[eDebate] JP's Democratic Oath!

[Josh Hoe]

One other thing,

I am not kidding about the public debate.

I believe that the vast majority of what you have espoused in edebate and
the majority of the arguments your team has run would be SHUNNED by the
academic community at large.  I believe that your model of debate would be
MUCH more hated than the rapid debate delivery that you claim is what makes
it unacceptable to administrators.  I also believe that simply speaking
slower but still using tech and traditional debate would be much more
accepted by them then your system.

I do not say this because I want your program to change - although you might
suspect that - I say this because it is proof of my enclaves arguments which
you jettison out of hand.  You cannot have it both ways.

I do not believe that performance debate should go away - or that your team
should be my team - I make arguments about how I think debate OUGHT be.
However, when you make arguments about how traditional debate fails the test
of administrators I think you are either not being reflexive or being
outright hypocritical.  Hence the challenge.

Josh


On 11/26/05, debate at ou.edu <debate at ou.edu> wrote:
>
>
> JP,
> I like the discussion.  At least you are taking the argument deeper,
> rather than misinterpreting what I am trying to say. (on the most part)
> I would ask what is this model I have been strapped with?
> Please define who I am, because I am not sure who or what you want me to
> be.
> Let me simplify this a little more.  My argument is that the topic needs
> to allow creative choices of action for affirming the topic, and not biased
> towards one ideological perspective.  Otherwise debate becomes a form of
> banking education, forcing the radical to verbalize things they disagree
> with, and thus creating the normalized hegemony needed to effectually
> promote our perceived exceptionalist form of polyarchy that is couched in
> terms of democracy.  Your day argument is my argument, that you surrender
> your convictions for faith in the "democratic" process.  I got no faith in
> that process. Do you?
> If you were aff, I would find a place to disagree with you, that would be
> my obligation to the process, not to verbalize things I disagree with on the
> affirmative as a form of action.
> One speech I should be an advocate, the other speech I should negate what
> the affirmative says. Now, what are we saying that is different, except you
> think I should be forced to say sick shit on the affirmative as my
> consensual surrender to the process?
> If your gonna quote day, you might as well quote cripe and muir!
> ---------------------------------------------------
> At 02:14 PM 11/25/2005, Jim Hanson wrote:
> >jackie
> >
> >racism is wrong.
> >
> >be "true" to your convictions and respond.
> >
> Jackie: [Responding to Steve Sawyer:] "I agree that when negative, you
> should negate the affirmative, and thus figure out how to disagree. I am
> not dismissing the educational vaule in that side of debate. No cowbells."
> So, how do you respond to the affirmative who says "Racism is wrong."?
> Second example: Pretend I'm aff & you're neg.
> I present your entire post as a 1ac. From your convictions, how do you
> ethically disagree?
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> What is my conviction model of debate?  Right now, the neocons and the
> moderates are the ones with this conviction model in their favor. Don't you
> get it?  It is only working one way.  There is no switch side in our current
> debate model, at least not for those who the ideology protects.  I never
> said conviction comes first, I said that the topic forces the radical to
> sacrifice that conviction on both sides of the topic, rather than just on
> the negative.
> Now Jim's model, racism is wrong.  Now if your model is so good, you
> should have to argue racism is good right?  So make some arguments. Now, if
> that is not fair, then you are not a true believer in real switch side
> debate, which is my argument. That's the illogical trap of switch side
> debate defenders. No JP, your model right now causes debaters to mumble five
> nuclear wars without a flinch, and people already attempt to advocate their
> least controversial conviction.  I think you let josh misconstrue your mind
> about what I am saying.
>
> ----------------------------------
>
> This is a vital question for your "conviction model" of debate. If a
> debater is confronted with an argument they completely, sincerely & in all
> conviction believe, how can they proceed without violating the sacrosanct
> principle of sincere conviction? Without a way for a judge to resolve the
> debate & the debaters to proceed, the debate dies. Your model creates a
> huge incentive for debaters to advocate their least controversial, deeply
> held convictions, that nobody in their right mind would find any
> disagreement. (Like Jim Hanson's example: Racism is wrong.)
> Aside from the arguments that:
> "debating against your closely held beliefs both increases conviction,"
> "exposes those convictions to the most rigorous testing possible (perhaps
> opening and changing minds...),"
> "leads us to a deeper understanding of our own social location, & more
> importantly, that of others."
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> This consensual community you claim we build is something I am afraid of.
> The consensus has been to give scholarhips to black kids instead of white
> kids. Oops, no, actually the other way around.
> The consensus has been to see womyn as the "in need of roommate" as the
> expenditures, on the chopping block for travel decisions.
> The consensus in our country has lead to the US being in a war in every
> year since its inception.  The consensus has resulted in the tyrrany of the
> majority.  This consensus occurs under the disguise of democracy, while
> injecting polyarchy on a global scale.
> This democracy discourse in Day's writing make me feel like W's giving
> another speech. Now those arguments josh was making about my ideology being
> of the conservative agenda make an awful bashing turn towards what is best
> to be promoters of the "free world".  The same "free world" that occupies
> Iraq and enslaves individuals in G-Bay.
> I say that Dhicks and Ron Green make an astounding indict of  Day in their
> writings to this effect.  I think your Day article feeds my position on why
> we should not sacrifice convictions for faith in a process that is a sham
> and based on the consensual normalization of the radical ideas for the
> purpose of agreement.
>
> Peace,
> Massey
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I think debaters are ethically obligated to continuously put themselves
> "in
> the shoes of those who disagree," yes, to the point of advocating their
> arguments.
> There is a good summary of why *public* debaters are ethically obligated
> to
> assume a critical distance from their own personal convictions and accept
> the force of better argument in order to build truly build consensual
> community at http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/96_docs/endres.html.
> Dennis Day [in the sexist language of the day] explains further how
> critical distance & *publicly* advocating arguments with which you
> disagree
> are ethically important:
> "all must recognize and accept personal responsibility to present, when
> necessary, as forcefully as possible, opinions and arguments with which
> they may personally disagree.
> To present persuasively the arguments for a position with which one
> disagrees is, perhaps, the greatest need and the highest ethical act in
> democratic debate. It is the greatest need because most minority views, if
> expressed at all, are not expressed forcefully and persuasively. Bryce, in
> his perceptive analysis of America and Americans, saw two dangers to
> democratic government: the danger of not ascertaining accurately the will
> of the majority and the danger that minorities might not effectively
> express themselves. In regard to the second danger, which he considered
> the
> greater of the two, he suggested:
> The duty, therefore, of a patriotic statesman in a country where public
> opinion rules, would seem to be rather to resist and correct than to
> encourage the dominant sentiment. He will not be content with trying to
> form and mould and lead it, but he will confront it, lecture it, remind it
> that it is fallible, rouse it -out of its self-complacency
> To present persuasively arguments for a position with which one disagrees
> is the highest ethical act in debate because it sets aside personal
> interests for the benefit of the common good. Essentially, for the person
> who accepts decision by debate, the ethics of the decision-making process
> are superior to the ethics of personal conviction on particular subjects
> for debate. Democracy is a commitment to means, not ends. Democratic
> society accepts certain ends, i.e., decisions, because they have been
> arrived at by democratic means. We recognize the moral priority of
> decision
> by debate when we agree to be bound by that decision regardless of
> personal
> conviction. Such an agreement is morally acceptable because the
> decision-making process guarantees our moral integrity by guaranteeing the
> opportunity to debate for a reversal of the decision.
> Thus, personal conviction can have moral significance in social
> decision-making only so long as the integrity of debate is maintained. And
> the integrity of debate is maintained only when there is a full and
> forceful confrontation of arguments and evidence relevant to decision.
> When
> an argument is not presented or is not presented as persuasively as
> possible, then debate fails. As debate fails decisions become less "wise."
> As decisions become less wise the process of decision-making is
> questioned.
> And finally, if and when debate is set aside for the alternative method of
> decision-making by authority, the personal convictions of individuals
> within society lose their moral significance as determinants of social
> choice." (Dennis G. Day, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of
> Speech, The Central States Speech Journal, February 1966, p. 7)
> So, for your personal convictions to have any significance, your quest for
> social change to amount to anything, the process of separating conviction
> from public debate is a necessary, ethical first step. [At least...that's
> my own conviction...]
> --JP Lacy
>
>
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