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Critiques




Both Mr. Whitney and Ms. Yackanech seem to be working from the concept that 
resolutional critiques are based on some form of punishment paradigm. While 
some teams do argue that sexist language, definitional inconsistency, 
inherent res flaws, etc. are reasons to punish the affirmative out of a 
ballot, I think there are plenty of good logical reasons to look at these 
types of positions as legitimate dejustifications of the resolution absent 
any punishment paradigm. It seems that the primary reason NOT to vote on a 
res flaw or resolutional linked language objection is ground and abuse 
arguments. 
Why should the idea of what is "fair ground" or "abusive" matter worth a 
squat in debate rounds if the judge's responsibility is to evaluate the 
arguments and the resolution as a proposition to be proven? Unless you 
adopt a games paradigm and accept that the focus of debate is to be a game 
then ideas like "fair ground" and "abuse" seem to have no reason to be 
weighed in the round. Sure, if debate is like football we need to have 
artifical rules and restrictions like fairness and ground to preserve the 
competitive game, but if it really intends to focus on intelligence, 
propositional inquiry, argumentation, and analysis, then any grounds or 
abuse arguments should be secondary to logical or well reasoned arguments 
as to why the resolution is unjustifiable.

-/-Pat Gehrke
-/-Cal State Chico

ps- By the way, if debaters claim a parametrical interpretation of the 
resolution, can't that be used as a tool to take out any resolutionally 
linked objections since the resolution's meaning and presuppositions are 
restricted solely to the case interpretation? 



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