I apologize for the lack of page numbers on the front of the CBU material, but I’m trying to get my whole team using Google Documents this year, they have yet to put that feature into their newest “Table of Contents” function.  If they don’t do it soon, I may have to go back to OpenOffice.

This is the packet that Danny and I will be distributing at the coaches conference this afternoon in Rancho Mirage, for those of you planning on attending.  We’ll be sure to post anything LD related that comes out of this weekend’s conversations.

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In the spring of 2010 UIL had a topic that dealt with free trade versus protectionism. While it’s not exactly the same topic we’re covering the site features a great overview that will point you in the right direction.

Here is one helpful section:

Second, the affirmative can make the claim that free trade decreases the likelihood of war and increases peace. In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu wrote that “Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who differ with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities.”

This can be a powerful affirmative argument. If the United States is dependent on, say, China for trade, we may be deterred from starting a war with China because, in the end, we need the goods they give us more than we need to blow them up. Likewise, if China is dependent on the money we give them for the things they provide, they will be less likely to take extreme action in the case of a disagreement.

That would be a great stock answer to any war disadvantage… good luck with your researching.

Tomorrow, at the PSCFA coaches conference, Marse and I will be facilitating a discussion of this year’s topic and we will have some evidence to share. I’ll post everything that gets distributed sometime next week on the site so stay tuned!

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In this case the affirmative defined a US Naval Aircraft Carrier as both “domestic” and as an “airport”. The affirmative then proceeded to win the round by beating the T debate, which the case encouraged. The core strategy of this case was to encourage a “T” debate that the negative had no hope of winning.  This is because on its face the case is not topical, but a clever parsing of terms allowed this case to be topical and the T became a time suck. This case became extremely popular among “younger” members of the team I was on because it provided an easy strategy which required very little debating. This is because of the “domestic” and “transportation” cards which allowed the case to technically meet a definition that it didn’t come close to perceptually. It was, for all purposes, an easy case for weak competitors to debate.

So, the topic is almost here, and many people already have an idea of the direction they intend to travel. This article is meant to encourage competitors to embrace the most intuitive, or predictable, case(s) under the resolution.

WHY GO FOR THE MOST INTUITIVE CASE?

Well that’s a matter of preference. As someone who competed in LD successfully for 4 years and won a number of tournaments I found myself doing both. I think the beginning and intermediate competitors will gain more from debating the nuances of a predictable case that does not merit a “T” debate. It’s my experience that advanced Open-LD debate is mostly about procedurals (at a later date we will discuss using procedurals as strategy). Procedural debate quickly devolves into meta-debate theory that most beginning and intermediate competitors only have a slight familiarity with. Avoiding a procedural debate as a beginner allows you to debate the other stock issues that conveniently get left out of most debate rounds…like solvency!

Another reason to consider the most intuitive case as your first option is that intuitive cases have the ability to decrease the amount of judge intervention in round.  The problem with obscure cases such as Aircraft Carriers is that it triggers a cognitive response akin to rejection in the judge. Obviously, this claim can’t be generalized to all judges, but the principle remains sound. People are less likely to embrace ideas that deconstruct their worldview, so rejection becomes the only viable alternative. This is called cognitive bias, and it’s a real problem both inside and outside of debate rounds.

Sure most teams will already have great strategies for those “predictable” cases. Some teams may even giggle with glee that you’re debating a case that they have tons of cards prepared for. Both of those statements are true, but so is this one: The better debater is the one that wins on a case the opposition was prepared for, not the one that wins because their opponent was unprepared for the case. The former is a statement of skill, while the latter is a statement of luck. Luck can vary from one round to the next, but skills remain the same no matter what your opponent does.

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For many people “kritik” is a bad word. A no-no in most polite debate circles, kritiks have been called everything from philosophical mumbo-jumbo to really bad debate. Despite what you may have heard, kritiks are none of those bad things people have told you they are. In reality, a kritik is no different than your typical DA-Counterplan debate-save for the in depth philosophical discussion.

NFA-LD Rules clearly stipulate that kritiks are unacceptable, but no one seem to care.

The official decision-making paradigm of NFA LD is that of Stock Issues: Harm (Advantage or Goals), Inherency, and Solvency…The negative may attack any of these issues, but need only win one to win the debate. The negative may also challenge the jurisdiction (topicality) of the affirmative proposal or argue that disadvantages to the proposal outweigh its benefits…The negative may present one counterproposal specific to the affirmative problem area. By this, we mean that the counterproposal must deal with the problem area defined by the affirmative, and not the form of government, economic system, or need for further study (UNLESS SPECIFICALLY IDENTIFIED AS A KEY ISSUE IN THE RESOLUTION). http://www.nationalforensics.org/lincoln-douglas-debate/ld-rules

The problem with kritiks, for both coaches and competitors, is that a kritik represents the great unknown in both LD & Parli Debate. Most coaches never had to engage in kritik debate at the level that they have become common today, if they even engaged K’s at all. Furthermore, individuals that embrace both kritik debate, and the philosophical ideas that fuel them are few and far between. So, knowledge on the subject of kritiks is usually only explored in summer workshops, and post tournament parties with other schools/teams. This means that a good deal of coaches, critics and competitors don’t have the knowledge base to evaluate kritiks fairly. As such, the answer for many folks on both the two and four year circuit is rejection and demonization.

This disconnect also speaks to a larger problem emerging in the debate community. Kritiks have become a luxury item, apparently exclusive to certain schools and debaters. This gives these debaters a leg up in competition because they are able to use an argument that a majority of the folks they compete against are not prepared to respond to adequately. In my opinion, this removes equity from debate rounds. Two issues in specific have made the learning curve for kritks quite steep.

1. Most kritik debates are rooted in post-modern theory. Post modernism is usually studied as a part of upper division or post graduate philosophy classes. For the non-philosophy major trying to grasp the ideas in K debate is extremely difficult initially. This is an even bigger problem for people with little to no foundation in philosophy.
2. Kritik debate is usually reserved for the most experienced teams on the circuit. This is not by accident. Kritiks are difficult to understand, tricky to construct, and a pain to articulate. The teams that run them are usually tough competition on a “straight up” interpretation of the resolution. With an obscure kritik they become unbeatable.  Usually, the “kritik” teams are always deep in the out rounds at the biggest tournaments.
3. Kritik debate is designed to challenge our world view, and/or way of thinking. That their world view/way of thinking is wrong,  is not something most people are ready to acknowledge or embrace. As such, kritiks usually trigger cognitive bias in those who are the subject of the kritik, and in some cases this cognitive bias can extend to the judge.

The bottom line is that a kritik is just another argument against your case, and like any other argument made against you it’s possible to beat the argument if you have the right responses.

In LD debate the kriticism is sometimes crafted to look like a regular argument, sometimes not. It really just depends on the judge and your opponent. If your opponent feels the need to belt out a militarism kritik on the China topic because the judge doesn’t mind kriticisms in LD, you should feel confident in being able to respond to the arguments with a combination of cards and analysis based on your knowledge base.

Below we’ll explain Kritiks and a few easy ways to beat them back.

WHAT IS A KRITIK?

If you didn’t already figure it out, a kritik argues that the methodology you use to frame your worldview and build your affirmative case is problematic. The argument occurs pre-fiat which is critical to the way the judge votes on the kritik. If you lose the following arguments, you lose the debate.

1. There is a problem with my ontology/ethics/mindset
2. This ontology/ethics/mindset has some really nasty implications
3. We have a way to fix your ontology/ethics/mindset
4. Words are real Fiat is not. Therefore, our pre fiat implications should come before case because they are the only “real world” implications.

HOW TO BEAT A KRITIK:

Most of the apprehension to kritik debate comes from this section. Most debaters, especially in LD Debate, don’t have the tools required to respond accurately to Cap Bad, or Fem IR, or Orientalism, etc. When I was in my last year of debate I both ran kritiks (Fascismo or “chismo”) and routinely beat them when they were run against me. Here is my in round strategy.

1. Know your judge: If you don’t have access to a judge philosophy booklet before the round it’s acceptable to ask for a judge philosophy in round. THERE IS A GOOD REASON THIS IS #1. Your critic is the most important person in the round. You can short circuit kritik debates before the round gets started by asking this simple question – “How do you feel about kritiks?” If your critic says they are open to all arguments or they love kritiks then follow the steps below. If your judge hates kritiks, and your opponent runs one anyway, you should already know what to do.
2. Pre-empt the kritik in the 1AC: This is a clever way to give yourself some offense against the kritic in the 1AC (frontloading), and more often than not it will go overlooked or under-covered in the 1NC. In Contention One, or Observation One, just after you read the resolution and give the definitions and type of debate (policy, fact, value) and evaluative criteria, throw in the Textual Advocacy is preferable to Sub-textual Advocacy argument. Textual advocacy is everything written in the 1AC. If the negative responds to your 1AC line by line text they are engaged in textual advocacy. If the negative responds to “pre-fiat” considerations then they are engaging in sub textual advocacy by engaging in argumentation that is outside the text of the 1AC. An example of this construction is below

Observation (Contention) One: Resolution Analysis

i. Definitions

ii. Case: Policy

iii. Criteria: Net Benefits

iv. Textual Advocacy is preferable to sub-textual advocacy for a few reasons

a. Textual advocacy is the most predictable form of advocacy in this round because it is derived from the text of the resolution. Both teams are able to read the text of the resolution and have a good idea where the debate is headed. If the affirmative were to interpret the text of the resolution in a sub-textual way the negative would be skewed out of the round, as would the affirmative if the negative engaged in sub-textual debate.

b. Textual advocacy decreases the amount of judge intervention in round by limiting the evaluation, of the round, to the textual arguments alone. Sub-textual arguments ask the judge to accept that portions of debate either do not exist, or should be considered illegitimate. Judge intervention is bad because it destroys the activity by creating unpredictable rounds that discourage participation in the activity. Lack of participation equals the end of debate.

If you are interested in the carded portion of the above argument (Babbie 04) it can be found in Earl Babbie’s book, The Practice of Social Research p.334, or the Content Analysis chapter.

MORE KRITIK STRATEGIES (OFF CASE)

1. Rules Good Blocks: At the core of kritik debate, especially in LD, is a complete disregard for the rules of the activity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as debaters consider themselves critical thinkers, and challenging normative forms of debate by debating everything, including the rules, demonstrates growth in the activity. Still, rules are rules and we have them for a reason. Defaulting to a block on why rules are good (w/impacts) and why breaking rules is bad (w/impacts) can go a long way to making your opponent uncomfortable in round. PLUS IT’S A GREAT STRATEGY TO FORCE THEM TO ALLOCATE TIME. Spend no more than a minute on your rules good block, and force them to respond. If there is no offense on the rules block you can kick out (don’t go for it) of the argument in the 1NR.
2. Go after the alternative: Once you get to the kritik go to the alternative first. A kritik means nothing without a viable alternative text. Why? Well, without an alternative you have a non-unique linear DA that we have no mechanism to solve for, so why penalize me when the problem will continue to exist regardless of what we do in round. The Alternative is essentially a counterplan to the kritik. As such, like any counterplan it has to solve for the implications of the kritik. This is your first chance to put offense on the K.
   • Alternative Vagueness on every K, no matter what. One of the funny things about philosophers is their confusing use of language and jargon. Often times this language bleeds into the alternative during the K debate. No matter how specific the alternative is you can find a word, or series of words, that can be described as vague. “Embrace the Other” or “Add fem voices to the IR stage” are both examples of alternative texts that can lead to good alt vagueness debates. There is a good amount of literature on policy failures due to confusion about the policy’s intent. Use it to your advantage.
   • Turn the assertions in the alternative. As a type of counterplan, the alternative is open to the same type of arguments you would run on a counterplan. If they remove all government structures, run a tribalism turn and say tribalism will become rampant as people organize along the lines of race. No government = Small Arms Warfare & Small Arms Warfare, according to the UN, is usually the most violent form of warfare. Alt creates more death and destruction. You can turn almost any alt because they usually advocate sweeping changes is societal structures, which have historically ended badly (Chile, Cambodia)
3. Turn and/or mitigate the Implications. In a kritik, the implications are the impacts of the position. So when you turn the implications of the kritik you are saying these are good things. This has to be done carefully, because you don’t want to turn everything they say. A good example would be child labor. If you have implications of child labor bad, you don’t want to say child labor good because it makes you sound heartless, even if you have a good argument. A smart way to divide your arguments would be on three levels. Arguments you can turn (military bad, cap bad, etc) – Arguments you can mitigate (outbreak of war, nuclear war, famine, etc) and arguments you can claim plan solves for (child labor, racism, anthropocentrism). These arguments have to be answered and there is a good combination of offense and mitigation to make the round competitive.
4. Answer the hidden arguments in the Framework (frontloading). THIS IS WHAT MAKES KRITIKS CONFUSING AND DEADLY. Basically, Frontloading is the practice of answering the 1AR in the Framework and implications of the 1NC. Confused? I’m not surprised. This confused the heck out of me until I started running K’s. Basically, the best kritik debaters will take all of the traditional arguments used against a kritik and place a pre-empt to that argument somewhere in the framework or implications (sometimes they can be slipped into the link and alternative, so stay alert. I’ll give you an example of frontloading from the kritik I ran my senior year, Fascismo. All of the pre-empts from the framework are in bold. These are the arguments that one had to answer to beat this kritik. Needless to say, we won a lot of rounds running this kritik because no one could answer the frontloaded arguments well, or they would ignore them altogether.

Framework to the Fascism K (Cards Excluded):

A. The Fascist Authoritarian Nationalist Political Movement exist in the United States

1. The Fascismo is a revolutionary trans class form of anti-liberal and anti conservative nationalism. It is an ideology deeply bound up with modernization and modernity. It is highly adaptable to sociopolitical context and can consume a variety of movements and forms that exist inside of its framework.

2. The Fascismo draw from a wide range of cultural and intellectual currents. The Fascismo do not care about left or right, conservative or democrat. The Fascismo only care about articulating itself as a body of ideas, slogan and doctrine.

3. During the inter-war period of the 20th century the Fascismo were manifested as an elite-led armed party that promised to end the threat of international socialism, end national degeneration as a result of liberalism.

4. In the continuing post war period of the late 20th and early 21st century the Fascismo have become military corporatist. They argue in favor of a strong proletarian nation, but not the creation of a proletarian class. The Fascismo argue that they favor all, business and worker alike, and that they can protect the upper-class bourgeoisie from the petite bourgeoisie, and they can protect both from the proletariat. In America this Fascismo is manifested in the populist appeals to the middle class to protect small business and individuals from communism by pledging an economy based on competition and profits, but at the same time stating to oppose big business through taxes and regulations.

5. The Fascismo seek to create a single party state with a government led by a dictator that pledges to maintain national unity and development by forcing individuals to subordinate self interest to the collective interest of the nation or race. The Fascismo seek to permanently forbid the freedom of speech, and criticism. The Fascismo also forbid the quest for equality amongst individuals and military pacifism because all are deemed threats to national unity because they dispute any normative national identity.

B. The Fascismo can only dominate in a world where individuals are willing to support its actions through the use of their agency within the system. It is the initial action that entrenches the mechanisms and power of the state, and it is what the Fascismo need to claim that they are the vehicle through which ends are achieved.

1. The K can be weighed against case because the K exists in a world where the authoritarian nationalist Fascismo political movement is not inevitable because agency can be used contrary to the state or separate from it.

2. The K has both pre and post fiat implications because it not only questions the policies you choose to enact through the state, but also questions the methodology you use pre-fiat to frame you world view. We believe that bad methodology breeds bad policy, and you must first have the correct methodology in order to implement effective policies.

C. We must beat back the regime at all costs. Political Justice and freedom can never exist under the coercive structure of the state. The Fascismo will always place the corporate state before the individual through acts of dominance and coercion.

1. Each act of resistance is one of existential survival where we seek to save ourselves against the Fascismo movement. Each moment of resistance has the potential to deny the movement individuals for consumption, and works its way towards building a critical rupture.

The above framework is filled with a lot of techno babble. This was done to deliberately cloud the issue, or more specifically, confuse the affirmative as to which arguments were really important. As you see from the above bolded arguments, there are six (6) framework arguments that have to be answered in order to with the debate. The most important argument in the framework is the very last argument. This argument gives uniqueness to both the criticism and alternative by pointing out the ability to reverse our present course despit being at the brink. The argument above that is designed as a hidden voting calculus. In this the judge is instructed to consider any act of fighting the regime preferable to any act of entrenching its mechanisms of power. This is an example of both a winning kritik and what you have to be conscious of when faced with a K in LD or Parli. The only way to know what to look for is by running a kritik that uses these same techniques.

When all is said and done you should have at least 1:30 for on case arguments. A good rule to live by is spending as much time on case as you opponent did. So, time them and write it down on your flow. You shouldn’t use less time covering an argument than your opponent, unless you believe you can beat back the argument in less time than that.

THE WEAPONS YOU NEED FOR BATTLE.

Kritiks tend to revolve around the same philosophical areas. Once you get comfortable with philosophy as a subject you’ll notice that there aren’t that many different kritiks. No matter how dressed up they are with a cool name they tend to revolve around the same issues (Economics, Politics, Sociology, and Defense). A good kritik debater can provide good/bad answers for all relevant philosophical issues used in kritik debate. This, like everything else in debate, takes some research to do well. I wouldn’t recommend citting any cards at this point because you won’t know what to cut. Once you practice kritik debate without evidence you’ll find answering the with evidence to be a dream. If you have access to any of the online policy card databases you can download all sorts of kritiks or kritik responses.

If you’re serious about dominating kritiks if they’re run against you, the list below is your study guide. If you know who these people are, and you can argue for or against their most important ideas in a reasoned manner you will find yourself accepted amongst the net-benefits crowd and your popularity on the circuit will greatly increase if you say “Zizek is nuts” and actually know what you’re talking about. At some point you may even turn these arguments into cards.

Common Kritik Philosophers: (not an exhaustive list, just what I’m familiar with)

• Theodor Adorno – Dialectic of Enlightenment (See Horkheimer)
• Giorgio Agamben – Whatever Singularity & Homo Sacer
• Alain Badiou – Being and Event
• Jean Baudrillard – Everything (Simulacrum is Great! – Matrix K)
• Gilles Deluze – Everything
• Jaques Derrida – Everything
• Stephen Dubner – Freakonomics
• Daniel Faber – Eco Pragmatism
• Patrick Geddes – Global Local (Think Globally, Act Locally)
• Jurgen Habermas – Public Sphere
• G.W.F. Hegel – Everything (Dialectic)
• Martin Heidegger – Everything
• Max Horkheimer – Dialectic of Enlightenment (See Adorno)
• Bell Hooks – Everything (Feminism & Critical Race Theory)
• Felix Guattari – Everything
• Jacques Lacan – Everything
• Emmanuel Levinas – Everything
• Steven Levitt – Freakonomics
• Kurt Mandelbaum – Everything
• Johann Most – Anarchism (Propaganda of the Deed)
• Freidrick Nietzche – Everything
• Richard Rorty – Pragmatism
• Jean Paul Sartre – Absurdism
• Edward Said – Everything (Orientalism!)
• Slavoj Zizek – Everything
• Fareed Zakaria – The Post American World

Common Kritik Topics: (not an exhaustive list, just what I’m familiar with)

• Anthropocentrism
• Biopower
• Borders (sovereignty)
• Capitalism
• Coercion (power)
• Crisis Politics (Theatre of the Oppressed)
• Deep Ecology
• De-Schooling
• Development
• Eco (Psychology, Governance, Pragmatism, Feminism)
• Empire (Cap Bad)
• Feminism (Fem IR)
• Freakonomics
• Essentialism
• Gendered Language
• Gifting (Foreign Aid)
• Global-Local (globo-loco)
• Hegemony
• Immigration
• Irony
• Mimesis (mimetics)
• Normativity
• Nuclearism
• Ontology
• Orientalism
• Queer Theory
• Race Theory (Critical Race Theory)
• Radical Ecology
• Realism
• Science (Dialectic of Enlightenment)
• Threat Construction/Terror Talk

A great way to start exploring these issues and philosophers is through You Tube. Great videos about or by all of the individuals/issues above. Thankfully, some LD tournaments offer judging “rules” that exclude the judging pool from considering arguments like kritiks. If you find yourself at a local community college tournament, you may never encounter a kriticism. For you it may be the white rhino of debate. Regardless,  if you have any specific questions about anything above just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get you an answer.

Good Luck!

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At this point in your summer research you should have quite a few articles that you’ve collected and turned into policy chains. From these policy chains you should have generated tags or frontlines for various arguments. The final step in your summer prep, Contention Development, is probably the least time consuming, and given the fact that it’s your summer vacation that’s probably a good thing.

So, what is Contention Development?

Contention Development is the term for creating warranted arguments from the literature you’ve selected for your policy chains.  

“The toughest thought-work of case construction is now complete: extensive research has uncovered numerous argument ideas, and the best of these have been formally mapped and analyzed to show exactly which premises are required to sustain the conclusion and also what kinds of support will be needed to sustain the premises. One, two, or at most three of these mapped arguments have been selected for inclusion in the constructive speech itself…The work that remains to transform these skeletal arguments into a presentable LD case falls largely into the domains of rhetoric and composition-subjects…But the logic-centered model of argument does have a few implications for this final stage of casing which we should notice.” (Baldwin – National Forensics League Online)

Contention Development is the logical process we use to determine what argument is being made in the literature we’ve collected, and how we can turn those arguments into a contention. The literature base you have access to provides you with three very important elements in contention building.

1. Claims
2. Warrants
3. Impacts

Every article you’ve collected should make arguments using this same structure. An example of this is the Centre-Local Policy Good argument below.

Nimmi Kurian, Fungible Borders and Informal Regionalism: Rethinking China’s International Relations, March 2006.

CLAIM: China’s Domestic Policy is Closely Linked to its Foreign Policy. China will not implement Domestic Policies that Limit Regionalism or Globalism.                                                                         

China’s re-engagement with the regional economy and the pursuit of comparative advantage has not been restricted to the coastal region alone. The idea of promoting sub-regional cooperation forms an integral part of China’s Go-West campaign aimed at developing its vast western region. The political thrust given to integrating southwestern China with the extended regional economy marks the latest temporal and spatial shift in the country’s regional development policy. The western region is home to nearly 300 million people spread across the six provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou; the three autonomous regions of Ningxia, Xinjiang and Tibet and the Chongqing Municipality. It is also home to 80 per cent of China’s ethnic minorities.

WARRANT: Rising regional disparities have imparted an added urgency to the drive to develop the largely inaccessible and backward region that covers about 56 per cent of China’s geographic area. That the problem of uneven regional development has been a cause of growing concern is evident from the writings of Chinese scholars on the subject. The existence of stark differences in regional development is likened “to an eagle spreading only one wing for flight.” A national conference of the heads of the nationalities affairs commissions in 1989 imparted a strong push to expedite the development of the minority areas. It recommended that the minority areas “open to other parts of China and the world with the introduction of an opening programme that looks in two directions simultaneously: south and east to the coastal areas and developed countries; west and north to neighbouring countries across the Chinese border.” Thus, emphasis was laid on developing a strategy that optimised the ‘petty advantage’ of border trade that geographic proximity conferred on it. In recent years, inland border provinces have been actively encouraged to seek economic cooperation with neighbouring countries across land frontiers. An Open Door policy for the western region was “aimed at converting the minority regions from remote places far from domestic markets into frontier areas adjacent to an international market.” Article 42 of China’s Foreign Trade Law passed in 1994 enjoins upon the state to “adopt flexible measures and provide favourable treatment and convenience to the trade between its border towns and the border towns of bordering countries….” Policies such as the creation of border cities, economic cooperation zones and trading ports in several of the border regions galvanised trade across China’s border regions. As a result, there has been a rapid expansion in border trade which grew at an annual average growth rate of 35 per cent during 1998-2002, notching a high of $6.7 billion.

IMPACT (Internal Link): Reflecting these changed national priorities has been China’s New Security Concept structured around the values of accommodation and cooperative security. The strategy of diplomatic accommodation has been in keeping with its strategic requirements of seeking peace “as an entrepreneurial input for development”. For China, such a policy of diplomatic accommodation has “its greatest effects on bordering provinces, since they might change from being on the military’s front line to being first in line for trade…” The conceptual shift serves another important goal of Chinese foreign policy particularly in the region, namely that of raising the acceptability of China as a responsible and mature power. Cooperation and pragmatism have thus moved in tandem since the efficacy of any sub-regional initiative is contingent on corresponding complementary moves across borders especially in building multi-modal connectivity by road, rail, air and water.

Obviously, the above impact hasn’t been terminalized so there is a step (card) missing. That card would (should) detail the positives associated with a Centre-Local Domestic Policy.

Contention Development is an extremely important part of your summer prep, and it is the step that will contribute the most to what you say in round. It is for this reason that it is a good idea to wait until the final resolution has been announced on July 1st before you start building contentions. Once you know what the resolution is you can use the contention development exercise to cut arguments for, or against, the most likely cases under that resolution.

Part of prepping for the most likely case under any given topic is knowledge of the topic area. If you believe you have a good understanding of the policy area then you should have no problem prepping for the most intuitive case(s) under any given topic/resolution. The most effective means of case preparation would be with your coaching staff or other debaters.

Step One: Ask your friend(s) what case/cases they are running under the announced topic area. Once you have a list of 4 or 5 viable cases start cutting arguments against those cases. Specifically, what items in your policy chain or tags/frontlines argue against the case list you’ve collected? If you don’t have any cards against their case idea (it’s okay if you don’t because most cases are ultra-specific) it’s time to do more research. If you’re lucky enough to have collected literature specific enough to negate a particular case then you’ll feel great about having already cut the card.

Step Two: Come up with 3 to 5 solid, topical cases and ask your friend(s) or coach(es) what arguments they would make against those cases. Once you have a list of DA’s and procedurals go back to your literature and cut cards in response to these positions. Once again, it’s okay if you don’t have any literature on the specific arguments, but it feels great if you do.  

As I mentioned in part one, Lincoln-Douglas debate is about research. Those who are willing to do the research give themselves a competitive advantage in every round they enter, because they understand the topic area well enough to articulate to the judge how the arguments presented (cards) interact with one another, and why the judge should prefer their arguments. If you follow this guide research will be step one of your summer prep program. Step two is the creating policy chains that describe either foreign or domestic policy. It is from these policy chains that you will begin developing contentions. These contentions should be a logical extension of your area research, chain building, and tagging/frontlining done earlier in the summer.  This means that your arguments should always be based on the literature you have and not the literature you wish you had.

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At this point there is no right or wrong way to approach cutting/frontlining. As long as you’re gathering evidence for good generic arguments your time is well spent. If you choose to cut your cards directly from the web, as opposed to saving the article as an RTF, you should make sure you keep meticulous source cites. This should include the url where the article was found. It is imperative that you know exactly where to find the literature for the cards you cut so you can modify your arguments at a moments notice.

So, your policy chain should contain a series of articles, gathered from various sources around the web, that tell a story about China’s political climate. These articles may discuss China’s Economy such as The Economist February article, “Learning to Like Inflation” which provides some great information for econ debates. Or, the articles may discuss China’s Foreign Policy such as the Brookings-China article “The Advantages of an Assertive China” which provides great uniqueness arguments on China’s current “agressive” strategies with their foreign policy. This card could be cut and used when debating the brightline (brink) scenario for Chinese Foreign Policy and what, if any, backlash has/would come about as a result of those strategies.

Whatever your articles discuss it’s pretty easy to turn that literature into tags and frontlines.

What is a Tag/Frontline?

A tag or frontline is simply the text of the argument or claim you’re making. A “tag” is an argument made as part of a traditionally constructed argument. So if you’re using your uniqueness, link, internal link, impact construction you would call your claims “tags”.

Frontlines are typically claims made as part of your refutation/rejoinder and do not necessarily follow traditional construction. These arguments are a series of arguments used to respond to procedurals, advnatages, disads, k’s, and counter-plans.

A frontlined response is designed to take the guess work out of argument construction during your rebuttals. A simple frontline on a Chinese Nationalism DA would look like the below.

1. non-unique: China is using an aggressive foreign policy now, should have triggered your impact scenario (cite evidence text below)
2. non-unique: China and the US routinely posture against one another to make passage of domestic policy easier. No reason to believe this scenario is any different. (cite evidence text below)
3. Link turn: our plan removes the need for China to implement an aggressive foreign policy through bi-lateral engagement. (cite evidence text below)

Another way of frontlining is to list a number of arguments (a dump) that you could pick and choose from based on your in-round strategy. A dump would simply be frontlined responses to the most likely arguments against you. Talk to a friend about the arguments they would make against the advantages, disadvantages, or procedurals you’re outlining. Now you can take those arguments made against you and answer them using frontlines.

A great example would be a dump against the nuclear war between the US and China impact scenario. This argument dump should list every argument you can find, and cite, that says China, or the US ,or both, would not want war. Why it is unlikely that a war would break out, and why this war would be so bad that it actually keeps it from being an option (the mutually assured destruction argument).

The number of possible responses to any given scenario is only limited by the number of sources you can find. Once you find the author, their literature becomes the warrant for your claim. Be sure to keep it short and to the point…30 seconds or less to run through the tag, source cite and text. If your tag and text take a long time to read you will have less time available for other arguments.

So, putting it all together you should begin accumulating word documents that are going to form the foundation of your case files. Once the final resolution was announced I was always surprised by how many of my arguments remained relevant. This is because even when the topic is announced you won’t have access to specific cases for a few more months.

During this time it’s best to consider the most predictable and intuitive cases under the topic and begin cutting arguments for that topic.

In part three we’ll discuss how you can use your policy chain outlines to make arguments for and against the most predictable case under any of the five possible final topics.

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The Lincoln Douglas Committee has revised the wording of the 5 resolutions for
clarification reasons. If you have already voted, and feel you need to change
your ballot, send me a new ballot. The new wording is given below:

______ A. The United States Federal Government should substantially change its military capability in regards to the People’s Republic of China.
[Only change is People's instead of Peoples]

______ B. The United States Federal Government should take action to protect U.S. Legal rights in regards to the People’s Republic of China.
[Only change is People's instead of Peoples]

______ C. The United States Federal Government should significantly change its trade policy and/or practices with the People’s Republic of China.
[Only change is People's instead of Peoples]

______ D. The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its engagement with the People’s Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: energy, environment.
[Change is People's instead of Peoples and instead of "adopt an energy or environmental policy that directly involves" is now "increase its engagement ... in one or more of the following areas"]
______ E. The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its economic engagement with the People’s Republic of China.
[Only change is People's instead of Peoples]

YOU MUST RANK ALL FIVE OF THE RESOLUTIONS IN ORDER FOR YOUR BALLOT TO COUNT.
(1st counts as 5 pts., 2nd counts as 4 pts., 3rd counts as 3 pts., 4th counts as
2 pts., and 5th counts as 1 pt.) The resolution with the hi8ghest points will
be the LD Debate Resolution for 2011-2012 and will be announced on July 1st.

PLEASE RETURN THIS BALLOT BY MAY 30TH TO THE NFA PRESIDENT (Lgene9535@aol.com).
If there is a tie, the NFA President will vote to break the tie.

Only one vote per school: Name of School: ______________________________________

Please vote again based on the amended resolutions for your favorite topic.

Makes sense to address the “People’s v. Peoples” that Nick brought up earlier – probably just an honest mistake by the committee.

I think the substantial changes to Topic D make that resolution much better in my mind. It answers my objections I posted earlier. It removes the need for multiactor fiat since now it’s clear that the US is increasing its engagement on the issue. This preserves negative ground based on China reaction to the engagement.

The changes also solve the “or” problem outlined in my post. Since it would have been nearly impossible to run an energy plan that didn’t also involve the environment affirmatives no longer have to worry about that “or” scoring easy wins for the negative.

I think this topic is vastly improved with the changes and I applaud the NFA-LD committee for listening to feedback and making some quick changes. I now think topic D would be OK.

The similar structure of D & E is an interesting situation. Schools that want the resolution more limited can vote for topic D whereas schools that want a broad topic can vote for E. I hope the similarities between the two don’t mean that the schools that prefer the economic engagement topic end up splitting the vote allowing a 3rd less preferred topic to sneak in.

Based on revised topic wordings I would have to now rank them:

1 – Topic C – trade
2 – Topic D – energy or environment
3 – Topic E – economic engagement
4 – Topic B – legal rights
5 – Topic A – military capability

moving the energy or environment from 5th to 2nd.

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I often find these conversations are helpful at the end of the season when so many coaches and students are experiencing burnout and may feel like all the hard work of the season was not worth it. So, I pose the question – why do you do debate? And specifically, why do you do NFA-LD debate?

I coach debate because I believe it’s the single greatest activity to improve critical thinking, argumentation, and public speaking skills. I can’t think of a single activity that does more to transform people into articulate advocates for their beliefs. Further, I know that the skills students learn in debate translate to success both in other classes and in life. That’s one reason I’m particularly excited about NFA-LD: there is a focus and ethic to encourage real world public address during the debate. That student’s do not only learn argumentation but also are taught the presentation skills they’ll need in their future endeavors once debate is over.

I do think there is value to being able to explain your point without resorting to jargon or increasing the pace of your delivery. I do think there is value to learning the importance of nonverbal communication and attire when presenting an persuasive message. I’m glad that, even if it’s 100% effective, NFA-LD stresses this side of debate.

In sum, I know that debate can teach incredibly value skills to students. And NFA-LD puts the emphasis on the areas of debate I value. That’s the two reasons why I continue to participate in NFA-LD debate.

This student from Cornell discusses her reasons for participating in debate:

Leah points out that as we speak, we also learn to think in an orderly and logical manner. “When we learn alternative ways to see a situation, we learn that we can challenge norms in a constructive manner. We don’t have to use confrontation; there are other ways to solve problems.

“Debate forces us to examine the root cause of problems. Once we figure that out, we can structure a plan that changes the negative situations around us. What we learn in debate, we can apply to other situations in our own lives.”

The Baltimore Urban Debate League’s study found debate had tremendous benefits for its students:

Although BUDL students are demographically identical to the overall Baltimore City Public School student population, the study found that BUDL students attend classes at higher rates than their peers, outperform their fellow students on state mandated exams and attend colleges and universities at higher rates. Comparisons of student scores on the Maryland High School Assessment (HSA) exams found that 54 percent of BUDL students passed the English exam, compared to 35 percent of their fellow students, and that 53 percent of BUDL students passed the algebra HSA, compared to 25 percent of their fellow students.

How about you?

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Summer vacation is one of the best ways to shorten the learning curve on any given topic area because you can focus on the political climate (who runs the show, who’s the opposition, who’s suffering, who’s on the margin, what are the major ideological conflicts, how’s the economy doing, etc.) in a country without looking for specific issues. This general knowledge can be devastating, if used properly, in a cross-examination or as extensions.

Bottom line, the best LD debaters know how to use summer vacation to their advantage. This article is the first in a series on how you can use your summer break to get ahead of the competition.

Step 1: Explore the topic area & build a Policy Chain

a. Familiarize yourself with the area being considered for the final resolution. The 2011-2012 topic area is China, so a great place to start your research would be with a simple search. Go to your favorite search engine type China, and click the news tab. If you prefer traditional news outlets I would recommend exploring China Daily or BBC. Both are great places to start for free content, and have extensive archives. Foreign Policy and The Economist are great sources as well, but a minor drawback is that it is a mix of free and pay content.

b. It is important that you understand the nuances of Chinese Domestic and Foreign Policy before you cut a single card. Specifically, you should be able to answer with some certainty what China is currently doing in terms of foreign and domestic policy, what China intends to do in those two areas in the immediate future, and what good/bad could develop from these policies. An example of a policy chain is below

1. China is looking to increase its interaction with the world, especially the west, through its UN Peacekeeping activities, but China remains weary of increased US/European Involvement in its sphere of influence (euronews 2011).
2. Chinese cultural identity is strongly linked to regional supremacy. Any threat to this order increases Chinese Nationalism and forces the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to take actions that preserve China’s regional legitimacy (Hughes 06).
3. Currently, popular nationalism is being held in check by the CCP (Hughes 06)
4. Actions by the US to pressure China to adopt political or social reforms encourage popular nationalism by fostering a perception of US interference with China’s sovereignty (Zhu 01)
5. Surges in Chinese nationalism lead to human rights abuses and war e.g. Uighur, Tibet and Taiwan (China Human Rights Defenders 2011)

Exploring topic areas in this fashion allows you to develop aggressive, generic in-round strategies. In the example above we see that item #4 (US Political Pressure=Increased Chinese Nationalism) serves as the link story in this specific policy chain. The uniqueness arguments are items # 1-3 (What China is doing now) and item # 5 functions as the impact scenario (Human Rights abuses).

We now have the shell of a solid, generic DA with a terminal impact of dehumanization. For those of you questioning dehumanization as a terminal impact I will cite the infamous Berube 97 card where he explains how dehumanization outweighs nuclear war.

Once the final resolution is announced you can go back and cut link cards that are specific to the resolution. You can also cut strategic topicality cards that force your opponent into an either or situation (If you’re topical my DA should link. If my DA doesn’t link it proves the you’re not topical- vote on T).

In Part 2 We’ll discuss how to turn these chains into cards and how to cut frontlines

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… The NFA-LD committee has just finished receiving results from the 2010-2011 coaches NFA-LD survey that was sent out two weeks ago to all active NFA member schools. Apparently, preliminary results indicate that a majority of debaters have decided against engaging the substantiative issues of the mental health topic all year. Beyond one or two cases debaters have generally resorted to topicality arguments instead of key issues identified in the topic paper for last year …

I won’t quote the whole thing detailing what’s going on this year – just read it on the IE-L or watch this video message from the committee. I must say that I have to agree based on the word on the street. The real issue though is the course of action the board has decided to take:

Therefore, we stand resolved that in order to debaters to really learn about mental health policy in the United States (AND NOT OTHER COUNTRIES/PLANETS!) we are hereby suspending all balloting for the 2011-2012 topic. Instead, we will repeat this topic for next year in the hopes that debaters will really research the 3-4 case areas available to them and not only 1-2.

Your thoughts? Read more information here.

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