Warsh,+Jonathan

Jonathan Warsh – Groves/Harvard
In general, I think that you should run whatever you’re good at – yes, I tend to debate certain arguments, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to listen to whatever you have. If, at the end of reading this philosophy, you drastically alter your 1NC strategy to go for a bunch of arguments you’re not comfortable with, you’re probably making a big mistake. A few meta-level observations which will hopefully be helpful to you when the final rebuttals roll around 1) I think evidence is important, but poor evidence cannot overwhelm stronger argumentation. I think that debaters are overly reliant on their evidence to make arguments for them after the debate and neglect to make the arguments //during// the debate. Do not expect me to say “stack up all of the cards on every issue” and have me sort it out. After the debate, I will likely call for evidence that I think is crucial in deciding the issues, but I will not simply read through your evidence and make arguments for you if they were not in the debate. 2) Tech is important, but not as important as overarching issues of strategy – that is to say, that an argument is not really “dropped” if it is answered by the overarching thesis of the other team’s argument. This also means that I am unlikely to vote on a dropped e subpoint voting issue on a theory argument if the neg made other theory arguments elsewhere in the debate that you fail to respond to. In close debates, I am unlikely to vote on “cheap shots,” and instead will defer to larger issues of strategy. Before I discuss specific issues, let me make clear that while I may have some biases regarding particular arguments, I would likely vote (and have) on arguments listed below that I identify as silly. Specific issues: Case Debates – underutilized – please go for them. I think there is nothing more enjoyable in debate than a huge case debates. Negatives that are able to engage in specific and nuanced case debates will likely get good speaker points from me. DA –Link, link, link. I am not one of those offense/defense judges who thinks that if the neg has a “risk of uniqueness,” then there is no chance for the aff to win offense. Make link distinctions and do evidence comparisons on the link level. This is often crucial in determining who wins the substance of the DA. Theory - I am not all that biased in theory debates, but I would say that I generally lean neg. Important: I think that “reject the argument, not the team” is always implied (except in the case of conditionality/dispositionality ) and if you are a team going for theory, then you should make sure to answer this argument. I tend to side with the neg on issues of conditionality and dispositionality, but it’s possible I could be persuaded otherwise. I am extremely skeptical of CP’s which include the entirety of the plan, like consultation CP’s. I think you would have a difficult time persuading me that running these types of CP’s is so bad that it’s a voting issue, but a lot of time spent on CP competition would serve you well. ASPEC, OSPEC and [Insert letter here]SPEC are non-starters (again, have voted reluctantly) on these before.

Topicality – I could easily vote here. I think issues of limits only become important when the neg proves that the //margin// by which the aff expands the topic makes the topic undebatable for the negative. This is also to say that I am unlikely to vote on the neg interpretation that limits out 5 more affs than the affirmative’s interpretation. One more thing – I think that evidence in topicality debates that has an intent to define and contextual evidence are both important. Teams that are going for topicality would be better served by very topic specific T violations with a lot of good contextual evidence. In other words, don’t plan on going for T-Should=without material qualifications in front of me. Counterplans – case specific PIC’s are great – run them and impact y