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[DEBATE ON!] Policy / Lincoln-Douglas Thread
Spawnbroker
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello everyone! I figured this would be an appropriate place to post this thread, and I'm wondering if anyone else on the forums has had the same experiences as I have. I did two years of Lincoln-Douglas debate in high school, and now that I'm in college I've picked up Policy debate as my extracurricular activity.
The resolution for college policy debate this year is:
Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should substantially reduce its agricultural support, at least eliminating nearly all of the domestic subsidies, for biofuels, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, corn, cotton, dairy, fisheries, rice, soybeans, sugar and/or wheat.
I knew little to nothing about the topic this year before I started up with debate, but so far it's led to some pretty interesting debates that I've been to. The amount of arguments that you can link to war or famine or disease is mind-boggling if you have done the right research. So basically what I'm looking for in this thread is just a place to talk about debate. Lincoln-Douglas, Policy, Public Forum, regale me with funny or interesting stories of your debating exploits!
Oh, and if anyone else is currently debating in the college policy circuit feel free to get in contact with me, maybe we'll see each other at a tournament sometime!
Feel free to post your thoughts about resolutions and which side you are personally on, why you think subsidies are bad or why CAFOs should be banned, whatever.
The resolution for college policy debate this year is:
Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should substantially reduce its agricultural support, at least eliminating nearly all of the domestic subsidies, for biofuels, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, corn, cotton, dairy, fisheries, rice, soybeans, sugar and/or wheat.
I knew little to nothing about the topic this year before I started up with debate, but so far it's led to some pretty interesting debates that I've been to. The amount of arguments that you can link to war or famine or disease is mind-boggling if you have done the right research. So basically what I'm looking for in this thread is just a place to talk about debate. Lincoln-Douglas, Policy, Public Forum, regale me with funny or interesting stories of your debating exploits!
Oh, and if anyone else is currently debating in the college policy circuit feel free to get in contact with me, maybe we'll see each other at a tournament sometime!
Feel free to post your thoughts about resolutions and which side you are personally on, why you think subsidies are bad or why CAFOs should be banned, whatever.
Steam: Spawnbroker
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lincoln-douglas is where it be at!
unless you're in college, in which case I guess parliamentary debate is pretty cool
if you're a member of the national parliamentary debate association, at least, and not one of those crazy fuckers at the american parliamentary debate association
Yeah I do policy, and it's definitely not what I'm used to. I've never tried Parliamentary Debate, can you explain the rules to me and how it works?
You know who doesn't like competitive debate? Some douchebag in the wall street journal!
You know who does like debate? Me!
Aside from writing a little blog about the subject, I also coach a high school policy team, the same team on which I debated during high school myself. Debate is very near and dear to me, and its about time we had a thread about it.
In some areas that is what it's devolved in to, but at least in my region, it's becoming more interesting because there are lots of critical cases up here. Critical arguments are based on the idea that something is wrong with the way we think, or our rhetoric, etc. instead of something being wrong with the policies that we are advocating. It makes it more interesting. I go to school in the Northeast, so they're more open to that kind of stuff here.
We need every country to do this, and also remove all the tariffs. The problem is, if your one of the only countries without subsidies or tariffs your own agricultural industry suffers because everyone will buy from other countries who maintain artificially low prices through subsidies. I'm hoping the high price of transportation will actually lessen this effect. Also, farm lobbies seem to have way too much political clout and not just in the USA. My province has wheat as the provincial symbol and everyone thinks of us as a farming province even though it is only around 7% of the provinces economy -we have oil, natural gas, mines, some manufacturing, the list goes on.....but no one would dare to run for election without promising to perform fellatio on the farmers.
Subsidies and tariffs are against the principle or free trade from which everyone benefits. It's like there is some sort of mind block when it comes to farming that just makes this acceptable.....make no mistake, it is not.
He said some even more douchebaggy stuff. Read my blog entry if you are particularly interested in my rebuttal.
I don't know which teams you are watching, but there are some really excellent high school programs in the Atlanta area. Granted, being from Minnesota I only see the ATL teams that travel nationally, but go watch Westminster's top teams debate and tell me it's "mindless"
As far as "insanely rapid," yes, debaters talk fast. One of the only absolute "rules of the game" is time limits. I only have 8 minutes to make my case, and I want to get as many good arguments in as I can. It only sounds insane until you sit through a few rounds and get used to it, then it's just like listening to any communication.
I'm going to assume that by "specious slippery slope arguments" you are referring to "impact" debates. For example, if you and I are shooting the breeze talking about health care policy, you might make the argument that Obama's health care plan spends too much of the government's money, and that's all well and good. But if we're engaged in a policy debate where we need to weigh risks and benefits, we need to be a little bit more specific about what risks a certain policy entails. Why the hell is government spending bad? How does it weigh against giving people additional health care? You make the argument that too much government spending might collapse the economy (via interest rate crowd out, for instance), and if the economy collapses we are looking at war, poverty, disease, and all sorts of bad shit.
This is the rationale behind the "lol everything leads to nuclear war" tendency in policy debate. It's the same sort of cost/benefit analysis that we do in the "real world," it's just more explicit because it needs to be more explicit. When we want to weigh the risks and benefits of policy options, we need to be more specific than "health care is good, spending is bad, you figure it out"
That's unfortunate that your school phased out policy, because it's such an amazing activity, both in terms of being an awesome game in its own right and in terms of educational value it provides students.
I was talking to a friend who said that their team won a debate because the other team used a plural in a law they were debating instead of a singular. Fucking stupid. Though, I have to say, it probably helps if you want to turn into a giant douchebag of a political pundit; the time limits and blowing up of irrelevant minutiae must come in handy when you're trying to explain why your black opponent is a terrorist and you've only got a four-minute segment to do it.