For high school debaters with aspirations of competing in college, qualifying for the NDT is a frequent goal. But is it realistic? The popular perception is that debaters who qualify for the NDT are largely products of strong high school debate programs and expensive summer institutes that are afforded the opportunity to compete regularly at national circuit tournaments. But is that really the case?

In order to investigate whether this common wisdom is correct—and to find out more about the demographic makeup of the NDT field—the 156 debaters that have qualified for this year’s NDT were categorized by the high school from which they graduated, the state in which they attended high school, and the year that they graduated high school. This data was obtained for all but seven students. Debaters were also separated into four categories to reflect their competitive experience in high school:

1. Exceptional national circuit high school policy debaters—these students reached the elimination rounds of the Tournament of Champions and/or were consistently in the elimination rounds of major national invitationals.

2. High school policy debaters with national circuit experience—these students competed regularly at national circuit tournaments but did not typically reach the late elimination rounds.

3. High school policy debaters who competed only on local and regional circuits—these students may have attended a few national circuit tournaments but the vast majority of their competitive experiences were at the local or regional level.

4. No high school policy debate experience—these students may have competed in Public Forum or Lincoln-Douglas debate (including on the national circuit) in high school, but they did not compete in policy debate.

Assignments to these categories were subjective but hopefully provide an accurate picture of the overall composition of the NDT field in terms of the debaters’ high school backgrounds.

Debaters from 31 states have qualified for this year’s NDT. Kansas—a state that places limits on the distance and frequency of travel to tournaments outside of its borders—leads the list with 19 alums. Traditional high school debate hotbeds Texas (18), Georgia (16), California (14), and Illinois (10) round out the top five.

1. 19—Kansas
2. 18—Texas
3. 16—Georgia
4. 14—California
5. 10—Illinois
6. 6—Florida, Missouri
7. 5—Minnesota
8. 4—Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Washington
9. 3—Colorado, District of Columbia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia
10. 2—Louisiana, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin
11. 1—Arkansas, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wyoming

Only six high schools can claim three or more alums at this year’s NDT; another 20 have two alums apiece. Georgia’s Chattahoochee High School is the runaway leader with six students (from five graduating classes and competing for five different universities) attending the NDT.

1. 6—Chattahoochee (GA)
2. 4—Damien (CA), Glenbrook South (IL)
3. 3—Georgetown Day School (DC), Glenbrook North (IL), Shawnee Mission East (KS)
4. 2—Caddo Magnet (LA), Cathedral Prep (PA), Cedar Rapids Washington (IA), Celebration (FL), Centennial (ID), Digital Harbor (MD), Lexington (MA), Milton Academy (GA), Okemos (MI), Pace Academy (GA), Pueblo South (CO), Round Rock (TX), Shawnee Mission West (KS), Kinkaid (TX), Greenhill (TX), Westminster (GA), Woodlands (TX), Wayzata (MN), Westwood (TX), Wichita East (KS)

Students from nine high school graduating classes have qualified for this year’s NDT. The class of 2006 (mostly traditional fourth-year seniors) is represented by the highest number of students with the class of 2005 coming in second.

Of the 156 students that have qualified for the NDT, only 34 had extensive national circuit success while in high school and only 39 more had significant national circuit experience. In fact, the number of debaters whose high school experience was focused mostly on local and regional competition (75) is slightly more than the number who traveled extensively on the national circuit (73). The remaining eight students that have qualified for this year’s NDT had no high school policy debate experience.

What does this demographic analysis mean for current high school debaters hoping to one day qualify for the National Debate Tournament? National circuit success is certainly helpful, but it is not determinate: many debaters at this year’s NDT graduated from high school programs that did not provide them with extensive national circuit experience. While debaters from certain regions and with certain experiences undoubtedly have an easier path, the significant number of students that have reached the upper echelon of intercollegiate policy debate after competing at local and regional levels during high school provides ample precedent for those in similar positions who wish to make it to the top.

Typically composed of multiple policy options aimed at solving all or part of the affirmative case while avoiding a disadvantage that links only to the plan but not the counterplan, the multi-plank counterplan is now commonplace in high-level debates and has become a potent weapon in the negative’s strategic arsenal.

Affirmative teams that fail to adapt and keep up with this negative innovation are putting themselves behind the proverbial eight ball. This article is an attempt to help affirmative debaters effectively respond to the multi-plank counterplan and construct a winning strategy to defeat it.

Approach Cross-Examination Strategically

The cross-examination of the 1NC is particularly important in debates involving a multi-plank counterplan.

First, the disposition of the counterplan needs to be established. Is the counterplan a single position? Or can each individual plank (or combinations thereof) be extended or discarded? Asking for the disposition of the counterplan is not enough; “conditional” or “dispositional” needs to be clarified further for the affirmative to intelligently choose the best strategy for responding to the specific multi-plank counterplan against which they are debating.

Second, the net-benefit(s) to the counterplan need to be clarified and often contested. Is the politics disadvantage the only net-benefit to the counterplan? If so, why does the plan but not the counterplan trigger the link? The affirmative can get a lot of mileage out of a good cross-examination on the veracity of the negative’s intended link distinction.

Third, the solvency of the counterplan should often be questioned. What does a given plank do and why does that action solve the internal link(s) to the affirmative’s advantage(s)? Because multi-plank counterplans often include a “plank of the week” to solve common affirmative impacts, it is likely that the first negative will have little familiarity with the mechanics of the counterplan and the details of its solvency claims. In this way, a good cross-examination of a 1NC on a multi-plank counterplan will mirror a good cross-examination of a 1AC—setting up evidence indicts, investigating missing internal links, highlighting inconsistencies in context, etc. are all effective techniques.

Develop A Persuasive Theoretical Objection

Judges differ greatly in their opinions of multi-plank counterplans: some judges find them inelegant and absurd while others celebrate their strategic value for the negative. With the possible exception of the extreme neg flex fringe, however, the vast majority of judges will be amenable to well-articulated theoretical objections tailored to the specific multi-plank counterplan being debated.

There are two basic approaches that the affirmative should take depending on the specific situation.

1. Develop a theoretical objection to the disposition of the counterplan. Instead of just repeating the same “conditionality bad” objection that could be made in any debate, affirmatives should specifically object to the multi-plank nature of conditionality. If the negative argues that each plank of their counterplan is conditional, the 2AC should include a specific theoretical objection to this practice (preferably one that has been prepared in advance and which makes a complete, developed argument).

2. Develop a theoretical objection to the multi-agent nature of the counterplan. Multi-plank counterplans often include planks advocating action by several different actors: the federal government, one or more specific branches of the federal government, the 50-states and U.S. territories, the government of another nation, an international organization, etc. A persuasive theoretical objection can be levied against this practice.

Another theoretical objection that is sometimes levied against multi-plank counterplans is based on the absence of a single solvency advocate for all of its component parts. Because the counterplan as a whole is not advocated in the literature about the plan (or about the affirmative’s harm area in general), affirmatives argue that they cannot be expected to have prepared a defense against it. While this argument may have some merit, it is almost universally considered unpersuasive when each component plank of the negative’s counterplan is supported by evidence from a solvency advocate. While affirmative debaters can certainly make this argument, it tends to be perceived more as a “whine” than as a serious theoretical objection.

When extending a theoretical objection against a multi-plank counterplan in the 1AR, it is important to tailor one’s responses to the specific context of the round. While the reasons that conditionality is bad will certainly apply to a conditional multi-plank counterplan, they are not the best arguments the affirmative can advance—at least not without adapting them to highlight the problems inherent in multi-plank counterplans.

In addition, it is important to answer the inevitable negative counter-interpretation—whether it is “the neg gets one conditional multi-plank counterplan” or “the neg gets a conditional multi-plank counterplan as long as each plank has a solvency advocate” or something else, the negative will undoubtedly attempt to frame their multi-plank counterplan as eminently reasonable and not at all like the unreasonable multi-plank counterplans against which the negative is mounting an objection.

While many judges would scoff at a 1NC that included six conditional advantage counterplans, the same intuition is not as strong when the six conditional advantage counterplans are presented as a single conditional multi-plank counterplan. The key to winning a theoretical objection, then, is to deconstruct the multi-plank counterplan into its component parts and thereby force the judge to consider the argument not as “one conditional multi-plank counterplan” (perceptually reasonable) but as “six conditional counterplans” (perceptually unreasonable).

Use Permutations Strategically

It is imperative that the affirmative advance a series of permutations that can account for each plank of the counterplan. Too often, affirmative teams only offer a permutation to “do both,” inclusive of the plan and all planks of the counterplan. This is not strategic because it leaves the affirmative without the ability to develop a disadvantage to one plank of the counterplan while still capturing the benefits of the other planks. When the only permutation offered is “do both,” the negative can argue that the permutation links to the affirmative’s plank-specific disadvantage and therefore is not net-beneficial.

Instead of advancing only a “do both” permutation, the affirmative should present a “multi-plank do both” permutation: “do the plan and any/every combination of counterplan planks”. While parishioners in the church of neg flex might find this intuitively unfair, it is no different than advancing a permutation to “do both” on each of the independent planks of the counterplan. The benefit to this phrasing of the permutation, of course, is that it does not require the affirmative to invest valuable speech time meticulously permuting each plank of the counterplan one-by-one.

The “multi-plank do both” permutation can be a powerful tool when combined with offensive arguments against one or more planks of the counterplan. By permuting any/every component plank of the counterplan, the affirmative has enabled themselves to advocate the enactment of the plan and the plank(s) of the counterplan for which they do not have an offensive argument but not the plank(s) of the counterplan for which they do have offense. The negative is then forced to make one of three decisions: extend the counterplan as a whole and outweigh the disadvantage to one or more of its planks, kick the counterplan as a whole, or kick only the plank(s) of the counterplan against which the affirmative has made an offensive argument. Regardless of the choice that they make, the affirmative is in good shape—far better shape than they would have been had they only made a “do both” permutation in the 2AC.

Decide When To Read Disadvantages to a Plank

If each plank of the counterplan is independently conditional, the negative has the flexibility to kick out of the plank(s) against which the affirmative has read a disadvantage. As a result, disadvantages to a single plank should not be the core of the affirmative’s strategy if the negative is presenting their counterplan in this way. Unless the affirmative has strong disadvantages against all of the planks of the counterplan, it is far better in these instances to extend a theoretical objection to multi-plank conditionality. If the goal is to win this theoretical objection, reading a disadvantage to one plank of the counterplan can be helpful as a demonstration of the nefariousness of multi-plank conditionality: when the affirmative presents a disadvantage to one part of the counterplan, the negative can simply ignore it by kicking out of that portion of the counterplan.

If the counterplan as a whole is conditional but not its independent components, then disadvantages to individual planks can be much more valuable. Even if the affirmative only has a disadvantage to two of the negative’s five planks, the “multi-plank do both” permutation can help frame these arguments in a way that they can be favorably weighed against the negative’s net-benefit. Forcing the negative to choose between kicking the whole counterplan or outweighing the disadvantage(s) to the counterplan with the net-benefit puts the affirmative in a strong position entering the final rebuttals.

Contest Whether The Politics Disadvantage Is A Net-Benefit

The most popular net-benefit to multi-plank counterplans is the politics disadvantage. When deploying this strategy, the negative will read a specific piece of link evidence on the politics disadvantage in the 1NC that applies to the plan but not to any of the planks of the counterplan. The problem, of course, is that the absence of a link to the planks of the counterplan does not mean that there isn’t a link; the affirmative just needs to tease it out.

Ideally, the affirmative should be prepared with link evidence that can be applied to each plank of the counterplan. While this might seem like an impossible task—after all, the hallmark of the multi-plank counterplan is in many ways its unpredictability—it is easier than most teams seem to think.

First, the affirmative should prepare a politics link to every plank of every advantage counterplan that they have debated during the season. While negative teams often try to stay ahead of the curve by breaking new planks, the reality is that there are a relatively small number of advantage counterplans that an affirmative will debate over-and-over again. There is no excuse for not having a good politics link for each of these counterplans/planks.

Second, the affirmative should prepare links to each of the relevant counterplans produced by summer institutes or disclosed on the NDCA wiki. Even if each specific counterplan is not something a team debates, chances are good that the evidence they have gathered will have utility against other advantage counterplans in the future.

Third, affirmative teams should organize and store copies of politics link backfiles on their computers so that cards can easily be located and read. Many advantage counterplans are recycled from previous topics; this only makes sense—why write a whole new counterplan when the comprehensive research a squad completed in a previous season can be easily retooled? While these recycled counterplans may seem new to current debaters, rest assured that many of them have been exhaustively researched in previous seasons and take advantage of that research as part of your preparation.

Finally, the affirmative should collect a set of generic link arguments that are broadly applicable against a wide variety of policy proposals. When all else fails and the negative reads a plank against which no specific link was researched, the 2AC can fall back on these generic arguments to establish a link. Evidence making arguments like “legislation saps political capital,” “every new initiative distracts focus,” “spending money is controversial,” etc. can be incredibly valuable parts of the affirmative’s politics toolbox.

In addition to preparing links of their own, affirmative teams should capitalize when the negative reads links in the 2NC or 1NR that are not as specific to the plan as the link presented in the 1NC. While the negative’s first-line card might be very specific to the plan, there is a good chance that their second-line cards are not. If this is the case, the 1AR should connect the planks of the counterplan to the warrants in the negative’s new link evidence. Few teams have the argumentative discipline and high-quality evidence necessary to sustain a hyper-specific link to the politics disadvantage through the negative block; when they fall back onto more generic link claims, the affirmative should take advantage and capitalize.

Whether the planks of the counterplan link to the politics disadvantage is important, but perhaps more so is the extent to which a difference in the relative links to the plan and the counterplan is important. If both the plan and the counterplan link to the disadvantage but the plan links slightly more, should the judge vote negative because there is a greater risk of the disadvantage? In too many debates, the affirmative allows the negative to characterize the debate in this way and therefore earn the ballot even when both the plan and the counterplan link to the disadvantage. Instead of ceding this important framing issue to the negative, affirmatives should argue that relative differences in the magnitude of the link are irrelevant so long as both links are sufficient to overcome uniqueness.

For example, the negative might argue that a climate change bill will pass the Senate in the status quo but that the plan will derail this initiative by sapping the President’s political capital. If the affirmative wins that the counterplan saps the President’s political capital enough to derail the climate change bill, it doesn’t matter if the plan saps the President’s political capital more—the only question is whether the link is strong enough to overcome uniqueness. Once that threshold is crossed, the relative strength of the link to the plan versus the link to the counterplan is irrelevant.

Know When To Give Up Hope Of Winning A Solvency Deficit

The most common response made by the 2AC to a multi-plank counterplan is a solvency deficit argument: the counterplan does not solve the case, it is argued, because the plan is key. This explanation is rarely comparative; most often, the 2A simply repeats the thesis of their advantage(s) while asserting that the plan is therefore “key”. This is not enough. The fact that the plan might be one way of capturing an advantage does not mean that it is the only way. Unless the affirmative combines their “plan solves the advantage” claims with an explanation for why the counterplan does not solve the advantage, they have not presented a complete argument; “the counterplan does not solve because the plan does solve,” while common, does not meet this threshold.

Ideally, the affirmative will be prepared with evidence that specifically contests the ability of each plank of the counterplan to solve. Realistically, this is not always the case: sometimes the negative catches a team off-guard and leaves them with no substantive responses to one or more planks of the counterplan. The affirmative should do their best not to allow this to happen, but it is not the end of the world. The key to overcoming this kind of situation is to acknowledge early on that winning a meaningful solvency deficit for one or more advantages will be difficult if not impossible.

Instead of wasting valuable speech time repeating losing solvency deficit arguments, affirmatives should focus on beating the net-benefit or on winning a theoretical objection. In the end, even a well-articulated solvency deficit is only helpful when the affirmative can mitigate the impact of the net-benefit; when the affirmative’s solvency deficit explanation is weak, decisively defeating the net-benefit becomes even more imperative.

Knowing when to commit to winning a meaningful solvency deficit and when to abandon ship in favor of other arguments is vital. Teams whose strategy against a multi-plank counterplan is always centered on winning a solvency deficit are unnecessarily constraining their options and making things easy on the negative.

Conclusion

The multi-plank counterplan can be a powerful tool in the negative’s strategic arsenal. By presenting several advantage counterplans that attempt to solve the case, these positions can make it very difficult for the affirmative to win a credible solvency deficit that is not outweighed by even a minimal risk of a net-benefit. In order to catch up with this negative innovation, affirmative teams need to improve the quality of their responses and strategically rethink the way they approach multi-plank counterplans.

OVERVIEW/THE CARDS

While coaching part-time at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart on the 2005-2006 Civil Liberties topic, Lindsay Harrison maintained a blog called Legal Debate that discussed the intersection of debate argumentation and legal scholarship and theory. When announcing the blog’s creation in September of 2005, Harrison—a former champion debater at The Greenhill School and the University of Southern California and a rising star in the legal world—explained her motives in creating the site:

This blog intends to provide a forum for high school debaters debating this year’s Civil Liberties topic to engage in discussions with law professors about the topic. Many of the arguments that reoccur year after year in the debate community are areas where law professors have special expertise: federalism, presidential powers, separation of powers, the hollow hope, critical legal studies, etc.

My hope is that this forum functions as a site for clarification of debaters’ questions about the law, as well as a site for argument innovation.

In addition to posting a summary of her academic qualifications, Harrison included an explicit disclaimer about the citation of her blog as evidence in debates:

Disclaimer #2: I work occasionally as a judge and part-time, pre-round coach for Carrollton (School of the Sacred Heart). Nothing in this blog is available exclusively to Carrollton debaters, nor do any of my posts exist for the purpose of providing evidence for debaters.

Throughout the 2005-2006 season, Harrison posted articles discussing a broad range of legal topics. Despite Harrison’s disclaimer, debaters—thankful for the well-written and easily accessible application of legal concepts to debate arguments—began citing the Legal Debate blog as evidence in contest rounds. The most popular cards were those used to bolster the negative’s argument that court decisions link to the politics disadvantage; other popular cards included affirmative responses to the Hollow Hope disadvantage and to judicial process counterplans.

There was a certain degree of controversy about the practice of reading evidence from Legal Debate during the remainder of the season, but a firestorm did not erupt until the Supreme Court topic in college debate. In September of 2006, Harrison posted another disclaimer on her blog reiterating that it was not to be used as evidence in debates:

(2) To clarify, I do NOT intend that anything on this site be read as evidence in a debate. This site is merely meant to clarify certain legal questions for the debate community. In my opinion, evidence should be peer-edited, or at least edited by someone. Nothing on this site has been edited or checked by anyone else. I recommend that you do NOT use anything posted here in an actual debate.

Despite this disclaimer, college debaters continued to cite the “Harrison ‘05/’06” evidence. In March, Harrison posted a message to e-Debate disavowing this practice yet again:

It has come to my attention that teams are reading “evidence” from a debate blog that I ran last year when the high school topic was a legal one. I started the blog because, in judging debates on the topic, I was frustrated by what I saw as misunderstandings of the legal system by many in the debate community. I also was frustrated by a lack of creativity in devising arguments as a result of a lack of broad legal knowledge. I intended the blog both to educate and to generate new ideas for argumentation. I did NOT intend the blog to be used as evidence, especially not in college debates where I figured the community would recognize that none of my posts were peer-reviewed (or reviewed by anyone at all), none of my posts were backed up by specific research, and none of my posts would ever qualify as “legal scholarship.” In fact, I am merely giving people ideas for arguments and I do not necessarily advocate any of the ideas as my own – I consider evidence to be taken out of context if it says, “debaters should argue that bush would get credit” and folks read only the part suggesting “bush would get credit,” thereby attributing that idea to me.

When I found out that people were reading “Harrison 06” evidence from the blog as link cards on the court politics argument, I made an effort to end this. Whenever anyone read this evidence in front of me, I asked that they not do so in the future. I also posted something on the blog that I intended as a disclaimer for people not to read “evidence” from the blog.

I have been traveling internationally for several months and, upon my return, I found out that people have continued to read this evidence in debate rounds. Accordingly, I am now sending this to edebate in the hope that the community will recognize definitively that I do not want blog posts from my debate education blog to be read as “evidence” in rounds.

Please do not read evidence from my debate education blog in rounds. I consider it to be taken out of context. I hope that if people do read this evidence in rounds that judges will penalize those teams for reading evidence that the author considers out of context.

In addition to issuing this public statement on e-Debate, Harrison deleted all of the posts on the blog (with the exception of those cited in this article) and issued a final admonition about citing her blog in debates:

(3) I have discovered that people are citing posts made here as evidence in college debates, which was never my intent. Accordingly, I will be shutting this blog down and removing previous posts. Hopefully, this will put an end to the practice of citing this blog in debates.

This announcement spurred a vibrant discussion on e-Debate; a complete list of postings is available in the March 2007 archive. After the controversy died down, it seemed like the issue would finally be resolved: the posts had been taken down and there was general agreement that Harrison’s writing on Legal Debate should no longer be used as evidence in contest rounds.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS EVIDENCE

Fast forward to the 2009-2010 season and high school debaters are once again citing evidence from Legal Debate to support their arguments about the judicial branch. Since Harrison’s posts have been removed—and are not available from the Wayback Machine—it is clear that students are simply recycling cards from old backfiles without checking to make sure the original source still exists.

The citation of Legal Debate is almost certainly not nefarious: current high school seniors were in eighth grade when the Civil Liberties topic was being debated and it is highly unlikely that many of them were regularly perusing e-Debate at the end of their novice years (when the college controversy was at its peak).

In any case, however, the practice of reading cards from Harrison’s blog needs to stop. Even if the intentions of the author are discarded, the fact that the posts being cited are no longer available online is reason enough to discontinue their use. Were they to be reposted (either in the Wayback Machine or by an enterprising debater or coach who had saved local copies of the posts before they were removed), their use would still be in direct contravention of the author’s wishes. And even if that is not enough for some, the fact that the author indicted the credibility of her blog posts most certainly should be.

HOW TO ANSWER THIS EVIDENCE IN DEBATES

This should be an easy case to make for the team indicting the evidence: simply pointing out its context and the fact that it is no longer available online should be sufficient for the vast majority of judges. If the opposing team insists on defending the use of the evidence, reading a short card from Harrison should be enough to earn a decisive victory.

(___)

Disregard their Harrison evidence—

It’s from a blog post that is no longer available online and that was written by a debate coach to educate students about how best to make arguments about the judiciary, not to be cited as evidence. Harrison does not consider her posts to be credible evidence—the judge should not evaluate their card(s).

This is the third in a series of articles highlighting popular but poor-quality pieces of debate evidence. If you’d like to recommend a card for inclusion in this series, please leave a comment or contact the author.

Malgor Warming up for the Podcast

Topics discussed in this podcast include

-how we are in fact real Americans who fight for the rights of everyone

-How debating the K like a DA is brilliant… only the exact opposite

-Why is everyone else not as smart as us?

- Your big words (like “link”) would work in front of me, except i’m way smarter than you

-When is Framework a necessary argument? Answer- When we tell you it is!

Roy was also along for this podcast- we told him to speak up anytime he had something insightful to add.

You can mainline this mother right into your veins here.

You should probably also read this post, not going to duplicate.

Don’t ask about cards the other team didn’t read- if you aren’t paying close enough attention to their speech to know what arguments you have to answer why should I be paying close attention to yours?You can’t just assume any card on a piece of paper they brought up for their speech was read. Pay attention, flow.

Don’t ask about potential arguments against what they just said in their speech. Examples of this

“You read mead, why didn’t X economic decline cause the impact”.

What do you hope to happen with this question? I can see one of 3 outcomes

1. They mess up answering- oh but wait, they get more speeches after that to fix it so you have accomplished literally nothing.

2. They BS you- which happens 99.9 percent of the time- congrats you have just wasted some cx time

3. They say something like “make that argument and we will answer” – while a true response also kind of dumb but less dumb than your initial dumb question.

This is a point I have brought up a few times in conversations and people seem to disagree with me, I would love to see the rational for why its a good idea to preview arguments you are about to make and what function this serves. It is much better to set up arguments in CX than make them. So for the econ example above, instead of saying “what about X recession” , ask questions that set up you making the argument about that recession like “how far does the economy have to decline for your impact” or similar threshold related questions. This is actually getting them to commit to something they can’t back track on later that will help you win your argument.

A sort of similar line of questioning that I think is totally useless as used now is the “what cases meet your interpretation” question about T. This is useless because

A. if they are any good at T they will have to say that in a speech, so why let them do it for free in your CX

B. The 2AC usually reads a prescripted T block anyway

C. There are rarely any meaningful follow up questions that use this question as part of a strategy.

Again- what are you trying to accomplish? Get them to admit no case meets? Not going to happen. Let’s say best case scenario they say “I can’t think of any”-what has this achieved for you? If the 2NC goes for T and lists some, its not like you can say “Whoa whoa whoa, extend cross-x, the 1N couldn’t think of any, this is a VI”.

“your evidence says A, but we read a card that says B”

This isn’t even a question, so I guess I never see people “ask” it, but I see it done in CX all the time. You are making an argument- thats not the point of CX. Think about it- why do we have a part of debate where the point is to ask questions and not make arguments- why not just abolish cx altogether and add time to speeches? Because you are supposed to be displaying a different skill set- you are supposed to be skillfully setting up future arguments, not clumsily making them. Another example of this is ” our card is from a professor, why should we prefer your card from a staff writer”. The only conceivable goal of this question is to make an argument. You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing.

“What about X random issue you didn’t address in your last speech”

If they didn’t address it and its devastating why are you brining it up in CX instead of a speech? This can only hurt you. No judge is going to go “my god, they didn’t address that?” sign their ballot and walk out.

Making little comments before moving onto your next question like “Well I don’t think this card says that” or “well we’ll see” etc.

We get that you are arguing against their position, we assume you disagree. This is CX- ask a question, don’t make arguments particularly stupid arguments that are just an unwarranted statement of your opinion. What are you trying to accomplish with this? Has a judge ever given a decision and said “upon first reading I thought their card DID say X, but then as I was about to fill out my ballot I remembered that thing you mumbled in CX about how it didn’t and low and behold- IT DIDNT!!”

This one applies to more than just cross-x: save your facial expressions and exasperated groans/comments for complaining about how I screwed you after the round. I remember occasionally seeing people do this when I debated, but it seems that this is a trend going out of control (it could just be that I notice it more as a judge since I spend more time looking at the debaters) . It even spills over to when the other team is speaking, I notice teams waving their arms and contorting their faces while either mouthing or actually saying “WHAT” or “NO!”. What are you trying to accomplish with this? Do you think I was buying what the other team said but then saw your face and thought “oh well if he’s not buying it, no sale here madame”. It just makes you look like a total loser. Especially if you have to give a speech still- why don’t you try prepping instead of overreacting to every single thing the other team says. Tarantino agrees

But seriously- SHUT UP when the other team is giving a speech. I don’t want to listen to you when its your speech time, let alone when another part of the debate is going on. I don’t know when people started to think it was ok to converse loudly with their partner or themselves during an opponents speech. If you have to communicate with your partner, lean over and whisper in their ear at a level where they can barely hear you. People have also started talking to the partner of the person on the other team who is talking to find evidence or something- where did this come from? Esp if its during the 2NC the 1N is under no obligation to do your bidding- that is their time to prepare their speech. You had time before the 2NC and get cross-x after it to get your stuff back. In general the neurotic need to get everything you read back is stupid- if you have some familiarity with your evidence it wouldn’t be such a pressing need. Any card you read in the 2AC should of been read through several times in the process of writing/practicing blocks.

Not related to cross-x but another little rant- 1A’s should have read through all 2ac blocks before getting to the tournament. Two reasons for this

1. You have to give a speech about them so it might behoove you to have some idea what they say. Perhaps jot down some notes about crucial cards/arguments so that you are prepared to give a good 1AR with less prep.

2. No one is perfect, if you write a ton of 2AC blocks odds are some of them will stink. With no external check (someone else reading them) you aren’t going to discover they stink until it is to late. Writers have editors for a reason- the 1A should check through all the 2AC blocks, and you should maybe even have a conversation about some of the more important ones. If you show up at a tournament as the 1A having no idea what the aff answers are to major neg arguments you are unprepared.

“Fair enough”. This is usually said in CX when someone thought they had a devastating question and then the other side gave them an answer they weren’t ready for. Somewhat stunned, the asker now says “Fair enough” and moves on. This displays a critical problem- the lack of a reasoned line of questioning. You should think ahead of time how you are going to react to various answers they could give. If they give one you hadn’t thought of, you should think about it and ask a follow up. One thing I never see people do in CX is take 5-10 seconds and think after an answer before asking a follow up. I think most people think they have to just keep asking questions for some reason. CX is your time, use it how you want. One way you should want to use it is by thinking up thoughtful lines of questioning based on how the other team answers your questions. This applies to answering questions as well- sometimes you will need to think about an answer for a while, you shouldn’t be ashamed of that. It is not a virtue to spout off before thinking.

Some points on answering questions.

Way too many people think they are funny and give snide response answers when they are not. Laughter is a good form of feedback- if in a CX you have already made 5-6 snide comments and didn’t get any laughs, that is prob a good indication you should lay off and go for straight answers. Even if you are really funny, more than 2 or 3 jokes when you are supposed to be answering questions is pushing it. In cx you should be giving precise, accurate answers to questions. Anything else is basically wasting the other teams time. Some think that is a legitimate tactic- to draw out answers unnecessarily long, or to dodge questions/play dumb about them. I do not. If you feign ignorance in CX and then in your next speech make arguments that show you were faking it, I am likely to nuke your points/not give you credit for your new found understanding of the issue.

I see this one a lot in K debates when questions about does the alt include the plan get asked- the neg usually blusters around and pretends they couldn’t possibly understand what the aff is saying until in the 2NR they go “The aff has conceded our starting point argument- this is basically a delay CP- rethink and then do the plan”. This kind of playing dumb wastes everyone’s time and makes you look lack a jackass. Same with “what are the net benefits to the CP”- people who say like “what isn’t a net benefit to the CP” or ” its your job to…” are, in my mind, trying very hard to not win speaker awards. Why people think it is legitimate to basically lie or obfuscate in CX is beyond me

Responding to a question with a question- stop that. Usually this is done when the other team has asked a black and white yes or no question and you don’t want to answer it with a yes or no. Sometimes instead of asking a response question the team will instead launch into a big explanation of why they refuse to answer. Remember- CX is for asking and answering questions, its not for making arguments – even when you are the person answering questions its NOT for making arguments. Explaining why you don’t want to answer is an argument. Answer the question, and if need be, you can explain yourself later. Here is how this should go

“A or B”

“A”

“They concede in CX its A”

“When faced with a black and white a or b yes we would chose A, but that is rhetorical sleight of hand that rigs the game”

“…”

Alternatively it can go like this

“A or B”

“C or d”

“this is my cross-x”

“is it?”

“X or Y”

“We don’t think it’s as simple as X or Y so I’m not going to answer that”

Which exchange looks better for the team answering questions?

Never say “we don’t take a position on that”. The main reason is you have in 99 percent of cases in fact taken a position on it. Somehow people think that refusing to answer these sort of K link questions is a successful tactic. Think about it- how many debates have you seen decided where the judge said “I voted aff on no link- the CX wouldn’t explain a concept they clearly talked about in the 1AC, so the neg did not win a link”.

Let’s look at an example, the aff reads the Khalilzad card. The neg is trying to set up a security K link.

“What is security?”

“We don’t take a stance on that”

Well yes obviously you do you moron. Even though you don’t have “observation 2 security IS…” you clearly talked about the concept of security in your 1AC. Not answering/clarifying what you think security is allows the neg to insert it for you, when they get up and say ” the concept of security is a social construct” you can’t now say “actually its XYZ” because you already forswore that strategic option.

These K questions are SO DUMB for the neg to ask because they give the aff a chance to put their claims in context FROM THE GET GO which makes winning your links much harder. So lets say the aff read food stamps with Heg and hunger. Same line of questioning-

“What is security”

“Well in the SQ security is usually thought of as simply the safety of the nation state, however we think security is a combination of state and human security, thats why it’s important to recognize both threats to international order and individual people”

Now you are hosed. Unless the aff actually answers with “Security is an objective concept measured through quantitative social science methods…” no answer to this question is going to help you.

There are even worse examples. Lets say the neg says

“how do we know china is a threat”

Usually the aff answers with some nonsense like “we don’t take a position on that” – what better K link for china threat could there be then the aff saying “we dont say why china is a threat, we just say they are”!!.

One last example,

“Why didn’t you talk about XYZ issue in your 1AC”. Most teams either say “thats not relevant” (which is usually the neg link) or “we don’t take a stance on that” (which is def. one of the negs links). Sometimes the aff will say “due to time constraints” which is slightly better but still not great. I’ll leave this one as a dan brown/24 esque cliff hanger to be picked up as the starting point of part 2.

Below the fold is one I thought was dec.

Bruce Cumings is the Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Bruce, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/Jun2002, Vol. 58, Issue 3 p. ebsco
If you thought the twentieth century was cruel, with upwards of 100 million people killed in warfare, wait until the twenty-first: “This cycle of violence will continue far into the new millennium,” writes John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. “Hopes for peace will probably not be realized” because great power competition is the natural state of affairs–making for a world of sharp conflict that is nasty, brutish, and eternal. Mearsheimer offers his theory of “offensive realism” in “a handful of simple propositions” that come at the reader like staccato machine-gun fire. Great powers are those that can field a conventional army capable of conducting all-out war, and that have a survivable nuclear deterrent; they perpetually seek to maximize their share of world power in a zero-sum struggle with other powers doing the same thing; and their ultimate aim is to be the hegemon–”the only great power in the system.” This state of affairs is tragic, according to Mearsheimer, precisely because it is unavoidable and ineluctable; it is neither designed nor intended by human beings, yet we are all caught up in it, inescapably and forever. This book does not have a tragic tone, however, because Mearsheimer is having too much fun explaining why we’re all going to hell in a hand basket of our own (unconscious) design. This treatise is a milestone in the literature of realpolitik for its simplicity and directness, its unswerving commitment to a single handful of pithy, tried-and-true realist propositions, and its unalloyed, straightforward shoot’em-up style. Bullets seem to whiz by as Mearsheimer tells us that anarchy reigns in the international system; that the guy with the biggest gun wins (“the strongest power is the state with the strongest army”); it’s a dog-eat-dog world and when you get into trouble there’s no 911 to call; going democratic won’t help either because regime type makes no difference (democracies fight each other, too); and a cruel fate awaits us all because for every human neck, “there are two hands to choke it.” If this sounds like the Clint Eastwood theory of international affairs, Mearsheimer would only take that as a compliment. His fervid and often funny style will make the book standard reading in the classroom; indeed, generations of students will enjoy throwing brickbats at his arguments. The big powers, being big powers, are always on the march. If they aren’t, well, they’re just biding their time and building up their armies, looking for a chance to strike. The French will delight in Mearsheimer’s account of modern German history, with Germans on the aggressive onslaught every day of the week from Bismarck through Hitler, just as Koreans will love his depiction of Japan’s single-minded expansionist bent from 1868 to 1945. History is the place where Mearsheimer “tests” his propositions, and it’s hard to fail the test: Even pasta and wine-loving modern Italy was constantly seeking “opportunities to expand”; its “hostile aims were ever-present.” If Italy nonetheless wasn’t going anywhere, it was because “its army was ill-equipped for expansion.” You would think that the spectacle of the world’s second-ranking superpower closing up shop and turning itself into 15 squabbling nations in 1991 would be a bit of a stretch for the tenets of “offensive realism,” but no–the Soviet Union’s self-liquidation was another instance of realism in action. Now the theory tells us that the great clash of the new century will be between the United States and China. But we don’t need to worry about Japan and Germany: They may be the second and third largest economies in the world, but they haven’t been great powers since 1945. Why? Because the United States keeps its troops on their soil. And if the troops should leave? Then they’re great powers after all and all bets are off. It’s nice to have a parsimonious theory that explains everything. The book is a bit too simple, however, in its confrontation with a narrow literature of international relations unique to the American experience and the American academic scene. There are only two theories, realism and liberalism (or idealism), as Mearsheimer tells us today, and as George Kennan told us half a century ago in his classic little book, American Diplomacy. The liberals are irremediably deluded, of course, but the only realists that capture Mearsheimer’s attentions are his contemporaries in American political science like Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Krasner, and Stephen Walt, or renowned predecessors like E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau. Completely absent is the important literature in international relations that goes far beyond the simple dichotomies of realism and idealism, like the world economy theories of Karl Polanyi or Immanuel Wallerstein, important work on hegemony by Robert Cox and Stephen Gill, the realist political economy done by Susan Strange, or the application of critical theory to international relations by James Der Derian, Robert Latham, and others. The growing body of feminist work on international relations would be even more remote from Mearsheimer’s concerns, but perhaps by now there is something refreshing in an author who never seems to have heard of the race-class-gender triptych.

• evidence used to advance arguments outside its intended context;
• evidence citing unqualified, (functionally) anonymous, or even nefarious authors;
• evidence culled from (typically internet or tabloid) sources that are at best unedited and at worst contemptible;
• evidence advancing hyperbolic arguments supported by vitriolic and/or over-the-top language;
• evidence so old that it no longer makes sense given subsequent events or changes in the topic it discusses; and
• evidence which must be liberally interpreted in order for it to be used to support the desired conclusion.

The “Bad Cards” series is an attempt to highlight some of the most egregious examples of poor-quality evidence that is nonetheless commonplace in high school policy debates. It is not the author’s intention to “scold” or “shame” those who have read these pieces of evidence in the past or who will do so in the future. Instead, it is an attempt to influence the way that evidence is selected for inclusion in debate arguments by arming opposing students with the tools they need to defeat bad cards.

OVERVIEW

A common terminal impact to terrorism advantages and disadvantages, the Corsi ‘5 card is used to support the claim that terrorism is an existential threat to humanity. There are many problems with this so-called “evidence,” but the bottom line is this: it outlines a fictional account of a specific sequence of events dreamed up by a discredited and indeed contemptible author that—even if true—is not relevant in the vast majority of debates in which it is deployed.

SIDEBAR: CORSI’S INVOLVEMENT WITH ACADEMIC DEBATE

Jerome R. Corsi debated for St. Ignatius High School and Case Western Reserve University in the 1960s. At the 1966 National Debate Tournament, he and his partner (Ken Seminatore) cleared to the octafinals before losing to Emporia State; Corsi was named the 20th speaker. In an interview with “Set the Record Straight,” Corsi mentions his experience in debate:

SWETT: Dr. Corsi, you knew and debated against John O’Neill back in the early 1970s. How did you come to re-establish contact with him? Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what led to the decision to write the book “Unfit for Command.”

CORSI: Yeah, it’s interesting, Scott. When I was in college, I was in Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, and John O’Neill was at Annapolis. We were intercollegiate debaters. And we knew each other quite well. I had been very successful in intercollegiate debate. In fact, my partner and I won the Georgetown tournament. I believe it was 1966. And Bob Shrum was organizing and he was the head of that tournament at that time because he was working in debate at Georgetown University.

An article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer also mentions his debate experience:

A champion high school and college debater, he graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1964, Case Western Reserve University in 1968 and Harvard University (with a doctorate in political science) in 1972.

After graduating, Corsi maintained a connection to debate. In 1984, he presented a paper at the Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association in Chicago that he co-authored with David A. Thomas entitled “Extending the Boundaries of Debate Theory: A Value-Bounded Policy Decision Making Paradigm”. While Thomas was noted as an Associate Professor and Director of Forensics at the University of Houston, “Dr. Corsi” was listed as “Vice President with Benefit Concepts, a business and financial consulting firm in Denver”. He also wrote an article in the Journal of the American Forensic Association in 1983 called “Zarefsky’s Theory of Debate as Hypothesis Testing: A Critical Re-Examination” in which he “attack[ed] the intellectual roots of hypothesis testing” and another in 1986 entitled “The Continuing Evolution of Policy Systems Debate: An Assessment and a Look Ahead.”

Corsi explains his background a bit more in the interview with “Set The Record Straight”:

ZIEGLER: So you’ve been studying, Dr. Corsi, for decades – I mean John Kerry for decades. You’ve been into this – you’re a historian trained by profession and education, and essentially the book “Unfit for Command” is a continuation of a historical analysis.

CORSI: Yeah Tim, I’m a political scientist. I got my Ph.D. at Harvard in 1972, and I have always been fascinated with and studied political violence, political protests.

The very first things I wrote were even before I went to Harvard. I wrote some things on political – racial violence, on race riots. “Shootout in Cleveland” I was co-author of, and that ended up being one of the task-force reports to the Eisenhower Commission on the causes and prevention of violence. That was in 1969 it was published.

I always had an intuitive understanding of political protests and political violence. I got a top-secret clearance from the government in 1981 after I published a computer model that predicted the outcome of terrorist events. I published that in a journal at Yale in 1981, and then I started getting requests all over the world from intelligence agencies for that paper, and I got contacted by the Agency for International Development to help them on hostage survival when the Reagan administration just came in.

So I’ve been at this for a long time. I stopped doing the work on political violence – it kind of burned me out for a while – and I changed careers. I left universities and I went into financial services. I’ve been an innovator bring annuities, selling insurance in banks. That was really my claim to fame in financial services. I created four companies doing that that were all very successful.

It was John Kerry running for president that got me to feel an enormous urge that I just had to get out and tell the public what I had known. I kind of always felt, even back in the 1970s, that if this guy ever decided to run for president, I was going to speak out against him because I knew in detail the radical nature of his anti-war activities.

Exactly what Corsi’s relationship to academic debate between the time he graduated from Case Western and the time he transitioned to a career in the financial industry is unknown.

THE CARD

(_)

Terrorism causes extinction.

Jerome R. Corsi, author who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, 2005 [“Sleeper Cells and Nuclear Bombs: The Threat To American Security,” Atomic Iran: how the terrorist regime bought the bomb and American politicians, Published by WorldNetDaily Books, ISBN 1581824580, p. 176-179]

The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom.

The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists.

There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble.

Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy – Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us.

Then, too, we would face an immediate threat from our long-term enemy, the former Soviet Union. Many in the Kremlin would see this as an opportunity to grasp the victory that had been snatched from them by Ronald Reagan when the Berlin Wall came down. A missile strike by the Russians on a score of American cities could possibly be pre-emptive. Would the U.S. strategic defense system be so in shock that immediate retaliation would not be possible? Hardliners in Moscow might argue that there was never a better opportunity to destroy America.

In China, our newer Communist enemies might not care if we could retaliate. With a population already over 1.3 billion people and with their population not concentrated in a few major cities, the Chinese might calculate to initiate a nuclear blow on the United States. What if the United States retaliated with a nuclear counterattack upon China? The Chinese might be able to absorb the blow and recover.

The North Koreans might calculate even more recklessly. Why not launch upon America the few missiles they have that could reach our soil? More confusion and chaos might only advance their position. If Russia, China, and the United States could be drawn into attacking one another, North Korea might emerge stronger just because it was overlooked while the great nations focus on attacking one another.

So, too, our supposed allies in Europe might relish the immediate reduction in power suddenly inflicted upon America. Many of the great egos in Europe have never fully recovered from the disgrace of World War II, when in the last century the Americans a second time in just over two decades had been forced to come to their rescue. If the French did not start launching nuclear weapons themselves, they might be happy to fan the diplomatic fire beginning to burn under the Russians and the Chinese.

Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran.

But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. “Who is going to be next?” would be the question on everyone’s mind. For this there would be no effective answer. That the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge.

None of these scenarios bodes anything but more disaster. The point is simple: America cannot tolerate the risk that some insane group of radical Islamic terrorists might want to buy their way into heaven by exploding a nuclear device in the heart of New York City. The consequences are too devastating to imagine, let alone experience. As a nation we must realize that this type of attack can happen. It may only be a matter of time, unless we act right now. We must not permit the mad mullahs to have a nuclear capability they can turn clandestinely into a nuclear weapon to use in attacking America. That we might believe we can solve the problem diplomatically is exactly the conclusion the mullahs are praying we will come to.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT

The problems with the Corsi card can be divided into two parts: its content and its author.

PROBLEMS WITH THE CONTENT OF THE CORSI CARD

Before assessing the card itself, it is important to place it in the context of the book as a whole. As a blurb on the “WND Superstore” advertisement for the book makes clear, Corsi’s goal is to uncover “the true intentions and practices of the Iranian regime” and give light to “the aid and comfort being supplied by some key U.S. politicians.” The chapter that this card is excerpted from is called “Sleeper Cells and Nuclear Bombs: The Threat To American Security.” The introduction to the chapter provides a summary of what is to come”

A major point of this book is that the tragedy of 9-11 might well be small in light of what the terrorists have planned for America. If the mad mullahs can pull it off, the sight of a nuclear cloud roiling over New York or Washington, D.C., would dwarf the glee they derived from our misery over the 9-11 attacks.

Most likely a nuclear terrorist attack in a major U.S. city would come just as 9-11 came – unannounced and unanticipated. A sleeper cell like the 19 terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon may be living with us right now, unseen, below the surface, ready to strike when the order is given. It is frightening to think that people who are living among us now as apparently ordinary citizens are secretly planning when, where and how to explode a nuclear weapon in one of our major cities. (p. 156)

After first graphically describing a possible “dirty bomb” attack, Corsi decides that the more likely scenario involves the use of an Improvised Nuclear Device (IND)—”the preferred choice of serious terrorists.” Corsi proceeds to describe in great detail what he calls “Operation IND,” a fictionalized account of exactly how the terrorists would plan and carry out a nuclear attack on New York City. The next several pages of the book read like a Tom Clancy thriller—Iran, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and perhaps Iraq and North Korea all work together to carry out the attack.

The mullahs may be the driving force behind Operation IND, but the action itself would combine skills sets from across different terrorist organizations. Al-Qaida may be best equipped to provide the delivery team on-site in New York. Hezbollah and Hamas would have responsibility of selecting and coordinating the activities of operatives already on-site in the United States. The nuclear scientists and engineers working at the nuclear facilities in Iran may come from nuclear operations in Iraq or Pakistan, possibly even North Korea. (p. 171)

The attack itself is then described—including very specific details about its timing and location.

The terrorists’ operational team would calculate the timing of the attack to permit them to enter the city with the least chance of detection and to arrive at the maximum opportunity to kill people. Entering New York City just as morning rush hour is tapering off would allow the terrorists to seek the cover of many vehicles crowding the highways. The police might spot check, but the urgency in most rush hours in New York is to keep traffic moving. Detonating the IND as the lunch hour is beginning gives the greatest chance to have people in the streets. Also, late morning arrivers would be at work by now, so the maximum expected population density for the day should have been achieved.

Detonating the IND in Midtown positions the bomb where the largest number of people would be located, in the many skyscrapers that house the city’s offices. Assume the IND is detonated outside the Empire State Building at 11:45 a.m. Assume that the weapon is a 150-kiloton HEU gun-type bomb. Damage estimates can be scaled down to approximate damage and casualties should the bomb be a lower-yield weapon. Assume the day is the beautiful day that 9-11 was – clear and cool, few clouds in the sky, with a light wind from the east. Assume the population density is uniform, with an average of 125,000 people per square mile. Assume the bomb’s shock wave spreads out evenly, not affected by the structures.

For the terrorists, the mission is a suicide mission. Those driving the truck will remain in place, acting normal, so those inside the truck can trigger the device before anyone becomes suspicious. Remote detonation of the IND, or timed detonation, would be too risky. The way to make sure the device explodes is to stay in place and trigger the detonation locally. All terrorists on the weapons delivery mission are vaporized as the weapon detonates. (p. 171-172)

What follows is a disturbing and extremely thorough account of the effects of the detonation of this nuclear device. Corsi spares no detail: he graphically describes what would happen 1 second after detonation—and 4 seconds, 6 seconds, 10 seconds, 16 seconds, and 1 hour after detonation. He finishes this gruesome account with a section titled “By the end of the day.”

More than 1.5 million people are dead in New York City and another 1.5 million severely injured. Fewer than 25 percent of the injured will survive longer than a week. The old will die first, along with the very young. Those survivors who can move around will not know what to do. Looting will break out, as will random acts of violence. Thousands will be trapped in elevators, sealed in what are about to become their tombs. Those not at home will be unable to communicate with loved ones, to find out what has happened to husbands, wives and children. For all but a few there will be no words said of “Goodbye” or “I love you.”

Soon those who can emerge above the rubble will realize they are on an island with no escape. The Hudson and the East rivers are too strong to swim across. Who will come to rescue when the radiation will kill all who enter the devastation without protective clothes? The survivors will be homeless, mostly without food or water. There are no hospitals for the injured, and even if there were, there is no way to transport the injured to medical treatment. Darkness and the cold of night will descend with no apparent answers available to anyone.

Disaster recovery will be nonexistent in the first 24 hours as officials in the state government in Albany and the federal government in Washington realize they cannot get relief and rescue resources into Manhattan as the city begins to burn out of control.

Across America, the nation will come to a stunned standstill of shock and disbelief. Public officials all over the land will call for all police and fire departments to report for duty. Pleas will go out nationwide for National Guard and military assistance to maintain calm and prevent rioting or looting. No one knows for sure what needs to be done, or if there will be another attack.

In the span of less than one hour, the nation’s largest city will have been virtually wiped off the map. Removal of debris will take several years, and recovery may never fully happen. The damage to the nation’s economy will be measured in the trillions of dollars, and the loss of the country’s major financial and business center may reduce America immediately to a second-class status. The resulting psychological impact will bring paralysis throughout the land for an indefinite period of time. The president may not be able to communicate with the nation for days, even weeks, as television and radio systems struggle to come back on line.

No natural or man-made disaster in history will compare with the magnitude of damage that has been done to New York City in this one horrible day. (p. 172-176)

Debaters, never satisfied unless their impact can be framed as an existential threat, generally do not include this portion of the chapter and instead excerpt only the following section about nuclear retaliation (posted above as “the card”).

Even if everything that Corsi has written is correct and all questions regarding his credibility are bracketed off, this card is useless in almost every debate. The evidence is typically deployed in one of two ways:

1. By the affirmative: “The plan solves terrorism,” “Corsi 2005.”
2. By the negative: “The plan causes terrorism,” “Corsi 2005.”

But the Corsi card is not an impact to “terrorism” in general; it is only applicable to a very specific scenario in which terrorists backed by Iran’s nuclear program execute a successful nuclear attack against New York City. In reality, this is an impact to Iranian nuclearization, not to “terrorism”—Corsi’s argument is that Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons because they will provide them to terrorists who will then strike against the United States.

Moreover, the “extinction” claim that debaters read into this evidence is pure hyperbole. Corsi himself does not use the term extinction: his claim is that after “a war between the United States and Islam,” “the apocalypse would be upon us.” What would need to happen in order for this worst case scenario to come true? According to Corsi, the United States would need to respond to a successful nuclear attack against New York City by using its own nuclear arsenal to destroy Mecca and Medina. Perceiving weakness, this would then provoke Russia, China, North Korea, and France to launch nuclear weapons of their own—mostly at the United States. If this chain of events were to occur, it would certainly constitute an existential threat.

But what is the probability of this worst case scenario? Corsi certainly does not provide any grounding for his assertions about the behavior of the United States and the rest of the world if terrorists successfully attacked New York City with nuclear weapons. “Bomb Mecca and Medina” is certainly one of many possible responses available to the U.S., but it is obviously not the only one—and certainly not the most likely.

And how likely is it that Iran will cooperate with Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah to execute a nuclear attack against the United States? If Corsi is right about the capabilities and motivations of these terrorists and their supporters, it seems like such an attack is inevitable. Corsi’s solution, of course, is regime change in Iran—either via an Israel strike (the so-called “Samson Option”) or through internal revolution backed by people like himself (Corsi has donated money to opposition groups through his Iran Freedom Foundation). Reducing the likelihood of terrorism in general is not enough; this specific threat must be addressed in order to “solve” the impact that Corsi outlines.

In practice, debaters deploy the Corsi card as an all-purpose impact to “terrorism”: a simple search on the NDCA Wiki reveals over 50 instances of its use in the past two seasons alone. Examples of the way that the Corsi card is deployed include:

• Developing mini-nukes by increasing funding for the National Ignition Project will deter proliferation and win the war on terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Promoting clean energy in Kyrgyzstan is key to prevent terrorism that results from instability in Afghanistan… Corsi 2005.
• Adopting a national renewable portfolio standard is crucial to shore up U.S.-E.U. relations and thereby improve anti-terrorism cooperation… Corsi 2005.
• Removing the tariff on imports of sugar ethanol is vital to stabilize the Caribbean; failure to do so risks terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Providing the Department of Defense with clean energy technologies is key to defense transformation which enables more effective anti-terrorism efforts… Corsi 2005.
• Providing the Department of Defense with clean energy technologies is also key to combat opium trafficking in Afghanistan which funds terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Procuring additional nuclear-powered ships for the U.S. Navy is necessary to develop additional Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities which prevent terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Decentralizing the U.S. farm sector by promoting the use of solar power is key to prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. agriculture… Corsi 2005.
• Expanding federal authority to construct new transmission lines for wind power is key to protect the electricity grid from terrorist attacks… Corsi 2005.
• Increasing development of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology is key to cement U.S. hegemony which solves terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Adopting a plan that spends money will divert funds from missile defense which is crucial to prevent terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Increasing Medicaid funding to the states is key to shore up U.S. soft power which is key to solve terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Covering undocumented immigrants with Medicaid health insurance is key to effectively respond to bio-terrorist attacks… Corsi 2005.
• Indo-Pak war would devastate Pakistan and solve terrorism… Corsi 2005.
• Economic growth is key to reduce terrorism… Corsi 2005.

There is a disconnect in each of these examples between the internal link to “terrorism” and the Corsi card: he does not speak to the consequences of terrorism generally, only to the impact to a specific scenario for a nuclear terrorist attack against New York City funded by Iran and carried out by Al Qaeda with the support of Hamas and Hezbollah (and perhaps Iraq and North Korea). Unless the probability of this specific scenario is effected by the internal link, the Corsi card is wholly irrelevant.

Defenders—if they exist—will perhaps claim that the “warrants” in the Corsi card apply to all acts of terrorism, not just to the specific act of terrorism explicitly discussed in the book. This is clearly not the case; Corsi not only fails to provide an explanation for why the U.S. would respond to terrorism by bombing Mecca, but to assert that this would be the default response to any attack is preposterous and empirically denied.

Putting things in perspective, it is also exceedingly silly for debaters to claim that the reason a nuclear terrorist attack on New York City is bad is because the U.S. would respond by bombing Mecca. Would the attack be acceptable if the U.S. did not retaliate against Mecca? And if the biggest “impact” to a terrorist attack is U.S. retaliation, why shouldn’t the U.S. simply not respond by bombing Mecca? Corsi’s assertion that “the first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam” is absurd. Maybe Corsi would consider adding Medina “to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity,” but that certainly does not seem like the most probable response of the Obama Administration.

PROBLEMS WITH THE AUTHOR OF THE CORSI CARD

It is not just the content of the Corsi card that warrants its inclusion on any “greatest hits” list of bad debate cards. Its author, it turns out, is a contemptible right wing hack who has no credibility in mainstream public discourse. Joseph A. Palermo, an Associate Professor of History at Cal State University at Sacramento, provides a brief overview:

A few minutes of Googling around the voluminous hate sites on the web and we quickly discover that Jerome R. Corsi is well known for holding many “controversial” views. According to Corsi watchers, he called Islam “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion,” and referred to the Koran as “the ‘software’ for producing deviant cancer-cell political behavior and violence in human beings.” He also calls Muslims “Ragheads” and “Boy-Bumpers.” But Corsi apparently doesn’t care much for Catholicism either: “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press.” Corsi calls Senator Hillary Clinton “Hillary FAT HOG Clinton,” and he calls John Kerry “John Fucking Commie Kerry.” “Anybody ask why HELLary [sic] couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied?” Corsi asks. “Not lesbo or anything, is she?” And on Kerry: “After he married TerRAHsa, [sic] didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?”

Corsi, like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and other chickenhawks, staunchly supported the Vietnam War when he was draft age but he ducked military service with the excuse of being afflicted with “hereditary eczema.” His love for the Vietnam War did not translate into love for the veterans who fought it, or else Corsi might have hesitated before Swiftboating vets who disagreed with his defamation of John Kerry’s exemplary Vietnam War record.

Corsi is also well known for his paranoid ramblings about the “North American Union,” which is a “black helicopter” conspiracy theory that posits that the Council on Foreign Relations is seeking to impose on the United States a “super-government” that will comprise the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It is a favorite argument of the extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican crowd.

Corsi first rose to national fame in 2004 when he co-authored Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, a book that accused the Presidential candidate of treason during the Vietnam War. Since then, he has written several books promoting his far right conspiracy theories including The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, a book that accused Barack Obama of—among many other things—being a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible for the Presidency.

Corsi’s rise came despite a sordid past. In an article published in The Nation, Max Blumenthal—a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute—revealed some of the details:

Corsi’s success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight. During George W. Bush’s first term, Corsi was a little-known financial services marketing specialist. In 1995, according to the Boston Globe, he coaxed twenty people into a shadowy investment venture in Poland that ultimately lost them a total of $1.2 million. “It ruined my career in the brokerage business, and it was a sad story for a lot of people,” said Bradley Amundson, one of those enlisted into Corsi’s bungled scheme. The FBI opened an investigation but never filed any charges.

Corsi had dabbled off-and-on the fringes of conservative backlash politics for nearly three decades. In his spare time, which he appeared to have lots of, Corsi busied himself at his computer, firing off opinions on the far-right website Free Republic, marked by their sexual and racial obsessions.

Atomic Iran itself contains an obvious political motive: connect the Democratic Party in the United States to the mullahs in Iran who are pursuing nuclearization. These and other antics have alienated Corsi even from mainstream conservatives. Jon Henke, a Republican blogger and political strategist, explains the conservative case against Corsi:

The continued tolerance and prominence of Jerome Corsi – his books, columns and appearances – is just embarrassing. It is embarrassing for the Right, embarrassing for Republicans, embarrassing for conservatives and libertarians, embarrassing for all of us.

It’s not just that he’s frequently, remarkably wrong – something pretty well documented and acknowledged by both the Left and (while less enthusiastically) the Right. (and the Obama campaign (PDF), of course) Both the Obama campaign and Hugh Hewitt acknowledge that Jerome Corsi is “fringe”.

Bad as his gross errors are, though, it’s not just that. It’s also about who Jerome Corsi is.
* Jerome Corsi is a smear artist (e.g., he has claimed that “Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian and Muslims worship Satan”).
* Jerome Corsi has advocated the hysterical, deceptive North American Union conspiracy theory.
* Jerome Corsi associates with white supremacists.
* Jerome Corsi is guilty of plagiarism.
* Jerome Corsi is a 9/11 Truther.

I mean, c’mon. Have some standards. This guy does not deserve the platform, he does not deserve the publicity, and he does not deserve to be treated as member-in-good-standing on the Right.

The Right seems to engage today in social promotion of hatchet men, bullies and political hit men. Those people poison the Right, and – whatever their temporary electoral effects – they serve to discredit us all.

Ross Douthat, another popular conservative blogger and an editor at The Atlantic, agrees whole-heartedly with Henke:

I’m not big on ritual denunciations: I’d rather argue with people than read them out of the conversation, as a general rule, and I hope my distaste for certain styles of political discourse is clear enough without my having to publicly denounce Ann Coulter every time she pulls an offensive, sales-goosing stunt on live TV. But along with Jon Henke and Pete Wehner, I think it’s worth making an exception in the case of Jerome Corsi’s anti-Obama book, whose Amazon page won’t be linked here. It isn’t just that Corsi himself is a conspiracy theorist and a crank, or that his best-selling farrago of innuendo and outright smears exemplifies everything that’s wrong with a certain sort of right-wing publishing, or that David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to write an anti-Obama book without descending into the fever swamps. It’s that this is an election where conservatives need to be very, very conscious about the importance of line-drawing: If the Right is going to resist the ongoing attempts by Obamaphiles to define various sorts of normal political elbow-throwing (cutting ads making fun of Barack Obama’s political style, calling attention to the controversial public utterances of Michelle Obama and Jeremiah Wright, etc.) as inherently racist and hatemongering, conservatives need to be very clear about where the line actually is, and what sort of attacks are actually beyond the pale and worth condemning.

Defenders—again, if they exist—will cite Corsi’s academic credentials as proof that he is “qualified”. After all, he has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University and a B.A. from Case Western Reserve University… isn’t that good enough? Clearly not. As Professor Palermo explains in a separate article about Obama Nation:

Corsi’s view of American society is ahistorical. He might have a Ph.D. from Harvard in political science but he has no understanding whatsoever of how fundamental political rights in this country were won through hard work, organizing, and struggle. In Corsi’s worldview all labor unions and trial lawyers are evil, women shouldn’t have reproductive rights, blacks and Mexican immigrants should know their places, and anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman is a “socialist.”

Corsi is forever fixed in 1972 like an insect embedded in resin. Every four years we repeat the McGovern-Nixon battle and re-fight the same culture war. But the bottom line is that Corsi is intellectually dishonest and he willfully lies and misrepresents his subject matter for maximum emotional effect. He impugns Obama’s integrity and patriotism so many times in this work it’s impossible to chronicle them all.

The fact that Corsi received a doctoral degree from Harvard almost forty years ago does not mean that everything he has subsequently written should be accepted as the product of rigorous academic scholarship. Atomic Iran, like most of Corsi’s other books, was published by WND Books, the publishing wing of the discredited right wing website WorldNetDaily. None of his “scholarship” has been subjected to independent editorial or peer review—and when independent organizations like Media Matters and FactCheck.org have reviewed his books, they have found them full of inaccuracies and outright lies.

In the end, reading evidence from Jerome Corsi in debate rounds lends credibility to his work—it places him on equal footing with qualified authors whose work is a product of sincere, rigorous scholarship. Even if debaters cannot resist the urge to quote him in debates, judges should certainly approach “evidence” from Corsi with extreme skepticism and assess its credibility accordingly. Treating the Corsi evidence as gospel requires the suspension of disbelief regarding the internal link to “terrorism” and it undermines the credibility of debate as an academic activity. The debate community can—and should—do better.

HOW TO ANSWER THIS EVIDENCE IN DEBATES

It is unlikely that debaters will require an in-depth author indict to sustain a devastating attack on the Corsi evidence. In the rare case that the internal link and the impact are sensibly connected, the credibility portion of the attack may need to be expanded (cutting the articles cited here will provide ample evidentiary support). In most cases, though, it will be enough to efficiently point out the disconnect between the internal link chain outlined by one’s opponent and the terminal impact described by “Corsi ‘5”.

One way of phrasing the argument is as follows:

(_)

Disregard their Corsi evidence—

A. Context—It describes a specific scenario in which Iran supports a successful Al Qaeda nuclear attack on New York City and the U.S. responds with a nuclear strike on Mecca, sparking a great power nuclear conflict. If Corsi is right, this is inevitable because of Iranian nuclearization—reducing the risk of terrorism in general does not reduce the risk of this specific scenario.

B. Credibility—Corsi is a discredited conspiracy theorist with a track record of bigotry and academic dishonesty—his writing has not been independently edited or peer reviewed and should be considered presumptively false.

You should couple this indict with evidence disputing the probability and magnitude of terrorism in the specific context of your opponents’ internal link(s); searching for “terrorism” AND “existential threat” can yield lucrative results as can researching the work of Ohio State Professor John Mueller.

This is the second in a series of articles highlighting popular but poor-quality pieces of debate evidence; the first featured the South China Morning Post ‘96 disease impact. If you’d like to recommend a card for inclusion in this series, please leave a comment or contact the author.

The episode—officially the tenth, since our previous attempt was never released to the public—features a wide-ranging discussion of topics including:

• The Spirit of Disclosure Award: Should analytical arguments be disclosed? What level of disclosure should be expected? What makes for an effective wiki page? Woodward PP: worst wiki page in the country?
• Flowing: A lost art?
• Should The 3NR create other awards recognizing effective research, innovative strategies, etc.?
• Speaker Points: Are they too high? Were the debaters “back in the day” better than those of today? Is Roy a hopeless curmudgeon or does he have a point? Should we transition to a 100-point or 30/.1 scale?
• Why do 2N/1A’s receive higher points than 1N/2A’s? Should they?
• Low Point Wins: Should they be banned? Scott says yes. Is he right, or are there situations where low point wins make sense?
• Double Losses: Should they be allowed? Scott says yes—we discuss this idea and some alternatives.
• Pairing Criteria: Is the current system (high-low within brackets using high-low adjusted points) effective? Should opponent wins be used to pair debates? Should high-high rounds be more common? Should side constraints be ignored for undefeated teams when pairing the last prelim?
• The Politics Disad: sweet or not so sweet? Should the aff be losing debates to the politics disad? Should negs be relying on it to construct their post-season strategies?
• “The DA Turns The Case”: the last refuge of scoundrels? What can the aff do to protect themselves from “the low risk DA turns the case, I voted neg” decisions?
• Conditionality Gone Wild: is each plank of a multi-plank counterplan conditional? Is it okay to kick independent planks? Whose burden is it to establish the meaning of “conditionality” (or, more generally, the disposition of the counterplan)?
• “A2:” or “AT:” (or “They Say:”) as a label for blocks: which one is best? (Yes, we actually got into an argument about this.)

And several other things that listeners probably don’t care about but might still find entertaining, like openness in Public Forum and the disturbing content of most Dramatic Interpretation pieces.

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it through iTunes.

What does it take to win the tournament of champions?  You have to win at least 9 debates. Thats it- just 9.  So in essence you have 60 days to prepare for 9 debates. Lets say you and your partner are the only team from your school, and you have no support staff that does any work. Assume you can each only dedicate 2 hours a day to debate work (which, lets be honest, if these are the case you prob. are not going to win the TOC). And lets say you can only produce 5 pages of work/hour.

That means by the time of the TOC (60 days) you will have done as a team 4 hours of work a day (240 hours) producing 10 pages an hour for 2,400 pages of new evidence/arguments. Lets overestimate here and say that to produce a new aff requires 300 pages of work, and a new negative generic takes 200 pages. You are preparing for 9 debates, lets say 5 aff and 4 neg to assume you will get screwed and have to be more aff than neg. If you run a new aff every round you have to win that is 5 times 300 pages for 1500 pages. If you read a new neg generic in each of your neg debates that is 4 times 200 for 800 pages. 15 + 8= 2,300. So a team of 2 with no coaches working a modest amount per day should be able to have new arguments for every must win debate they will have at the tournament.

Viewed in total this seems monumental, virtually overwhelming. If you sit down and say ” I need to do 1200 pages of work” you will likely get discouraged and quit. The key is to remember you only need to focus on a little bit at a time.  The numbers above are all exaggerated a little bit, and in reality you could get away with a lot less and still win as long as you prepared smartly. So here are some tips on how to do that

1. Forget case specific negatives. This is largely a waste of time because anyone good you debate at the toc is either going to have

A. Changed their plan/advantages

B. Decided to read a new aff

So writing super specific pics vs a particular plan wording, or spending a lot of time on a 200 page case neg to 1 aff is going to be trading off hugely with more productive work. But on top of that, lets say you have a super sick neg against team X, what are the odds you will debate them? The odds you will debate any particular team are obviously very low (they can be reasonably good if say, you were the 2 best teams and where therefore favorites to be undefeated going into round 7, or if you were the best and worst of the teams likely to be 0-6 going into that round but these chances are not significant).

You can however prepare for “areas” of the topic. So for example “getting poor people jobs” is a pretty big area of the topic and lots of different affs use mechanisms to try and do that. It is probably very likely given the status of the economy and the quality of evidence out there that many new affs will fall into this area. So instead of writing 10 jobs negs to existing cases, you need to come up with a generic jobs strategy that you can adapt to potential new jobs cases, but also apply to old jobs cases in case you hit them. So how do you go about doing this? To keep this post a manageable size lets say that you are only considering a policy strategy and that you love the politics da. If that is the case, what you need are a set of counterplans that can solve potential advantages, and a good set of link blocks that differentiate your cp from the case.

Starting with the CP

First, make a list of all the internal links that jobs affs are trying to solve. From the top of my head

-economy/comeptitiveness/hegemony (i lump these together because face it they are all the same)

-environment/green jobs

-infrastructure

-trade

Thats about all I can think of, there are probably some I am leaving out but remember this is just an example. So now think of things that would address all those areas but are not a social service. Obviously things like cap and trade spring to mind and that would probably be a good one, although due to last years topic the aff would probably be ready with some answers. But now that you have thought of a good area you can come up with other ideas. One thing I do a lot is think of the obvious CP- in this instance cap and trade, and then I think “if I was doing a neg to cap and trade what would I cut as the CP” thus removing myself 1 step from the logic the aff might use in generating a list of counterplans to cut answers to. In this case I would think “there was a sweet fund energy R and D cp vs cap and trade”. So now I have the general idea- energy R and D. I need to find some solvency cards for all those advantages above.

Next, a step people rarely think of, I need to think about the permutation. What kind of arguments could I generate to answer do social services and energy R and D. Now obviously any social services disad would link to the permutation, and you could just read a ton of them in the 2NC. But if you have a more tricky strategy you will be able to crush. With a few seconds of research you can find lots of articles that argue against upgrading the energy grid right now- their arg is that we should wait a bit until we have better tech. So in response to the perm you could read a 2NC da that said infrastructure upgrades now lock in inferior tech which turns the advantages /has an external impact. Now obviously this evidence will not say “the combo of the plan and the cp results in…” but rarely will evidence ever be that on point. Probably no affirmative will have thought this far ahead to consider these kind of arguments, so your biz doesn’t have to be devastating. If you read that along with some external net benefits to the CP and the aff decides not to go for the permutation you are golden.

2. Make sure you have good advantage defense ( or offense). Last year at the TOC there were approx. 1 billion new economy advantages ran. You could see coaches running around frantically trying to scout these, and their minions trying to desperately cut answers. Come on- its still mead 92. If you weren’t ready for that before the tournament you prob. should of gone to the derby instead. Having good updated advantage defense will mean you are fine when faced with thee “new” advantages- I mean really how many possible impacts are there for the aff to have- maybe 30 as an upper limit? Do 1 a day in the month of march and you are set.

3. Generic negatives- a generic is a coherent strategy that you can read against a new aff pretty much regardless of its content. It is usually either a CP and a DA or a K. A DA by itself I don’t really consider a full generic, but if you have good case defense it could be enough. There are a few ways to start coming up with and writing generics, but if you are going to the TOC you have prob. been to a camp/written a file before so i won’t get into the nitty gritty of “brainstorming”. Instead, lets look at what the make up of a generic should look like. If you are writing a CP and DA generic, you should have all the blocks on the list below

-1NC shells – this is obvious

-specific link/solvency modules to put in the 1NC- focus on areas (econ, hunger, health, terrorism etc)

-2NC overviews for each including turns the case/solves the case, impact analysis with cards, arguments that set up offense/defense paradigm etc

-link blocks- a generic one, area specific ones, new 2NC link arguments that you can read against any case as independent modules

-impact add ons – make sure you have diverse impacts so you don’t just have the same impact as the 1AC and lose on it being muddled

-independent net benefits to the CP

-anticipate aff arguments and write blocks to them

Lets assume conservatively that that is 20 blocks total, and 2 pages for each block, so that is 40 pages total. If you have a new argument that does not have those 40 pages you are not prepared. You need to write the blocks, then go through and highlight the blocks including analytics for efficiency, and then you need to practice reading them so you get a sense of how much you can get through. To have a good negative block you want to be able to have at least 2 strategic options alive, which means you need to be able to know that you can get through a DA and CP in 8 minutes or less.

4. Don’t count your politics eggs before they have hatched- you should not go into the TOC with “politics” as your plan. For the last 4 months or so the politics DA has been shoddy at best. The real world just isn’t playing nice with the debate construct of the political capital DA. If you write all your strategies planning to have politics be the net benefit and politics is bad at the TOC you are going to be hosed. Now obviously teams are still winning on the politics DA now but honestly that is just shameful for the affirmative and not any indication that the disad itself is sustainable. Lets say hypothetically you went to 3 more tournaments before the TOC. If you did 50 pages of politics work for each tournament that is 150 pages of useless crap that won’t help you at the TOC. If instead you dedicated that time to writing a new disad you would have a solid new generic come TOC time. I know its hard to find new things and people think all the other disads will suck blah blah blah- seriously stop and think for a second: how stupid is the politics disad? How terrible is the evidence for this disad usually? How ridiculous is it to say health care is the top of the presidents agenda, and the aff plan passing more head start would derail it? Are you really going to tell me given 2 months you can’t find a better disad than that? The politics disad is useful because you can apply it to a large number of cases and thats it. It’s not magic.