Take your ball and go home

[Stefan Bauschard]

Interesting Ks: (1)The anti-(some)K crowd is classist; 2) Here are a bunch
of Ks that are good that no one is attacking (those that impact policy
desirability).  

K debaters are certainly better at the spin.

Not wanting ot join them, SB

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Aaron Klemz wrote:

> I think that one of the most amusing parts of this kritik thread that has 
> sprawled out all over the listserve is the "get thee out of OUR policy 
> forum" argument that's popping up. What a hoot. You say that debate is a 
> game, and when you lose rounds you tell the people who won the ballot to get 
> out of "your" BEACH-FRONT COMMUNITY.
> 
> "This is what happens to deadbeats, Evans."
> 
> Now, not everyone is quite so contradictory in this thread, but nonetheless 
> I find the insistance on a "pure" form of policy making to be rather funny. 
> I think one of the most dramatic flaws in the way "policy making" happens in 
> the "real world" is the lack of rumination on the philosophical bases for 
> policy change. We have an exceptionally unexamined foreign policy 
> (especially military) policy that relies on what many serious scholars 
> believe to be an unreflective view of the state behavior (realism). You 
> don't have to be a nihilist to think that some discussion of the "hidden" 
> assumptions of the authors you cite might have some import on the policy 
> making process.
> 
> Hey, not everyone in this activity is a lawyer-in-training or a 
> congress_man_ (intentional) in the works. Some of us like the study of 
> argument (hence, the location of many debate teams in Communication 
> departments.) Some of us like to import other theories from diverse fields 
> (literary criticism [Spanos], film criticism [Trinh Minh-Ha], rhetorical 
> criticism [Nakayama, among others]) and test their "fit" in the context of 
> debate about policy.
> 
> In the end, the currency and strength of any argument, including the dreaded 
> "kritik" or "performative" argument can be seen in their competitive success 
> and the number of teams that utilize these arguments. Judges, in the end, 
> decide what arguments are "acceptable" and "unacceptable."
> 
> If you can't beat em, join em, that's what I said. And I _like_ it, too. 
> [grin]
> 
> Aaron Klemz
> Illinois State U.
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