Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate This past weekend a program I volunteer with attended the Cheyenne Central and Alta tournaments, and in both places our LD debaters encountered novel arguments and argument structures. After the tournaments, I was sent some smart questions about the nature of LD. I liked these questions a lot and thought I’d write up something similar here. Read the complete article below the fold. Walking into a team meeting this past Tuesday, I had an interesting conversation with a young debater. They expressed some distaste for the Jan/Feb LD resolution, since 'military matters are a policy topic not an LD topic.' I understand that impulse, but in response I asked: shouldn't the strongest vision of LD debate be able to speak to any issue? In other words, what good is philosophical or moral debate if it can't speak to any complex issue?
My big thought about the nature of any debate event is that my favorite thing about debate is that in its very best form, it's what you make of it. Should LD debate have counterplans? Even in policy, whether counterplans are allowed are not is not a settled question ("no neg fiat" is a rare argument, but not entirely absent). Are counterplans allowed? If so, how many does the negative get? One? Two? Three? As many as they can read in 8 minutes? What kinds of counterplans are allowed? Does the aff need to defend the entire resolution, or can they defend a subset of it? Does the aff have to be topical? Should debaters be required to disclose? My very favorite thing about debate is that in its coolest moments, it's the debaters that decide the answers to these questions by making arguments about them in round. Do you have amazing args as to why you should get three counterplans? If you can convince the judge that's good for debate, then you'll win that it's okay. Do you have great args that that's bad? Then you'll win that your opponent should lose for reading three counterplans. Now of course judge adaptation is also a thing. If your judge hates counterplans in LD, then I would advise you to not introduce one, because you will have one heck of an uphill battle winning that – and that will very often be the case in Wyoming LD debate. But for me, and in many places and with many judges, debate is what you, the debaters, make of it. Now for the specific questions I was asked: (1) "Can a resolution be interpreted in different ways, and to what extent?" Well even on just the East squad, we know different debaters have different visions of the resolution. You adopt different values, criterion, and contentions. Expand past the East squad but stay in Cheyenne and you can see other schools adopt significantly different cases, including one debater who chose environmental justice as his value and built a case about eco-feminism (very cool!). But all of those cases are similar in that they are whole-res, the defend the entire resolution. At Alta we encountered affs that defended subsets of the rez instead of the whole thing. In policy, we call those plans. Many traditional LDers call that LARPing (live action role play). When "plan debate" first emerged, let's say in the 1980's (although debate historians could have a debate about this), it was called hypothesis-testing, or hypo-testing. Rather than debate the entire resolution, hypo-testers argued, the aff could prove the resolution justified by proving an example of it true. This style of debating has grown over the last 40 years, and it is now very common on the national circuit and in many regional circuits (though not ours! at least not in LD). I looked through the ballots of the debaters at Alta, and one comment stood out to me. When an East debater debated a subset aff, they tried to say that was unfair, that the aff was obliged to defend the entire resolution. The judge wrote on their ballot: 'make this an argument. Write a T violation.' I like what that judge has to say! You could construct a theory arg or a topicality arg that the aff has to defend the entire resolution. Even on the national circuit, this is a very common arg. Is it a winning arg? I tend to think debaters that engage the aff and write arguments specific to the various aff proposals win more rounds than debaters that dogmatically stick to pushing Topicality Whole Rez, but it's certainly an arg you can make! In Wyoming, LD debate is largely what I call trad, or traditional. But across the country I think there are five distinct ways of debating LD: 1. Trad: traditional debate using the value and criterion with one or two contentions to defend or attack the resolution as a whole. 2. LARP: a focus on outcomes and consequences; circuit debaters adopting this style feel less bound by traditional structure and will adopt novel styles and arguments. 3. Phil: close to trad debate, phil debates go much deeper into Kant in particular. 4. K: kritik debate encompasses a broad umbrella of arguments, but K debaters often shift the debate to a question of social justice, often making the debate about debate itself. 5. Tricks: tricks debaters focus on argumentative minutiae to try and set up traps that ensure they win the debate. Which of these is the "right" way to debate LD? I don't think there's an answer to that question. The best of each type of those debaters will have to beat the best of the other types, sometimes with a judge sympathetic to their style, sometimes not. Rather than reject a style because it's not the way we were taught, I think we should stay open -- and above all, learn how to beat it, even under unfavorable conditions. (2) "What role do I play as an LD Debater?" Is LD debate about morals, philosophy, or governmental action? My question is, why does it have to be a forced choice? The Nov/Dec and Jan/Feb resolutions are unquestionably about government policies. But to decide whether those policies are good or bad, shouldn't we apply philosophy to them to figure out what's moral? Members of the East team, who everyone would agree are trad debaters, defend V/C like pragmatism. A pragmatic, cost-benefit analysis of whether the government should ban fossil fuel prohibition -- isn't that an application of philosophy and morality to government policy? It is! Isn't it remarkably similar to policy debate? It is! I don't think that's bad. LD debate offers you the opportunity to defend a value like pragmatism, just as it offers you the opportunity to attack that value. My big advice here is: don't get caught up on what LD debate "is" or "isn't." Don't presume it has to be one thing. Either engage and dispute your opponent’s arguments, or make an argument for why you have a vision of debate that means you should win.
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