Just little things that drive me up the wall...
Self-Limiting Values
Them: "Freedom of Speech is saying what you want as long as your not hurting anyone. Therefore none of my opponent's examples count, Freedom of Speech could never hurt anybody, I win."
Let me make something painfully clear. The definition you just gave was our Freedoms, relating to speech, as given by the Constitution. You are not talking about our human ability to speak freely. You are talking about the limits but on that right by man-made governments and Declarations. As a whole, this is just an underhanded way to win a debate round. Put it in your RA, make your Criterion the Harm Principle. But building in into your defs is an unfair advantage and not completely logical.
For more information, here's someone (Travis Herche), who can explain it better.
Other Squirrelly Definitions That Defeat Educational Value
"It's only mitigation if it succeeds, so all my opponent's examples don't apply. I win."
Anyone who debated the 2013-14 LD season in Stoa knows exactly what I'm talking about. Some of you probably even ran this. I'm not judging, I'm just going to tell you why you're wrong. :P It's okay, I became extremely desperate in one round and tried to pull this off. One time, okay?
I'm basically saying becoming extremely technical with definitions and grammar is unethical, even if you think it creates an "ace in the hole."
Which it does, I saw one girl get to finals with this argument. She's really nice, too.
This doesn't prove what an epic debater you are, though. It doesn't prove your amazing logic skills, your impeccable presentation, your hard-hitting and to-the point examples. It doesn't win the value debate, it doesn't achieve anything, it just proves somebody else found a flaw in the res and you stole the idea and exploited it.
It actually makes you look like a jerk.
Because instead of having a debate about international relations and moral obligations, you're just thunking everyone over the head with something they already know. For example, of course it's moral to help people in peril. Of course every time we succeed it's a good thing. But closing off the res to where every time we attempt to mitigate an international conflict and fail or make things worse it doesn't apply, well that cuts off 80% of the Neg's possible arguments. The only thing the Neg has left to say is
1. Some lame argument about how governments can't have morals or there's no such thing as moral obligations. Which some people tried and it worked okay, but let's face it, it was a bit easy to defeat and also kind of killed the point of the debate
. 2. They can make the logic argument about we're actually talking about ethics and not morals, which is actually correct and makes a lot of sense, but it will confuse most judges and, yet again, kill the point of the debate.
3 They can say something about the affect on the US's economy and how it harms our citizen's welfare. The Neg will the look like a gigantic, heartless, pathetic bad word next to your pity-inciting examples. The best shot they've got at this point, which is what I did and how I won a few rounds, is talking about sending our American soldiers into conflicts, sacrificing their lives for countries who hate us, having American kids back home with no dads (or moms) because the US decided to fix the conflict between Uzinbekastan and Fleckaboyvockia. This doesn't really work on talented pity-case debaters, though. I know this sounds really mean, and I hate being mean, but it's the truth.
My advice against this sort of thing? Talk about debate ethics. Talk about how the resolution was meant to be debated. How you, your opponent, and the judge will learn so much more if we take your route instead. Talk about why we debate.
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