Forwith!: I Move on in Life

Well (it seems like I start every post with this interjection), after 28 hours at the Mt. Hood Community College Speech and Debate Tournament, the results are in, and they speak well. Our school dominated public debate (on which I shall elaborate later), had stellar performance in the IEs (so called, “Individual Events”; really just anything besides debate), and fittingly took 2nd place in the tournament out of at least 20 teams.

Let me begin with debate. There are multiple formats of debate, but our school only does public debate because its pretty much the only decent format. We sent four teams, all in the Open division. Myself and Colin, and Leeor and Meghan made it to quarterfinals where we were eliminated. This essentially means that these two teams were ranked somewhere between 5th-8th place in the tournament of 40 teams. Not too shabby. In addition to this, our best team also made it to quarterfinals, but they won putting them in semifinals. Here, they faced the team beat us in the quarterfinals and that won the tournament last year (against a team from our school, interestingly). Let me just say that there are very few people that I supremely dislike. However the unbelievable arrogance of these opponents, Anderson and Lowe, compels me to have such animosity. It was a good debate, and Dan and Catherine crushed them, debating the the topic “this house would let Martha Stewart fry” (the worst topic I’ve ever, ever heard). The final speech of the debate was Catherine’s rebuttal, and it was without a doubt the greatest and perhaps angriest speech I have ever heard in a debate. Dan and Catherine were then put in the final match, where they debated the topic “this house believes that everyone should be allowed to say ‘I do.’” The proposition defined this essentially as “the American people believe that the citizens of the US should have the right to obtain legal marriage licenses.” This wording on this topic is a little weird, but they were essentially debating whether or not everyone “should” be allowed to obtain marriage licenses. The thing with “believes” is misleading, and the word is almost never in topics. The proposition came up with the classical arguments for no restrictions of marriages in their first speech. Dan gave the first opposition speech with a good set of arguments against the proposition’s, focusing primarily on homosexual marriage, as that is where there is the most controversy in respect to this topic, and that is clearly from where the topic was derived. He focused on how the American public was not progressive or ready enough for gay marriage, and how civil unions were a good alternative. The proposition had also stated that the purpose of government was solely to protect the rights of the citizens, and Dan launched an excellent counterattack. He essentially said that this was not the a function of government rather than a fundamental purpose. Fundamentally, he went on, the purpose of government in our representative democracy is to carry out the will of the people. Indeed, the government carries out the will of the people and often the will of the people is to protect the rights of people. The government is essentially bound to the majority opinion, and in this case, the majority opinion of the United States people is clearly against homosexual marriage. The second propositional speaker didn’t flesh out a lot of new ground, but made a few key arguments. She pointed out that all of the opposition’s arguments were tied to homosexual marriage and the argument was not limited only to this, but it encompassed all marriage. This was a key argument that could have won the debate, but it also opened up a small but major weakness. Throughout the debate there had been some comparisons to the civil rights movement, and she noted that the national guard was used in the 1960s to let black children attend white schools even when the majority opinion in those states was against desegregation. This is decent argument, but it has major deficiencies. Then she brought up this utter crap about the fourteenth amendment guaranteeing equal rights to everyone. The opposition never really nailed this, but I’ll tell you why it’s the biggest load of crap. The 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. It wasn’t until a century later that African Americans actually had remotely equal legal rights, and that’s because the government enacts the will of the people, regardless of whether it upholds rights or not. The majority opinion of the US until near that time was that blacks were inferior, and so unfortunately that’s how the government treated them.

After the 2nd propositional speech, Catherine delivered the 2nd oppositional speech which sealed the case brilliantly. The proposition was focusing a lot on how the opposition’s arguments pertained mainly to gay marriage, but really the debate was about the marriage of all of the citizens of the United States of America. So Catherine stood up and apologized for the misunderstanding (you don’t hear someone actually apologize to you in debate unless they’re going to obliterate you anyway or they’re about to introduce an argument that is going to obliterate you). She said that clearly the controversy of homosexual marriage is where the topic had been taken from, and they had made a mistake limiting their arguments to it. She also affirmed that the homosexual arguments still hold to the case however, since homosexuals are still citizens. Then, she introduced her first main argument: if indeed the proposition is proposing the legalization for any citizen of the United States to get marriage licenses as they defined the topic, then they are proposing the expansion of marriage rights to minors. And, if you give marriage rights to minors, then that follows that minors would be having sex, and none of this is clearly morally acceptable by the standard of the overwhelming majority of US people. Since the purpose of government is carry out the will of the people, then this would not happen. much of the rest of the speech reaffirmed previous arguments and rebutted others. On the whole it was an excessively brilliant speech. Dan then gave his rebuttal, which sealed down the substance of the argument with his characteristic good structure. The proposition was left then with only one five minute rebuttal to try to defeat the opposition’s unpredictable shift in arguments. The speaker was a good for sure, but the substance of what she said was shaky. She went down the line of what the opposition had said, and claimed to point out inconsistencies and logical failures of the opposition. About two-thirds of the time, it seemed that she had slightly skewed or misunderstood the meaning of the opposition’s arguments, and she failed to substantially rebut the child-marriage argument. Overall, it was not that great of a speech. After the ballots had been cast, apparently one of the judges said that it was one of the best debates he had ever seen either on the high school or college circuit. Needless to say, they won the debate and Catherine got an award for being the best speaker in the tournament.

In the IE roundup, we also did well although I did terribly. My radio piece that had gotten me 4th at a previous tournament was hated by two the judges in two of the three rounds. One judge said it was “quite boring and repetitive”, and another said it was “hard to listen to”. One judge really liked it though, and gave me a perfect score. Radio is supposed to focus on writing an opinion about current event topics with some analysis. Mine was a philosophical piece on the role and future of religion in postmodern societies. It’s sort of a current social analysis. Another radio piece of someone on our team also focused on philosophy and he too got hammered after winning at other tournaments. I think most people really don’t enjoy philosophy. He had a Yale-educated teacher at school read and comment on it, and he wrote on the piece that it got boring and was “too philosophical.” People just don’t understand what is really interesting. To me, philosophy is ten times more interesting than the usual hackneyed radio topics like how schools aren’t supported enough, or how popular culture is a sign of how horrible our society is becoming. Blah, blah, blah... everyone knows that pop culture is actually just a common misspelling of "poopy culture". Dan (this other person I've been speaking of) and I have decided to scrap our radios and write new ones. We'll see how life further abuses us.

But I shouldn't be complaining, because lots and lots of other people made finals and won things, and after 28 hours when all the tabulations were over, we took 2nd in the tournament (2 years running). The only reason we didn't get first was because of stupid University High School from Spokane, Washington. The only reason they got 1st (2 years running) is because they have so many people that to cross-examination debate, and Lincoln-Douglas debate. Your team gets significantly more points for doing well in those debate styles than in the other debate styles like public (which we do). Not that I'm complaining.