Policy debaters should not use Kritikal affs

Pardon the forfeit last round. I put this off for far too long and ran out of time while writing. I'll just post what I intended to write last round and finish the rebuttal: Debate generally has as its foremost concern two key values: fairness and education. Debate is an academic activity sponsored by schools, so it is important that students be educated by their participation in debate. However, it is also a competitive activity, so it must be constrained by rules of fair play. As such, when determining which norms to set for debate rounds, the most important impacts to consider are those to the fairness and educational quality of debate as an activity. A norm against kritikal affs would undermine both. 1. Fairness A. Aff/Neg skew In a world where kritikal affs aren't allowed, affs are at a major disadvantage. They only have one possible method of debating the resolution (the utilitarian cost-benefit analysis of most policy debates) which significantly limits aff options. On the flip-side of the coin, it makes negating easier because when you discount all of the non-utilitarian affs, there are significantly fewer affs to prepare for. Finally, it's just flat out unreciprocal since the negative has access to the kritik. If the negative has the ground to question the various philosophical underpinnings of the aff, the aff should be able to choose what philosophy to defend. B. Big School/Small School In a world where only body-count impact calculus is the norm, the big school will almost always win. Small schools get easily out-evidenced by the massive amount of files that the large schools possess. Allowing for kritikal affs checks back this problem because it allows for small-school debaters to specialize in one form of debate (e.g. being well-read on a particular philosophy) and debating in that manner instead of having to cut cards and prepare for every facet of the resolution. It's also easier to win a K debate as the underdog since the debates are resolved moreso on the debaters' knowledge and explanation of the philosophy rather than the number of cards that can be spewed out, meaning having the most evidence won't always guarantee the win. 2. Education Kritikal affirmatives are educational. They promote understanding of different veins of philosophy, provide different perspectives on politics than the dominant ones, and encourage the rigorous questioning and defense of the basic assumptions we make. I would go so far as to say that the philosophical education one gains from the K is more useful than the policy education gained from DA debate. The current events that your politics DAs adrees will be long since past by the time you're old enough to do anything about them, and the majority of us won't even grow up to be policy-makers. We all will, on the other hand, make important life choices that require a grasp of philosophy. Excluding these important concerns makes for a myopic and over-limited debate that runs counter to the free-thinking spirit of the activity. Moving to PRO's points... There are a few flaws with contention 1 (regarding his assertion that kritiks rarely have solvency) 1st, this is, at best, a problem in implementation and not in concept. Bad debaters write bad K affs. The same debaters would write bad policy affs. This isn't a problem with the Kritik, just a problem with the people who write poor ones. 2nd, this flaw is hardly unique to the kritikal affirmative. Here's the first 3 policy affs I found in a google search: http://www.mediafire.com... http://www.mediafire.com... http://www.mediafire.com... Not one of them makes a lick of sense to me and all seem to lack the "solvency" that you talk about. They claim that we need to promote international law, prevent human rights violations, solve terrorism, prevent Pakistani collapse, and a whole host of issues and then propose one small action (such as closing Bagram Air Base) which they claim will completely solve these issues. None warrants why the small action that they propose is sufficient to solve all of the problems they discuss. 3rd, I think this argument begs the question of whether kritikal affs need solvency to begin with. It is not the goal of every philosophy to solve for some huge impacts. Sometimes the means are more important than the ends and taking a stance is important regardless of whether it solves anything. In these cases On this contention 2 (that kritikal affs make K negs debate against themselves) my opponent commits a very hasty generalization fallacy in assuming that all kritiks are the same. If the affirmative proposes one particular philosophy, the negative can counter it with another. I would posit that it is better for kritik negatives to debate against K affs because they can engage solely in the comparative philosophical discussion that they want to debate and ignore the framework issues you think are so bad. Here's a good few examples of teams countering the K with the K: http://puttingthekindebate.com... http://puttingthekindebate.com... http://puttingthekindebate.com... http://puttingthekindebate.com... http://puttingthekindebate.com... Also, he mentions the Afghanistan Agenty Counter-plan (which is a dumb argument in the first place - but that's another debate) being easily beat by the K aff. That just proves your CP is a bad argument that doesn't effectively disprove the aff. That's not a reason the aff is bad. It's a reason your neg strat is. Contention 3 is mainly a bunch of assertions which I'll deal with in the next round if they ever get quantified, impacted, or warranted. He says morals aren't policy but (1) if you don't think policy makers need to look to morals in decision-making, you're just wrong -- I don't want a Capitol Hill unconstrained by moral rules, and (2) most K teams would reject the role of policy makers in the first place. You can debate a policy without being a policy maker. Also, I don't know what this "Anti-philosophy framework" is, but if it is anything like it's name suggests, I doubt it is a strong argument. On his contention 4, all arguments from contention one apply. This is just a reiteration of "kritiks don't solve".