QotD: Political Debate

Who would you hope to never face in a political debate?

There is no debate opponent I fear.  There are, however, debate judges that I fear. 

I used to have a friend, back when I was judging debate on a semiregular basis (actually I knew this guy from when we were both debaters) who would walk into the room, throw his flow chart down on the table and declare to the debaters, "I'm tabula rasa.  I am only going to judge you based on what you say and the flow."  And he was telling the truth.  It never mattered with him, or with most of us ex-debaters turned debate judges, what we thought.  It wasn't a war of opinions; it was all about who won the flow chart[1].

I don't think most people are capable of that, though.  I used to think they were capable of it but just failed to do it.  Now I wonder if most people are even capable of being blank slates on which a flow of ideas, facts, and opinions, can arrange itself until one side emerges victorious, even if it's the side you disagree with.  Maybe prejudice and bias and deeply held beliefs that cannot be shaken no matter how much flow is thrown its way are normal and I and my debatey friends are the freaks.  It's entirely possible.  But, in that case, the philosophical ideal of law, that it is reason free from passion, is not realistic.  When I first got hold of that idea, I was completely disillusioned.  Justice John Marshall was one of my most beloved childhood heroes.  To me, the law and the rule of law are no joke.  That doesn't mean I always obey the law.  Obeying the law is for suckers[2].  Devo taught me that.

Hold on.  I'm having a mental disconnect resulting from the fact that I just mentioned John Marshall and Devo in the same paragraph. 

Anyway, so I'm a person whose political and other opinions change from time to time.  Most of the time, the changes are just refinements of what I already think, because most of what I think now has already been fairly well considered and researched.  But from time to time, a startling new set of evidence comes my way, and an internal debate is held between the two competing ideas, and whoever wins the flow chart wins me.  That's why I used to support the death penalty, and I don't anymore.  New evidence convinced me it was wrong.  People accuse me all the time of just having whatever political belief suits my whims that day, as if I were an unserious person (please)--my parents used to accuse me of just believing whatever book I was reading at the time, which was obviously untrue because I used to read Schopenhauer for kicks, and nobody agrees with him.

It's very frustrating for me to debate people who are not debaters by temperament, because such people do not actually listen.  If you're making a point more subtle than, "x sucks," they usually don't listen well enough to even understand what your point is.  Then they tend to view everything in the Manichean dichotomies whereby if you disagree with them, then you must agree with the opposite position.  And, if all else fails, they will simply say that you are stupid or something along those lines rather than have to adequately deal with the question at hand.  This type of arguing--it isn't debating, that's for sure--goes against every fiber of my being as they say.  Both my temperament and my training [3] are made a mockery of by what passes for "debate" amongst the nondebaters out there.  It's why I just don't really talk to people anymore, unless those people have met some criteria first. 

Anyway, the hardest people to debate are the people who take a stand that you are completely not expecting, for example, by questioning the very fundamental assumptions on which the question rests.  This doesn't happen a lot, frankly.  Usually, you can predict what positions people will take, but I will say that it happens more often in L-D debate (which is what I did) than in policy debate.  The only time policy debate is ever fun, though, is when someone does this.  Let me give a couple of examples.

Once, the policy debaters were debating some resolution about federal funding for the homeless.  The normal course of this was to debate setting aside a certain amount of federal monies for homeless shelters and so forth versus not doing so and providing for the homeless, say, through private charities or something.  Sometimes the debate would really revolve around whether this was a state or a federal project, or whatever.  Boring!  But this one team boldly declared that society would really be better off if, instead of providing shelter to the homeless, we just euthanized them all.  The brilliance of this tactic is that the opposing team is in no way prepared to argue this.  They have boxes full of evidence about various state, federal, and private programs; they got nothing on euthanasia.  In the end, though you are unlikely to sway most judges who will not take kindly to killing off the homeless, you will probably win the flow chart just by catching the other team with their pants down.  Great fun!

In one of my debates, we were debating some penny-ante resolution about what role the media properly plays in a democracy, I think...or maybe public education.  It's beside the point.  Democracy is the point.  Most of the debaters I was facing were using one of about three arguments, all of which I was well prepared to slay.  But, then, Dean gets up there--and bear in mind that I had a crush on him anyway, which didn't help--and starts quoting Plato about how democracy is not a very good system of government anyway.  I was not prepared for that.  Not at all.  I floundered.  Dean won the flow chart handily, and since we had a good judge, he also won the debate.   Bastard!  Still, it was fantastic, one of the best hours of my entire life because it was so challenging and fresh and even though I ended up losing, I really had to be at my best.  Exhilarating.

Honestly, I doubt there is a politician out there who could provide me with the kind of unpredictable thrills that those two debates did.   And there are so few judges out there who can really claim to be tabula rasa.  That's why I blog, so that I don't have to debate.

[1]  If you don't know what I'm talking about with flow charts and "flow," it's just a specialized form of note-taking, really.  Usually, there are columns for each speech.  In each column, you write a short summary of each of the speaker's points, so if they make three points in support of their basic thesis, you have three headings in your flow chart column.  You may or may not write down further supporting points based on how relevant or interesting or worthwhile they are.  Then when the opposing speaker speaks, you draw an arrow from the first speaker's point to the specific rebuttal offered by the opponent.  The opponent needs to offer a rebuttal for each point, or else the first speaker has technically won that point by default.  So if there were three headings, then you should have at least three arrows.  Then you make new headings for the opponent's own points.  Then more arrows and so on.  It's not difficult, but when it is properly done, it should give you a pretty clear idea of who argued what and how well they rebutted each other.  Since the affirmative speakers speak last, judges who don't use flow charts tend to vote for the affirmative because the last thing they heard sticks with them best, or they vote for the side they most agreed with already.  Judges who use flow charts, even if they are makeshift ones by lay people, judge better because they have a more accurate picture of what was actually said and what arguments were in play.

[2]  Except traffic laws.  I really hate people who break traffic laws. 

[3]  I'm not sure which is more important, the temperament or the training.  I do think it is a crucial part of debate that you are forced to take both sides.  You have to be prepared to convince a judge of both sides of the debate, because in one round you are affirmative, then in the next one against a different opponent, you will be negative, etc.  You don't have any choice about it, so no matter how much it might offend your deeply held convictions, you have to lay them aside and argue persuasively that the homeless should all be euthanized.  I think that being forced to be absolutely convincing on both sides is a good thing, because it means you have understood both sides.  The political debate in America would benefit a great deal from having more people who actually understand both sides of the issue.