Resolved: Apples are the best fruit

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One imagines that the contestants at CatNats were all complaining about the judge pool. This is only fair, since the judges were all complaining about the contestant pool. Curiously enough, however, the elimination-round contestants were uniformly a strong, experienced group representative of elimination rounds everywhere. So this judge-pool-lite that is CatNats must have somehow managed to figure out, despite its incredible randomness, who the strongest contestants were. Which is a tribute to the contestants, who must have appropriately adapted to their general audience. The Old Farts maintain that this is one of the underpinnings of LD's value, the need to adapt to audiences (it is an important aspect of any speaking gig, throughout life). The OFs don't say that you should have to adapt to someone who's never heard of LD, but you should be able to pick up ballots from someone other than a former TOC debater. The more parochial the activity becomes, the less catholic it will be (if you'll allow a little vocabulary borrowed from the moment).

Meanwhile, there were those other contestants. I was judging up a storm (for me, which means I still probably managed to get more time off than anyone else), and I was astounded by some of the things I saw and heard. My average points were about 24. I saw some good debaters, but seldom in the same round. [Note to the kid who came up to me afterwards and said he read my blog, I thought you were good. If you had told me ahead of time that you read my blog, I would have thought you were great.] [Note to everyone else going forward: If you're not on my team and you read this blog, keep it to yourself. It's bad enough that my life is empty, but for you to be with me in it does not reflect well on you. Log off and read "Moby Dick."]

What bothered me the most was the almost uniform lack of negative advocacies. I was even told once that the rules of LD place the burden of proof on the affirmative, while it was hit or miss whether the negative would tell me that all the neg has to do is prove the resolution is false (or the affirmative wrong) in order to win, or whether it would simply be implicit in the argumentation. Now I've been down this road in the past, but that never stops me from taking another trip. As you know, I am cursed with a rather profound innate understanding of the English language. Not only can I interpret straightforward sentences such as debate resolutions, but I understand with hardly any need to be bopped in the head the implicit aspects of these resolutions. Often a topic, like CatNat's "imparting of knowledge ought to be the primary goal of formal education." looks to the uneducated, non-English-speaking eye like it is about one thing, in this case, the imparting of knowledge. But Menick, recognizing the clever trickery of those Catholic resolution makers, sees that the focus is, in fact, the question of what should be the primary goal of formal education, with the imparting of knowledge posited as the affirmative advocacy. (Some CatNatites argued on the aff only that education was a good thing; these folks obviously had had little, at least insofar as debate theory was concerned.)

But this is too hard to understand. So let me try something else.

My point is that there is no such thing as a topic where all the negative has to do is prove the affirmative wrong, where the affirmative has an advocacy and the negative doesn't. Just because the neg advocacy is not explicit doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I mean, you could debate this way, but it doesn't make much sense. If the negative advocates no postion on a topic, then if any piece of the affirmative advocacy survives the round, the affirmative wins. In the unlikely event of no pieces of the affirmative surviving, since there is no alternative offered, we have a draw; however, since we can't have a draw, we rely on the judge to intervene. How, strategically, does this make any sense for the negative? Unless they argue perfectly, they lose, and if they do argue perfectly, they ask the judge to toss a coin. If the negative does have an advocacy, however, an alternative position to the affirmative, then the neg has an alternative to offer after having shot down the affirmative. Now the judge smiles and writes NEG on the ballot in big letters (unless of course the affirmative shoots down the neg advocacy, and we're back to the coin flip again, but that's another matter altoegether).

Let me provide an example that is metaphorically identical to CatNats. Resolved: Apples are the best fruit.

The aff value is health, with a criterion of varied ubiquity. Contention 1: Apples provide more vitamins and minerals than any other fruit. 2. Apples are easy to come by in a variety of flavors, more than any other fruit. 3. Apples can be made into a lot of different products, more than any other fruit.

The bad neg value is autonomy, with a criterion of protection of rights. The neg's sole contention is that some people don't like apples, and making them eat apples dehumanizes them.

Now, you should be able to see the problem here for neg. Aff has had 6 minutes to declaim on all the positive virtues of apples; neg will no doubt use a lot of its NC time to refute these claims, but some of these claims are pretty good. And all neg says in its own constructive is something that is, well, not constructive. Think about that good old English language again. Both sides give a constructive case. But this neg didn't construct anything, this neg simply attempted to tear down the affirmative construction. The likelihood of tearing down the entire construction is slight, and even if you do tear it all down, every last apple branch crushed in the dust, without any construction to consider, what is a judge to do? Not only that, but the neg has put the entire debate on affirmative ground. All we're ever arguing is apples; apples is catnip to the affirmative, and the affirmative wants nothing more than to discuss apples. Yeah, great strategy, neg: keep the entire argument on aff turf. Do you think the US would be independent of Great Britain if Washington had had to fight in downtown London?

You can boil what I'm saying down to something so elemental that even a CatNatite can understand it.

"Sith is the best Star Wars movie because of its special effects."
"No it isn't."
You be the judge. Based on the argument above, what is the best Star Wars movie?

Negative positions are always implied in the resolution. A comparison is suggested even if not clearly stated. Some of those implications are easier to divine than others, but they're there if you do a little research. But, come to think of it, there are even times when there is a clear comparison in a resolution, and some debaters STILL don't offer a true negative position. Remember, this isn't only about theory, it's about practicality. The odds of winning on the neg without a clear constructive position are against you, and certainly your odds of winning on the neg are always better when you propose a clear position of your own. This is pure strategy. It's obvious.

And Sith is so far from the best Star Wars movie that I don't even have to offer any arguments. I dare you to refute this.