You know who you are

Yeah, you, You're the sort of debater who believes that all a negative has to do is say that the affirmative is wrong. As much as possible, you avoid a position of your own.

Here's how you'll do this in March-April.

Now, I grant you that this is a mushy topic, which is why no one voted for it (it only came in #2 out of 10—who are these people, for pete's sake). I know my team didn't vote for it (I save our ballot). The thing is, I can't imagine more nebulous constructs than community or national standards. (I won't even talk about where civil liberties comes in!) Even the Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to not define the two, but simply to leave cs in the hands of the sitting jury facing the evidence in hand. You're the community, folks: have at it.

So, in the event, the aff will have no choice but to define and defend community standards above national standards. The negative, even your negative, will have to concede that, if protecting cs "better protects" civil liberties, it has to actually be better than some other thing. The natural (preferable, and ultimately stronger) negative is that, no, ns better protects, and now let us compare the two. I say natural, because it demonstrates an intuitive understanding of the English language, that better implies a comparison of two items. Also, debating thus will provide the neg not only with reasons why cs is not good, but why something else is indeed better, which is a strategically strong position all negs should attempt to achieve in any resolution. Neg's advocacy should always be equal to aff's, if for no other reason than that this strategy forces aff to address strong arguments other than refutations of aff's own (putting aside kritiks, of course). You never listen to that, though.

Anyhow, here's what you're going to do. Rather than explaining why nat stds better serve civil liberties than com stds (which, of course, they seem to do, at least if you don't think about it too hard, which means that neg has an intuitively stronger case if neg grabs the topic by the tail and stares it straight in the eye), you are going to argue that:
1. It is difficult or impossible to differentiate between ns and cs
2. Because of 1, we can't know which is which
3. Because of 2, we can't choose between them
4. Therefore, the aff is not true because we can't tell which is better because we don't know the difference

Keep in mind, when you make this argument, that it is paradigmatic of bad debating. That won't stop you, but at least you'll know what you're doing.

According to my calendar, I probably will not be judging this topic. Lucky you.