Tuesday, August 30, 2016

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.

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