spits on the aff case, for God’s sake. Instant loss.
Judges might vote on them or not, but they’re probably the most risky strategy around. And, as I say, from my perspective they seem to have gone out of style.
Theory debate - yes or no?
Example: The ICC topic, kids that wouldnt claim to use the ICC to spike out of ICC bad turns were susceptible to claims that they utilized utopian fiat, utopian fiat bad.
Can I have policy implications? A la, "Voting aff will cause [link story] that leads to extinction, avoiding extinction is the supreme moral imperative?"
I haven’t watched many theory debates, so I’m probably the wrong person to answer this. I mean, the ICC example is pretty straightforward to me; call it theory if you want, but it’s also simply a matter of, if you didn’t use THE then you couldn’t make any claims based on THE, period. Why anyone would have run the actual ICC was beyond me, given the inherent flaws, but at the same time they would make claims from the literal protocols of the organization. Doing that was, well, dumb. Defeating it on theoretical grounds? Call it what you want. Just saying in the round some civilized version of “that was dumb” was good enough for me.
Nevertheless, I’d shake off those policy tendencies early in the game. LDers never get nuked. It’s a basic rule of thumb, while policians always get nuked. That’s how we can tell the difference between the two disciplines.
Anyone else have anything to add? This is a fun question.
I am a Public Forum debater by choice, and have had some modest success on the circuit. However, as a rising senior whose partner is graduating, I am left in a quandary.
He goes on to report that he’s been reading pretty deeply into the likes of Dworkin, Arendt, Zizek, etc. This guy’s no dummy.
Thus, I turn to LD, which is where I'd like to ask for help; I have a few questions regarding the structure and nature of LD, and regarding cases.
I’m game. I’m probably going to be wrong, but I’m still game.
What are five things you would tell every LD novice that don't relate to debate universally?
Even if you never argue them, you have to master the canon of Locke and Mill. The 2nd Treatise is the best explanation of Social Contract you can get, and On Liberty is the best defense of personal freedom.
I’m sort of lost after the first one. Judge adaptation applies to all disciplines, as does knowledge, research, etc. The key thing about LD that separates it from the other debates is the concept of value, that it is values debate. Understanding ethics, therefore, is the core. This doesn’t mean that there’s agreement about morality or law or any of that stuff, but you’ve got to know what they’re all about. And then you’ve got to argue, always, from the point of view of that value. If the V is justice, your case has to demonstrate justice or that lack thereof.
And I consider it bogus that people argue things like, there is no such thing as justice, or morality, or whatever. Perfect justice, universal morality? Maybe not (although both can be arguable). But an attempt to be more just, or more “right” or more truthful, even if we can’t achieve completeness in these abstract areas, is better than being less just, less right or less true. If there is a lesson to be learned in LD that transcends LD it is that ethics matter for your entire lifetime. They matter to the entire lifetime of the human species. Not a bad way to spend a few hours in high school, in other words.
How do impacts work?
Can I have practical impact turns? (I heard an LDer at NFLs run that conscription was key to industrial development - can I run "capitalism bad" turns against that, where the impacts are democracy, environment, and dehum?)
Simple answer is yes. An impact is, of course, merely the jargon for the result of something. So if I claim that Y is the result of X, I need to demonstrate it clearly with some link from X to Y. If you have a link from X to H, that at the very least makes my link non-unique. If you can prove that your link from X to H always happens and not my link from X to Y, then you’ve simply proven that you’re right and I’m wrong.
I’m wary of the word “turn” in debate, which is used willy nilly, usually to mean “refutation.” A turn is a very specific argument that proves that the original argument is not only false, but works for the opposite side. Half the rounds I see, every other word out of the debaters’ mouths is “turn.” To which I respond, “taint.”
How prevalent are kritiks?
How willing do you find circuit judges to vote on them, if well explained?
On the negative, can I kritik the V/VC structure?
Can I run two kritiks in the NC, one of the V/VC structure, and one of the resolution itself?
This guy is definitely gung-ho. Kritiks are a personal thing among judges. Some like them, some don’t. I don’t, particularly, because I feel that they don’t really argue the content of a resolution, and to not argue the content of a resolution would require an awfully big reason against, and I seldom hear it. Usually people run kritiks because they’re smart and they’ve read something like Nietzsche that could theoretically undermine virtually any position on any resolution, and they figure this will win them some rounds. Originally kritiks were directed by small policy programs against big policy programs, demonstrating that the smaller programs were, by default, unable to compete. The kritik was a tool to level the playing field. Interesting. Nowadays the kiritik is a tool to blitz the opponent semi-unfairly. Or at least that’s the way I see it.
You don’t see many Ks around here anymore, to tell you the truth. A few Nietzsche cases were abroad for a while, but the novelty wore off quickly. Worse, people who didn’t understand how to run the K were trying it, execrably. That is, if your case is a kritik of morals on the grounds that the ubermensch is beyond good and evil, you can’t run this for 5 minutes and then reply line by line to the aff. The ubermensch spits on the aff case, for God’s sake. Instant loss.
Judges might vote on them or not, but they’re probably the most risky strategy around. And, as I say, from my perspective they seem to have gone out of style.
Theory debate - yes or no?
Example: The ICC topic, kids that wouldnt claim to use the ICC to spike out of ICC bad turns were susceptible to claims that they utilized utopian fiat, utopian fiat bad.
Can I have policy implications? A la, "Voting aff will cause [link story] that leads to extinction, avoiding extinction is the supreme moral imperative?"
I haven’t watched many theory debates, so I’m probably the wrong person to answer this. I mean, the ICC example is pretty straightforward to me; call it theory if you want, but it’s also simply a matter of, if you didn’t use THE then you couldn’t make any claims based on THE, period. Why anyone would have run the actual ICC was beyond me, given the inherent flaws, but at the same time they would make claims from the literal protocols of the organization. Doing that was, well, dumb. Defeating it on theoretical grounds? Call it what you want. Just saying in the round some civilized version of “that was dumb” was good enough for me.
Nevertheless, I’d shake off those policy tendencies early in the game. LDers never get nuked. It’s a basic rule of thumb, while policians always get nuked. That’s how we can tell the difference between the two disciplines.
Anyone else have anything to add? This is a fun question.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Dr. Negative, I presume?
I’ve been engaged in a discussion of burdens on Facebook with Christian Chessman. You might find it interesting.
It begins with my status posting: “I'm worried that people say there's neg presumption in PF, and believe there's neg presumption in PF, but, maybe, there isn't any such thing.” I’m not sure what prompted me to come up with this, but probably it was something I wrote here that elicited some comment responses (I’m not going to get too archaeological in digging stuff up; if you’re that interested you can do it yourself).
Christian: “PF resolutions are either designed as truth statements (something is something else/something has done something else) or policy statements (we should do this).
In either case, you need to prove the statement true before it can be accepted as such.
Christmas is bad. ... Unless I have reasoning behind why Christmas is bad, I should not integrate that statement into my belief system. I cannot possibly endorse that statement without understanding a reason for why Christmas is bad.
And Should is the same reason why CX has negative presumption.”
Me: “Rez = Christmas is bad. Pro goes first, then maybe I'm with you. But if con goes first, haven't the alleged burdens shifted?”
Christian: “If you believe that the negative has a burden to prove the resolution false, yes.
I don't see that as how debate is structured, however. The resolution makes a truth statement (lately) or a statement of policy.
It seems prudent that the statement should have to be proven accurate before being accepted by the judge.”
I don’t know. I need to throw this into the mix: “Public Forum Debate focuses on advocacy of a position derived from the issues presented in the resolution, not a prescribed set of burdens.” That’s what NFL has to say about it.
Curiously enough, I can’t find anywhere in the NFL literature that there is a presumption for the negative in Policy. I wonder if I’m accepting that such a burden exists because I have talked to a lot of people who say that it exists, a position derived, as Christian derives his position, from a logical reading of rhetoric rather than anything set forth in the rules of adjudication.
I do recall that someone eloquently pointed out (somewhere, and once again I’m too busy to do the archaeology) that the paradigm of PF is simply convincing inexperienced judges, a call to an approach of lucidity of thought and presentation reminiscent of the earliest days of LD. This may be de facto true and, to some extent, ex officio true as well.
I default to my conundrum. If I subscribe to a negative presumption, and Con goes first, who gets the presumption? The so-called negative statement usually inherent in Con’s position, or the negative position of the Pro which has, by this theory, the burden of disproving the Con’s so-called truth statements? In either case, one side gets a distinct advantage, and the judge is removed from a position of having to do more than say, “Well, it looked like a tie to me, so whichever side I construe as the negative therefore wins by default.”
I remain unconvinced by any of this (and less convinced at this point that there’s even presumption in Policy except by common practice). In LD, there is a clear rule stating that there is no presumption, which seems to bother few judges when it comes time to base their RFDs on presumption. But if we’re using those inexperienced judges in PF, than maybe the whole question is moot. They will, in fact, judge by their guts, given no better paradigm. Whether this is good or bad is another question altogether.
It begins with my status posting: “I'm worried that people say there's neg presumption in PF, and believe there's neg presumption in PF, but, maybe, there isn't any such thing.” I’m not sure what prompted me to come up with this, but probably it was something I wrote here that elicited some comment responses (I’m not going to get too archaeological in digging stuff up; if you’re that interested you can do it yourself).
Christian: “PF resolutions are either designed as truth statements (something is something else/something has done something else) or policy statements (we should do this).
In either case, you need to prove the statement true before it can be accepted as such.
Christmas is bad. ... Unless I have reasoning behind why Christmas is bad, I should not integrate that statement into my belief system. I cannot possibly endorse that statement without understanding a reason for why Christmas is bad.
And Should is the same reason why CX has negative presumption.”
Me: “Rez = Christmas is bad. Pro goes first, then maybe I'm with you. But if con goes first, haven't the alleged burdens shifted?”
Christian: “If you believe that the negative has a burden to prove the resolution false, yes.
I don't see that as how debate is structured, however. The resolution makes a truth statement (lately) or a statement of policy.
It seems prudent that the statement should have to be proven accurate before being accepted by the judge.”
I don’t know. I need to throw this into the mix: “Public Forum Debate focuses on advocacy of a position derived from the issues presented in the resolution, not a prescribed set of burdens.” That’s what NFL has to say about it.
Curiously enough, I can’t find anywhere in the NFL literature that there is a presumption for the negative in Policy. I wonder if I’m accepting that such a burden exists because I have talked to a lot of people who say that it exists, a position derived, as Christian derives his position, from a logical reading of rhetoric rather than anything set forth in the rules of adjudication.
I do recall that someone eloquently pointed out (somewhere, and once again I’m too busy to do the archaeology) that the paradigm of PF is simply convincing inexperienced judges, a call to an approach of lucidity of thought and presentation reminiscent of the earliest days of LD. This may be de facto true and, to some extent, ex officio true as well.
I default to my conundrum. If I subscribe to a negative presumption, and Con goes first, who gets the presumption? The so-called negative statement usually inherent in Con’s position, or the negative position of the Pro which has, by this theory, the burden of disproving the Con’s so-called truth statements? In either case, one side gets a distinct advantage, and the judge is removed from a position of having to do more than say, “Well, it looked like a tie to me, so whichever side I construe as the negative therefore wins by default.”
I remain unconvinced by any of this (and less convinced at this point that there’s even presumption in Policy except by common practice). In LD, there is a clear rule stating that there is no presumption, which seems to bother few judges when it comes time to base their RFDs on presumption. But if we’re using those inexperienced judges in PF, than maybe the whole question is moot. They will, in fact, judge by their guts, given no better paradigm. Whether this is good or bad is another question altogether.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Fixing the problem
It’s easy to suggest that both debaters walk into the round with a copy of the rules in the old briefcase, but it doesn’t matter much if the judge hasn’t walked into the round with a copy of the same rules. So we have to mandate it. We have to insist that all judges follow the rules. It’s as simple as that.
As we’ve already argued, the rules to be followed are those published by the NFL in the District Manual, a pdf extraction of which is available on this site. The question remains, how do we mandate it? There are a lot of obstacles to this, despite its manifest logic. Chief among these obstacles is the jungle of individual paradigms published hither and yon, added to every year by the latest crop of college freshmen filled with their own ideas of what LD ought to be. I love that they are filled with their own ideas of what LD ought to be, but I am the first to point out that wishing doesn’t make it so. LD is what it is, and it’s fine to want to change it, and there are ways of changing it, but those ways are not in the rounds you judge in a competitive vacuum. In fact, not judging according to the rules does not allow to activity to evolve, as some people suggest, but merely makes the whole activity (and any hoped for progress) that much more muddled. Nonetheless, there is certainly variance among judge preferences that are within the rules, so although I would prefer to eliminate judge paradigms altogether insofar as they indirectly nurture the worst aspects of the activity, I would suggest that every judge, high and low, begin their paradigm with the simple phrase: “I adhere to the rules of LD as posted by the NFL.” Many judges (most?) could stop there. Contrariwise, if a judge does not submit to these rules, then they should begin their paradigm with the simple phrase: “I do not adhere to the rules of LD as posted by the NFL.” In this latter case, this would alert us in advance not to hire these judges in the first place.
But that’s where the real crux of the issue is, and the real source of control, in the hiring and use of judges. Ultimately this falls on the coaches, and the execution of practices that could keep the rules being adhered to falls on the coaches who are tournament or league directors. Like me. I am a director of the MHL, and I run the Bump invitational tournament every November. I can do a couple of very easy things that could make a difference. I can attach to the operational rules of the MHL a notice that we adhere to the NFL LD rules, and I can attach to the MHL website a copy of those rules. And I can insist at the beginning of every tournament, when I whisper the opening announcements, that we will be following these rules, which can also be distributed at the ballot table. Certainly these rules will be part of the package I give to new judges, posted on the MHL website. As for Bump, I simply make this a part of the invitation. I note that the activities at the tournament will follow NFL rules, and I will post those rules as an addendum to the invitation and on the Bump website. I will insist that all judges must adhere to these rules. Judges and/or teams who do not wish to adhere to these rules are welcome to find a different way to spend the weekend.
And, come to think of it, since I’m claiming I could do those so-called very easy things, I will do those very easy things.
And then we take to the bully pulpit (which is this blog, in my case) and we have at every other tournament. We ask simply, when we register, if the tournament will be adhering to the rules of LD as published by the NFL. If they are, so be it. If they aren’t, we can ask what rules they will be following. For instance, the CFL follows moderately different rules in PF and LD, and when I accept an invitation to one of their tournaments, I’m happy to follow those rules. Other venues might have other versions of the rules. But is it asking too much for them to publish those versions? And if they do not wish to enforce any rules, is it asking too much for them to admit it publicly? If I am going to a free-for-all in the guise of a debate tournament, the least you can do if I’m paying you an entry fee is to let me know that this is the case so that my teams can conduct themselves accordingly (bringing extra protective mental equipment, for instance). Even the most rabid “progressive” LD advocate can’t object to the idea that we should know what we’re paying for!
Great. Now I’ve got another iron in the fire, and something else to advocate for, and complain about. But, at least it’s clear and specific. You show me your rules and I’ll show you mine. It’s not asking that much at all. But I wonder how many people will actually take me up on it.
As we’ve already argued, the rules to be followed are those published by the NFL in the District Manual, a pdf extraction of which is available on this site. The question remains, how do we mandate it? There are a lot of obstacles to this, despite its manifest logic. Chief among these obstacles is the jungle of individual paradigms published hither and yon, added to every year by the latest crop of college freshmen filled with their own ideas of what LD ought to be. I love that they are filled with their own ideas of what LD ought to be, but I am the first to point out that wishing doesn’t make it so. LD is what it is, and it’s fine to want to change it, and there are ways of changing it, but those ways are not in the rounds you judge in a competitive vacuum. In fact, not judging according to the rules does not allow to activity to evolve, as some people suggest, but merely makes the whole activity (and any hoped for progress) that much more muddled. Nonetheless, there is certainly variance among judge preferences that are within the rules, so although I would prefer to eliminate judge paradigms altogether insofar as they indirectly nurture the worst aspects of the activity, I would suggest that every judge, high and low, begin their paradigm with the simple phrase: “I adhere to the rules of LD as posted by the NFL.” Many judges (most?) could stop there. Contrariwise, if a judge does not submit to these rules, then they should begin their paradigm with the simple phrase: “I do not adhere to the rules of LD as posted by the NFL.” In this latter case, this would alert us in advance not to hire these judges in the first place.
But that’s where the real crux of the issue is, and the real source of control, in the hiring and use of judges. Ultimately this falls on the coaches, and the execution of practices that could keep the rules being adhered to falls on the coaches who are tournament or league directors. Like me. I am a director of the MHL, and I run the Bump invitational tournament every November. I can do a couple of very easy things that could make a difference. I can attach to the operational rules of the MHL a notice that we adhere to the NFL LD rules, and I can attach to the MHL website a copy of those rules. And I can insist at the beginning of every tournament, when I whisper the opening announcements, that we will be following these rules, which can also be distributed at the ballot table. Certainly these rules will be part of the package I give to new judges, posted on the MHL website. As for Bump, I simply make this a part of the invitation. I note that the activities at the tournament will follow NFL rules, and I will post those rules as an addendum to the invitation and on the Bump website. I will insist that all judges must adhere to these rules. Judges and/or teams who do not wish to adhere to these rules are welcome to find a different way to spend the weekend.
And, come to think of it, since I’m claiming I could do those so-called very easy things, I will do those very easy things.
And then we take to the bully pulpit (which is this blog, in my case) and we have at every other tournament. We ask simply, when we register, if the tournament will be adhering to the rules of LD as published by the NFL. If they are, so be it. If they aren’t, we can ask what rules they will be following. For instance, the CFL follows moderately different rules in PF and LD, and when I accept an invitation to one of their tournaments, I’m happy to follow those rules. Other venues might have other versions of the rules. But is it asking too much for them to publish those versions? And if they do not wish to enforce any rules, is it asking too much for them to admit it publicly? If I am going to a free-for-all in the guise of a debate tournament, the least you can do if I’m paying you an entry fee is to let me know that this is the case so that my teams can conduct themselves accordingly (bringing extra protective mental equipment, for instance). Even the most rabid “progressive” LD advocate can’t object to the idea that we should know what we’re paying for!
Great. Now I’ve got another iron in the fire, and something else to advocate for, and complain about. But, at least it’s clear and specific. You show me your rules and I’ll show you mine. It’s not asking that much at all. But I wonder how many people will actually take me up on it.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
For whom the (LD) rules toll
If we believe that there ought to be rules for LD—and we do—we need to look at how those rules affect the people involved in the activity. That is, to whom are these rules important? This is an easy question to answer. The rules are important to 1) the debaters and 2) the judges. Occasionally the tournament staff is consulted on issues where there is a perceived rules violation, but this is rare, and need not concern us here, since if we have clear rules, the tournament staff would be merely interpreting and/or enforcing, and not legislating. The legislation, as we have claimed, has already taken place. (One could argue, perhaps, that the classical Lockean requirements for legislation were somehow not met when the NFL created the rules, but this would presume that not only is the forensics community a democracy, but that it is able to perform democratic functions, both of which are quite a leap. And, to be honest, I’m tired of defending the right of the NFL to create rules of forensics. In other words, get over it!)
So the rules apply to rounds and, mostly, within rounds. The rules, as we have argued, exist, and are clearly written and available to all NFL members (or anyone else, for that matter) in the district manual. And I have extracted them into a pdf on this site, for those who are incapable of surfing the NFL site (a large group with whom I have great sympathy). Which means that everyone walking into every round, debater or judge, has the easy ability to bring along a copy of these rules. They only take up a couple of printed pages. And they can answer, or prevent, all sorts of issues that might otherwise detract or distract from the round. The is, for instance, the Myth of Negative Presumption, which has about as many believers in LD circles as there are believers in UFOs, the Yeti and WMDs in Iraq combined. Let me make this clear. THERE IS NO PRESUMPTION FOR THE NEGATIVE IN LD. The rules are absolutely clear on this. You might wish there was a presumption for the negative, especially if you are, say, on the negative side, or you’re a judge who is unable to follow the arguments very well and didn’t bring a coin to surreptitiously flip while the debaters are otherwise engaged, but that does not make it so. Let me add this: ALL DEBATERS, AND ALL JUDGES, NEED TO KNOW THIS. And, of course, they need to know all the other rules as well. Keep in mind that knowing and following the rules does not mean you agree with them; study M. Rousseau on the subject of the General Will if you need to learn more about this. And if you are a total clown you can run a performative critique of the rules somehow, an act of debate civil disobedience if you will, but by the definition of c.d., you should be willing to accept the consequences of that action (i.e., losing the round).
As I said, the rules are important mostly to 1) the debaters and 2) the judges. The problem is that often 1) the debaters and 2) the judges don’t really care about these rules. Either they subscribe to their own mythologies (and they are mythologies: there are no alternate rules posted anywhere generally available to debaters and judges, so it’s not as if there is some other orthodoxy that can be consulted) or they simply don’t understand the rules that do exist, but in either case, it’s tantamount to the rules not existing, which means not only that anything can happen in a round, but that there is no way of predicting what will happen in a round, or more to the point, how what happens will be adjudicated. LD is not a game without rules, it is a game without people paying attention to the rules. There’s a big difference between the two. LD doesn’t pay attention to the rules to such a degree that we often mandate that each judge post his or her own rules just so we have some idea of what to expect from our adjudicators. We call these individual rule sets paradigms, and they can contradict the rules from NFL completely, and they can contradict all the other judges at a tournament, where every judge can have a unique paradigm different from every other judge, meaning that there is no normal expectations from rounds whatsoever. The thing is, we have begun to accept judge paradigms without any questioning whatsoever. A judge is a good judge because his or her paradigm is posted, not because the paradigm is a meaningful attempt to adhere to the rules of LD. While I’m perfectly willing to accept that there are measures of interpretation possible within the rules, at the point where paradigms become alternate rules they are, at best, counterproductive, and certainly counterintuitive, and probably countereducational. Compare, for instance, the subject of history. We can approach history in a variety of ways, from a variety of paradigms, in other words. We can look at history are a series of biographies of important people, or as the movement of the vast mass of people in daily life, or as the consequence/motivation of geography or any other of the usual disciplined approaches to the subject. Each approach yields a different view of events, with different priorities and analytics, but the facts remain the same, and the history itself is unchanged. And none of these paradigms can eliminate the other paradigms and say that they don’t matter; they just aren’t prioritized. In application to LD, a judge may like critical theory arguments, for example, believing that a resolution can be best understood through these analyses, but that does not make other analyses any less effective; they are just less preferred by that judge. But at the point where the judge may believe in a presumption for the negative, or that V/C standards are unnecessary, or that not arguing the resolution is acceptable, then we’ve gone off base. And there are plenty of judges whose paradigms are exactly that. And since LD is competitive, and people want to win, who can blame debaters (the 1 in the equation of this article) from trying to play the game the way the judges (the 2 in the equation of this article) imagine it? That’s probably the only way to win, after all.
Who’s to blame here for an activity with competing rules, where every judge is reigning over a private duchy of understanding/misunderstanding of the rules? A lot of people. Blame the NFL, as we discussed yesterday, for not policing the activity. Blame the bully pulpit of the TOC, which leans toward picking your judges (mutual preferences) rather than a belief that a good LDer should be able to convince any (trained) judge. Blame your average invitational that insists on paradigms but pays no attention to them. Blame coaches who don’t insist that the judges they hire abide by the rules, and who don’t train new judges, especially parents, but simply throw them to the wolves to cover an entry and the results be damned. Blame the college student judges who believe that the activity would be so much better if we only did it their way (a thought in which they are often sincere, and perhaps even right at times, but nonetheless misguided in thinking that they are central players rather than hired guns). Blame a lot of people. It doesn’t matter. Maybe these are the cause and maybe they’re not.
What we need to do is fix it, not whine about it.
So the rules apply to rounds and, mostly, within rounds. The rules, as we have argued, exist, and are clearly written and available to all NFL members (or anyone else, for that matter) in the district manual. And I have extracted them into a pdf on this site, for those who are incapable of surfing the NFL site (a large group with whom I have great sympathy). Which means that everyone walking into every round, debater or judge, has the easy ability to bring along a copy of these rules. They only take up a couple of printed pages. And they can answer, or prevent, all sorts of issues that might otherwise detract or distract from the round. The is, for instance, the Myth of Negative Presumption, which has about as many believers in LD circles as there are believers in UFOs, the Yeti and WMDs in Iraq combined. Let me make this clear. THERE IS NO PRESUMPTION FOR THE NEGATIVE IN LD. The rules are absolutely clear on this. You might wish there was a presumption for the negative, especially if you are, say, on the negative side, or you’re a judge who is unable to follow the arguments very well and didn’t bring a coin to surreptitiously flip while the debaters are otherwise engaged, but that does not make it so. Let me add this: ALL DEBATERS, AND ALL JUDGES, NEED TO KNOW THIS. And, of course, they need to know all the other rules as well. Keep in mind that knowing and following the rules does not mean you agree with them; study M. Rousseau on the subject of the General Will if you need to learn more about this. And if you are a total clown you can run a performative critique of the rules somehow, an act of debate civil disobedience if you will, but by the definition of c.d., you should be willing to accept the consequences of that action (i.e., losing the round).
As I said, the rules are important mostly to 1) the debaters and 2) the judges. The problem is that often 1) the debaters and 2) the judges don’t really care about these rules. Either they subscribe to their own mythologies (and they are mythologies: there are no alternate rules posted anywhere generally available to debaters and judges, so it’s not as if there is some other orthodoxy that can be consulted) or they simply don’t understand the rules that do exist, but in either case, it’s tantamount to the rules not existing, which means not only that anything can happen in a round, but that there is no way of predicting what will happen in a round, or more to the point, how what happens will be adjudicated. LD is not a game without rules, it is a game without people paying attention to the rules. There’s a big difference between the two. LD doesn’t pay attention to the rules to such a degree that we often mandate that each judge post his or her own rules just so we have some idea of what to expect from our adjudicators. We call these individual rule sets paradigms, and they can contradict the rules from NFL completely, and they can contradict all the other judges at a tournament, where every judge can have a unique paradigm different from every other judge, meaning that there is no normal expectations from rounds whatsoever. The thing is, we have begun to accept judge paradigms without any questioning whatsoever. A judge is a good judge because his or her paradigm is posted, not because the paradigm is a meaningful attempt to adhere to the rules of LD. While I’m perfectly willing to accept that there are measures of interpretation possible within the rules, at the point where paradigms become alternate rules they are, at best, counterproductive, and certainly counterintuitive, and probably countereducational. Compare, for instance, the subject of history. We can approach history in a variety of ways, from a variety of paradigms, in other words. We can look at history are a series of biographies of important people, or as the movement of the vast mass of people in daily life, or as the consequence/motivation of geography or any other of the usual disciplined approaches to the subject. Each approach yields a different view of events, with different priorities and analytics, but the facts remain the same, and the history itself is unchanged. And none of these paradigms can eliminate the other paradigms and say that they don’t matter; they just aren’t prioritized. In application to LD, a judge may like critical theory arguments, for example, believing that a resolution can be best understood through these analyses, but that does not make other analyses any less effective; they are just less preferred by that judge. But at the point where the judge may believe in a presumption for the negative, or that V/C standards are unnecessary, or that not arguing the resolution is acceptable, then we’ve gone off base. And there are plenty of judges whose paradigms are exactly that. And since LD is competitive, and people want to win, who can blame debaters (the 1 in the equation of this article) from trying to play the game the way the judges (the 2 in the equation of this article) imagine it? That’s probably the only way to win, after all.
Who’s to blame here for an activity with competing rules, where every judge is reigning over a private duchy of understanding/misunderstanding of the rules? A lot of people. Blame the NFL, as we discussed yesterday, for not policing the activity. Blame the bully pulpit of the TOC, which leans toward picking your judges (mutual preferences) rather than a belief that a good LDer should be able to convince any (trained) judge. Blame your average invitational that insists on paradigms but pays no attention to them. Blame coaches who don’t insist that the judges they hire abide by the rules, and who don’t train new judges, especially parents, but simply throw them to the wolves to cover an entry and the results be damned. Blame the college student judges who believe that the activity would be so much better if we only did it their way (a thought in which they are often sincere, and perhaps even right at times, but nonetheless misguided in thinking that they are central players rather than hired guns). Blame a lot of people. It doesn’t matter. Maybe these are the cause and maybe they’re not.
What we need to do is fix it, not whine about it.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Storm troopers of the NFL
Here’s the problem, or, “Previously on Coachean Life…”
1) LD requires rules.
2) There in fact are rules for LD.
3) The existing rules for LD come from the NFL.
4) For reasons slightly less complex than the genome of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a large number of people involved in LD are woefully ignorant of, or totally uninterested in, either 1, 2, or 3 (above), or any combination thereof.
We’ve touched on 1, 2, and 3 (above) in varying degrees of detail in recent weeks, but we have not discussed 4 very much. While 1, 2 and 3 (above) rely on either simple logic or manifest facts, 4 is a highly subjective area of analysis that contains multiple threads, some of which are contradictory. One recent contention that I have heard brought forth in a comparable context was that, somehow, Rippin’ is to blame for not enforcing its rules, that it is a body so powerless that its existence is meaningless and therefore easily dismissed. There are a lot of corners that require turning in that concept, and I tend to get lost at around the second one-way sign. NFL is no more or less powerful than it ought to be. True, they do not run every forensics event in the country, and no doubt not every person at every event is a bona fide member of the league, but that is of no consequence. As a comparison, if I decide to head out with some friends and play a casual game of golf, that game is neither run by the USGA nor are any of us members of that organization, but we play by their rules just the same (except when those rules are so obscure that even the USGA can’t figure them out, but that’s another story entirely). The fact that NFL (or USGA) does run some events does not render the events they don’t run somehow rule-free. I can, of course, decide to adjust the rules, in golf, for instance, by dropping a ball at the edge of the woods where the ball was last seen and taking a penalty, whereas the rules state I should have hit a provisional ball. This penalty-drop allows us to finish a game the same week we begin it and, as amateurs, keeps it more fun. Granted, the USGA would frown on this, but all of us in the foursome play by the same rule. There is, after all, fifty cents riding on this match! So, I’m willing to concede that there are situations where an adjustment to the rules is acceptable, but that adjustment both acknowledges the existence of the rules in the first place and is clearly delineated ahead of the game and understood and agreed to by all the players. Source rules need not be absolutely binding, in other words, provided all the players agree to the new rules. That is not unheard of in many games. And how much fun would Monopoly be, after all, if somebody from Milton Bradley broke down the door of my house and arrested me every time I created a kitty of the fine money for the lucky goober who lands on Free Parking?
So I am not willing to blame NFL for not making everyone adhere to its rules. It is illogical for me to expect them to do it, and possibly undesirable. That does not mean, however, that their rules are rendered moot. It simply means that NFL is not a modern-day debate Gestapo breaking into rounds and carrying off novices who fail to uphold a value. (Actually, although there are those who doubt it is so, my personal opinion of the NFL is quite positive: who wouldn’t love an organization that wouldn’t want to have me as one of its organizers? But seriously, I think they do exactly what they’re supposed to do pretty much the way they’re supposed to do it, and I am impressed that present leadership has been addressing the questions of rules and procedures in apparently all its activities.)
Which brings us back to the point where, as I say, number 4 above is complex and is probably, in the end, impossible to pin down. Suffice it to say that it is true, and we must deal with it. And, as I have suggested here, I don’t think it’s the NFL’s job to deal with it; they can keep their theoretical jackbooted thugs back home in Wisconsin. And the rest of us, especially those subject to severe wunnophobia (morbid fear of the Wunn and Only), can breathe easy. There are other solutions, and better solutions, to the problem.
Although I have to admit that the idea of the Wunn and Only storming into rounds and carrying off recalcitrant novices does have a certain charm to it…
1) LD requires rules.
2) There in fact are rules for LD.
3) The existing rules for LD come from the NFL.
4) For reasons slightly less complex than the genome of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a large number of people involved in LD are woefully ignorant of, or totally uninterested in, either 1, 2, or 3 (above), or any combination thereof.
We’ve touched on 1, 2, and 3 (above) in varying degrees of detail in recent weeks, but we have not discussed 4 very much. While 1, 2 and 3 (above) rely on either simple logic or manifest facts, 4 is a highly subjective area of analysis that contains multiple threads, some of which are contradictory. One recent contention that I have heard brought forth in a comparable context was that, somehow, Rippin’ is to blame for not enforcing its rules, that it is a body so powerless that its existence is meaningless and therefore easily dismissed. There are a lot of corners that require turning in that concept, and I tend to get lost at around the second one-way sign. NFL is no more or less powerful than it ought to be. True, they do not run every forensics event in the country, and no doubt not every person at every event is a bona fide member of the league, but that is of no consequence. As a comparison, if I decide to head out with some friends and play a casual game of golf, that game is neither run by the USGA nor are any of us members of that organization, but we play by their rules just the same (except when those rules are so obscure that even the USGA can’t figure them out, but that’s another story entirely). The fact that NFL (or USGA) does run some events does not render the events they don’t run somehow rule-free. I can, of course, decide to adjust the rules, in golf, for instance, by dropping a ball at the edge of the woods where the ball was last seen and taking a penalty, whereas the rules state I should have hit a provisional ball. This penalty-drop allows us to finish a game the same week we begin it and, as amateurs, keeps it more fun. Granted, the USGA would frown on this, but all of us in the foursome play by the same rule. There is, after all, fifty cents riding on this match! So, I’m willing to concede that there are situations where an adjustment to the rules is acceptable, but that adjustment both acknowledges the existence of the rules in the first place and is clearly delineated ahead of the game and understood and agreed to by all the players. Source rules need not be absolutely binding, in other words, provided all the players agree to the new rules. That is not unheard of in many games. And how much fun would Monopoly be, after all, if somebody from Milton Bradley broke down the door of my house and arrested me every time I created a kitty of the fine money for the lucky goober who lands on Free Parking?
So I am not willing to blame NFL for not making everyone adhere to its rules. It is illogical for me to expect them to do it, and possibly undesirable. That does not mean, however, that their rules are rendered moot. It simply means that NFL is not a modern-day debate Gestapo breaking into rounds and carrying off novices who fail to uphold a value. (Actually, although there are those who doubt it is so, my personal opinion of the NFL is quite positive: who wouldn’t love an organization that wouldn’t want to have me as one of its organizers? But seriously, I think they do exactly what they’re supposed to do pretty much the way they’re supposed to do it, and I am impressed that present leadership has been addressing the questions of rules and procedures in apparently all its activities.)
Which brings us back to the point where, as I say, number 4 above is complex and is probably, in the end, impossible to pin down. Suffice it to say that it is true, and we must deal with it. And, as I have suggested here, I don’t think it’s the NFL’s job to deal with it; they can keep their theoretical jackbooted thugs back home in Wisconsin. And the rest of us, especially those subject to severe wunnophobia (morbid fear of the Wunn and Only), can breathe easy. There are other solutions, and better solutions, to the problem.
Although I have to admit that the idea of the Wunn and Only storming into rounds and carrying off recalcitrant novices does have a certain charm to it…
Monday, January 26, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 8 (conclusion)
We have made the case that, first, that rules are needed for LD rounds, and second, that the rules provided by the NFL are the rules we should abide by. Then we have presented those rules and analyzed what they are saying.
Are these the best possible rules for the activity? Not necessarily, although my opinion is that they are pretty good, and if I were asked to come up with something, it wouldn’t be much different from this. In our analysis, we have decidedly not been evaluating the rules, however, but simply enumerating them and discussing their meaning. The thing is, once you accept the need for rules, and the provenance of the NFL, you are sort of stuck with accepting the NFL’s rules. Who wants to play a game with someone who keeps complaining that the rules are unfair? As we’ve said often in the past, an LD round is not the place where one should debate the rules of LD. Once you decide to debate LD, well, following the rules already in place is what you have to do. If you think the rules should be changed, then come up with a way to do so that does not include your implicit acceptance of those rules in a debate round operating under those rules. Taking a “conscientious objector” approach and flouting the rules in a round is not quite the way to do it; as any conscientious objection scholar will tell you, when you break the law you should expect to pay the consequences, which in this case would be to lose the round. The point of conscientious objection is to publicize injustice, not evade consequences.
I have heard an argument that because the NFL is irredeemably flawed, their rules cannot stand. I don’t buy this logic, because this would mean that in a region where murder is illegal but the local police are corrupt, the law against murder is no longer valid. For that matter, I don’t buy the underlying premise that the NFL is irredeemably flawed. Their website may be just slightly more complex than your average Hieronymus Bosch triptych, and the VCA is well aware that I am no longer the world’s worst district chair (much to the acclaim of Rippin’, it would seem), but I have never believed, and I certainly doubt if I have ever claimed, that they are in any way, shape or form not looking out for what they think are the best interests of students, nor that they are in any way, shape or form not the people I want as the underlying organization behind what we do.
So what if you happen to disagree with their rules? Are your stuck with them? Of course not. You have avenues of change you may pursue within the organization. You pay your dues: communicate with Rippin’ and the LD folks and see how that works out. Or, if you run a tournament, post different rules for that tournament. As long as the rules are clear, people will follow them. Nothing stops anyone from doing that. CFL certainly does it. TOC does it (by not running the topic of the moment), and the northeast will be doing the same with The Northeast Championships. Next year the Modest Novice will have its unique, non-NFL topic. I have heard of tournaments that experiment with different speech timings and the like. I see nothing in the NFL rules that say, if you don’t follow these rules you will be expelled from forensics. But if you’re not going to follow these rules, some other clear rules are required; a game with no rules is no game at all. As I say, the issue of what the best rules might be is vastly different from the issue of the inherent need for rules. And until such point as clear and specific rules are in place substituting for the NFL’s rules at a tournament, the NFL’s rules must stand. You don’t have to love ‘em, you just have to obey them. If you don’t like it, and you’re not willing to offer change in a productive, practical fashion, either within the system or through your own ostensive and academically sound alternate system, then do all of us a favor and take up competitive cucumber growing. LD rounds (and cucumbering) will both profit from your secession from the activity.
Are these the best possible rules for the activity? Not necessarily, although my opinion is that they are pretty good, and if I were asked to come up with something, it wouldn’t be much different from this. In our analysis, we have decidedly not been evaluating the rules, however, but simply enumerating them and discussing their meaning. The thing is, once you accept the need for rules, and the provenance of the NFL, you are sort of stuck with accepting the NFL’s rules. Who wants to play a game with someone who keeps complaining that the rules are unfair? As we’ve said often in the past, an LD round is not the place where one should debate the rules of LD. Once you decide to debate LD, well, following the rules already in place is what you have to do. If you think the rules should be changed, then come up with a way to do so that does not include your implicit acceptance of those rules in a debate round operating under those rules. Taking a “conscientious objector” approach and flouting the rules in a round is not quite the way to do it; as any conscientious objection scholar will tell you, when you break the law you should expect to pay the consequences, which in this case would be to lose the round. The point of conscientious objection is to publicize injustice, not evade consequences.
I have heard an argument that because the NFL is irredeemably flawed, their rules cannot stand. I don’t buy this logic, because this would mean that in a region where murder is illegal but the local police are corrupt, the law against murder is no longer valid. For that matter, I don’t buy the underlying premise that the NFL is irredeemably flawed. Their website may be just slightly more complex than your average Hieronymus Bosch triptych, and the VCA is well aware that I am no longer the world’s worst district chair (much to the acclaim of Rippin’, it would seem), but I have never believed, and I certainly doubt if I have ever claimed, that they are in any way, shape or form not looking out for what they think are the best interests of students, nor that they are in any way, shape or form not the people I want as the underlying organization behind what we do.
So what if you happen to disagree with their rules? Are your stuck with them? Of course not. You have avenues of change you may pursue within the organization. You pay your dues: communicate with Rippin’ and the LD folks and see how that works out. Or, if you run a tournament, post different rules for that tournament. As long as the rules are clear, people will follow them. Nothing stops anyone from doing that. CFL certainly does it. TOC does it (by not running the topic of the moment), and the northeast will be doing the same with The Northeast Championships. Next year the Modest Novice will have its unique, non-NFL topic. I have heard of tournaments that experiment with different speech timings and the like. I see nothing in the NFL rules that say, if you don’t follow these rules you will be expelled from forensics. But if you’re not going to follow these rules, some other clear rules are required; a game with no rules is no game at all. As I say, the issue of what the best rules might be is vastly different from the issue of the inherent need for rules. And until such point as clear and specific rules are in place substituting for the NFL’s rules at a tournament, the NFL’s rules must stand. You don’t have to love ‘em, you just have to obey them. If you don’t like it, and you’re not willing to offer change in a productive, practical fashion, either within the system or through your own ostensive and academically sound alternate system, then do all of us a favor and take up competitive cucumber growing. LD rounds (and cucumbering) will both profit from your secession from the activity.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 7
3. Argumentation – Because Lincoln Douglas debate is an educational debate activity, debaters are obligated to construct logical chains of reasoning which lead to the conclusion of the affirmative or negative position. The nature of proof may take a variety of forms (e.g., a student’s original analysis, application of philosophy, examples, analogies, statistics, expert opinion, etc.). Arguments should be presented in a cohesive manner that shows a clear relationship to the value structure. Any research should be conducted and presented ethically from academically sound and appropriately cited sources.
I can’t imagine anything less controversial than the above paragraph. “Don’t make up the research,” would seem to sum it up. I have nothing to add, except that I have only occasionally felt the need to examine a piece of evidence, and have always been rather amused that LDers think that handing you their case with the quote typed up in it somehow suffices, especially when my problem is not that I didn’t hear or understand the quote so much as I didn’t quite believe it. If you’re going to have evidence, would it kill you to photocopy it directly from the source? If you want to be a Policy debater, act like one.
4. Cross-Examination - Cross-examination should be used by the debater to clarify, challenge, and/or advance arguments in the round.
I guess one can extrapolate from this that CX should not be used as another three minutes of prep time. Certainly it is no great leap to accept that the timings for the speeches in LD have been set by the NFL (it’s on their ballots). The acceptance of flex prep seems about as reasonable as the acceptance of a debater deciding in a round that he’ll take his thirteen minutes of debate as 4, 4 and 5 rather than 6, 4 and 3. Whatever. Cases that are so unintelligible that they have to be read during prep is the culprit here, mixed in with a little fashion-following. Anyhow, aside from this, the explanation of CX here is definitely the starting point to training any debater what to do while standing there for three minutes of free air time. Good CX skills are hard to acquire, in that they require a mix of careful analysis of what’s been heard so far, respectful yet firm questioning, plus laying strategic groundwork for your own case. Maybe that’s why people like flex prep instead: They get to bypass one of the hardest jobs in a round.
5. Effective delivery: Lincoln Douglas debate is an oral communication activity that requires clarity of thought and expression. Arguments should be worded and delivered in a manner accessible to an educated non-specialist audience. This encompasses:
- Written communication: Cases and arguments should be constructed in a manner that is organized, accessible, and informative to the listener. The debater should employ clear logic and analysis supported by topical research.
-Verbal communication: The debater has the obligation to be clear, audible and comprehensible, and to speak persuasively to the listeners. Additionally, debaters should strive for fluency, expressiveness, effective word choice, and eloquence.
- Non-verbal communication: The debater should demonstrate an effective use of gestures, eye-contact, and posture. Throughout the debate, the debaters should demonstrate civility as well as a professional demeanor and style of delivery.
“An educated non-specialist audience”? Come on, now. Those are strikin’ words, pardner. The number of “top” debaters today who can win a ballot from, say, the average Supreme Court justice is pretty small. Our theoretically hottest debaters are capable only of picking up ballots from a select (and often pre-selected) group of professional LD judges. I’ve talked about this many times in the past.
That effective speaking is only marginally valued these days in LD is hardly a shocker. There is even a subset of people who don’t even bother to stand up to present their cases. Again, debaters who imitate what they think is Policy are sort of missing the point of their idolatry. The value of Policy debate, aside from the classic rhetorical benefits, is the manipulation of research. Go to court some day; you might see lawyers with as many tubs as your average Policy team. LD, with none of the need to get tons of evidence across in a short period of time, goes fast presumably simply to fit more stuff into less time. I wonder why announcers on TV don’t do this. After all, if K Couric talked twice as fast, she’d cover twice as much news. John Stewart, at twice the speed, would be twice as funny. If Obama’s inauguration speech were twice as fast, he could have included all kinds of other stuff as well. Beats me. Anyhow, the battle to get debaters to speak well in a classic sense is a losing one, and I have no intention of fighting it at any length here now. Given that there is no realistic use for extreme speaking speed outside of debate, the logic of using it inside debate must stand or fall on its own merits. The only thing I can say is that, if your judge says go slowly, it behooves you to go slowly. From my own experience, in my heyday I could flow just about anything, but since nowadays I judge only a few times a year, I’m rusty. I admit as much to anyone I judge. If they choose to ignore this warning, they will not deliver effectively. They may, if they wish, blame me for not receiving effectively, and they may be perfectly justified in doing so, but that won’t help them earn any speaker points on my particular ballot. Come to think of it, the number one complaint I hear from judges, regardless of paradigm or experience, is that when debaters ask for preferences before a round, the debaters then proceed to ignore those preferences. How about a new slogan: “Don’t Care? Don’t Ask!”
Anyhow, we’ll sum up next time out.
I can’t imagine anything less controversial than the above paragraph. “Don’t make up the research,” would seem to sum it up. I have nothing to add, except that I have only occasionally felt the need to examine a piece of evidence, and have always been rather amused that LDers think that handing you their case with the quote typed up in it somehow suffices, especially when my problem is not that I didn’t hear or understand the quote so much as I didn’t quite believe it. If you’re going to have evidence, would it kill you to photocopy it directly from the source? If you want to be a Policy debater, act like one.
4. Cross-Examination - Cross-examination should be used by the debater to clarify, challenge, and/or advance arguments in the round.
I guess one can extrapolate from this that CX should not be used as another three minutes of prep time. Certainly it is no great leap to accept that the timings for the speeches in LD have been set by the NFL (it’s on their ballots). The acceptance of flex prep seems about as reasonable as the acceptance of a debater deciding in a round that he’ll take his thirteen minutes of debate as 4, 4 and 5 rather than 6, 4 and 3. Whatever. Cases that are so unintelligible that they have to be read during prep is the culprit here, mixed in with a little fashion-following. Anyhow, aside from this, the explanation of CX here is definitely the starting point to training any debater what to do while standing there for three minutes of free air time. Good CX skills are hard to acquire, in that they require a mix of careful analysis of what’s been heard so far, respectful yet firm questioning, plus laying strategic groundwork for your own case. Maybe that’s why people like flex prep instead: They get to bypass one of the hardest jobs in a round.
5. Effective delivery: Lincoln Douglas debate is an oral communication activity that requires clarity of thought and expression. Arguments should be worded and delivered in a manner accessible to an educated non-specialist audience. This encompasses:
- Written communication: Cases and arguments should be constructed in a manner that is organized, accessible, and informative to the listener. The debater should employ clear logic and analysis supported by topical research.
-Verbal communication: The debater has the obligation to be clear, audible and comprehensible, and to speak persuasively to the listeners. Additionally, debaters should strive for fluency, expressiveness, effective word choice, and eloquence.
- Non-verbal communication: The debater should demonstrate an effective use of gestures, eye-contact, and posture. Throughout the debate, the debaters should demonstrate civility as well as a professional demeanor and style of delivery.
“An educated non-specialist audience”? Come on, now. Those are strikin’ words, pardner. The number of “top” debaters today who can win a ballot from, say, the average Supreme Court justice is pretty small. Our theoretically hottest debaters are capable only of picking up ballots from a select (and often pre-selected) group of professional LD judges. I’ve talked about this many times in the past.
That effective speaking is only marginally valued these days in LD is hardly a shocker. There is even a subset of people who don’t even bother to stand up to present their cases. Again, debaters who imitate what they think is Policy are sort of missing the point of their idolatry. The value of Policy debate, aside from the classic rhetorical benefits, is the manipulation of research. Go to court some day; you might see lawyers with as many tubs as your average Policy team. LD, with none of the need to get tons of evidence across in a short period of time, goes fast presumably simply to fit more stuff into less time. I wonder why announcers on TV don’t do this. After all, if K Couric talked twice as fast, she’d cover twice as much news. John Stewart, at twice the speed, would be twice as funny. If Obama’s inauguration speech were twice as fast, he could have included all kinds of other stuff as well. Beats me. Anyhow, the battle to get debaters to speak well in a classic sense is a losing one, and I have no intention of fighting it at any length here now. Given that there is no realistic use for extreme speaking speed outside of debate, the logic of using it inside debate must stand or fall on its own merits. The only thing I can say is that, if your judge says go slowly, it behooves you to go slowly. From my own experience, in my heyday I could flow just about anything, but since nowadays I judge only a few times a year, I’m rusty. I admit as much to anyone I judge. If they choose to ignore this warning, they will not deliver effectively. They may, if they wish, blame me for not receiving effectively, and they may be perfectly justified in doing so, but that won’t help them earn any speaker points on my particular ballot. Come to think of it, the number one complaint I hear from judges, regardless of paradigm or experience, is that when debaters ask for preferences before a round, the debaters then proceed to ignore those preferences. How about a new slogan: “Don’t Care? Don’t Ask!”
Anyhow, we’ll sum up next time out.
Friday, January 23, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 6
2. Value Structure -The value structure (or framework) is established by the debater to serve two functions: a) to provide an interpretation of the central focus of the resolution, and b) to provide a method for the judge to evaluate the central questions of the resolution. The value structure often consists of a statement of the resolution (if affirming), definitions (dictionary or contextual), the value premise (or core value), and the value criterion (or standard). This structure is commonly but not always employed.
Definitions: The affirmative should offer definitions, be they dictionary or contextual, that provides a reasonable ground for debate. The negative has the option to challenge these definitions and to offer counter-definitions.
Value Premise/Core Value: A value is an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc. that serves as the highest goal to be protected, respected, maximized, advanced, or achieved. In general, the debater will establish a value which focuses the central questions of the resolution and will serve as a foundation for argumentation.
Value Criterion/Standard: In general, each debater will present a value criterion (a standard) which the debater will use to:
- explain how the value should be protected, respected, maximized, advanced, or achieved.
- measure whether a given side or argument protects, respects, maximizes, advances, or achieves the value.
- evaluate the relevance and importance of an argument in the context of the round.
The relationship between the value premise and the criterion should be clearly articulated. During the debate, the debaters may argue the validity or priority of the two value structures. They may accept their opponent’s value structure, prove the superiority of their own value structure, or synthesize the two.
There’s not much here of any real controversy. The only important questions that arise are two. First, do cases absolutely have to contain explicit values and criteria? The answer is, mostly yes. There’s some hedging language in here that suggests that either the committee writing this up was acting very much like a committee, or else they simply didn’t want to clamp down 100% on something that is not naturally inherent. That is, one can conceive of a perfectly acceptable, values-oriented LD round without values and criteria—although in practice values and criteria have become very, very helpful—so excluding them is not totally disallowed. Realistically, the rules are saying, this is what you ought to do, but if you don’t do it, it’s not necessarily wrong. (Which is in keeping with their own burdens of generally proving something to be true!) The strong suggestion that V and C are good and recommended is clear as day, but you couldn’t drop someone just because of their exclusion.
The second big question, and this one is answered definitively, is whether debaters need to uphold the same value. For some reason, certain debaters and judges, usually more inexperienced, come into a round believing that it is somehow against the rules to have different values, or at the very least that both values will stand at the end of the round. But the rules clearly explain that anything goes, that values and criteria and be the same or different or synthesized. It is up to the judge to evaluate where the better job was done on the basis of the job itself and not some predetermined way the job ought to be done. Hardest thing of all, if you ask me, is judging a really good round where debaters stand for different values achieved through different critera. But, that’s why we earn the big bucks. And why there’s panels, and squirrels.
Definitions: The affirmative should offer definitions, be they dictionary or contextual, that provides a reasonable ground for debate. The negative has the option to challenge these definitions and to offer counter-definitions.
Value Premise/Core Value: A value is an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc. that serves as the highest goal to be protected, respected, maximized, advanced, or achieved. In general, the debater will establish a value which focuses the central questions of the resolution and will serve as a foundation for argumentation.
Value Criterion/Standard: In general, each debater will present a value criterion (a standard) which the debater will use to:
- explain how the value should be protected, respected, maximized, advanced, or achieved.
- measure whether a given side or argument protects, respects, maximizes, advances, or achieves the value.
- evaluate the relevance and importance of an argument in the context of the round.
The relationship between the value premise and the criterion should be clearly articulated. During the debate, the debaters may argue the validity or priority of the two value structures. They may accept their opponent’s value structure, prove the superiority of their own value structure, or synthesize the two.
There’s not much here of any real controversy. The only important questions that arise are two. First, do cases absolutely have to contain explicit values and criteria? The answer is, mostly yes. There’s some hedging language in here that suggests that either the committee writing this up was acting very much like a committee, or else they simply didn’t want to clamp down 100% on something that is not naturally inherent. That is, one can conceive of a perfectly acceptable, values-oriented LD round without values and criteria—although in practice values and criteria have become very, very helpful—so excluding them is not totally disallowed. Realistically, the rules are saying, this is what you ought to do, but if you don’t do it, it’s not necessarily wrong. (Which is in keeping with their own burdens of generally proving something to be true!) The strong suggestion that V and C are good and recommended is clear as day, but you couldn’t drop someone just because of their exclusion.
The second big question, and this one is answered definitively, is whether debaters need to uphold the same value. For some reason, certain debaters and judges, usually more inexperienced, come into a round believing that it is somehow against the rules to have different values, or at the very least that both values will stand at the end of the round. But the rules clearly explain that anything goes, that values and criteria and be the same or different or synthesized. It is up to the judge to evaluate where the better job was done on the basis of the job itself and not some predetermined way the job ought to be done. Hardest thing of all, if you ask me, is judging a really good round where debaters stand for different values achieved through different critera. But, that’s why we earn the big bucks. And why there’s panels, and squirrels.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 5
1. Parallel Burdens - No question of values can be determined entirely true or false. This is why the resolution is debatable. Therefore neither debater should be held to a standard of absolute proof. No debater can realistically be expected to prove complete validity or invalidity of the resolution. The better debater is the one who, on the whole, proves his/her side of the resolution more valid as a general principle.
- Burden of proof: Each debater has the equal burden to prove the validity of his/her side of the resolution as a general principle. As an LD resolution is a statement of value, there is no presumption for either side.
- Burden of clash: Each debater has an equal burden to clash with his/her opponent’s position. After a case is presented, neither debater should be rewarded for presenting a speech completely unrelated to the arguments of his/her opponent.
- Resolutional burden: The debaters are equally obligated to focus the debate on the central questions of the resolution, not whether the resolution itself is worthy of debate. Because the affirmative must uphold the resolution, the negative must also argue the resolution as presented.
I know. You just read that twice. You don’t believe it. You certainly won’t act as if it’s true, and the next time someone posits the absolute fact that there is a presumption for the negative in LD, you will agree with them. [Sigh…]
There is, of course, a presumption for the negative in Policy. This may be where the idea that there is a presumption for the negative in LD comes from, but that has never been true. In Policy, the affirmative must argue a change the status quo; that is the affirmative’s burden. And that is also the source of the presumption. Since we cannot have a tie in a zero sum game of debate, we need to set some parameter for adjudicating when, in fact, there appears to be a tie. Because we ask that the aff change the status quo, we set the standard at that point; i.e., our starting point is that the status quo is okay, and the aff must prove that it isn’t. If they don’t prove this, then the neg, if the neg upholds the status quo, wins. I doubt that many debates devolve in this way (at least they don’t in the literature I consulted on this question), but there you are. In the case of a tie, the negative wins if there’s a presumption for the negative. That’s what a presumption means.
There has never been a negative presumption in LD, and the rules explicitly state that “there is no presumption for either side.” So, if an affirmative makes various claims in a round, the idea that all the negative has to do is prove these claims false equals a negative win is not true. At best, this would mean an unresolvable tie. Personally, I would also maintain that this would be a remarkably weak position on the part of the neg, rules, presumptions and burdens notwithstanding. The cliché that the best offense is a good defense stands up in a debate: the negative with a strong advocacy is a much better case than a negative with no advocacy other than the falseness of the other side. That kind of case is pure defense with no offense. That is weak argumentation.
There are other obvious issues in this Part 1 of the rules that conflict with much popular belief. “Neither debater should be held to a standard of absolute proof” would undermine a lot of theory arguments. A realistic argument between conflicting sides should indeed be in conflict, but the idea that one side has to prove everything and the other side only has to prove that everything can’t be proven is, well, silly. And, as with the no-advocacy neg, is another attempt to run an argument with no advocacy. It’s weak debating. Calling it “theory” merely dresses it up in its Sunday clothes in an attempt to hide its internal vacuity. That it often works is, as I say, rather remarkable. A lot of people are suckers for a lot of things if they think it’s smart and progressive. Given that, if it were true that one side must argue absolutes and the other need not the side that need not ought to win exactly all the time, it’s not surprising that the rules preclude this approach.
“Each debater has the equal burden to prove the validity of his/her side of the resolution as a general principle.” That’s clear enough. You’ve got to have an advocacy that is cut from the LD mold of upholding a value. “Neither debater should be rewarded for presenting a speech completely unrelated to the arguments of his/her opponent” would toss a lot of negs right out the window for obvious reasons, not to mention the clear statement that both sides must “focus the debate on the central questions of the resolution, not whether the resolution itself is worthy of debate. Because the affirmative must uphold the resolution, the negative must also argue the resolution as presented.” Off-case? Pre-standards? Bias makes it unarguable? Suck it up. If the resolution is not arguable, your best strategy is to do Extemp for a couple of months until the next resolution rolls around. Or PF. Or, heaven forbid, Dec. But if you’re going to walk into an LD round to debate either side, you must have an argument for your side, it must be in aid of a value, and it must be relevant to and accepting of the resolution.
I don’t make this stuff up. It’s the people who disagree with me who need to put their cards on the table and demonstrate first, there should be no rules, or failing this, that the source of the rules should be someone other than NFL. Until that point, well….
You’ll probably to continue to enjoy the next 4 sections if you’ve made it this far. AY, in an earlier comment, asked for a link to these rules. I’ll put up a pdf at some point, but till then, it’s all in the District Manual.
- Burden of proof: Each debater has the equal burden to prove the validity of his/her side of the resolution as a general principle. As an LD resolution is a statement of value, there is no presumption for either side.
- Burden of clash: Each debater has an equal burden to clash with his/her opponent’s position. After a case is presented, neither debater should be rewarded for presenting a speech completely unrelated to the arguments of his/her opponent.
- Resolutional burden: The debaters are equally obligated to focus the debate on the central questions of the resolution, not whether the resolution itself is worthy of debate. Because the affirmative must uphold the resolution, the negative must also argue the resolution as presented.
I know. You just read that twice. You don’t believe it. You certainly won’t act as if it’s true, and the next time someone posits the absolute fact that there is a presumption for the negative in LD, you will agree with them. [Sigh…]
There is, of course, a presumption for the negative in Policy. This may be where the idea that there is a presumption for the negative in LD comes from, but that has never been true. In Policy, the affirmative must argue a change the status quo; that is the affirmative’s burden. And that is also the source of the presumption. Since we cannot have a tie in a zero sum game of debate, we need to set some parameter for adjudicating when, in fact, there appears to be a tie. Because we ask that the aff change the status quo, we set the standard at that point; i.e., our starting point is that the status quo is okay, and the aff must prove that it isn’t. If they don’t prove this, then the neg, if the neg upholds the status quo, wins. I doubt that many debates devolve in this way (at least they don’t in the literature I consulted on this question), but there you are. In the case of a tie, the negative wins if there’s a presumption for the negative. That’s what a presumption means.
There has never been a negative presumption in LD, and the rules explicitly state that “there is no presumption for either side.” So, if an affirmative makes various claims in a round, the idea that all the negative has to do is prove these claims false equals a negative win is not true. At best, this would mean an unresolvable tie. Personally, I would also maintain that this would be a remarkably weak position on the part of the neg, rules, presumptions and burdens notwithstanding. The cliché that the best offense is a good defense stands up in a debate: the negative with a strong advocacy is a much better case than a negative with no advocacy other than the falseness of the other side. That kind of case is pure defense with no offense. That is weak argumentation.
There are other obvious issues in this Part 1 of the rules that conflict with much popular belief. “Neither debater should be held to a standard of absolute proof” would undermine a lot of theory arguments. A realistic argument between conflicting sides should indeed be in conflict, but the idea that one side has to prove everything and the other side only has to prove that everything can’t be proven is, well, silly. And, as with the no-advocacy neg, is another attempt to run an argument with no advocacy. It’s weak debating. Calling it “theory” merely dresses it up in its Sunday clothes in an attempt to hide its internal vacuity. That it often works is, as I say, rather remarkable. A lot of people are suckers for a lot of things if they think it’s smart and progressive. Given that, if it were true that one side must argue absolutes and the other need not the side that need not ought to win exactly all the time, it’s not surprising that the rules preclude this approach.
“Each debater has the equal burden to prove the validity of his/her side of the resolution as a general principle.” That’s clear enough. You’ve got to have an advocacy that is cut from the LD mold of upholding a value. “Neither debater should be rewarded for presenting a speech completely unrelated to the arguments of his/her opponent” would toss a lot of negs right out the window for obvious reasons, not to mention the clear statement that both sides must “focus the debate on the central questions of the resolution, not whether the resolution itself is worthy of debate. Because the affirmative must uphold the resolution, the negative must also argue the resolution as presented.” Off-case? Pre-standards? Bias makes it unarguable? Suck it up. If the resolution is not arguable, your best strategy is to do Extemp for a couple of months until the next resolution rolls around. Or PF. Or, heaven forbid, Dec. But if you’re going to walk into an LD round to debate either side, you must have an argument for your side, it must be in aid of a value, and it must be relevant to and accepting of the resolution.
I don’t make this stuff up. It’s the people who disagree with me who need to put their cards on the table and demonstrate first, there should be no rules, or failing this, that the source of the rules should be someone other than NFL. Until that point, well….
You’ll probably to continue to enjoy the next 4 sections if you’ve made it this far. AY, in an earlier comment, asked for a link to these rules. I’ll put up a pdf at some point, but till then, it’s all in the District Manual.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 4
Lincoln Douglas Debate Event Description
Event description – Lincoln Douglas debate is designed to center on a proposition of value. A proposition of value concerns itself with what ought to be instead of what is. A value is an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc. Debaters are encouraged to develop argumentation based upon a values perspective. To that end, no plan (or counterplan) will be offered by the debaters. In Lincoln Douglas Debate, a plan is defined by the NFL as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. The debate should focus on reasoning to support a general principle instead of particular plans and counterplans. Debaters may offer generalized, practical examples or solutions to illustrate how the general principle could guide decisions.
This is the top of the description in the district manual. It tells you, briefly, what LD is about. Since the activity did evolve from Policy, it is not surprising that, to some extent, although implicitly, it describes the activity in terms that separate it from Policy.
The activity is described as revolving around a question of what we ought to do as a “proposition of value.” This is a way of saying that we are dealing with ethics and/or morality. In the traditional study of ethics, we are very much discussing what we ought to do, against a background of some overarching rationale for doing it. That is, you can’t determine right actions in a vacuum. You need to see them as they relate to a notion of rightness actually held by some people and/or achieving benefit for some people. The specific idea of value, “an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc.” takes in a lot of territory, but it is inclusive of the broad ideas of morality and justice and any other big concept we might have of right and wrong action. So we will say that we are going to argue what we ought to do to achieve some specific ideals-based end. We are going to achieve justice or morality or whatever by doing these things. We are arguing that something is right or wrong, and using capital V Values as our guiding principles.
There is no assumption that we are or are not already doing that thing that we are being asked to consider—“what ought to be instead of what is.” We might be doing it, or we might not be doing it. “What ought to be instead of what is” does not necessarily allude to logically fallacious arguments that what we are doing is right because we’re doing it (although that is nonetheless true). Nor does it mean that resolutions should not be interpreted as being about whether a situation is extant because the word “is” is in the resolution (although this is also nonetheless true). This is more to separate it, albeit implicitly, from Policy. In Policy debate, the resolution is a proposition of change. This year, for instance, the resolution is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.” The burden of the affirmative is to demonstrate that we should do this thing. The affirmative can’t say no, let’s not do it. On the other hand, the burden of the negative can be a number of things, including that we should not do this thing, or that we’re better off with the status quo, that what ought to be is what is. (Or, at least logically the negative can take that position. I gather they usually do other things altogether.) Most importantly, in Policy, there is a stated, rules-based, presumption for the negative, that the status quo is ok. This phraseology in the event description of LD is the first to indicate that there is no identical presumption that the status quo is ok, much less a presumption for the negative (which we’ll get into later).
Given that we are looking to “develop argumentation based upon a values perspective,” i.e., argue what we ought to do based on broad principles of social right and wrong, “no plan (or counterplan) will be offered by the debaters.” We are arguing the underlying correctness of an action, not its “implementation.” Implementation, or plans and counterplans (some other way of implementation), is the bread and butter of Policy. Plans are what they’re carrying around in all those tubs. That’s why there’s these sentences here that make it pretty clear that LD is something else. How something would or could be done doesn’t matter. That it should, or shouldn’t, be done, is the issue at hand.
Which brings up two side points. First, there are often arguments in LD about how, because something can’t be implemented, we shouldn’t do it. These are not my favorite arguments for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that they are just not the strongest arguments that people can come up with. They presume too many preclusions for my taste, and they aren’t really addressing the core rightness or wrongness of an action; they’re tricky arguments, and because of the nature of LD (no plans/counterplans), fairly loosey goosey. These are the kinds of arguments that appeal to, well, mostly lazy debaters who don’t want to dig too deeply into the literature surrounding a topic. Secondly, a counterplan, if I’m not mistaken, is a different way to achieve the same goal. Which means that, in Policy, if someone wins with a counterplan, they’ve out affirmed the affirmative, so to speak. But in LD, isn’t it analogous that running a counterplan means that you are inherently accepting the affirmative position of what we should do, and simply saying that we should do it some other way? I’m no theorist, but if you ask me, if you accept your opponent’s position of what we should do or not do, I’m not left with much reason to vote for you, since you’ve already conceded the core argument. So while this language in the event description is relevant as much to LD’s Policy roots (and differences) as anything else, there’s other perfectly good reasons to consider it relevant.
From here the rules go on to state:
The hallmarks of Lincoln Douglas debate include:
1) Parallel Burdens
2) Value Structure
3) Argumentation
4) Cross Examination
5) Effective Delivery
We’ll look at parallel burdens next.
Event description – Lincoln Douglas debate is designed to center on a proposition of value. A proposition of value concerns itself with what ought to be instead of what is. A value is an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc. Debaters are encouraged to develop argumentation based upon a values perspective. To that end, no plan (or counterplan) will be offered by the debaters. In Lincoln Douglas Debate, a plan is defined by the NFL as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. The debate should focus on reasoning to support a general principle instead of particular plans and counterplans. Debaters may offer generalized, practical examples or solutions to illustrate how the general principle could guide decisions.
This is the top of the description in the district manual. It tells you, briefly, what LD is about. Since the activity did evolve from Policy, it is not surprising that, to some extent, although implicitly, it describes the activity in terms that separate it from Policy.
The activity is described as revolving around a question of what we ought to do as a “proposition of value.” This is a way of saying that we are dealing with ethics and/or morality. In the traditional study of ethics, we are very much discussing what we ought to do, against a background of some overarching rationale for doing it. That is, you can’t determine right actions in a vacuum. You need to see them as they relate to a notion of rightness actually held by some people and/or achieving benefit for some people. The specific idea of value, “an ideal held by individuals, societies, governments, etc.” takes in a lot of territory, but it is inclusive of the broad ideas of morality and justice and any other big concept we might have of right and wrong action. So we will say that we are going to argue what we ought to do to achieve some specific ideals-based end. We are going to achieve justice or morality or whatever by doing these things. We are arguing that something is right or wrong, and using capital V Values as our guiding principles.
There is no assumption that we are or are not already doing that thing that we are being asked to consider—“what ought to be instead of what is.” We might be doing it, or we might not be doing it. “What ought to be instead of what is” does not necessarily allude to logically fallacious arguments that what we are doing is right because we’re doing it (although that is nonetheless true). Nor does it mean that resolutions should not be interpreted as being about whether a situation is extant because the word “is” is in the resolution (although this is also nonetheless true). This is more to separate it, albeit implicitly, from Policy. In Policy debate, the resolution is a proposition of change. This year, for instance, the resolution is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.” The burden of the affirmative is to demonstrate that we should do this thing. The affirmative can’t say no, let’s not do it. On the other hand, the burden of the negative can be a number of things, including that we should not do this thing, or that we’re better off with the status quo, that what ought to be is what is. (Or, at least logically the negative can take that position. I gather they usually do other things altogether.) Most importantly, in Policy, there is a stated, rules-based, presumption for the negative, that the status quo is ok. This phraseology in the event description of LD is the first to indicate that there is no identical presumption that the status quo is ok, much less a presumption for the negative (which we’ll get into later).
Given that we are looking to “develop argumentation based upon a values perspective,” i.e., argue what we ought to do based on broad principles of social right and wrong, “no plan (or counterplan) will be offered by the debaters.” We are arguing the underlying correctness of an action, not its “implementation.” Implementation, or plans and counterplans (some other way of implementation), is the bread and butter of Policy. Plans are what they’re carrying around in all those tubs. That’s why there’s these sentences here that make it pretty clear that LD is something else. How something would or could be done doesn’t matter. That it should, or shouldn’t, be done, is the issue at hand.
Which brings up two side points. First, there are often arguments in LD about how, because something can’t be implemented, we shouldn’t do it. These are not my favorite arguments for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that they are just not the strongest arguments that people can come up with. They presume too many preclusions for my taste, and they aren’t really addressing the core rightness or wrongness of an action; they’re tricky arguments, and because of the nature of LD (no plans/counterplans), fairly loosey goosey. These are the kinds of arguments that appeal to, well, mostly lazy debaters who don’t want to dig too deeply into the literature surrounding a topic. Secondly, a counterplan, if I’m not mistaken, is a different way to achieve the same goal. Which means that, in Policy, if someone wins with a counterplan, they’ve out affirmed the affirmative, so to speak. But in LD, isn’t it analogous that running a counterplan means that you are inherently accepting the affirmative position of what we should do, and simply saying that we should do it some other way? I’m no theorist, but if you ask me, if you accept your opponent’s position of what we should do or not do, I’m not left with much reason to vote for you, since you’ve already conceded the core argument. So while this language in the event description is relevant as much to LD’s Policy roots (and differences) as anything else, there’s other perfectly good reasons to consider it relevant.
From here the rules go on to state:
The hallmarks of Lincoln Douglas debate include:
1) Parallel Burdens
2) Value Structure
3) Argumentation
4) Cross Examination
5) Effective Delivery
We’ll look at parallel burdens next.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 3
We’ve argued that there should be rules for LD, and that the rules should be set by the NFL. Curiously enough, until recently, even if you subscribed to these ideas, there wasn’t much you could do about it. Material explaining the rules of the activity, if any, were not disseminated by the folks at Rippin’ aside from the broadest outline. Whether this was from a lack of certitude, a sense of non-necessity or a failure of organization is unclear, but my guess is that the league, in providing what little guidance it did, felt that this guidance was clear and sufficient. Further, an initial orthodoxy reflective of the league’s notions of what the activity ought to be took hold at the start in actual competition and at the leading camps, so probably people felt that the ship was launched, it wasn’t leaking and it was headed for the correct ports of call. All was well in Wisconsin, and they went back to their day jobs, which for most of them is shoveling snow off their cars.
Without going into an analysis of “what’s wrong with LD,” it was certainly clear to everyone in the last few years that whatever the initial conception of LD was, the practice of LD had become something different. So the NFL got together an assortment of coaches and sat them down and charged them with clarifying the activity in writing. In effect, it asked them to write up the rules. In a way, waiting twenty-five years to getting around to formulating what LD was all about was rather clever, because the assembled minds could look at that quarter of a century of history and analyze what they liked and what they didn’t like, and cherry-pick the best material. At the same time, anyone who reads the resulting rules will feel that, while many things are clearly set out, many others are open enough to interpretation that the activity isn’t completely put into a straightjacket. (And, of course, there are some that argue that total rule control has its benefits too. In Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, for instance, the detective—who weighs a quarter of a ton—has extremely strict rules of what he will and will not do. He will not be interrupted twice a day when he is tending to the orchids on the roof of his brownstone. He will not discuss business at meals, which are as sacred as teachers’ desks. He will not shake anyone’s hand. And he definitely will never, under any circumstances, leave the brownstone. Much of the fun of the series is watching how Stout gets around the rules he has set for his character without actually breaking them, or else how he breaks them and gets away with it. And I don’t intend this as a pure digression simply to illustrate a minor point. There are people who can eloquently explain how the movies of the thirties and forties, which were produced under a strict code of “decency,” were sexier than movies where everyone is naked as a jay bird. A marvelous rhyme in poetry fulfills a particular rule of that form and provides a special joy not inherent to non-rhyming poetry; if you think that rhymes in poetry are a silly, old-fashioned idea, go through your iPod and figure out how many songs in there with really great lyrics are the ones that don’t rhyme. It is a classic thought, even a truism, that some of the best artistic work done in almost any field is done best with rules, which the best artists use to their own advantage.)
The rules that the committee laid down for LD after much conferring and hobnobbing are in the NFL’s district manual. There are those that argue that, because these rules are in the district manual that they should only apply to district tournaments, but this is analogous to claiming that the rules of baseball should only apply to the world series, or the major leagues, or some other part of the whole. I don’t question the mild logic of this claim, but it’s pretty silly. If the rules only apply to district or NFL tournaments, then logically they don’t apply to any other contests, which means that there are literally no rules whatsoever except at NFL events, which is just goofy. Still, one wishes that there were some other place that the rules were posted as overall strictures so that those among us who are genetically inclined to argue about everything under the sun (which is, I estimate, roughly 93% of the debate universe) wouldn’t be able to pick them apart with this sort of argument. But, they are where they are.
Let’s take a look at them. (Finally!)
Without going into an analysis of “what’s wrong with LD,” it was certainly clear to everyone in the last few years that whatever the initial conception of LD was, the practice of LD had become something different. So the NFL got together an assortment of coaches and sat them down and charged them with clarifying the activity in writing. In effect, it asked them to write up the rules. In a way, waiting twenty-five years to getting around to formulating what LD was all about was rather clever, because the assembled minds could look at that quarter of a century of history and analyze what they liked and what they didn’t like, and cherry-pick the best material. At the same time, anyone who reads the resulting rules will feel that, while many things are clearly set out, many others are open enough to interpretation that the activity isn’t completely put into a straightjacket. (And, of course, there are some that argue that total rule control has its benefits too. In Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, for instance, the detective—who weighs a quarter of a ton—has extremely strict rules of what he will and will not do. He will not be interrupted twice a day when he is tending to the orchids on the roof of his brownstone. He will not discuss business at meals, which are as sacred as teachers’ desks. He will not shake anyone’s hand. And he definitely will never, under any circumstances, leave the brownstone. Much of the fun of the series is watching how Stout gets around the rules he has set for his character without actually breaking them, or else how he breaks them and gets away with it. And I don’t intend this as a pure digression simply to illustrate a minor point. There are people who can eloquently explain how the movies of the thirties and forties, which were produced under a strict code of “decency,” were sexier than movies where everyone is naked as a jay bird. A marvelous rhyme in poetry fulfills a particular rule of that form and provides a special joy not inherent to non-rhyming poetry; if you think that rhymes in poetry are a silly, old-fashioned idea, go through your iPod and figure out how many songs in there with really great lyrics are the ones that don’t rhyme. It is a classic thought, even a truism, that some of the best artistic work done in almost any field is done best with rules, which the best artists use to their own advantage.)
The rules that the committee laid down for LD after much conferring and hobnobbing are in the NFL’s district manual. There are those that argue that, because these rules are in the district manual that they should only apply to district tournaments, but this is analogous to claiming that the rules of baseball should only apply to the world series, or the major leagues, or some other part of the whole. I don’t question the mild logic of this claim, but it’s pretty silly. If the rules only apply to district or NFL tournaments, then logically they don’t apply to any other contests, which means that there are literally no rules whatsoever except at NFL events, which is just goofy. Still, one wishes that there were some other place that the rules were posted as overall strictures so that those among us who are genetically inclined to argue about everything under the sun (which is, I estimate, roughly 93% of the debate universe) wouldn’t be able to pick them apart with this sort of argument. But, they are where they are.
Let’s take a look at them. (Finally!)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
On the Nature of Lincoln-Douglas, Part 2
I guess we could ask if LD needs rules. We made that assumption a priori, and maybe that was mistake.
There are a number of possibilities. First, that there should be clearly defined rules of engagement. Second, there should be no rules of engagement. Third, a middle position, there should be some rules, or the rules need not be clearly defined, or some combination of the two.
Given that LD is an academic competition between strangers, conducted under the auspices of a national league implicitly charged with creating academic standards (NFL is strongly involved in scholarship programs, merit acknowledgments, etc.), the first possibility, that there be clearly defined rules, would seem to fit into this understanding of the activity. Education, while often free form, is a goals-based business. We want students to learn stuff. How they learn is subject to different approaches, but that they should learn is inarguable. In addition to classroom work, secondary education offers a variety of extracurricular pursuits, some of which are competitive. One can certainly do athletic things that are non-competitive, for instance run daily on the track for 3 or 4 miles to stay in shape, and this is a perfectly wonderful thing, and it may make you smarter by making your body stronger and your brain more receptive, and a school might even reward this activity, or support it with trainers so that students learning to run don’t hurt themselves by, say, not stretching first. Similarly, you can argue with people all you want to, from morning to night if you’re a disagreeable enough human being. You can argue with your parents, you can argue with your teachers, you can argue with your friends (a quickly diminishing number, no doubt, if all you ever do is argue with them). You don’t need rules for this, although a little helpful advice might not hurt (e.g., lay off when the person you’re arguing with is holding a meat cleaver). However, once you begin to run competitively, or argue competitively, rules seem to make sense. By definition, competition means that you are pitting people against one another for the purpose of rewarding some measure of success. Rules clarify what that measure of success is. In running a mile, for instance, the rules are pretty straightforward. We all start at the same time, we don’t take any shortcuts, we don’t bop the runner in the aisle next to us with a rolling pin, we don’t hop on a motorcycle halfway through. As I say, pretty straightforward, but rules nonetheless. Because of these rules, we get a clear winner at the mile mark.
In arguing competitively, we have a harder time measuring the winner because we don’t have anything as simple as a mile marker with a tape that one person breaks first. (I wish we did.) But we do have the aim of making the competition fair for the competitors, in running and in debating. In debate, the more one knows about what is expected in order to win, the more one can direct one’s efforts toward that win. A set of rules outlining what needs to be done, and the format in which it should be done, provides that information of what one has to do to succeed. Academic debate has a special burden, because of its academic nature, of providing not merely competition but education as well, much as sports activities in an academic environment are more than strictly competitive (they create healthier students and a more engaged student body, both very valuable in the management of young scholars). When the New York Giants play, it’s strictly for money and entertainment. When the Hen Hud Sailors play, it’s for something else altogether.
The benefits of clearly defined rules in the scenario presented above is obvious. If there are no rules of engagement at all, there is no way not only of determining a winner but of preparing yourself to become a winner. The academic goals of the activity are more in that latter bit—preparing yourself—than in simply winning. Preparing to debate means learning all about a subject area, studying different lines of thought on a particular problem, perhaps studying philosophers and theorists who have written on that subject in the past and applying their thoughts to the issue, etc. If debate were merely about winning, we’d still need to do all that, but we would traffic even more in the specifics of rhetoric perhaps to the detriment of content (e.g., critiques of resolutions, where once a student has grasped enough of, say, Nietzsche to run amorality off-case, that student can run that same amorality off-case against virtually everything and never learn much except that Nietzsche was a self-contradicting albeit fascinating and literate fruitcake, plus enough of a particular resolution to apply fruitcake analysis to it). Rhetoric, insofar as logic is concerned (not to mention presentation) is important, of course, but not to the exclusion of content if we accept that the point of high school LD is to learn about the content and not the container.
As for the third overall possibility about rules, the idea that rules should be vague or few is much closer to no rules whatsoever than to a better way of handling rules. The fuzzier we are in establishing goals, the fuzzier our approach to reaching them. Simply apply what I’ve been saying above, but in a fuzzier way.
So why, then, do people suggest that rules are problematic? The chief reason seems to be that rules somehow limit the activity. That is, they tie their claim down to the existence of a (mis)conception of what the activity ought to be that can never change, and that therefore harms the activity by not allowing its natural evolution. There is certainly truth to this supposition, that the activity won’t change much, and probably some truth in its underlying concern, that the activity could be improved. But the suspension of or dispensation with rules isn’t the solution to this possible tendency for the activity to, for lack of a better word, stagnate. Rules can be changed. Once upon a time baseball didn’t have a designated hitter. Good change, bad change? Beats me, but I can’t imagine a sport more bound by rules than baseball, but even there those rules aren’t static. (Speaking of which, those rules seem to help the umpires decide if a player is safe or out, or if a pitch is a ball or a strike, in a uniform way, rather than allowing each umpire to publish his or her strike-out paradigm before each game.)
So, we argue that there should be rules, because they will enhance the academic aspect of the activity as well as clarify the competitive aspect of the activity. As we said yesterday, those rules should come from the NFL.
What rules, exactly? I’m pretty sure we’ll start examining them tomorrow.
There are a number of possibilities. First, that there should be clearly defined rules of engagement. Second, there should be no rules of engagement. Third, a middle position, there should be some rules, or the rules need not be clearly defined, or some combination of the two.
Given that LD is an academic competition between strangers, conducted under the auspices of a national league implicitly charged with creating academic standards (NFL is strongly involved in scholarship programs, merit acknowledgments, etc.), the first possibility, that there be clearly defined rules, would seem to fit into this understanding of the activity. Education, while often free form, is a goals-based business. We want students to learn stuff. How they learn is subject to different approaches, but that they should learn is inarguable. In addition to classroom work, secondary education offers a variety of extracurricular pursuits, some of which are competitive. One can certainly do athletic things that are non-competitive, for instance run daily on the track for 3 or 4 miles to stay in shape, and this is a perfectly wonderful thing, and it may make you smarter by making your body stronger and your brain more receptive, and a school might even reward this activity, or support it with trainers so that students learning to run don’t hurt themselves by, say, not stretching first. Similarly, you can argue with people all you want to, from morning to night if you’re a disagreeable enough human being. You can argue with your parents, you can argue with your teachers, you can argue with your friends (a quickly diminishing number, no doubt, if all you ever do is argue with them). You don’t need rules for this, although a little helpful advice might not hurt (e.g., lay off when the person you’re arguing with is holding a meat cleaver). However, once you begin to run competitively, or argue competitively, rules seem to make sense. By definition, competition means that you are pitting people against one another for the purpose of rewarding some measure of success. Rules clarify what that measure of success is. In running a mile, for instance, the rules are pretty straightforward. We all start at the same time, we don’t take any shortcuts, we don’t bop the runner in the aisle next to us with a rolling pin, we don’t hop on a motorcycle halfway through. As I say, pretty straightforward, but rules nonetheless. Because of these rules, we get a clear winner at the mile mark.
In arguing competitively, we have a harder time measuring the winner because we don’t have anything as simple as a mile marker with a tape that one person breaks first. (I wish we did.) But we do have the aim of making the competition fair for the competitors, in running and in debating. In debate, the more one knows about what is expected in order to win, the more one can direct one’s efforts toward that win. A set of rules outlining what needs to be done, and the format in which it should be done, provides that information of what one has to do to succeed. Academic debate has a special burden, because of its academic nature, of providing not merely competition but education as well, much as sports activities in an academic environment are more than strictly competitive (they create healthier students and a more engaged student body, both very valuable in the management of young scholars). When the New York Giants play, it’s strictly for money and entertainment. When the Hen Hud Sailors play, it’s for something else altogether.
The benefits of clearly defined rules in the scenario presented above is obvious. If there are no rules of engagement at all, there is no way not only of determining a winner but of preparing yourself to become a winner. The academic goals of the activity are more in that latter bit—preparing yourself—than in simply winning. Preparing to debate means learning all about a subject area, studying different lines of thought on a particular problem, perhaps studying philosophers and theorists who have written on that subject in the past and applying their thoughts to the issue, etc. If debate were merely about winning, we’d still need to do all that, but we would traffic even more in the specifics of rhetoric perhaps to the detriment of content (e.g., critiques of resolutions, where once a student has grasped enough of, say, Nietzsche to run amorality off-case, that student can run that same amorality off-case against virtually everything and never learn much except that Nietzsche was a self-contradicting albeit fascinating and literate fruitcake, plus enough of a particular resolution to apply fruitcake analysis to it). Rhetoric, insofar as logic is concerned (not to mention presentation) is important, of course, but not to the exclusion of content if we accept that the point of high school LD is to learn about the content and not the container.
As for the third overall possibility about rules, the idea that rules should be vague or few is much closer to no rules whatsoever than to a better way of handling rules. The fuzzier we are in establishing goals, the fuzzier our approach to reaching them. Simply apply what I’ve been saying above, but in a fuzzier way.
So why, then, do people suggest that rules are problematic? The chief reason seems to be that rules somehow limit the activity. That is, they tie their claim down to the existence of a (mis)conception of what the activity ought to be that can never change, and that therefore harms the activity by not allowing its natural evolution. There is certainly truth to this supposition, that the activity won’t change much, and probably some truth in its underlying concern, that the activity could be improved. But the suspension of or dispensation with rules isn’t the solution to this possible tendency for the activity to, for lack of a better word, stagnate. Rules can be changed. Once upon a time baseball didn’t have a designated hitter. Good change, bad change? Beats me, but I can’t imagine a sport more bound by rules than baseball, but even there those rules aren’t static. (Speaking of which, those rules seem to help the umpires decide if a player is safe or out, or if a pitch is a ball or a strike, in a uniform way, rather than allowing each umpire to publish his or her strike-out paradigm before each game.)
So, we argue that there should be rules, because they will enhance the academic aspect of the activity as well as clarify the competitive aspect of the activity. As we said yesterday, those rules should come from the NFL.
What rules, exactly? I’m pretty sure we’ll start examining them tomorrow.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Will the stormy clouds chase / everyone from the place?
I have pulled my galoshes out of the closet for the Pups tomorrow. The weather sounds less than promising, at least for the ride up and much of Saturday. You’d think the Ivy League could do better in the meteorological department. I thought these guys were supposed to be smart, perfect SATs and all that. No doubt if I were to raise the issue they would simply blame noted alum G. W. Bush and move on. I know that’s what I would do. Anyhow, I’ve got the data on Little Elvis, although I didn’t sort out the judges yet; there’s all sorts of quibbling (“Can’t judge Round 47—appt with proctologist,” that sort of thing) that needs to be sorted out, but I figure I can do that tomorrow while registration is going on. If you’re going I would advise you to bring an umbrella.
So I was thinking about the evolution of LD, which isn’t really evolution at all, or at maybe more to the point, it’s not what you would call progress, even though it is change. Evolution isn’t progress either, of course; it too is just change. Some changes are good and lead to species prosperity, and some changes are not so good and lead to extinction. Witness the fact that most species that have existed on this planet are now extinct (well, I think it’s a fact, and it should be even if it isn’t). Teleology doesn’t seem to be the underlying operator, unless teleology includes planned obsolescence. Of course, some changes are progress neutral: they’re just changes. A lot of the changes to LD seem to be of the progress-neutral persuasion.
In the 90s we moved from the molding of arguments in what one might called Enlightenment-based philosophical constructs to a more research-based approach to resolutions. At first, one would have a card from John Locke, but then it was more likely a card from someone who was actually still alive discussing the actual topic from a real-world perspective. This was policy-influenced, of course; they had so many cards, and we had so few: Card Envy was the natural result. If policy was cool and LD wanted to be cool, it therefore should be more like policy. (I won’t comment on the logical fallacies inherent in that thinking.) More cards! More speed! A number of Sailors were notable leaders in this direction. Others bucked it. In any case, it lasted for a while, and even the topics started getting more specific and less philosophical. The market seemed to be following the consumers, an interesting idea when the consumers are students and the market is educators.
The next phase of change was the pomo-ization of content. Once again, what was cool in policy was to run kritiks and Foucault and things like that, and therefore if LD wanted to be cool… It is curious that this embracing of pomo and critical theory coincided with what seems to be the last serious gasp of this material at the university level. Academe needs to find new approaches to relatively static content: Moby-Dick doesn’t change from year to year, but the way academics teach and learn it change. (Yeah, I know, there may be a lot of assumptions in that last sentence that are intrinsically contrary to CT, but if you don’t like it, go read about Presidential politics on WTF. And I was really looking for the field report from East Westville North: “The South Will Rise Again Tuturial and Pancake Flip.”) CT and pomo came along and filled that what-do-we-do-next gap in the English departments, and the rest of us got our annual laugh reading the titles of the papers at the MLA. But all things, good or bad, come to an end, and for whatever reason (common sense?) this material isn’t so highly regarded anymore by mainstream (!) academe (which is the same as Nut City for many of us) and they’re on to newer (older) approaches, which means we won’t continue to be fed by college judges pushing this new-to-them stuff as the latest thing to the students they write cases for (or judge cases by). Another one bites the dust, in other words. And not a moment too soon.
But we are not left in the lurch. We do not have to argue the resolutions; we do not have to study the content and learn about the big issues that LD pretends to be about. Now we have “theory arguments.” Nowadays a case is constructed of, oh, 90% how to judge the round and what the burdens are and what the exceptions are. 90% of the case is devoted to explanations and more explanations, of the value and the criterion (if any, since sometimes such old-fashioned ideas are theoretic albatrosses). 90% of the way through a speech, a 1AC, you finally hear the words, “My first and only contention.” If you’re lucky, that is. Perish the thought that, in Sept-Oct, we argue the merits or lack thereof of utility or deontological beliefs. Perish the thought we consider whether we should ever in any situation allow ourselves to end the life of another human being, to question under what circumstances this may in fact not be the wrong thing to do, maybe to decide it is always wrong, or sometimes right. Perish the bloody thought that we care about right and wrong. What we need to care about is the burdens of the neg and why these burdens are unfair and therefore the neg should win not because neg argued a negative position on the content of the resolution but because neg argued that a negative position on the content, if neg had one, should win, while an affirmative position should not win. Not because of content, but because of structure. Of theory.
You know. It makes me want to read a couple of Derrida books, just to clear my head.
So I was thinking about the evolution of LD, which isn’t really evolution at all, or at maybe more to the point, it’s not what you would call progress, even though it is change. Evolution isn’t progress either, of course; it too is just change. Some changes are good and lead to species prosperity, and some changes are not so good and lead to extinction. Witness the fact that most species that have existed on this planet are now extinct (well, I think it’s a fact, and it should be even if it isn’t). Teleology doesn’t seem to be the underlying operator, unless teleology includes planned obsolescence. Of course, some changes are progress neutral: they’re just changes. A lot of the changes to LD seem to be of the progress-neutral persuasion.
In the 90s we moved from the molding of arguments in what one might called Enlightenment-based philosophical constructs to a more research-based approach to resolutions. At first, one would have a card from John Locke, but then it was more likely a card from someone who was actually still alive discussing the actual topic from a real-world perspective. This was policy-influenced, of course; they had so many cards, and we had so few: Card Envy was the natural result. If policy was cool and LD wanted to be cool, it therefore should be more like policy. (I won’t comment on the logical fallacies inherent in that thinking.) More cards! More speed! A number of Sailors were notable leaders in this direction. Others bucked it. In any case, it lasted for a while, and even the topics started getting more specific and less philosophical. The market seemed to be following the consumers, an interesting idea when the consumers are students and the market is educators.
The next phase of change was the pomo-ization of content. Once again, what was cool in policy was to run kritiks and Foucault and things like that, and therefore if LD wanted to be cool… It is curious that this embracing of pomo and critical theory coincided with what seems to be the last serious gasp of this material at the university level. Academe needs to find new approaches to relatively static content: Moby-Dick doesn’t change from year to year, but the way academics teach and learn it change. (Yeah, I know, there may be a lot of assumptions in that last sentence that are intrinsically contrary to CT, but if you don’t like it, go read about Presidential politics on WTF. And I was really looking for the field report from East Westville North: “The South Will Rise Again Tuturial and Pancake Flip.”) CT and pomo came along and filled that what-do-we-do-next gap in the English departments, and the rest of us got our annual laugh reading the titles of the papers at the MLA. But all things, good or bad, come to an end, and for whatever reason (common sense?) this material isn’t so highly regarded anymore by mainstream (!) academe (which is the same as Nut City for many of us) and they’re on to newer (older) approaches, which means we won’t continue to be fed by college judges pushing this new-to-them stuff as the latest thing to the students they write cases for (or judge cases by). Another one bites the dust, in other words. And not a moment too soon.
But we are not left in the lurch. We do not have to argue the resolutions; we do not have to study the content and learn about the big issues that LD pretends to be about. Now we have “theory arguments.” Nowadays a case is constructed of, oh, 90% how to judge the round and what the burdens are and what the exceptions are. 90% of the case is devoted to explanations and more explanations, of the value and the criterion (if any, since sometimes such old-fashioned ideas are theoretic albatrosses). 90% of the way through a speech, a 1AC, you finally hear the words, “My first and only contention.” If you’re lucky, that is. Perish the thought that, in Sept-Oct, we argue the merits or lack thereof of utility or deontological beliefs. Perish the thought we consider whether we should ever in any situation allow ourselves to end the life of another human being, to question under what circumstances this may in fact not be the wrong thing to do, maybe to decide it is always wrong, or sometimes right. Perish the bloody thought that we care about right and wrong. What we need to care about is the burdens of the neg and why these burdens are unfair and therefore the neg should win not because neg argued a negative position on the content of the resolution but because neg argued that a negative position on the content, if neg had one, should win, while an affirmative position should not win. Not because of content, but because of structure. Of theory.
You know. It makes me want to read a couple of Derrida books, just to clear my head.
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