ARMY DEBATE AT “Join My Social Movement”

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A. OUR INTERPRETATION: THE AFFIRMATIVE SHOULD PRESENT A TOPICAL

PLAN OF ACTION AND DEFEND THAT THEIR POLICY SHOULD BE ADOPTED
BY THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

B. DEFINITIONS:

1. THE TOPIC IS DEFINED BY THE PHRASE FOLLOWING THE COLON –

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT IS THE AGENT OF THE
RESOLUTION, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL DEBATERS
Webster’s Guide to Grammar and Writing 00
http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm

Use of a colon before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can
stand by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on… If the
introductory phrase preceding the colon is very brief and the clause following the
colon represents the real business of the sentence, begin the clause after the colon
with a capital letter.

2. “RESOLVED” EXPRESSES INTENT TO IMPLEMENT THE PLAN

American Heritage Dictionary 00 www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=resolved

To find a solution to; solve …

To bring to a usually successful conclusion

3. “SHOULD” DENOTES AN EXPECTATION OF ENACTING A PLAN

American Heritage Dictionary 00 www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=should

Used to express probability or expectation

4. OUR DEFINITION OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXCLUDES ACTION BY

SMALLER POLITICAL GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS.
Black’s Law Dictionary 99 [Seventh Edition Ed. Bryan A. Garner (chief) ‘99]

Federal government 1. A national government that exercises some degree of control

over smaller political units that have surrendered some degree of power in exchange
for the right to participate in national political matters.

C. VIOLATION – THE AFFIRMATIVE IS NOT AN INSTRUMENTAL

AFFIRMATION OF THE RESOLUTION –
ARMY DEBATE AT “Join My Social Movement”
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D. REASONS TO PREFER –

1. PREDICTABILITY: the resolution sets the parameters for the debate. Affirmatives
would always win if there wasn’t predictable negative ground.

2. PRIVATE ACTOR FIAT BAD: advocating a personal movement or idea is unfair as

there’s no literature base to counter it. Running a topical version of their affirmative
solves all of their offense.

3. SWITCH-SIDE DEBATE SOLVES: topics are meaningless if we don’t debate both

sides. This is why topic-specific education outweighs general education.

E. VOTING ISSUE FOR GROUND, COMPETITIVE EQUITY AND JURISDICTION.

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Block Framework Cards

GROUND – THE AFF WILL ALWAYS WIN THAT THE PRINCIPLES OF THEIR
ADVOCACY ARE GOOD IN THE ABSTRACT – WE CAN ONLY DEBATE THE
MERITS OF THEIR FRAMEWORK IF THEY DEFEND THE SPECIFIC
CONSEQUENCES OF POLITICAL IMPLEMENTATION

Ignatieff 04 [Michael, Carr Professor, Human Rights, Harvard University, LESSER EVILS, 2004, p. 20-21.

As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should
never have truck with dubious moral means and should spare its officials the hazard
of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position
also holds that states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the
universal moral standards set out in human rights conventions and the laws of war.
There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving aside the question of
whether it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable, nonderogable
moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them in
specific cases. What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted
killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when
legal and moral distinctions between these are clear in the abstract, abstractions are
less than helpful when political leaders have to choose between them in practice.
Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards is that they contradict each
other. The same person who shudders, rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect
might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist
base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our
response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their
place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy
weapons. To stick to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under
terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us
defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right
might lead us to betray another.
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WITHOUT PREDICTABLE GROUND DEBATE BECOMES MEANINGLESS

AND PRODUCES POLITICAL STRATEGY THAT IS WEDDED TO VIOLENCE
AND FAILS TO ACHIEVE PRODUCTIVE CHANGE

Shively 00 [Ruth Lessl, Associate Professor, Political Science, Texas A&M University, POLITICAL THEORY
AND PARTISAN POLITICS, 2K, p. 182-183.

surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be

The point may seem trite, as
shared before they can be resisted and problematized. in fact, they are often very
candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or
"parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert.
But admitting the paradox is not helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only
implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For what the paradox
should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for
resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against
the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as
arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a
necessary ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged
ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and
some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to
insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of
subversion.
Yet difficulties remain. For agreement is not simply the initial condition, but the continuing
ground, for contest. If we are to successfully communicate our disagreements, we
cannot simply agree on basic terms and then proceed to debate without attention to
further agreements. For debate and contest are forms of dialogue: that is, they are
activities premised on the building of progressive agreements.
Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any
argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants
must agree on basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at
issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agree—and they do
so simply by entering into debate—that they will not use violence or threats in
making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by,
good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of argumentation.5
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This is A-Priori—it is a precondition to have a debate

Shively 00 [, gmr assist prof. pol science @ Texas A&M, 2000 (Ruth, political theory and partisan politics, ed: E.B.
Portis et al)

The requirements given thus far are primarily negative.

The ambiguists must say "no" to—they
must reject and limit—some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that
they must say "yes" to some things, In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of
rational persuasion.
This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the
basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here
is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of
contest—that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect
—if there is nothing at all left to question or contest.
In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some
matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not
on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting
condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes:
We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the
corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the
reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of
agreement. (Murray 1960, 10}
In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we
cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas
about what counts as evidence or good argument.
At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can
debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a
musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if
those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a
policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or
communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and
debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their
disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand.
And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some
agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation
rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be
resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the
paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert.
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Don’t act like you are on the moral high ground—your expression of “freedom” is a
coercive use of power. Instead of all of us sharing the constraints of the system, you
force it on us, using the same reasoning as George W. Bush in the War on Terror
Steinber 05 (Michael, “no rules, just right?” October 22, online,
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/steinberg221005.html )

As I was driving through Ithaca, New York, on the weekend of the Grassroots Folk
Festival, a guy with long curly hair and a beard -- the sort of ‘sixties revenant common in college
towns -- strode into traffic on a red light. I stopped my car, momentarily annoyed, and
he grinned and flashed me a V-for-Victory sign, which I suspect he must have
thought meant "peace."

He seemed happy with himself. as if he had asserted his freedom from both the
automotive world and the petty tyranny of stop lights. If that's the case, I wonder
what he would say if I told him that his version of freedom was exactly the same as
George W. Bush's.

When we play red light, green light at an intersection, we are all modestly and
equitably constrained. We take turns. When our libertarian pedestrian decides to
cross the street, though, all the rest of us are constrained to get out of his way. (He
can count on our doing this, since the only alternative is killing him.) The total
amount of constraint in this system is not diminished. It's just forced upon a single
party -- me -- instead of being shared.

In other words, the pedestrian's (apparent) notion of freedom is simply the power to
force other people to comply with his wishes. This is the same definition implicit in
Operation Iraqi Freedom and the other projects of the New American Century. It
might be described, with apologies to John Stuart Mill, as "My right to swing my
fist extends only as far as I can send you flying."
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Even subversives need a commitment to rules

Shively 00 [Ruth, gmr assist prof. pol science @ Texas A&M, 2000 (Ruth, political theory and partisan politics, ed:
E.B. Portis et al)

the ambiguists might respond that, even if there are such rules of
At this point,
argument, they do not apply to the more subversive or radical activities they have in
mind. Subversion is, after all, about questioning and undermining such seemingly
"necessary" or universal rules of behavior. But, again, the response to the
ambiguist must be that the practice of questioning and undermining rules, like all
other social practices, needs a certain order. The subversive needs rules to protect
subversion. And when we look more closely at the rules protective of subversion, we
find that they are roughly the rules of argument discussed above. In fact, the rules of
argument are roughly the rules of democracy or civility: the delineation of
boundaries necessary to protect speech and action from violence, manipulation and
other forms of tyranny.
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We have a disad to your interpretation: Free for all speech environments lead to
either coercion or irrationality—rules are essential to prevent this

Wegerif 02, faculty of education and language studies @ Open U, 2002 (Rupert, Reason and dialogue in education,
online, www.psy.vu.nl/iscrat2002/wegerif.pdf)

For Habermas the possibility of rationality is always implicit in successful

communication. One of his claims is that when the consensus assumed by
communicative action is broken then the options are coercion of one side by the
other (strategic action) or a move into explicit reasoning about different viewpoints.
Over time reason presumably emerges as the least costly option (it is worth noting that this may be a slow historical
process of which we are only at the beginning!). In Habermas’s account of communicative
rationality a second level of description of reason is often referred to as the social
rules governing what he calls an ‘ideal speech situation’. He never actually gives details of what
these rules are. However, at one point he quotes approvingly an account by Alexy of the
procedural rules that might be used to structure a speech situation in which
unforced agreement could be achieved. These are rules such as, that every participant has an equal
right to participate and to question claims (Habermas, 1990 p 92). Habermas' s insight here is that we
need shared social rules to open up a space for thinking between the Scylla of
coercion on the one side and the Charybdis of unreflective consensus on the other.