Kersch,+Brian

ADVANCE NOTICE: Racism good and sexism good are NOT, I repeat, NOT arguments. You not only will lose speaker points for saying these in front of me, but I believe it is within my ethical responsibility and agency to simply reject these arguments. I do NOT care if the other team "dropped" that rape is key to survival sex. That is not an argument. To be perfectly clear stuff like "patriarchy key to hegemony" is (a dumb argument) okay with me. But things like "blacks are inferior because of (any reason)" to answer a team that says Whiteness bad is a non-starter. If you're going to make an argument that says one culture is better than another think to yourself "is this highly offensive?" If the answer is yes, don't read it, it's a waste of time and speaker points. If the answer is "I'm saying science good" then by all means read that portion of "West is best." I will never reject a team for making any argument, I will only discredit arguments themselves. I realize this is a controversial opinion, that's why I foregrounded it in my philosophy.

I debate for UNT debated for 3 years on the national circuit in HS and am competing nationally at UNT. Generally speaking I know what I'm doing, sometimes.

My judge preferences are not the same as the arguments I have read in college. I am a middle of the road judge, probably lean a little bit left of center. I will vote for impact turns to K and love to see policy vs. policy debates.

Roll right, out left, go for framework. It doesn't matter to me.

If you have a particular K you read a lot feel free to ask me before the round starts. Giving the 2a the extra minute jump start on your 1nc strategy won't hurt you as much as me being confused as hell.

META LEVEL: I think analysis outweighs evidence. I am not afraid to be "that guy" on a panel who didn't call for the 20 cards the 2nr extended by cite and vote aff on the better explanation of "winners-win." Evidence supports argumentation, not the other way around. (Empirically) I've voted neg in a round where the neg was winning analysis but literally every card that was read went the aff's direction.

Kritik Paradigm: I think kritiks that don't let the affirmative access fiat are fighting an uphill battle in terms of framework. This is not to say "reps first" is a bad argument, because that's not "fiat doesn't matter" it's a prioritization of impacts, and therefore debatable, and in my opinion, winnable. But arguments like "The plan never actually passes so we should look at real world implications only judge!" just seem extremely biased to me. I do think it's possible to win the kritik without necessarily winning your alternative, but also at the same time, I think the permutation has a lot of weight against most kritiks. 99% of the time "Reject the aff" is not what your authors would call for, and so I would desire a very compelling story from the negative as to why rejecting the aff would be able to mitigate whatever the problem that we are criticizing is.

I hate that most judges buy into the mindset of "It's a K therefore it links" because that's not always true. I think links like "You use the State" would easily be able to be overcome by a specific link turn. Of course, a "you use the State" link can become specific and interact with the link turn if the negative does a good job with explaining why "using the State" actually matters. As a general rule of thumb, the more specific to the 1ac, the argument is, the better.

Framework: You must win why your education outweighs or why fairness outweighs education OR some external terminal impact. Proving that the aff is unfair is not only obvious, but completely irrelevant if you don't win a terminal impact to that fairness claim. Debatibility key to education, policy education good, topic education good, policy education key to democracy, ceding the political, etc. Otherwise I am inclined to think that unfair affs are better for debate if the education they provide by being unfair is more relevant than topical education. This is NOT a high threshold, and ought not to be hard to do. Simply put: Make sure I care about why the aff is unfair. Obviously degrees of unfairness are relevant. If the aff defends topical action just not the government you need to win a reason government focus/praxis is good. If the aff gets up and reads something from the social services topic because capitalism is bad, judge, I'm much more inclined to vote negative on any impact to framework.

PICs: Functional Competition, not textual. Forcing better research about the aff plan can never be bad.

CPs: Be creative. There are MANY ways to solve the aff with a States CP BESIDES just Lopezing or having the States do the mandates of the plan. Smarter CP texts that solve the aff without trying to have the States do the aff make me happy, more likely to vote for you, and at the very least raises my perception of your intelligence and thus your speaker points. Just know that whenever you read a CP presumption flips aff. If your disad links to both the plan and the CP equally I vote aff on presumption.

Disads: I'm not as extreme as this makes me sound. No one has ever actually won a reason for me to reject the politics disad in front of me and I vote on it like its my job.

I hate politics, I've voted for it, I understand it's strategic, I understand the utility of reading politics. I just think it's intellectually dishonest and bad for debate. HOWEVER that doesn't mean I won't vote for them, or that I automatically buy aff theory against them. In my experience judging rounds I actually have never once seen the aff win the intrinsicness/politics bad theory debate and therefore voted neg on politics + cp. As a judge though, I don't automatically dismiss arguments like "fiat solves the link" "vote no" or "disads must be intrinsic". I just have a high aff threshold on the warrants for this argument. The 2ac saying "fiat solves the link" gives me NO warrant for why that's true, and therefore the block is held to the same standard in answering such an argument. "Nuh uh" would be sufficient in this case.

Theory: Overall I think conditionality is fine. The instances where I think it's not fine are *generally* as follows. When you have 3 conditional worlds and at least 1 of them operates under a different framework than the other 2 (2 CPs and K). Conditional Planks of CPs are cheating, don't do them. Defend all of the CP if it's conditional. If the 2nr goes for a CP I will not vote for the status quo unless otherwise told to do so. If the 2nr goes for XO and Politics and the aff wins the perm solves the link to politics I vote aff. If the neg *makes an argument as to why even if they lose the perm I should vote for the status quo* I will then evaluate that. My DEFAULT is 2nr choice means you are NOT defending the status quo.

T: I think there are several *very* persuasive arguments in favor of reasonability, but they are very rarely ever debated well. I default to competing interpretations. Ground is not an impact, predictable ground is. Limits aren't good, predictable limits based in the literature are. Education outweighs fairness, and potential abuse is a voter.