A Minor Musing About The 2016-2017 Proposed Foreign Insurgents Topic

Resolved: The United States ought to end its provision of arms to foreign insurgents.

I suppose this post's title will put me on some NSA watch list, certain foreign insurgents not being the most popular group of people at present.

I am optimistically ambivalent about this one. Granted the vague nature of it might provide vague clash, and nothing is more frightening that five consecutive weekends of vague clash. Also, I am old enough to remember when the general public made semantic arguments about "freedom fighters." The term "foreign insurgents" seems open to all sorts of language kritiks.

On the other hand, this resolution allows for arguments and clash across the political spectrum. Neocons will of course have plenty of articles and examples of how the world would be a better place if only the right group of insurgents had been given a few more land mines. Those who love Noam Chomsky can find plenty of support for the idea that arming insurgents is just another example of American imperialism at its worst. If one wants to run Richard Rorty's pragmatism, Amazon has a book for you.

I am tired of typing "the wording of this resolution makes it a policy resolution," but that statement applies for this resolution. However, off the top of my head, I can't think of LD debating a version of this resolution lately, so I would like to give it a shot, even at the risk of Hedge DAs disguised as cases.

A Minor Musing About The NSDA 2016 Proposed Rome Statute Resolution

Resolved: The United States ought to become party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The one rates a meh.

The Rome Statute gives the court jurisdiction over "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole": "The crime of genocide; Crimes against humanity; War crimes; The crime of aggression."

The US's refusal to sign is apparently based on worries that "the Rome Statute created a seriously flawed institution that lacks prudent safeguards against political manipulation, possesses sweeping authority without accountability to the U.N. Security Council, and violates national sovereignty by claiming jurisdiction over the nationals and military personnel of non-party states in some circumstances."

Without adding the words "Federal Government" after "United States" in the resolution, this wording creates a policy resolution. The federal government will ratify the treaty that makes the US a party to the Rome Statute.

Affs will have plenty of ground. Extreme nihilists excepted, crimes against humanity have little support.

The negs will likely respond with an LD version of a DA. Policy debate having appropriated nuclear war and extinction scenarios, negs will likely argue that ratification means the US will be "headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. . . .Old Testament. . . real wrath of God type stuff. . . .Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!. . . Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...The dead rising from the grave!. . .Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

On a more serious note, this topic has a lot of nuance that may be difficult to develop in 13 minutes of speaking time.

A Minor Musing About the NSDA Proposedl 2016-2017 Civil Liberties Resolution

Resolved A just government ought to prioritize civil liberties over national security.

This resolution is probably my favorite of all the proposed 2016-2017 resolutions. Those who want to default to a utilitarian calculus may do so to their hearts' content. Those who wish to engage debates from other philosophical may also do so to their hearts' content. Frameworks and facts will clash and it should be glorious.

More importantly, this will be a great resolution for the novice. The discussion about civil liberties and national security occur frequently in the public sphere. In debate world, the arguments inherent in this resolution--the eternal Star Trek argument about the goods of the many verses the harms to the few--will be covered in nearly every Lincoln-Douglas resolution that students debate.

Personally, I would prefer this one for January and February. I am afraid it will become and March-April or Nats resolution which means most of our students won't get to debate it.

A Minor Musing On The NSDA Proposed 2016-2017 Limiting Qualified Immunity Resolution

Resolved: The United States ought to limit qualified immunity for police officers.

When this topic was announced in June, I was ready to dust off my copy of Radly Balko's The Rise of the Warrior Cop, and tell the young'uns to start prepping their affs. Since then, events in Dallas and Baton Rouge have caused the public debate to degenerate into #blacklivesmatter vs #bluelivesmatter.  Although I believe that our young'uns will be more civil and logical than the folks who currently engage in public discourse about the issue, our young'uns will be relying on some of their information, and those articles will likely generate more heat than light.

This resolution, like many others proposed this year, has policy phrasing. This particular resolution dares/begs/cajoles/demands/craves/desires/needs a solvency mechanism. LD debate as done is South Dakota doesn't demand a plan, so it's going to be really difficult to provide show that solvency will happen if qualified immunity is limited. Police department reviews will still happen; some will be cover-ups. From Rodney King on, communities have been upset with juries' decisions to limit punishment or prosecutors' refusing to indict. Limiting qualified immunity will not change juries or prosecutors.

I will post my final ranking after I finish these quick overviews, but I will likely vote for this one in the March/April or September/October lists, the ones that we don't debate.

A Minor Musing About The NSDA 2016 Proposed Single-Payer Healthcare Resolution

Resolved: The United States has a moral obligation to adopt a single-payer healthcare system.

I don't like this resolution, so I hope the overview will be short and sweet.

First, there will likely be too many arguments about whether stats from other countries should apply because no one apparently agrees on what constitutes a single-payer system. This NPR article offers the following definition:

A single payer refers to a system in which one entity (usually the government) pays all the medical bills for a specific population. And usually (though, again, not always) that entity sets the prices for medical procedures. 

A single-payer system is not the same thing as socialized medicine. In a truly socialized medicine system, the government not only pays the bills but also owns the health care facilities and employs the professionals who work there.

The article goes on to cite Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who contends that only Canada and Taiwan have "true single payer systems." 

Meanwhile, this Atlantic article contends:

The other point of confusion is that “Europe” has single-payer health care, and America should be more like Europe. European countries’ medical systems are all pretty different. Some of them, like the U.K., have single-payer health care. Germany has a system much like ours, except the insurers aren’t for-profit companies and it’s cheaper for the patients. Other countries have mixed public-private systems that guarantee a basic level of health care but allow the rich to buy supplemental private insurance. [Emphasis Mine]

This confusion will result in a large number of debates descending into "throw out the Great Britain statistics" or "prefer my Great Britain statistics" and then arguments about whether the existence of private insurers constitutes a "true single payer" system. 

Further, this resolution limits aff ground. Aff debaters are forced to defend a single-payer system which has its own set of problems. Further, aff debaters not only have to defend a flawed system; they have to prove the US has a "moral obligation" to implement that flawed system.

Negs can defend the status quo which works well for people who have jobs that provide good insurance. Those citizens would be losers under a single-payer system. Negs can also advocate socialized medicine which is not single-payer. They can refuse to advocate any system at all and attack the failings of a single-payer system. They can support a single-payer system but claim that no moral obligation exists to implement it. They can even contend that the United States has a legal/constitutional/contractual obligation to adopt a single-payer system but that such an obligation does not rise to the level of a moral obligation. Finally, they can argue that Medicare means that the US has fulfilled its moral obligation to adopt a single-payer system because the resolution does not specify that the system be available to all citizens and there is no need to create an additional plan or obligation.

The intent of this resolution may be the same as the intent behind the November/December 2012 resolution Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens; however, focusing on the method rather than the result will cause the debate to degenerate into a definitions debate in which the aff has little ground.