AT Marse – In defense of Kritiks in NFA-LD
Forgive the title of the post, just trying to have a little fun. I don’t have too much of a problem with the things that Mike Marse is advocating (and similarly Danny Cantrell in his comment), but I wanted to provide an alternative viewpoint.
I don’t think that ALL kritiks are against the NFA-LD rules.
The rules that are frequently cited about kritiks are the rules which describe “counterproposals.” Kritiks with stable, policy alternatives would certainly qualify in my opinion. That would tend to restrict arguments that advocated a change in government, economic or existential systems. Utopian alternatives, socialism and anarchy seem to be the kind of thing that would be against the rules. I personally don’t have a problem with the exclusion of these kinds of arguments.
However, other critical arguments like the Malthus argument explained by Marse don’t bother me. The aff is arguing to save a significant amount of lives and the neg responds by saying the following: as per their harms/inherency these lives will die in the status quo, that gives the argument some level of uniqueness as only the aff claims to save them. The neg can also read more arguments on uniqueness/brink claiming how the earth has reached its carrying capacity. Link, saving lives in Africa will lead to an overpopulation crisis. Internal Link, overpopulation crisis strain the human habitat to the point of cascading collapse which spills over across the globe. The impact is clearly extinction.
I have ZERO problem with the above argument (save for the fact that it is kind of ridiculous) and don’t believe it is against the rule. It is just a disad without terminal uniqueness. It does have some limited uniqueness, but winning this argument would be just like ANY other disad. It is merely a question of the risk of link multiplied by the magnitude of impact VERSUS the risk of solvency multiplied by the magnitude of 1AC impacts. That is how every debate round goes down, and most kritik debates are no different.
Now consider the scenario where the negative reads one more card at the bottom of the kritik. The tag is – “The alternative is to reject the affirmative – we must reject every risk of extinction because any risk of extinction is infinite because the stakes are infinite. SCHELL in 1982.” This argument is secretly NOT an alternative and it probably shouldn’t be treated as such. Can it be permed? No, not really – you can’t pass your plan and reject it at the same time. You could try different kind of perms, like pass my plan and vote aff but write on the ballot about how bad overpopulation is, but that would be an intrinsic permutation. So if this is secretly not an alternative, what is it? It is a framework argument. It is a decision rule. It is just like when 1AC’s read evidence saying their plan is a moral imperative. It only functions as a way to persuade the judge to vote for the minimal risk of the link that comes with this kind of disad/kritik. You could also read the Schell card along with ANY disad that impacts to extinction.
The other scenario is that the kritik might actually have a policy alternative. Consider the following strategy. Link, the affirmative uses rhetoric that invokes a fear of terrorism. Internal link, use of terror talk leads to knee jerk policies that never solve. Impact, terror talk only seeks to replicate the impacts the aff claims to solve, fueling the drive of insurgents and anti-Americanism. The alternative is to pass the affirmative plan but without any mention of terrorism or terror impacts – as a society we must avoid making policy based on fearmongering of terrorists.
Now, aside from the alternative being both a PIC and topical, I don’t have a problem with this strategy, but some do. However, what distinguishes this kritik with the malthus argument is that this kritik has a stable policy alternative. However, it follows most of the counterproposal rules aside from topicality and there is always a way out of that (perhaps in this instance Terrorism was the Human Right violation they solved and your CP just severed out of it, that means the CP would be non topical because it was an increase in assistance, but in NONE of the three areas, teehee). The other difference is that this kritik is non-unique. The status quo is LITTERED with terror talk on both sides of the political aisle. However, since it has a policy alternative the position has counterplanned its own uniqueness.
I kind of feel like Marse used some terrible kritiks as examples in his post. Yes, I agree that terrible kritiks are bad. They might not be against the rules all the time, but they should be easy to defeat. I think a good kritik debater is secretly just running a partially unique disad with a decision rule/framework OR a non-unique DA that comes with a CP to provide uniqueness.
Finally, lets talk about ways to debate against a kritik.
1. Get a stable alternative. If the kritik has an alternative, FORCE the negative debater to give you a STABLE alternative text. Ask them to write down on a sheet of paper the text of the alternative.
2. What is the status of the alternative. Is it dispositional, conditional or unconditional? Is the negative abandoning defense of the status quo to advocate the alternative instead? Can they revert back to the status quo? Under what conditions may they kick the kritik?
3. Make non-unique arguments against the kritik. For instance, in CEDA last weekend we made the following argument. We ran give Afghanistan geothermal energy. They ran Orientalism. Our argument was non-unique – US foreign policy is always orientalist. Non-unique – the otherization that comes as a part of orientalism is a state of nature. Non-unique – orientalism is inevitable. Then we made the following argument. Geothermal makes Afghanistan energy independent with indigenous energy. That means they are less dependent on the West and Western aid post plan. The only risk of plan is that Afghanistan would DISENGAGE with the West and stop feeling the effects of orientalism. Controlling the UNIQUENESS of the kritik allowed us to win a RISK of a LINK TURN, which is enough to defeat the position.
4. Run vagueness on the alternative. Alt Vagueness is a great way to prevent the alternative from floating around throughout the round. It means that if you think their alt is a moving target in the 1NR and can demonstrate that in the 2AR, you can get some easy ballots.
5. Finally, ALWAYS look for performative contradictions. If you can win that the negative is making arguments that contradict it is really bad for them. You can even make arguments that perf cons justify dropping the debater in question, but at the very least they lose an argument on the flow.
In conclusion, I don’t think most kritiks are against the rules, although I do agree there are some very bad kritiks. Most kritik debates should come down to framework, and if you can’t position your affirmative as offense against the kritik or as outweighing the kritik you will probably lose. I think good kritiks function as a disad or a cp with a net benefit. If you do it right, you don’t even have to label it a kritik. The label is arbitrary, how the argument FUNCTIONS in the round is what is important. Just because someone says kritik, doesn’t mean they are running and abusive and nebulous argument. Evaulate how it competes with your aff, if they are making uniqueness claims, if they have a reject alternative or a policy alternative and adjust your strategy accordingly.
I hope this helps shed even more light on the kritik discussion! I look forward to your comments!
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
I think we really agree more than we disagree. You mentioned that your problem is not with kritiks, but with bad kritiks. You also admit (I think) that good kritiks are really other kinds of arguments with the name “kritik” on the top. Your points about the Malthus kritik being a non-unique DA and your (for lack of a better term) “Terrorist Rhetoric” K being a topical counterplan I think are well explained. I suppose I have two further arguments to build upon your post.
1) Is there an example we could come up with of a kritik that is not either simultaneously or in total another type of negative argument?
2) If debaters are using kritiks to mask the true nature of the argument (a big hypothetical), should judges punish debaters for deliberate obfuscation? After all, many ballots do read, “The better debating was done by…” and certainly deliberate obfuscation is not “good” (whatever that means) debating.