NatNats

Here's what I said back in June about the no gov v. bad gov:

Resolved: Oppressive government is more desirable than no government.

I can hear the winds of the good old days blowing down the highway. This was a classic in its day, on so many counts. It’s about the old-time social contract stuff that used to be the meat and potatoes of LD, plus since both sides are bad, you have to run the less bad. On top of that, the advocacy is clear: either you’re one side or the other. 20 years ago this was the most beloved topic of all time. It was a serious contender for the northeast Modest Novice topic; we went with civil disobedience mostly because of the two negatives of this one, which seemed a little sophisticated for newbies. If you want to push LD back a generation or two, vote for this one for Jan-Feb. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the NatNats topic.

Rating: Depends on the months. 8 for Sept-Oct or Nov-Dec, 6 for Jan-Feb (from a $ircuit bias), 10 for Mar-Apr or NatNats.

And NatNats it is.

One obvious pitfall here is those negs who will not advocate for no gov, but will claim that the wording allows them to take the position that neither is desirable over the other. Members of the VCA will immediately recognize that while I feel this is, alas, a possible reading of the rez, it is also mealymouthed. The intention of the rez is that one side is op gov and the other is no gov. For the neg to claim they're equal means that, right off the bat, neg accepts all the harms of the aff, whatever they are. So what burden, exactly, would the neg accept? Not much of a one. The neg would be arguing that, since they're both bad, you shouldn't have either, and therefore should win on face. Duh. Real exciting debate, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Another problem from back in the day was that somehow no gov became anarchy became some system of lite government. I don't remember exactly how this sleight of hand was pulled off, but before long no gov was, in fact, some gov, because the evidence came from anarchists. Well, apparently it was anarchists who didn't own a dictionary. Some gov is not no gov and, in terms of evaluation, yeah, some good gov is intrinsically better than bad gov, so how does this lead to good debate?

Anyhow, as I said originally, this is a real classic, at least in the context of old-fashioned debate. That's why we liked it for novices, because it was a great lead-in to political philosophy. Not that long ago this was the Jan-Feb topic, and I can just imagine how it would play today in high-powered $ircuit debate. The thing is, NatNats isn't the circuit (although plenty of $ircuit debaters will do well) because of the nature of the judging. Ryan talked about this last week, how the judging helped define contemporary styles. (Anyone still questioning that should mosey over to NSD update, where the judges are all having at each other over the final round at TOC, and I haven't a clue to most of what they're talking about when they're actually analyzing the round as compared to analyzing claims of name-calling). I would imagine that, at NatNats, most of the discussion will be resolutional rather than theoretical. I'm pretty sure that's what everyone who voted for this topic is hoping for, at least.