[music] All debate is a training in a method
of arriving at a decision.
It is putting forward a proposition, testing that proposition from multiple angles, and
at the end of the day, having to make a decision about whether or not the policy proposed
is a good or a bad idea.
I'm going tell you, you have a resolution for the year.
This year, it's the United States federal government should establish a national health insurance
and the affirmative’s job is to affirm the spirit of the text.
First thing you would do is say, "What are the different strategies
that experts are discussing?"
And so you'll craft an affirmative case offer – here are all the good reasons why we think that this
is a good political option that the United States should pursue.
The negative has to also anticipate what all of those affirmative cases are, because the
negative’s job is to say that the case presented by this given affirmative is wrong.
You have different generic strategies for policy teams and then different generic strategies
for Kritikal teams.
In terms of preparing for policy teams, just doing research on the topic can give you a
good sense of what advantage grounds are out there.
National health insurance is at the very least some form of universal-ish coverage,
maybe saving people's lives, stopping pandemic diseases, saving the economy.
We create these hypothetical scenarios in which the federal government themselves, like
the three branches, were to actually give healthcare to its citizens.
But as Kritikal debaters, we're more interested in the underlying assumptions of what is national
health and conversations of race, class, gender, sexuality, can all emerge from these things.
I do all my research – this is where I’m finding articles, I’m finding books.
Anything that I can search on Google Scholar, on the Wake Forest database, that talks about
national health insurance, risk assessment.
I imagine, in my head, the debate equivalent of a chess board, trying to move all the pieces
and simulate how your opponent would move pieces in response.
I don't even have to assume what our opponents are going to say before I'm already trying
to put together a document that would pre-empt every single possible thought they might have.
[background conversation] At this point in the process, we're actually
exactly two weeks out from our first tournament.
We took inventory of what we have and basically what we needed is a bunch of more research.
Yes, so his argument is intuitively, you were biased against making those utilitarian judgments.
Another example is with the trolley experiments… [fades]
We approach debate from this perspective that intellectual diversity is welcome, right?
In addition, that it ought to be proliferated.
We're describing big tent debates with the philosophy that the student comes to us with
the types of arguments that they're interested in and then we as a coaching staff
help cultivate that.
[shouting] The second strategy! - The second strategy!
We are trying to make that the best forum possible.
“Big Tent” is the metaphor, but I think it's very real.
Everyone should be able to make whatever arguments they want and they should have to do it how
they want and no one should get in your way except to facilitate that.
[music] Brent and Varun are what many in the debate
community would call an odd couple.
The idea, on one hand, is you have a policy debater who looks at the government and you
have a Kritikal debater who looks at Kritikal questions in society.
Kritik debate is seen as emphasizing human values and emphasizing emotion and emphasizing
notions of identity.
“We are not separate from the people around us”
is our fundamental argument.
Whereas policy is traditionally interpreted to be this kind of debate that focuses on
the normative questions of legislation and how the courts acts with it.
Also our argument is that linking markets means that there is two-way economic streams occurring in
between the countries, i.e., should U.S. firms invest in Chinese firms, Chinese firms invest in
U.S. firms, and they invest in the U.S. marketplace?
I think more often than not, the division between the two is arbitrary.
Varun is someone who is extremely well-trained in philosophy.
Brent is someone who is an economics and religion studies major.
It's a very different style of debate than I've been usually doing.
Varun comes from the more Kritikal camp whereas I’ve been policy the last seven years
of my debate life.
It gets old talking about the same things every debate.
Being partners with Varun, I'm making arguments that I would have never probably
made otherwise.
In consciousness, we ought to make the world better.
Right.
So [Kingsley] Dennis is like the way that we create social revolutions is through turning inward.
It's new and it's refreshing and it adds a little a bit of fun into my senior year.
The flexibility to both adapt based on our opponent, adapt based on our judge, really
has given us all options on the table.
All debaters could make any of the arguments, but to perform at the level we're
talking about, they have to practice them all and know them all.
That's what makes Brent and Varun unique.
It's not they could say anything, it's they can say anything very successfully because
they've thought it all the way through.
Policy debate is just more boring Kritik debate honestly, but no, but debate is meant
to be fun and I think it's the most fun when we're pushing our traditional notions of what
one style of debate ought to be.
The hope is that if this was a team that was successful, it would cause people to rethink
how they approach argument.
It doesn't have to be one side or the other.
You don't have to be a philosophy person or a policy person.
You can really be a person that blends the two thoughts together so that our society
can both answer the question of values and what should we do and recognize that those
are not separate conversations but part of the same ones.
[music]