Nuke em!!!

We begin meeting tonight to discuss Sept-Oct. If that doesn’t mean the new season is here, I don’t know what does.

The LD topic is perfectly fine. As I think a little more about it, my initial reaction, that it’s perfect for Sept-Oct, is not changed. The thing is, it forces you to talk about democracy. What are our roles as citizens? If we don’t vote, are we not fulfilling our roles? Are we obligated to act as citizens, or is it perfectly acceptable simply to react? That the rez doesn’t specifically say voting for individuals may bring up some thoughts on referenda, as in California, which is a totally different business than voting for an individual. Meat on these bones? Absolutely. And best of all, no one really goes into the round with a predisposition to favor either side. It’s wide open. I like that a lot.

The PF topic, unfortunately, falls into the area that it seems most of the PF rezzes fall into, where there is a strong enough predisposition to believe one of the sides that anyone on the other side has no choice but to, first, box the intuitive supposition to take it out of play, and then fire up from there, a time consuming and annoying business. The thing is, you’re not going to find a lot of support for unilateral presumptive attacks in the general body of literature on war and politics. That sort of thing is just not done by the good guys (unless, maybe, you’re Dick Cheney, but then again, we’re talking the good guys). The average PF judge, even if unconsciously, carries the mental baggage of Iraq, not to mention that the idea of the rez just sounds wrong, while the average philosopher carries the conscious knowledge of just war: right authority, right intention, reasonable hope, proportionality and last resort. I guess that pro has to first navigate this obstacle course of theory before actually making a case of reality. Then again, what I think works against the con is that, while we may all accept these on face, there’s no absolute underlying warrant for them. That is, if we perceive enough danger in Iran’s nuclear aspirations, screw everything else and stop them—that would take the day for the pro. Con can’t just rely on theory, in other words (and I’m using theory in the traditional sense of the word, not in the snarky debate sense), and has to demonstrate why doing it would be a bad idea for practical reasons. (All right. Util, if you must.) A resolution that said something like, US should act to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program (the underlying core of the rez, right?) removes all the jus ad bellum stuff and leaves us with should we or shouldn’t we, and pick your approach. Maybe debaters will just do that anyhow. I don’t know. In any case, it’s not horrible by any means, but it’s flawed as written. But I guess the PF universe is used to that by now.

Having just watched Zero Dark Thirty and done a bunch of reading on it (there’s a good article I clipped for Debate Etc), I think the debate on torture is analogous. The thing is, nobody’s admittedly in favor of torture, but if it does yield results… We live in the real world, not a philosophical construct of the real world. We can use philosophical constructs to guide what we do, but in political actions, we mostly look to results. That’s why policy debate exists in the first place (or at least it used to), to evaluate what happens if, not if what happens is objectively right or wrong. LD exists (or, again, at least it used to), to evaluate the right and wrong aspects. PF seems to tend more toward policy than LD in this, if one simply goes by the resolutions.

Regardless of my complaints, I think arguing the PF topic will be fine. It’s not tragically flawed, just a little loosey goosey. It certainly beat the alternative on bean-counting weapons systems, which was nothing but “The Most Facts Wins.” Fortunately, the NFL citizenry seemed to recognize it as such.