Next Year’s Topic

My thoughts, although obviously I’m biased:

I like space because it’s generally awesome and there’s a good literature base for it. It’s wide open so it has a lot of potential for unique cases.

Indigenous people would be interesting at first. The problem is that it would get stale pretty quickly. Debaters run indigenous cases almost every resolution and they usually claim similar advantages. How do you keep debates from ending in self-D every single time?

Middle Eastern education is simply way too specific of a topic area. I highly doubt that there is a substantial literature base to be found that links the United States to education assistance in the middle east, which makes finding solvency advocates for specific plans pretty difficult. The advantage areas are also somewhat restricted. Think about the Cuba rez and ask yourself if you really want to repeat that experience so soon.

I agree with Nick about the education topic. I do not want a Cuba repeat. I think Space is a topic that has a lot of potential cases and also is a very current topic.

In defense of Indigenous People: Space gets just as boring in my experience.
1 – On the Neg people will run space weaponization, cap, and Heidegger
2 – On the Aff people will run get off the rock every time with some kind of infinite generations of humans (star trek) or something similar to that.
Either way, space is going to have like 3 possible affs; which is good for clash, but bad for people who run away from the middle (me).

Concessions towards Indigenous People allows for a lot of arguments each way. Is consultation key? How about politics, paternalism, is self-determination even good, spending, and yes even heidegger could be run here, too I guess.
I am just saying that there are more potential affs that will keep the debates from being stale after the first 3 months. Develop/explore space sounds fun now, but I think it will get old.

Since I am not competing next year, just coaching, I think I will abstain from the vote in fairness. I should not get to choose what you all get to talk about, I just wanted to provide a possible alternative.

FYI – I will have neg cites on the case list when I get back from TTU this weekend.

I would vote for space exploration, if only to work in the Krugman article on interstellar trade.

Sadly, however, the poll seems to have closed early.

Of course, my vote is going to be biased as well. I’m going to stick to my guns and go for Education in the Middle East.

Why? I have several reasons.

1. I think it’s important that we discuss education in the Middle East, we’re so well informed about the war but we know little to nothing about the educational aspect in the Middle East.

2. In response to Nick’s argument about there not being enough “literature” you could also cross apply Nick’s analysis and say that there’s not enough literature for Space Exploration. (Unless you happen to have security clearance for NASA. lol)

I know there is a wide variety of literature on Education in the Middle East. You may have to do more than just have google alerts but in the end, you’ll be a better researcher, you’ll be more educated on the issue and perhaps you’ll be able to cross apply the knowledge you have learned in LD and bring some of your solvency on your own affirmatives into fruition as potential solvency on the issue of the ongoing war in the Middle East.

3.The Middle East is broad, therefore, you can’t give this the same analogy as “Cuba” because Cuba is one country, whereas the Middle East covers more than just one country.

4. I’m thinking of future LD’ers and I think since some may be crossovers from Parli, that debating about Middle Eastern Education would be a good transition rather than Space Exploration into the unknown.

5. Education in the Middle East is very fair to both the Affirmative and the Neg. With Space Exploration, it would be too general of a subject where you may have the affirmatives solving for a variety of different things such as world peace, colonies, building life on (enter planet here), maybe even evolution of mankind, etc. I think because of this, the Negative would be at a huge disadvantage.

In the spirit of clash, I introduce my line by line response:

1. A lack of knowledge regarding a particular subject matter is not a warrant for why it would make a good yearlong topic for debate. There are an infinite possible number of things that might be worth learning about. The job of selecting a resolution is to narrow those possibilities down to areas that are well-researched and are conclusively linked to policy action.

2. a) Searching Google News using the query “NASA” “Space Exploration” yields 628 news results from the past month alone. Expand that to a regular Google search and the figure balloons to well over 5 million. I rest my case.

b) Even if there is a wide range of literature on education in the middle east, the problem is that precisely NONE of it assumes USFG action. Do a similar Google News search for “United States” “Middle East Education” – you get ONE result, and it’s about Nigeria and the Undie Bomber. Barely even tangentially related. A topic this obscure is not ideal for policy debate. There won’t be any solvency advocates because the U.S. has never intervened in Middle Eastern education before. There wouldn’t be any affirmative OR negative ground. The absurdly narrow research burden would exclude all but the people with the most resources to hire professional card-cutters. It’s just infeasible.

3. False. The scope of a topic is not determined solely by the region being acted upon. It’s far more dependent upon the action the resolution calls for. Because there’s so little literature available on US action in Middle Eastern education, the case list would inevitably be confined to a handful of bare-bones ideas.

4. What? No seriously, what? Poll the average parli debater and I bet my house and my dog that 99% would say they know more about the United States’ space exploration efforts than they do about the United States’ role in Middle Eastern education policy.

5. a) Oh, it’s fair all right, if you consider that BOTH the aff and the neg getting jacked is fair. Look, if there’s no literature base to draw from, it’s impossible to form coherent arguments. That’s just not good debating.

b) You do realize that “general” resolutions are what make policy resolutions good, right? This year’s resolution is very general. I am enjoying the breadth of debates I get to experiece. A specific resolution, on the other hand, is like the Cuba one, where by the end of the year there’s only five cases being run. Ask any debater and they will agree that that resolutions was terrible because it was so overlimiting that it stifled all semblance of creativity. Debates got stale after the third tournament. Not so fun. Generic resolutions are equally fair to the negative – they simply get more negative arguments to choose from as well. Sure the research burden might be slightly larger but the literature base still checks it.

I think natives gets disqualified though, I am not willing to write the topic paper, remember I volunteered Nick to do it, lol. I was serious, school is kicking me arse.

Unless someone else wants to write it for us, which would be HOT.