Please vote on a topic wording
I think we can reasonably say that we have two possibilities:
Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified.
Resolved: In a democracy, civil disobedience is an appropriate tactic for achieving justice.
Please vote (send your choice to midhudsonleague@gmail.com). Feel free to discuss more here too, if you wish, but the deadline for ballots is 4/30/09. If you ask me, we can debate either of these, for a couple of months at the novice level. We can always upgrade the topic next season if a fatal flaw is discovered. (And there can be no more fatal a flaw than having to run last year’s Sept-Oct topic.)
Thanks.
SherylKaz said,
Wrote on April 23, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
Peter, the LDers and I discussed the topic choices at our meeting this afternoon. At first, we were divided 50-50 on which topic we preferred, at which time time I proposed a “thought experiment,” that we each list aff and neg arguments for each resolution. After sharing our results, nearly everyone agreed that NFA prefers the first, and shorter, version of the topic. As a side note, I would like to mention that when Peter and I compared our lists, we found similar arguments on opposing topics, which means Jim is probably right that both are pretty decent (and pretty similar), although our vote is definitely still for Version One.
Jon Cruz said,
Wrote on April 25, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
I’ll go public as well. As with our friends at NFA, Bronx Science will be casting its collective vote for the first version.
KIC said,
Wrote on April 28, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
I just started a unit using the first resolution at AITE. The students, who only have experience with “extemporaneous debate” and Parli, seemed to really like the resolution and find it intuitively understandable. I think it’s very well worded.
Kathryn