Evan+McCarty

Evan McCarty Senior at Northwestern University Assistant Coach at Niles North

Updated 1-22-2016

1. Debate should be about opportunity costs. This has significant implications for my views on counterplan competition, disad theory, and kritik links (particularly links that have to do with what the affirmative did // not  // say).

2. I’m an Economics/Political Science major and an incoming management consultant. As such, I generally believe pragmatism > idealism in almost all cases. Arguments that are heavily idealistic (pacifism comes to mind) are generally unpersuasive.

3. Debate should promote clash.

4. The affirmative should almost certainly affirm the resolution, in some manner or another.

5. The affirmative should probably defend instrumental enactment of the resolution or a topical plan of action that falls under the resolution.

6. I fundamentally do not understand why “the USFG is bad” is a justification for the affirmative not proposing and defending a topical government action. The USFG being bad is neg ground, not aff ground. Saying “the USFG is bad and therefore we shouldn’t have to defend it” is the equivalent of saying “surveillance is good and therefore we shouldn’t have to defend a reduction of surveillance because that would be difficult for us to defend.” Personally thinking the USFG is bad doesn’t give you license to ignore the resolution. The beauty of debate is that we have to argue two sides of an issue. If you don’t think debaters should have to occasionally argue for things that they don’t actually believe, then you and I have fundamentally different views about debate and you should pref me at your own risk.

7. Use of racist/homophobic/sexist/ableist/etc. language (except in instances of reclamation), threats of violence, and suggesting that the opposing team should harm or kill themselves all = auto-losses. So does clipping. None of these require the other team to call you out for me to vote you down.

8. A dropped argument (claim + warrant) is presumptively true for the rest of the debate. However, I have a relatively high threshold for what constitutes an argument in the first place. For example, the phrase “conditionality is a voter – time and strat skew, argumentative irresponsibility – dispo solves” is not an argument, because it does not contain an actual warrant (and is not, for that matter, even a complete sentence).

9. Presumption is towards less change from the status quo, unless you tell me otherwise.

10. No take-backs --- if you make a truth claim, you can’t retract it. You may only “kick” that truth claim by conceding an argument made by your opponent.

11. Judges do a disservice to debaters when they decide on cheap-shot arguments (e.g. ASPEC hidden in your 2NC conditionality block). As such, my threshold for voting on such arguments is very high. That being said, see #5 --- if it’s an actual argument (as opposed to an assertion), and it’s dropped, then it’s true.

12. I know ** very little ** about the surveillance topic. I cannot emphasize this point enough.