Matthew Shors and Steve Mancuso, University of Michigan

1993 - Health Care Policy: Debating Coverage Cures

"Bravely enjoy your feast of words."
- Plato's Republic
"You're in the wrong place at the wrong time."
- Die Hard II: Die Harder

If you were a member of a softball league and your team received an invitation to attend a tournament, you would expect that when you arrived to play, softball would be the game being played by all the other teams. Imagine your surprise when your opponent refuses to play, instead arguing that a swimming competition should be held to determine the winner. Not only that, states your opponent, but yours will be the only team competing. Your opponent will watch and judge your team and determine whether or not you have passed their critique of your athleticism. Whatever happened to softball? you wonder, and rightly so. Why don't they have to swim, too? Another good question.

In policy debate, a situation similar to this bizarre softball tournament exists. It involves the so-called "Critique" (or Kritik, depending upon how firm one's convictions are for the argument). It is our reflective opinion that the Critique is misplaced. The rules of the Critique do not impel good ideas. Rather the rules constrain meaningful discussion of issues and superficially reject ideas with merit because they uphold questionable institutions. Traditional policy debate offers substantial educational advantages to its participants through learning the issues and reasoning process involved in the comparison of policies. The benefits of the Critique can be achieved in this framework by changing the nature of the argument to facilitate comparative discussion.

Critiquing the Kritik

Before examining the utility of the Critique it is necessary to gain a level of understanding regarding the argument. The Critique is an emerging idea in debate which has attempted to become established as a meaningful argument in a policy debate context. The Critique rejects many of the assumptions of traditional policy debate, and posits the following: (1) "Fiat" is a meaningless construct. Affirmative plans are never really implemented, and voting for a plan to gain an advantage is illogical. After all, why vote affirmative if nothing really changes? By implication, therefore, the Critique theory maintains that given that plans are never implemented, it is useless to discuss the benefits of what would happen were plans really to be implemented. (2) Debates should instead be focused on rejecting ideas which unwittingly uphold questionable institutions, language, ideology, or worldviews. What perhaps most distances the Critique from other debate arguments is its refusal to consider the alternative to that which is being critiqued. For the Critique advocate, the job of the debater is to reject, not to embrace.

The first claim made by Critique advocates is (pardon the pun) not a unique one, in that no policy debate advocate believes that by voting affirmative he/she actually changes the world. Policy debate advocates simply view "Fiat" as imagining their policy in existence, to obviate the need to consider whether or not their policy would be done.

The second claim is then a necessary consequence of the first, say Critique advocates. Since policy discussion is irrelevant, principles should be embraced which reject, or critique, current thinking which is bankrupt. A plan which can be successfully critiqued should, on its face, be rejected. A terse summary of past Critiques is as follows: (1) "They should lose because they use racist language;" (2) "They should lose because they endorse the United States Government;" and (3) "They should lose because they assume that things exist." This is by no means an exhaustive list. The three examples are listed here as an illustration of how broadly the Critique has been used. (Don't forget to bring your "I think, therefore I am" backfire.)

Despite the vigor and thoughtfulness of the philosophical theories underlying many of these arguments, the Critique especially the rules in which it is framed - is misplaced in policy debate. The way in which the Critique is currently used is both incompatible with and undesirable for policy debate. Four broad arguments critically erode the core value of the Critique, as it is argued now. They are (l) All judgments, even moral ones, about policies involve a context, and the rejection of a policy requires that one understand the relevant alternative; (2) The rules of the Critique are antithetical to debate, and as argued currently, the Critique is an exercise in strategy, not intellectual probing. The value of the Critique can be upheld by applying a more rigorous test against it in a policy framework in order to facilitate better discussion through comparison; (3) The debate round itself is an improper forum for a resolution of the legitimacy of the Critique; and (4) the Critique puts an undue burden on the affirmative, since resolutions always require endorsement, which is the central target for the Critique. Even when affirmatives adopt the logic of the critique, they are unable to escape its breadth.

There Is Just No Komparison

As defined above, the critique merely rejects. It denies that alternatives are relevant when one attempts to reject the logic of a proposal. The Critique does not attempt to meet the conventional burdens of a debate argument - there is no 'uniqueness,' no 'impact,' no 'probability,' and no 'threshold.' In short all of the requisites of comparative discussion are ignored by the Critique. Since the Critique is an overriding claim which should be a priori in a debate context, comparisons are irrelevant, say its advocates. Hence if it can he demonstrated that, in order to successfully reject a proposal, one must defend an alternative, then the Critique, as is currently argued, is intellectually defeated. It is our contention that evaluations require competing alternatives; our contention can be proven both in a debate context, and, more broadly, in the deductive logic of daily situations.

Imagine that the 1993-94 debate resolution was RESOLVED: THAT THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD ESTABLISH A SYSTEM OF APARTHEID. Most debaters would understandably be skeptical about the topic, but some would probably research it in any case. Upon researching apartheid, one finds that segregation would be embraced by such a government, but that laws against murder might remain intact. While segregation and unequal distribution of benefits, public and private, are legally required under an apartheid system, the researcher would find that genocide is forbidden.

Most people would think, and rightly so, that nearly every debate on that topic would be won by the negative on the argument that overt, arbitrary discrimination which is endorsed by government is bad on its face. In other words, apartheid is so repugnant that it must be rejected. However, suppose we change the context and imagine this topic was debated in 1935-36 Nazi Germany. Apartheid, while difficult to defend, suddenly becomes incredibly attractive compared to genocidal Nazi Germany. Would one be so eager to reject the resolution on moral grounds if the alternative was acceptance of the murder of millions of people?

The point of this example is to prove that all judgments about policies involve a context, and that normative assertions about what should and should not be rejected must be evaluated with respect to the relevant alternative or alternatives. One might easily judge that our contemporary liberal democracy is preferable to apartheid, which is in turn preferable to Nazism. The Critique's ability to rank-order preferences is limited to a simplistic assessment of what is imperfect about the institution which is endorsed by the affirmative plan. What the Critique ignores is, what would the alternative be if the plan were not implemented? As part of its inherent nature, when a Critique claims that we should reject the United States Government because it is hierarchical, it does so with wanton disregard for the alternative. Even if the affirmative proves that, in the absence of plan implementation, hierarchy is more entrenched and more malevolent, the negative simply responds that this is irrelevant to a Critique.

Consider, finally, a much more mundane example: a family is sitting at home around dinner time and no one feels like cooking. Someone suggests "let's go to McDonald's" and the father retorts "No way - too much cholesterol." Would our hypothetical family be satisfied if the discussion ended right there? Definitely not. In fact someone surely would follow up with: "Well where should we go instead?" If the father turned his back and said "That is irrelevant - you suggested McDonald's and that was a lousy idea," one would probably think he was acting very strangely. It would be reasonable to accept the father's reasoning if it was commonly understood that the alternative was a lower-cholesterol salad bar at Wendy's, but the coherence of the father's response disappears if the alternative is unavoidably the higher-yet cholesterol meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or outright hunger. But the logic of the Critique is the logic of this hypothetical father, it analyzes a proposal and simply rejects it.

In short, deductive logic and the absence of any overriding set of normative principles lead to the conclusion that to reject a policy proposal, one must understand and consider an alternative. The rules of the Critique preclude rational discussion by shielding alternatives from the realm of discourse. (We have to be careful here since even rationality has been a target of the Critique.)

Even more damaging to the Critique is the fact that this need for comparison is particularly salient in a policy debate framework. Two issues should be considered here: resolutional wording and fiat. These two issues push debate strongly in the direction of comparative discussion.

Resolutional wording is typically such that an endorsement of policy enactment is necessary for the affirmative. Although topics and wordings change, topics converge to the core resolution of RESOLVED: THAT A POLICY SHOULD BE ADOPTED. "Should" or "should be" appears in every resolution. No topic to date has been of the sort RESOLVED: THAT POLITICALLY INCORRECT LANGUAGE IS IMMORAL. If the latter were the topic, Critique advocates would obviously have a stronger case. But our debate topics, which are selected by a vote of out membership, directly state a policy framework. The Critique, currently formulated as an a priori rejection of a proposition, is utterly irrelevant in that it does not reject the clear consensual basis of resolutional advocacy. That the affirmative uses racist language does not answer the argument that "policies should be adopted." The question of whether we should be debating policies is one that has already been answered for us.

Related to this discussion is the issue of fiat. The Critique advocates would have one believe that, since fiat is a construct, it is pointless to discuss policies. Two replies are necessary here: (1) Critique advocates are not in a good position to make this claim, as the rules of the Critique are equally arbitrarily constructed, and (2) there is value in discussing policy proposals, despite the not-so-revolutionary observation that plans never really get implemented. The consensual adoption of current resolutional wording proves that we consider policy discussion relevant and important. Moreover, a primary academic purpose of debate is for the participants to gain an understanding of important issues which shape their lives. There is tremendous value in learning enough about an issue so that one is in a position to make a normative judgment about that issue. "Fiat" merely means we are imagining the world under different situations, facilitating comparisons. In fact, generally it is the Critique advocate who initiates any contrary assumption about "fiat."

In its effort to reject the value of implementing a plan, the Critique erodes its own worth as well. If we take it as a given that, since flat is a construct, policy discussion is irrelevant, then when you get right down to it: What is the purpose of the Critique? Why is the act of rejection more valuable than learning about issues, even assuming that debaters can never change their world? The Critique is certainly not a necessary educational device; any debater can learn about the underlying intellectual foundation of the Critique without succumbing to its rules, meanwhile the Critique advocate would have debaters ignore policy issues altogether. Traditional policy debate allows us to have our "kake" and eat it as well.

Additionally, as we have argued elsewhere, comparison makes debate better, and the Critique devalues important areas of assessment. Unlike any other argument, the Critique refuses to be comparative. It may be argued that the issue of Topicality, like the Critique, does not require comparison. This notion is erroneous , at two levels: (1) Topicality as an issue does not conflict with policy debate. In fact, in our opinion, the very role of Topicality is to facilitate policy comparison. Topicality is not a rejection of "policies should be adopted" but an argument that affirmatives beg the question by not being within the scope of resolutional policy enactment but should be. (2) Topicality generally is comparative. Debates about Topicality focus on how interpretations limit debate, with each team trying to win its interpretation as more appropriate. Negative teams offer their own interpretation of the topic. It is commonly accepted that if the affirmative can prove the negative interpretation "over-limits" then the Topicality argument is defeated. What is this but comparison? However when the Critique is attacked at being "over-limiting" its advocates argue that this is irrelevant since the Critique is an overriding claim. The Critique is thus unique in its rejection of comparison.

Whither "Unikness"?

The Critique, rather than being an exercise in philosophical conviction, has become an exercise of strategy only, which has weakened the argument. What could be a powerful metaphysical claim has become a veil for negatives to argue weak disadvantages as Critiques to improve their chances of winning. The strategic benefit of running a Critique lies in its set of rules, namely its rejection of conventional argument burdens. For example, the burden of 'uniqueness,' which requires both the affirmative and negative to demonstrate that advantages and disadvantages are uniquely caused by the plan, is wholly irrelevant to the Critique as its rules currently operate. Herein lies one of the biggest defects of the Critique, because its insistence on adhering to the rigid rule of rejection is artificial.

In our view the abuses of the Critique, therefore, come from the rules that accompany it, not the intellectual questions raised by the Critique per se. Although stripped of its framework the Critique alone carries little, if any, weight in policy comparison. Arguments which can easily be made as conventional debate positions have become Critiques, not because the Critique is particularly meaningful, but because it is easier to win if a substantial portion of the responses suddenly do not apply. Two arguments which we have encountered in particular come to mind: (1) The First World should not blame the Third World for overpopulation, since industrialized countries are guilty of resource depletion as well; and (2) U. S. aid has never achieved economic modernization as planned in the past - capitalist development does not work. Instead of these arguments being used as solvency challenges they were run as Critiques, the first a Critique of Hypocrisy, the second a Critique of Defend Your Assumptions. Is this because the arguments are more valid as Critiques? No - it is because conventionally argued they are difficult to win, but as Critiques they no longer had to worry about trivialities such as thresholds, uniqueness, turns etc.

Unfortunately, these uses of the Critique are not only inevitable when its rules are accepted, but they also make a mockery of any potential intellectual power of the Critique. Taken to its logical end, soon there will be Critiques of business Confidence and the like, when the overriding set of principles includes "the judge should never harm the confidence of businesses." Precisely because normative statements are always relative, no one set of principles is ever always defensible. What the Critique allows is that debaters find any philosopher or advocate in the history of humankind who writes "Rational thought is a myth" and therein lies a Critique.

By avoiding discussion of actual policies, the rules of the Critique sterilize even the ideas it advocates. Consider the following example. An affirmative case, which argues for aiding the government of Afghanistan, uses the phrase "Islamic fundamentalism" in the 1AC. The negative argues a Critique of Language - the argument being that American citizens wrongly consider all Muslim peoples fundamentalist and inclined toward terrorism, and that it is racist to uphold this stereotype. The argument, on its face, may have some merit. The affirmative then responds that their plan actually supports a Muslim government which is not fundamentalist, and therefore they fight the negative stereotype by demonstrating that most Muslims are not extremists and deserve economic aid to help them through hard times. However, what should be a powerful turnaround to the Critique is simply dismissed by the negative as irrelevant because the affirmative argument makes the assumption that the plan gets implemented. Notice it is purely the rules of the Critique, not the intellectual force of the argument, that is now at work for the negative. As the rules of the Critique make it incompatible with comparative discussion, they block the very type of discussion which allows its intellectual force to be played out in a meaningful sense. The essence of the Critique as a Critique is not as substantive as it seems, and never allows thorough examination of an issue, because of its insistence on rejection. It devolves into the end-all non sequitur.

The alternative is to use the Critique in a conventional policy sense, which forces the affirmative to defend their assumptions without resorting to the use of the Critique as an artificial strategic weapon. The Critique can and should be used as an instrument to challenge questionable thinking, be it ethnocentric, or whatever. It can be useful in casting perspective on issues, but it should not be considered independent of comparison; it cannot be and remain meaningful. The Critique can be used as a disadvantage, a solvency turn, a PMN etc. - essentially anything but a Kritik.

Of Softballs, Swimming Pools and Red Shirts

A third objection to the Critique is that the debate round is an improper forum to decide the legitimacy of the theory. Just as the members of your softball team justifiably felt that the middle of the softball tournament was the wrong time to change the rules to which they agreed to adhere, similar arguments can be made against the Critique. This objection accepts many of the assumptions of the Critique, but still concludes that it is misplaced in its current framework. In short, the Critique is opposed to policy debate to such an extent that consent is needed for its discussion. At policy debate tournaments, what is consented to is the resolution, and hence comparative discussion. Therefore the legitimacy of the Critique should not be resolved in the debate round any more so than should the legitimacy of the 45 second clock be discussed during the middle of a game in the NCAA basketball tournament. If the Critique framework is truly a powerful idea it should be successful by causing a change in the wording of future resolutions, starting a new activity, or hosting separate tournaments for Critiquing.

It has already been established that the Critique is wholly incompatible with, and non-germane to, policy debate. It is quite unclear that critiquing even rejects resolutional advocacy. Its failure to reject the resolution (or usually the plan, for that matter) makes the debate round an improper forum for discussion. What is more, even if we assume that the Critique should he an overriding principle on which debaters should focus in a single round, the debate round itself is still the wrong framework to resolve the legitimacy of the theory.

As was the case with the softball league, at the beginning of the year debaters (albeit not explicitly) agree to certain rules. In the case of debate, participants agree to debate the resolution. Students go to institutes, receive invitations from tournaments which embrace the wording of the topic, and so on. When debaters choose to Critique in a particular debate, they are as guilty of being out of line as the team in the softball league which wanted to have swimming times decide the outcome of their games. The resolution exists for a purpose, and given its clear policy orientation, the Critique is wrong to reject the framework in which the debaters have agreed to debate; namely comparative discussion.

Our claim here is not merely an appeal to adherence to the rules of the game. The Critique coerces its opponents into accepting its framework by risking a loss if they ignore its approach. The point is that debaters who run the Critique should not force the issue with other teams, who understandably come to a tournament ready to debate comparative policies. But should not that evaluation be a matter of debate, like anything else? No, because there is no meaningful prior notice for the other team. Critiques are ever growing in absurdity, and prior notice of a particular Critique is impossible. In policy debate, a core set of answers or case arguments can always defeat a new disadvantage; but if one accepts the rules of the Critique, how can one beat The Earth is Flat Critique?

The problem is that competing claims for advocacy are often tangential and not competing. Side-by-side the frameworks are necessarily apples and oranges. If a debater claimed, "Those who wear red shirts should win," judges would certainly not expect debaters to have evidenced arguments to answer such a charge. If the opponent replies, "Red shirts are irrelevant," judges would typically be satisfied with the response. But the Critique advocate would argue "Their response is nonsensical - it does not reject the idea of red shirt advocacy on its merits." In other words, while proving the plan saves thousands of lives does not disprove that red shirts should win, likewise the Red Shirt Critique does not really disprove that a policy should not be done. If this is the case then something else, that is, the framework that is expected, should be paramount. In the case of debate, the particular debate round should defer to the idea of comparative discussion.

There are alternatives for those who truly believe in the legitimacy and benefits of the Critique. Why not submit Critique based resolutions to the topic committee? If their fear is that such a resolution would never be adopted, then why is flying in the face of consensus, and appealing to the judge during a given debate round, any more likely to change the activity toward accepting and embracing Critiques? Why not host a tournament in which the invitation says "no policy debate, only Critiquing?" Why not try to convince judges and opponents prior to the round to consent to the Critique framework? Why not, if one insists on arguing the Critique during the debate, not expect the judge's acceptance of it to come at the expense of the other team? Is it because it is the strategy Critique advocates care about, not the argument? What is clear is that in comparison to all of these alternatives, deciding the rules during a given debate is the least desirable and fair.

A One- Way Street for the Negative

A final objection to the Critique regards the extent to which it is not side-neutral. The Critique, as currently argued, is extremely biased toward the negative. While it is currently the case that affirmatives win more than their share of debates, well researched and well-prepared teams are always rewarded in policy debate. Becoming good enough on one's case to win most debates is not unfair to the negative; it is a reward for doing one's job well. The Critique, on the other hand, rewards the negative by virtue of being negative only. Its insistence on rejection is so broad that, ultimately, if the Critique were to become commonly accepted as a legitimate strategy, and our resolutions were not changed to reflect that, the affirmative will hardly ever be able to win. In the end the affirmative must defend something, and the negative can Critique endorsement to death. Such one-sided arguments discourage research and hard work.

Resolutions typically require endorsement, and any endorsement can be a target of a Critique. Affirmatives could do their best to anticipate the Critique and still be helplessly caught in its grasp. Consider this extreme, but not so implausible example. Suppose the resolution read RESOLVED: THAT THE U. S. SHOULD CHANGE ITS AID POLICIES TOWARD AFRICA. Further suppose the affirmative runs a case which decreases U. S. aid, the entire advantage being a Critique of US Aid, arguing that US aid is culturally insensitive and assumes an ethnocentric worldview. This acceptance by the affirmative of the logic of the Critique is fatal, because negatives can then argue a Critique of the US Government, the argument being that the judge should never use the instrument of the U. S. Government because it is hierarchical and ethnocentric. The fact that the plan diminishes the level of evil U. S. involvement is irrelevant to the negative Critique, because the negative refuses to defend an alternative. The negative may even go so far as to argue that, even if the plan completely removes the extent to which the U. S. Government is evil, the negative still wins because government action cannot be endorsed. Endorsement is in itself necessarily evil. The negative would further argue that since fiat is artificial then the benefits of the plan would never really be achieved. In other words, the affirmative Critique depends upon adoption. This will always be the case under our current resolutions. Ultimately the affirmative must defend something, which is a far bigger burden than simply rejecting.

Even if this is an overstatement of the negative bias of the Critique, what then? How can competing Critiques ever be resolved? The hypothetical debate above cannot be reconciled by weighing and assessing; there is no place for assessing in a Critique because the framework has no room for impact or probability comparisons. Critiques are absolute. In the above case, the affirmative Critiques aid, the negative Critiques the US Government, and what gives? How could you decide which Critique is more convincing? Consequently, either debates are hopelessly unresolvable or unfairly biased toward the negative. In either case the Critique is undesirable compared to policy discussion.

Play Ball!

There is abstract value in the idea that underlies the Critique. Questioning assumptions and constantly testing one's beliefs and behavior are necessary to move toward something better than what exists today. The Critique encourages creative thinking, and rewards debaters intellectually who strive to understand important philosophical and political issues of the day and of the past. But that we should become slaves to the outcomes of new thinking is as invidious as maintaining steadfast conservatism. The Critique has gone too far. Its rules are too extreme and it is incompatible with logical comparative discussion. If Critique advocates are unwilling to play ball, rather than enter the softball tournament, they need either to: (1) convince members of the softball league to abandon softball and start swimming; or (2) find a swimming pool and have a separate swimming tournament. Given our convictions for comparative policy debate it is our hope that the former is not impending.