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New Concerns About Civil Rights Topic

There have been several interesting concerns about the possibility of a 
civil rights topic.  I have a few different concerns of my own.

1.  Small Affirmatives-we witnessed the trend begin this year and it 
would certainly continue with the civili rights topic.  Competition is 
the name of the game and nearly every debater would agree.  Some will lie 
and say they don't care about the ballot.  I certainly hope these folks 
will be opposing me in any break rounds or out rounds that I participate 
in.  The point is simple:  there is an eternal search for the small plan 
mechanism that avoids any links to disads.  I can envision teams 
advocating plans that isolate one example of discrimination and claiming 
that they solve for it.  I don't mean to trivialize discriminatory 
actions by saying that recognition of such actions is unnecessary. I 
personally believe that discriminatory acts (race, gender, sexual 
preference, age, etc.) at any level, be it federal policy or a municipal 
ruling in some obscure county in Idaho are unjustified.  However, such 
affirmatives 
will actually serve to delegitimize the integrity of such an issue.  If 
debaters decide to be competitive (and this seems likely) these cases 
will be advocated.  The underlying reason behind this delegitimization of 
the issue will be the negative strategy.  hence, problem #2.

2.  Agent Action Counter-plans-if you were annoyed with delay 
counter-plans this year?  I do not want to be around you by the time 
Nationals rolls around.  Affirmatives will force negative teams to either 
delay the plan or locate some obscure actor to do the plan.  This is the 
only ground.  I envision several rounds where either NGO's or States or 
Cities will be better equipped to solve the problem.  Oh boy, a 
federalism debate.  In these rounds, the issue at hand of discrimination 
will not be discussed!  Instead, fiat abuse will be the top argument of 
every 2AR.  It seems to trivialize the issue.  At heart I would like to 
believe differently.  I simply can't.  We are debaters.  We are 
competitive.  Our coaches want us to do well because that is the linchpin 
to the financing scheme of their program

Furthermore, the weighing process will be quite difficult putting the 
adjudicator in a serious moral dilemma.  How does one determine the 
impact of justifying the continuance of racism in the interim before the 
delay CP kicks in?  I am not sure.  If we evaluate the post-fiat world, 
policies that are inherently bad will continue to exist absent the plan 
or counter-plan worlds.  No affirmative will be able to de-rail all of 
the either sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. blunders that our politicians 
have created.  This creates a disturbing situation where our tabula-rasa 
critcs might have to justify that "a little racism in the interim isn't 
that bad, we can do it later, right?  at least I didn't disrupt the 
bipartisan cooperation on foreign aid appropriations to somewhere in the 
world where it's needed to eventually avoid a conflict."  I personally 
wouldn't want to sit in the back of these rounds.  recent posts lead me 
to believe that judging is already very difficult.  Let alone,  being 
forced to decide these sensitive issues.

3.  This is a question and not a problem?  Would we include the rights of 
species.  would we debate the environment again?  I'm certain that some 
squads are ready to say that "SPecies loss is irreversible!  It outweighs 
all!"  This is also an answer to those of you who are concerned about 
debating China again because the high schoolers did a year ago.  I 
certainly would like to move away from the topic of the environment.  
Simply put, change is good.

4.  If human rights and civil rights are issues you want to debate.  SE 
Asia is the topic.  Check out the situation in Burma, it's horrific.  
people have been forced away from their native lands and consistently 
lied to by their government.  That is oppression!  Does the US have a 
role in the manner?  Let's answer this question.

Thanks,
Chip
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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