Tuesday, April 26, 2016

In which we gaily sing. "California Here I Don't Go"

I can’t imagine that I’m the first person to notice that the CatNats LD and PF topics were accidentally switched at birth. I’m not attending, of course, so it was just out of morbid curiosity that I took a look. And lo and behold, someone must have been dipping into the altar wine on selection day, because, well…

Resolved: Human genetic engineering should be banned.

Resolved:  In a just democracy, elections for public office should be solely financed through public funding.

I mean, let’s face it. How much evidence is there about human genetic engineering outside of science fiction? “Are we not Men?” It’s not like, I don’t know, they’ve been tinkering a lot with the embryos in Harrison which is why they’re all good debaters, and Chetan has the cytosine data to prove it. This is a purely moral question. PF is the perfect place for that?

On the other hand, while one might make an ethical argument for or against public funding of elections, it seems to me that it would make more sense to look at actual situations. (And note that it doesn’t specify which elections, so we’re starting at dog catcher here.) We’ve seen public and private funding of campaigns of all sorts, so we can look to plenty of actual evidence of results, not to mention the whole corporate spending issue (thank you, Nino). Sounds perfect for LD!


Is it any wonder that Henry VIII wanted to start his own church?

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