Emory HS: Round 5: Mountain Brook v. Whitney Young

Negative: Whitney Young.

I wish that the affirmative would have aggressively pursued some combination of “permutation do the counterplan” and “consultation counterplans shouldn’t be considered textually competitive because they make debate silly.” I will give the affirmative very strong presumption on these arguments. Unfortunately, the affirmative elects to go for other arguments, so I don’t really have the pretext I want to intervene against an argument I despise.

As it stands, the 2NR wins by virtue of superior risk analysis. The affirmative wins a good risk of “say no” and the negative wins an excellent to full risk of their net benefit. The 2NR explicitly accounts for this possibility, and devotes a crucial paragraph on top comparing the case and the net benefit. Last rebuttals often constitute a race to risk comparisons phrased as “even if”. The negatively clearly wins this race.

I don’t think his arguments are intrinsically superior, by any stretch of the imagination. Truthseeking would compel an affirmative ballot here in many circumstances – there’s a much better threshold to the “say no” disad than there is to the cooperation net benefit. Left to my own devices, I’d definitely default aff on the basis of superior defense and superior threshold. The relationship between a single consultation and the net benefit is much weaker than the relationship between a “say no” risk and the case advantages.

I’m not left to my own devices, however. The affirmative has all of the individual arguments in play to weave a compelling risk analysis story, but must put them together for me.

On the micro level:

SAY NO: This is a logical argument, and the affirmative wins a decent risk of it. It certainly gives me pause. The negative evidence doesn’t really support their position – it says that the EU wants to promote their own biofuels. That’s the affirmative warrant. They want to inhibit US development in order to promote their own because they perceive it as a zero-sum situation.

If I assign the affirmative full weight of this argument, the gap in risk analysis is probably irrelevant (although I’d still pause, because there’s no subline on why EU rejection might compromise the internal net benefit.) I refrain from assigning anything above a B- (moderate-high) risk, though, for two reasons.

1. The affirmative doesn’t really articulate my objection to the negative evidence on this point. You do point out that it isn’t very good, and you’re right. You don’t, however, explain why it’s a better affirmative card than your cards.

2. This matters because your internal link to this – Perry – isn’t much better. I think you have a more logical story, but your evidentiary support fails epically. It discusses an instance in which Britain refused an EU attempt to regulate British drilling for gas and oil in the North Sea. This evidence is just entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand, and you’d be better off issuing an analytic on this point and keeping Perry out of my hands entirely.

This deficit’s particularly damaging because the 2NR has a cogent story about how Britain wants to reduce greenhouse gases, so will accept the aff as a good global citizen. The 2AR’s only answer is that the negative has no cards. You are correct, but neither do you – it’s very difficult to thus make clean risk assignments when everyone relies on atrocious cards.

PERMUTATION:

The internal net benefit is a disad to this perm. The Haass evidence clearly distinguishes between binding and non-binding consultation. The 2NR’s especially cogent here, incorporating lines of analysis from the evidence directly into his speech.

I could easily view this permutation as a defensive argument against the net benefit, which would in turn help support macro weighing arguments. The permutation doesn’t solve relations as well as the counterplan, but it’s better than the status quo. That furthers weakens the internal link between the counterplan and the net benefit, so the risk of the “say no” disad is comparatively much higher. I don’t hear anything about this in the 2AR, though.

TAIWAN INTERNAL LINK AND EMBARGO:

The negative does have an independent terrorism scenario which goes largely neglected. 2NR risk analysis, however, revolves around the China scenario, and I’d likely vote affirmative if left to my personal instincts on macro evaluation, so I’m compelled to engage here.

As with the “say no” debate, the affirmative has a comprehensible (if underarticulated) scenario, but they’re doomed by the quality of their evidence. This embargo internal link doesn’t draw any causative connection between relations and the embargo. It does say that we’ve objected to the European stance before, but there isn’t anything approaching either a predictive claim or even a general assessment of a relationship – it’s simply a description of an individual instance. 2AR storytelling here would be adequate for a good card, but it’s wholly inadequate for an argument with near-zero carded support.

I do think that the negative evidence about managing conflicts is good enough, though. It makes general but predictive claims about the importance of our relations for managing all possible flashpoints with China. Taiwan’s certainly one of those flashpoints, even if the internal link doesn’t mention it by name. I’d be more compelled by the affirmative’s internal link attack if it were coupled with at least some mention of other factors that might overwhelm, such as purely internal nationalist dynamics on both sides of the Strait.

Overall, the aff chips away at the risk of the net benefit and gathers a good risk of their own case as offense. They don’t win one argument so utterly decisively, though, that I’d discount superior negative macro evaluation.

Some individual speech comments:

1AC: Good 1AC, you are crystal clear. Substantively, I wonder if it’s a great idea to intersect directly with the college topic. I always feel that’s a slightly dangerous move that takes control over argument development out of your hands.

1AC CX: I think this goes well for the negative. I hope that these points make it into the speeches as well – if this comes down to case vs. politics, say, I think you’ve made a lot of strides here. If you’re planning to go for Heidegger, this is all meaningless. (Note: I wrote this during the speech, but it was eerily prophetic. You were, in fact, going for the CP or Heidegger, rendering this whole CX an exercise in futility. That’s frustrating.)

2NC – You are nearly incomprehensible. You are reading blocks of analysis at card speed. When you go for Heidegger and consultation, however, the debate’s going to revolve around fairly minute theoretical distinctions. You should have replicated your 2AR pacing.

I think you got lucky. If they went for “consult illegitimate” or “permutation - do the counterplan” I think this 2NC would have hosed you. I wouldn’t have flowed half of your answers, and I’d give the 2AR an enormous amount of leeway on new theory as a result.

1NR – Why do you get to read a slew of new defense in the 1nr? Am I missing something? I was under the impression that teams generally introduce all of their arguments in constructives, reserving the rebuttals for argument development.

I know that these comments primarily rail on the negative – but as I vote negative, I think that makes sense. The affirmative can (I hope) extract most of my advice from an RFD that doesn’t go their way.

Good debate!