Possible Topics for Next Year

First, my commentary. My ballot was as follows:

1st – B
2nd – D
3rd – A
4th – C
5th – E

My top two choices are B and D. They are well-worded and offer fair limits – there is ample ground for both the aff and the neg and I would be okay debating either one of these resolutions. They’re not particularly exciting but that is more a reflection of the topic area and not the resolution.

My third choice was A, criminal justice. I’m not sure how this resolution is supposed to function given that only 6% of all inmates in the US reside in federal prisons. The rest are in state or local penitentiaries. Sure, a plan could have the USFG try to hijack state-level prison regulations, but that loses every single time to the 50 states counterplan. Interesting subject but poor implementation.

My fourth choice was C. It doesn’t provide enough ground to anyone; it’s too limited. There is a very finite number of legal rights that could be reformed. Furthermore, what ground does exist is too small. You can’t really claim any big disad impacts off a resolution like this, which makes me stay far, far away.

My fifth choice was E. This one is just awful. First of all, it’s far too narrow. Overlimiting to such a small subset of individuals means that everyone will be running the same five cases. This sounds like a great parli resolution, but we have to debate the topic for an entire year, not one round. Just to prove how narrow it is, this resolution fits entirely within topic B – just another reason to rank B as your #1 choice. Plus, hege debates are going to get boring after awhile.

That out of the way, I want to respond to Danny’s commentary. First, I understand that the rules call for a stock issues paradigm. People know my stance on this, and I’ll reiterate once again: rules that dictate what a judge can and cannot evaluate are moronic because they arbitrarily exclude argumentation on the basis that it isn’t “traditional” enough. It also hampers the ability of debaters to determine what NFA-LD should look like. The brilliant part of every debate format is that it is shaped by the debaters themselves, as opposed to individuals who are no longer competing. Having such restrictive rules runs contrary to this principle.

All I ask is that the community not ignore or dismiss the kritikal implications of this topic. Authors like Szasz and Foucault all have excellent things to say about the assumptions we make when approaching mental health care. I will be relying heavily on a kritical approach next year and I hope that the community is open-minded enough to consider slightly nontraditional lines of argumentation.

With regards to solvency – Danny, the problem with solvency as a strategy is that it’s rarely a round-winner on its own merits. It’s usually possible to win at least some mitigation against a case (i.e. it’s ineffective or doesn’t encompass enough people) but those aren’t absolute takeouts. True 100% solvency takeouts are incredibly rare and usually the only way to win them is if your opponent concedes them by accident. Remember, even 1% solvency is preferable to the status quo.

A better strategy is to combine solvency and/or advantage mitigation with offense. In other words, “Not only does the plan not work as effectively as their authors claim, it’s actually a bad thing for reasons X Y and Z.” Offense can come in the form of case-specific turns – perhaps the plan exacerbates mental problems, for example. It can also come from generic disads. By doing this, you generate a lot of leverage when doing impact calculus, and in my mind this is the correct way to approach the contemporary case debate.

- Nick

The USFG should substantially reform the provision of mental health services to the chronically mentally ill.
By far the best topic!

1 – I tend to agree with Nick, but let me explain the central point of stock issues debate and the difference between what Nick would identify as a policy maker paradigm. Stock issues asks the question of, “Is it true?” while policy maker paradigms ask a question closer to, “Is it a good idea/fair?” This means that under stock issues I can run 3 cards: inherency, harms, and plan then sit down – or I can just read 2 inherency, 2 harms, and 8 solvency. That kind of debate is lame. Questions of disadvantages and kritiks don’t even enter into the equation under this paradigm. So, every time a judge votes on a DA they are breaking the rules. Lets just call LD what it is because, I assure you, judges are not stock issues critics, for the most part. You may get one a year, but that is all.

2 – If critics don’t evaluate Szasz and Foucault this year, I will be a sad panda. They are excellent scholars, better then most of those whom we read in most round. I believe someone quoted Wolfe Blitzer two years ago…

3 – Some disclosure, I have been accepted at SDSU for grad school and offered a teaching position, but not a coaching position. In return for rides to tournaments so I can get hired as a judge I am going to TRY and coach their team in LD/Parli (if they agree to it). If they don’t go for it I will try another school. I have one highly critical aff (not willing to disclose it yet because I am still doing background reading) and a natives aff in mind . So, if you read this far down, you have a heads up for next year.

i like the fifth resolution. a tighter resolution increases the depth of case-argumentation over the limited cases. Debate becomes less of a race to a Topicality/Procedural debate and more about actual research.

res number 5 has a flaw in it, much the same as this year’s topic. It says “military personnel and families”. This could be interpreted to say both military personnel and random families around the country much the same as the lack of possessive in this year’s resolution could mean Bagram is topical.

The aspect of international affirmatives will apply to all cases because there is a lack of direction in all the resolutions. However, the 5th res specifically tries to limit down to military service members, but potentially fails.

Something to think about.

[comment edited per request of author]

military modifies both personnel and families

…and domestic should have been modified by the USFG this year, but it didn’t.

“Questions of disadvantages and kritiks don’t even enter into the equation under this paradigm. So, every time a judge votes on a DA they are breaking the rules. Lets just call LD what it is because, I assure you, judges are not stock issues critics, for the most part. You may get one a year, but that is all.”

Look, that’s just patently false. First, the NFA-LD rules allow for disadvantages despite not listing them as a ‘stock issue.’

“The negative may… argue that disadvantages to the proposal outweigh its benefits.” -NFA Rules

This isn’t because NFA liked stock issues, liked disads, and wanted to pair them together. In fact, not being disadvantageous has LONG been a ‘stock issue.’

Here’s an excerpt from Patterson and Zarefsky’s 1983 Contemporary Debate in the chapter about the requirements of an affirmative case:

“Avoidance of Greater Disadvantages

…No sensible person will affirm a resolution if doing so will leave him or her worse off than before. TO avoid such a situation, the affirmative is required to prove that affirming the resolution avoids greater disadvantages.

…

It is not always recognized that this burden rests with the affirmative, since it is the negative who initially presents and proves the disadvantages. The affirmative is not expected to anticipate every possible disadvantage to the resolution and refute it in advance. But once the initial proof of the disadvantages has been presented, it is the affirmative’s duty to show that the evils are outweighed by the benefits of the resolution.”

________

There are numerous theory articles similar to this one.

Walter Ulrich, for example, in his article “The Stock Issues Paradigm,” writes that the fourth stock issue asks the question of:

“Will the proposed policy produce undesirable side effects?(desirability).”

Note that in this case he is merely stating the ‘question asked’ by that stock issue, not that the affirmative must prove its policy to be free from all undesirable side effects.

Look, the best way to understand the ‘stock issues’ is to NOT conceptualize them as debate concepts. They were drawn from the REAL WORLD before they ever entered debate; many debate theory articles explain this.

________

As far as Kritiks go, it is possible that Kritiks do not fit into either the policy maker or stock issues paradigm. While there are many variations on the kritik, if a kritik is to be understood as punishing a debater for the real-world implications of their rhetoric, then I’m not sure why a policy-maker/stock issues judge would care about either one.

However, I think that typically the policy-maker/stock issues judge serves multiple roles in the round, no matter what they call themselves: consider that a real ‘policy-maker’ (better called systems analyst I think) would not ‘punish’ a debater for running, say, multiple conditional counterplans. In this way, I think it can be said that a stock issues judge is not ‘prohibited’ by his/her paradigm from considering kritik impacts.

On an off-note, I personally don’t really like the kritik as described above. Using the arguments of Szasz and Foucoult is in my mind completely possible without use of a kritik evaluation the impacts of the debater’s rhetoric, for example as disads, harms arguments, and the like.

I just now discovered this web site and found it interesting that a person, who did not give a name, called me a Pimp. I am not sure just who that person is – but if one does not have the guts to say who they are then that says a great deal about their own character. I am not sure why I was mentioned – nor the issue that was causing such a problem. The rules for NFA LD were developed by debate coaches, long before I became the President of NFA. I have always encouraged the LD Committee to organize the coaches if they want to make rule changes. Better to get involved then to complain from the outside.

Larry Schnoor

Larry Schnoor, I wrote those things and the people who have read this site generally know it was me.
At the time I was an undergrad who did not understand the value of some of the rules and instead of doing what I should have (tried to engage the system) I just struck out about it.
I mentioned you because you are someone who I respect and I didn’t want people to think that I was attacking you personally. I am aware that you were not the person who created the rules for LD. That is why I didn’t want people to conflate the nfa leadership with the nfa-ld rules. If you feel offended then I feel obligated to give you an immediate apology and I will also give you one in person.

This is my only real excuse for my behavior. As a student I felt dis-empowered and unable to make changes. As a coach now I feel that empowerment and I see how I can get other students involved. As complaining from the outside I was trying to understand individuals who agree with me or disagree in an open atmosphere.
If you have read the rest of this site you will see my comments everywhere and have tried to be active in the community on the inside – not just the outside. Also, as I do post all the time lately I have tried to reduce my posting because I don’t want to drown out other voices that I have in the past. To those I have drown out over the past I am sorry.

Mat

please do