DDODCL Season 1 Debate: Team Sine Nomine VS Team Thrawn

It wouldn't make sense for Pro to argue twice in a row with nothing to respond to. My apologies on the error. To start this off, I need to lay out a couple of very important definitions. While this debate shouldn't have to devolve to semantic arguments, there are a couple things my opponent said in his round one "Context" area that are concerning for myself and the rest of Sine Nomine. Ought: Moral Obligation : Duty "used to express obligation , advisability , natural expectation , or logical consequence (1) This word is extremely important to the debate, as it establishes a basic premise of where Con's burdens lie. The word ought generally in the debate world implies a Moral Obligation to do something. However to say this would imply negative moral implications to society NOT funding art, which isn't really Con's goal in the debate. Using ought outside of it's moral realm in this case would be much more relevant to consequences from society funding or not funding art, as opposed to being based on ethical principles. Much the same way it isn't immoral for someone to not show up to work, a person still has an obligation to go. Con's burden is to demonstrate that the Government does not have a moral burden, or a burden based on consequentialism to fund art as per the debate resolution. Society People in general thought of as living together in organized communities with shared laws, traditions, and values The people of a particular country, area, time, etc. , thought of especially as an organized community This one is specifically important because my opponent seems to classify society as a government entity, which took our team off guard a little bit. In fact none of the definitions in Merriam Webster really seem to apply to a government entity, unless you were to really be literal and over the top with the meanings. By society, Con take this to mean that public citizens should not be funding art, and that the government spending money is the better alternative. After a very brief discussion with my opponent in the PM's, it sounds like he is taking "publicly fund" to mean literal "public funding" which then implies a government entity. This understanding of Public Funding is flawed, nor is it a "tautological fact" that the resolution means what my opponent thinks it means. Ultimately it's up to the judge in question to decide for themselves whether they buy Bsh1's separation of "society" and "public funding". Why wasn't the resolution phrased "Art should receive public funding"? In the Context area of this debate, Pro seems to be attempting to shifts Con's burden into a very narrow and unrealistic field, that obviously serves to give us little room to argue. For example, Pro says: Unless Con can show you that public funding will never have any upside, and that their options are better, than Con cannot show why we should endorse fewer tools in the toolbox. What an extreme way to limit your opponent and the arguments they can make. This is not only a BOP shift, but completely takes balancing and weighing a resolution out of bounds. In most normative debate resolutions, you wouldn't expect your opponent to admit that there wasn't benefits to the argument they are proposing against, you are suggesting alternatives that provide more benefits, or you are weighing the benefits against the negatives. With all due respect to Team Thrawn, we will not be playing into binding mechanics that don't make sense in their roots. Let the judges come up with their own code to vote on the debate. With that said, I will do my best to refute all of Pro's arguments, and hopefully binding semantics won't be an interfering issue. REBUTTALS Art, Free Speech, and Democracy More Speech This argument is impact-less. More speech is a positive, Team Sine Nomine doesn't intend to negate this. But this argument is weightless. Again, we don't have to prove that their aren't benefits to funding Art, just that these benefits don't justify a society putting money into them. While it is not our burden to prove that the government shouldn't be paying for these artworks, "public funding" could also be limited to the more important works like the war veteran Memorial, as opposed to the movie and the play my opponent also mentioned. This serves society, as well as serves the government economically by not having to put funds into the more un-important projects that my opponent mentions. Democratizing art Pro lacks real life substantive examples to prove that funding is more likely to be biased towards "Elite-approved art". Nor does he give a proper example of what this type of art is. The Con world doesn't see this as an over-whelming negative in the first place, as we don't have an alternative provided by Pro to see what this huge down fall would be by moving funding to the private sector. The assumption that better funded art will trump quality art from lesser known artists is to assume that the art community is flawed in and of itself. In that case, the question of whether art deserves funding at all is relevant, under a moral obligation to an unjust system that doesn't favor quality work from lesser known artists. Art and Jobs Because my opponent and I are basically on agreeing terms that a government should be funding art (not a society) we have nothing to directly contend here. We agree with the economic benefits the government yields, it is these benefits that suggest to a Con world that the Government ought to have a role in funding as opposed to allowing the private sector to struggle with these. Art and Culture We essentially, again agree with this point as well, though it doesn't seem like like cultural expression is directly impacted by the government, as if the private sector couldn't accomplish the same thing. Irregardless, a culture identity isn't stringent upon government funding of art. This argument is irrelevant anyways, as a complete shutdown art would need to be shown to be the consequence of a government entity not supporting art, from Pro's perspective. Conclusion After having discussed the resolution with other members, I don't think that our understanding of the resolution was flawed. The problem came due to a lack of proper communication prior to the debate about the resolution, and possibly also poor word choice. At any rate, we aren't going to change our position on the topic after already accepting debate with a pre-existing understanding of the resolutions meaning. If con isn't willing to support the notion of Society funding art as opposed to the government. this debate will unfortunately go nowhere. Pro hasn't made any arguments that directly contend with our ideas of the resolution, only arguments that more or less support our ideas. Sources: 1. . http://www.merriam-webster.com... 2. . http://www.merriam-webster.com...