BIRT This house will ban Combat Sports

Lets talk about boxing since it is the most well known combat sport: All sports have the potential of becoming about much more than athletics, transforming into symbols of a culture’s and country’s mood, insecurities, conflicts, and hopes. But perhaps no sport lends itself to this kind of transposition more than boxing. For the purity of boxing gives it the nature of a blank canvas; there is no playing field or special equipment; the rules are few and easy to understand. There is but two men, facing off with nowhere to go, with only their fists and their determination to decide their fate. Thus boxing easily becomes a metaphor for debates over our values: good vs. evil, immigrant vs. nativist, bravado vs. humility, intellect vs brute strength.This connection to cultural ideals and masculinity has given boxing quite a history. At times when society felt its manliness to be on the wane, boxing was wildly popular and seen as the iron needed to fortify a unstable culture. All of which makes for a fascinating history and a subject every man should know something about.In the golden age of boxing, many great boxers, such Muhammad Ali in this example, fought in the ring. This image represents boxing at it's finest. http://content.artofmanliness.com...; width="500" height="428" />Final remarks: in the ancient Roman Colosseum, thousands of citizens watched eagerly as gladiators fought and lost their lives in front of a screaming, raging crowd. Today, we use our TV to broadcast our combat sports. Don't let this age old cultural tradition be thrown away. REBUTTAL: 1.) Kids aren't watching boxing on the TV; that would be absurd for their parents to let them to. The mass majority of Americans are rational beings, and wouldn't expose their kids to such violence. 2.) It is not the boxing on TV which makes people want to hurt store owners (or anyone else for that matter). Any rational person knows that if they hit a person in public they will get prison time or lose money , no rational person would want that to happen. 3.) My opponent hasn't actually provided any studies, his arguments are just unwarranted claims. 4.) Here is a study which shows that the crime in the U.S. isn't caused by mass media violence viewed on TV. The authors write: "The literature on the effect of exposure to media violence (including exposure toviolent pornography) on aggressive behavior is critically reviewed. Evidence andtheoretical arguments regarding short-term and long-term effects are discussed..... Exposure to violence in laboratory and fieldexperiments is as likely to affect nonaggressive antisocial behavior as it doesaggressive behavior .... The fact that violent criminals tend to be versatile—theycommit nonviolent crimes as well—is inconsistent with explanations that emphasizeproviolence socialization (from the media or other sources). I conclude thatexposure to television violence probably does have a small effect on violent behaviorfor some viewers, possibly because the media directs viewer’s attention tonovel forms of violent behavior that they would not otherwise consider. [2] This means that the behavior effect from violence is not only unlikely, but is only the case from some viewers, and is only true because a form of violence is revealed to them which they didn't prviously know. The violence isn't caused by repetitive watching of violent sports, it's caused by viewers being revealed to a new form of violence(and even this only has a small impact on the subject's behavior). 5.) Even if kids were watching violent sports, they would realize as they get older that that violence is pointless and meaningless, and would not incorporate it into their behaviors. For these reasons, I urge you to vote for the negative, to preverse the ancient cultural tradition of boxing and other combat sports. Thank you. [1] http://www.badlefthook.com...[2]http://www2.warwick.ac.uk...