UMKC SDI 2007 Framework
Louie & Todd
Framework Lock Box
The Under View- Our Framework
Extend Affirmative Choice
Extend Predictable Limits-5
Extend Topic Education
Extend Topic Education- Coercion
Extend Voting Issue
Role-playing Good- Democracy
Role-playing Good- Education
Role-playing Good- Political Sphere (Kulynych)
Consequentialism Good-13
AT: Representations First
AT: Ontology First
The Under View- Our Framework
A. Interpretation:
Debate is about deciding if the resolution is right or wrong; since the affirmative can only win by proving its right through endorsement and defense of a topical example, the negative can only win if it proves a competitive policy option is preferable to the plan.
B. Reasons to prefer:
1.) Affirmative choice – the affirmative is obligated to speak first and also has the burden to prove the status quo should be changed so it gets to pick the framework. If the negative prefers a different framework, they must present it in the 1NC or else comply by ours because deferring to later speeches hurts the 2AC and 1AR and eliminates the 1AC.
2.) Predictable limits – the resolution is objective and decides who gets to say what. The burden of rejoinder mandates that they disprove the desirability of our topical plan. Alternatives or discursive charges that lie outside topic literature discourage clash and disadvantage the affirmative
3.) Topic education – prefer it to general education because annual changes ensure deep knowledge through focused research. Policy comparison is most real-world and switching sides fosters full expression of resolution arguments.
C. It’s a voter
Debate is a game so fair parameters is biggest voter. Rules and competition insulate debate from questions of personal conviction so that we can compare options relevant to the resolution. Presenting arguments in the wrong forum is a reason to reject the team for skewing equity of time and competition.
Extend Affirmative Choice
Extend our affirmative choice standard – speaking first gives the affirmative the right to pick the framework for making this decision. You should default to the 1AC interpretation.
This is also key to preserving the importance of the 1AC.
Timothy M. O’Donnell(Director of Debate University of MaryWashington) 2004
There are several reasons why the affirmative should get to choose the framework for the debate. First,AFC preserves the value of the first affirmative constructive speech. This speech is the starting point for the debate. It is a function of necessity. The debate must begin somewhere if it is to begin at all. Failure to grant AFC is a denial of the service rendered by the affirmative team’s labor when they crafted this speech. Further,if the affirmative does not get to pick the starting point, the opening speech act is essentially rendered meaninglesswhile the rest of the debate becomes a debate about what we should be debating about. History is instructive here. The brief and undistinguished life of both counter warrants and plan-plan have amply demonstrated thechaosthatresults when the negative refuses to engage the affirmative on its chosen starting point. In this light,AFC may even be viewed as a “right” similar to the affirmative’s right to define. Although there are several reasons why the affirmative ought to have the right to define, the most persuasive justification recognizes thatwith the responsibility of initiating the discussion on the resolutional question comes a concomitant right to offer an interpretation of what those words mean. Of course,it is not an exclusive right because the negative can always challenge the interpretations. Nevertheless, the affirmative’s interpretation carries a certain presumptionthat is accepted as “good for debate” unless proven otherwise. The rationale for AFC follows a similar line of thinking. The affirmative should be able to choose the question for the debate because they are required to speak first.
1AC is necessary for time equity and clash.
Timothy M. O’Donnell(Director of Debate University of MaryWashington) 2004
Second, AFC ensures competitive equity. Leaving the framework open to debate puts the affirmative at a significant competitive disadvantage. Whenthe negative has the option of changing, or even initiating, the framework discussion,the first affirmative constructive speech is rendered meaningless. This hurts the affirmative for two reasons. First,it gives the negative a two-to-one advantage in constructive speech timefor making framework arguments. Second, the firstaffirmativeframework choice (or lack there of)locks the affirmative into defending their opening speech act against an entirely different framework from the one it was designed to address. Not only does AFC solve these problems, it also gives every debater an opportunity to have debates in the framework of their choosing. Allowing the first affirmative constructive speech to set the terms for the debate ensures that teams get to choose to debate in their framework half of the time. For example, if one team wanted to have a policy debate, AFC would allow them to do so when they are affirmative. Similarly, if another team wanted to have a performance debate, AFC would give them a similar opportunity when they are affirmative. This means that every team would have an equal opportunity to have fulfilling and engaging debates on the issues they choose to discuss half the time.
Extend Predictable Limits
Extend our predictable limits standard – the burden of rejoinder requires the negative to disprove the desirability of the plan as a policy option. There are an infinite amount of alternatives to the 1ac, the only predictable ground is policy alternatives to a policy proposal. You should default to the 1AC interpretation.
There are limitless contexts or avenues through which they could purport to advocate the plan. Our interpretation limits debate to promote politically relevant dialogue and structured communication.
Donald S. Lutz (Professor of Polisci at Houston) 2000Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 39-40
Aristotle notes in the Politics that political theory simultaneously proceeds at three levels—discourse about the ideal, about the best possible in the real world, and about existing political systems.4 Put another way,comprehensive political theory must ask several different kinds of questionsthat are linked, yet distinguishable. In order to understand the interlocking set of questions that political theory can ask, imagine a continuum stretching from left to right. At the end, to the right, is an ideal form of government, a perfectly wrought construct produced by the imagination. At the other end is the perfect dystopia, the most perfectly wretched system that the human imagination can produce.Stretching between these two extremes is an infinite set of possibilities, merging into one another, that describe the logical possibilities created by the characteristics defining the end points.For example, a political system defined primarily by equality would have a perfectly inegalitarian system described at the other end, and the possible states of being between them would vary primarily in the extent to which they embodied equality. An ideal defined primarily by liberty would create a different set of possibilities between the extremes. Of course, visions of the ideal often are inevitably more complex than these single-value examples indicate, but it is also true that in order to imagine an ideal state of affairs a kind of simplification is almost always required since normal states of affairs invariably present themselves to human consciousness as complicated, opaque, and to a significant extent indeterminate. t A non-ironic reading of Plato's Republic leads one to conclude that the creation of these visions of the ideal characterizes political philosophy. This is not the case. Any person can generate a vision of the ideal.One job of political philosophy is to ask the question "Is this ideal worth pursuing?" Before the question can be pursued, however, the ideal state of affairs must be clarified, especially with respect to conceptual precision and the logical relationship between the propositions that describe the ideal. This pre-theoretical analysis raises the vision of the ideal from the mundane to a level where true philosophical analysis, and the careful comparison with existing systems can proceed fruitfully. The process of pre-theoretical analysis, probably because it works on clarifying ideas that most capture the human imagination, too often looks to some like the entire enterprise of political philosophy.5 However, the value of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the General Will, for example, lies not in its formal logical implications, nor in its compelling hold on the imagination, but on the power and clarity it lends to an analysis and comparison of actual political systems. Among other things it allows him to show that anyone who wishes to pursue a state of affairs closer to that summed up in the concept of the General Will must successfully develop a civil religion. To the extent politicians believe theorists who tell them that pre-theoretical clarification of language describing an ideal is the essence and sum total of political philosophy, to that extent they will properly conclude that political philosophers have little to tell them, since politics is the realm of the possible not the realm of logical clarity. However, once the ideal is clarified, the political philosopher will begin to articulate and assess the reasons why we might want to pursue such an ideal. At this point, analysis leaves the realm of pure logicand enters the realm of the logic of human longing, aspiration, and anxiety. The analysis is now limited by the interior parameters of the human heart (more properly the human psyche) to which the theorist must appeal. Unlike the clarification stage where anything that is logical is possible,there are now definite limits on where logic can take us. Appeals to self-destruction, less happiness rather than more, psychic isolation, enslavement, loss of identity, a preference for the lives of mollusks over that of humans, to name just a few possibilities, are doomed to failure. The theorist cannot appeal to such values if she or he is to attract an audience of politicians. Much political theory involves the careful, competitive analysis of what a given ideal state of affairs entails, and as Plato shows in his dialogues the discussion between the philosopher and the politician will quickly terminate if he or she cannot convincingly demonstrate the connection between the political ideal being developed and natural human passions. In this way, the politician can be educated by the possibilities that the political theorist can articulate, just as the political theorist can be educated by the relative success the normative analysis has in "setting the hook" of interest among nonpolitical theorists. This realm of discourse, dominated by the logic of humanly worthwhile goals, requires that the theorist carefully observe the responses of others in order not to be seduced by what is merely logical as opposed to what is humanly rational. Moral discourse conditioned by the ideal, if it is to be successful, requires the political theorist to be fearless in pursuing normative logic, but it also requires the theorist to have enough humility to remember that, if a non-theorist cannot be led toward an ideal, the fault may well lie in the theory, not in the moral vision of the non-theorist.
Extend Predictable Limits
Exploding predictable limits neutralizes the discursive benefits to debate and renders their advocacy meaningless – only our interpretation preserves the revolutionary potential of a deliberative activity
Ruth Lessl Shively(Assoc Prof Political Science at Texas A&M) 2000Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 180
Thus far, I have argued thatif the ambiguists mean to be subversive about anything, they need to be conservative about some things. They need to besteadfast supporters of the structures of openness and democracy:willing to say "no" to certain forms of contest; willing to set up certain clear limitations about acceptable behavior. To this, finally, I would add that if the ambiguists mean to stretch the boundaries of behavior—if they want to be revolutionary and disruptivein their skepticism and iconoclasm—they need first to be firm believers in something. Which is to say, again, they need to set clear limits about what they will and will not support, what they do and do not believe to be best. As G. K. Chesterton observed,the true revolutionary has always willed something "definite and limited." For example, "The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against..." He "desired the freedoms of democracy." He "wished to have votes and not to have titles . . ." But "because the new rebel is a skeptic"—because he cannot bring himself to will something definite and limited— "he cannot be a revolutionary." For "the fact that he wants to doubt everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything" (Chesterton 1959,41). Thus,the most radical skepticism ends in the most radical conservatism. In other words,a refusal to judge among ideas and activities is, in the end, an endorsement of the status quo. To embrace everything is to be unable to embrace a particular plan of action, for to embrace a particular plan of action is to reject all others, at least for that moment.Moreover, as observed in our discussion of openness,to embrace everything is to embrace self-contradiction: to hold to both one's purposes and to that which defeats one's purposes—to tolerance and intolerance, open-mindedness and close-mindedness, democracy and tyranny. In the same manner, then, the ambiguists' refusals to will something "definite and limited" undermines their revolutionary impulses. In their refusal to say what they will not celebrate and what they will not rebel against,they deny themselves (and everyone else in their political world) a particular plan or ground to work from.By refusing to deny incivility, they deny themselves a civil public space from which to speak. They cannot say "no" to the terrorist who would silence dissent. They cannot turn their backs on the bullying of the white supremacist. And, as such, in refusing to bar the tactics of the anti-democrat, they refuse to support the tactics of the democrat. In short, then, to be a true ambiguist,there must be some limitto what is ambiguous.To fully support political contest, one must fully support some uncontested rules and reasons.To generally reject the silencing or exclusion of others, one must sometimes silence or exclude those who reject civility and democracy.
Extend Topic Education
Extend our topic education standard – yearly changes in the topic ensure focused in depth research. You should default to the 1AC interpretation.
Our interpretation accesses the best standards for education
A.) diversity – topical education forces changes in the discussion from year to year, their interpretation allows debate to become stagnant because teams can read the same aff no matter what
B.)coercion – education about policymaking is necessary to prevent totalitarianism – their form of debate encourages suspicion of institutions that disavows political understanding and cedes control over powerful instruments to forces of evil
C.) predictability - Switch-sided debate is by its nature more suited to political deliberation than intellectual interrogation *gender modified
Mary Dietz, Professor of Polisci at Minnesota, 2000Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 117-8
Against this Vaclavian politics of truth, Ash deploys the alternative formulation of "working in half-truth" in order to distinguish "the professional party politician's job" from the intellectual's, especially as it is "reflected, crucially, in a different use of language" (1995, 35). Here he amplifies what it means to work in the language of half-truth: If a politician gives a partial, one-sided, indeed self-censored account of a particular issue, he [or she] is simply doing his [or her] job. And if he [or she] managesto "sell" the part as the wholethen he [or she] is doing his [or her] job effectively.... If an intellectual does that, he [or she] is not doing his [or her] job; he [or she] has failed in it. (1995, 36) Ash is anxious to insist that he is not casting the intellectual as "the guardian or high priest of some metaphysical, ideological or pseudo-scientific Truth with a capital T" (1995, 36). Thus, the difference between the role of intellectual and the role of the politician is not equivalent in any easy way to the epistemological divide between absolute Truth and relativism, or the metaphysical divide between objective reality and subjective experience. Whatever else they are, Ash's intellectuals are not Platonic philosopher-kings; although from the perspective of Platonic philosophy his politicians are surely sophists and rogues.The divide betweenAsh's truth-seekingintellectualandhis partisanpolitician hasrather more to do with the linguistic and ethical terrain on which they work,and not the upper ether of epistemology and metaphysics. If this terrain is organized along lines of "responsibility," thenwe might understand the divide between the intellectual and the politician as a matter of assuming,as Ash puts it, "qualitatively different responsibilities for the validity, intellectual coherence and truth" of speech in each of these irreducible domains (Ash 1995, 36, italics mine). *