K

Theoretical offense against progressive debating. Mostly hombrewed by ya boi Ced.

the cards were downloaded from cross-x.com

Read in 1AC

K Frontline
Interpretation: The negative should provide a competitive policy option or defend the status quo. Prefer1. Limits: There are thousands of philosophical writers and kritiks, explodes aff research burden and
makes research impossible.
2. Ground: We cant have the freedom to select a good affirmative if we know it will link to most Kritiks with
no problem.
3. Competitive policy option tests the policy implementation of the affirmative; key to education
4. Kritiks have no real world implications; their terminal non-uniqueness and lack of case solvency creates
artificial debate.

Interpretation - The affirmative gets to weigh their advantages on the same level as the K.
Prefer 1. Predictability- key to check unpredictable kritiks, we need predictable basis of offense for any aff
strategy.
2. Ground- advantages key to aff ground- must weigh them in order to measure the worth of the
affirmatives advocacy.
3. Solves all your offense, net-benefit of ours.

AFC
A) Interpretation: The affirmative can choose the standard by which we evaluate the round so long as the
standard is theoretically fair to offset the neg's advantage in the round.
B) Violation: this theory is pre-emptive. My opponent violates if they advocate an interpretation of debate
that doesn't let the affirmative choose the standard by which we evaluate the round.

C) Standards:

1) Time skew: Because of the 7 to 4 and 6 to 3 minute rebuttal time skew the negative enjoys, they win
the majority of rounds, regardless of the seeding of debaters. Allowing me to choose the standard helps
combat the significant time skew affirmatives face because instead of having to win both a framework
and offense back to that framework in the impossibly short 1ar, the aff only has to win offense back to a
standard, which is more practical.

A bad division of time violates fairness because arguments dont matter if you dont have time to make
them. Time skew is the most important impact to fairness because if you dont have time to make
arguments, you cant debate, making it a prerequisite to all other standards.

2) Strategy skew: given that the NC can adapt to the AC but the AC cannot adapt to the NC, the negative
has an easier chance at winning the round structurally because it can maximize the use of it's speaking
time by forcing the 1ar to respond to multiple layers of the debate. The variability in negative strategy
while the affirmative has to commit to a strategy since they talk first is the definition of a strategy skew.

Preventing strategy skews is key to fairness because without being able to form a strategy, you can never
win. If the negative can form strategy better than the affirmative can, it has an easier shot at winning the
round structurally.

This also links into time skew because the adaptability of the NC allows it to maximize the value of their
13 minutes of speaking time while the affirmative must commit 6 minutes to the AC, leaving only 7
minutes of speech time where the strategy is not pre-decided.

D) Voter: Fairness is a voter because

1) Unfair debates determine the better cheater, not the better debater

2) Debate is a competitive activity, which by definition makes it a test of skill. Unfair interpretations
prevent neutral evaluations of who did the better debating, and thus contradict the fundamental premise of
debate because the judge cant properly measure the skill of the competitors.

And, if the negative shows that AFC is not the solution to side bias, it must offer some other way to
rectify the inherent advantage to negating, otherwise you prefer AFC since it has a risk of solving the
side-bias. This means criticizing AFC is not enough. Either the negative must show there is not a side-bias
or it must offer some concrete alternative.

E) is the preempts:

First, I don't harm education about philosophy.

the little a is that even though the aff gets to specify the framework, every debater on the circuit will still
need to read and understand a variety of different philosophies to do well because that is the only way to
find new frameworks to affirm with and to understand the other frameworks debaters on the circuit read.
It's impossible to debate underneath your opponent's framework if you don't first understand what that
framework advocates. This means that I also capture the benefit of education about ethics and philosophy.

the little b is that as harmful to our educational progress as it must be to not hear the same
Ripstein/Korsgaard/Kant/Nagel bullshit over and over again, the education that both debaters receive on
the contention level of the debate outweighs the minimal education we receive from the philosophy
debate.

AFC forces greater substantive engagement on the AC contention level debate. This forces the negative to
compare arguments and warrants, make more nuanced responses to the contention debate, and understand
AC link stories.

Second, even though I know about my framework ahead of time and the negative doesn't, that doesn't
make it unfair.

The little a is that it's ok if the neg is at a disadvantage. That's the whole point of AFC; it puts the negative
at a disadvantage in order to counterbalance the structural advantage the neg enjoys. Thus, proof of abuse
just means we are evening the playing field, which is a good thing.

The little b is that my opponent's argument is that AFC is unfair because I will always be better prepared
to debate under my framework, but this assumes that my framework is unpredictable and my opponent
couldn't be ready to debate under it. However, given that we have no clue what scouting systems my
opponent is a part of, who my opponents is friends with, what frameworks my opponent has seen, and
what frameworks my opponent is ready to debate, we can't ever verify that a certain standard was
unpredictable or unfair. Thus, his argument is non-verifiable because the abuse story relies on out of
round links that cannot be proven. Arguments must be verifiable for you to vote off of them, otherwise we
will never know if they are actually true.

The little c is that the duration of the topic checks the abuse my opponent claims is happening. The debate
at Cedrics house is over 10 months after the topic was released. If my opponent isn't ready to debate
under different frameworks, it's their fault. At this point, even if my framework is a little unfair, you
should be ready to debate underneath it. Theory is meant to punish cheaters, not reward lazy debaters.

Prefer
Reasons to prefer the K frontline interpretation.

Limits
Their interpretation eviscerates predictable limits the
Steinberg & Freeley evidence explains that there are a literally
infinite number of contexts or principles they can enshrine by
using the topic as a point of access. Delimiting debate in this
manner undermines the political efficacy of discussion by
erasing clash.
Underlimiting debate ruins the ability to debate in a fashion
that can effectuate political change
Deitz 2000
Mary Dietz, Professor of Polisci at Minnesota, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 131-2

If another of the imperatives of the political world is to avoid becoming contemptible, then speaking the truth is a good, but not an unalloyed
good. The paradoxes of politics tend to wreak havoc with the principles of communication because, as Merleau-Ponty observes, " politics is

a
relationship to [people]men rather than principles" (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 219).32 Thus in politics an openness toward
the opinions of others is sometimes not a condition of mutual respect, but antithetical to it . It may be a
peculiarity of the political domain that "when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect," but it is a peculiarity that discourse ethicists
ignore to their peril (Machiavelli 1950, 87). One might say, then, that speaking the truth is an indispensable element in politics, but not the point
of it. To make communicative action, or the enactment of principles of discourse ethics, or moral

conversation, the end or goal of politics is to mistake the nature of working in half-truth and thereby
misconstrue "the milieu that is proper to politics" itself. The supervenience of strategic (speech) action on communicative
(speech) action in politics that I have been alluding to here is what I also think Timothy Garton Ash meant to convey when, in the aftermath of the
PEN Congress, he referred to the "qualitatively different responsibility" that the intellectual has for "the validity, intellectual coherence, and truth
of what he says and writes," as opposed to the politician, who invariably works in half-truth. The point is not that the intellectual lives in a
communicative world of validity, coherence, and truth while the politician does not. (Although Habermas's ideal communication situation might
stand a better chance of realization in a scholarly conference or a graduate seminar, as opposed to a press conference, an election campaign, or
even a neighborhood caucus.) The politician also inhabits a world of validity, coherence, and truth. Yet validity,

coherence, and truth take on different colorations working in the context peculiar to politicswhere
strategic imperatives and the exercise of power, conflicts of interest and drives of ambition, are
ineliminable aspects of collective action. Hence, it is one thing to encourage (or even insist upon) the
intellectual's responsibility to keep providing us with various practical (or even imaginary) means for
judging the health or sickness of the body politic, and quite another to expect the politician or the citizen
to "live" them.

Fairness is a decision ruleit rigs the game and makes neutral

evaluation by a judge impossibletheir ability to pick the high
ground is an inequality that ought to be eliminated.
Loland 2002
[Sigmund, Professor of Sport Philosophy and Ethics at the Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education, Fair Play and Sport,
95]

Rule violations are of several kinds. The long jumper who steps over the board has
her jump measured longer than it really is. By illegally hitting a competitor on the
arm, a basketball player steals the ball and scores two points . I have argued that
without adhering to a shared, just ethos, evaluations of performance among
competitors become invalid. Advantages resulting from rule violations that are no part of
such an ethos must be considered non-relevant inequalities that ought to be eliminated or
compensated for. The argument is similar to that in the discussion of equality. This time, however, we are

dealing not with external conditions, equipment, or support systems, but with
competitors actions themselves.

Education
Our interpretation accesses the best model for education.
Diversity topical education forces changes in the discussion
from year to year, their interpretation allows debate to become
stagnant because teams can read the same aff no matter what
this is proven by the fact that schools have run the same
arguments on different topics
Simulating government action is key to our skills offense
breaks out of traditional pedagogy and enhances active
learningeven if we arent in positions of power
Esberg & Sagan 2012
[Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of
2009 Firestone Medal, AND **Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International
Security and Cooperation NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy, 2/17 The
Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108

government or quasi-government think tank simulations often provide very similar lessons for
high-level players as are learned by students in educational simulations.
Government participants learn about the importance of understanding foreign
perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and the necessity to compromise and
coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist Robert
Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government officials to overcome
bureaucratic myopia, moving beyond their normal organizational roles and
thinking more creatively about how others might react in a crisis or conflict .6 The
skills of imagination and the subsequent ability to predict foreign interests and reactions
remain critical for real-world foreign policy makers. For example, simulations of the
Iranian nuclear crisis*held in 2009 and 2010 at the Brookings Institutions Saban Center and at Harvard
Universitys Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional experts* highlighted the
dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments preferences and misinterpreting their
subsequent behavior. In both simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay
in a failure to predict accurately how other states , both allies and adversaries, would behave
in response to US policy initiatives.7 By university age, students often have a predefined view of international affairs, and the literature on simulations in education
has long emphasized how such exercises force students to challenge their
assumptions about how other governments behave and how their own government
works.8 Since simulations became more common as a teaching tool in the late
1950s, educational literature has expounded on their benefits, from encouraging
engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to improving
communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen
understanding by asking students to link fact and theory, providing a context for
facts while bringing theory into the realm of practice .10 These exercises are particularly
valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same reasons they are useful for policy makers: they
force participants to grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux .11
Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate
topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and US response to the mass killings
These

in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political and

technical facts* but they learn them in a more active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom
and merely receiving knowledge, students actively research their governments positions
and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with others .13 Facts can change quickly; simulations
teach students how to contextualize and act on information.14

Case studies provepolicy simulations make students reexamine assumptions and use critical theory to affect change
Kupperman et al 2005
[Jeff, Gary Weisserman, associate professor of education at UM Flint, core member of Michigan's Interactive Communications &
Simulations group, **head of the Oakland Early College Curriculum games: An online character-playing project as "ironist
curriculum", http://blog.jkupp.com/files/curriculum_games.pdf)

This paper is a mixture of narrative and theory. The narratives were collected from a project called
Conflix, in which we aimed to create a new kind of social studies course for high school and college students,
through the use of character-play, the web, and a game-like system for making decisions
and wielding power. The theory grew out of our reflections on these narratives, as we realized that while our
students overwhelmingly indicated that their experiences in the project were engaging and
educative, the way that students learn in Conflix contrasts sharply with commonly held
assumptions about learning goals and curriculum. Mirroring the way that Conflix has developed through cycles of
theory, practice, and reflection, our paper blends narratives from the development and enactment of the project with explorations of
the idea of "ironist curriculum." We use the term "ironist curriculum" to describe an approach to educational goals that embraces the
contingent and context-dependent nature of those goals. We believe that a narrative format is particularly appropriate to the idea of
ironist curriculum because, in contrast to the traditional research paper format, narrative is friendly to surprise, ambiguity, and
individual interpretation: things that are eschewed by traditional research methods and traditional curricula (Clandinin & Connelly,
2000; Jackson, 1995; Sawyer, 2004), but which are at the heart of an ironist approach to curriculum. The scene: Gary's classroom in
a suburban high school. It is 7:40 on a blustery October morning, and the bell hasn't rung yet for first hour. Students began to
stagger in twenty minutes ago, some in pairs, many yawning or carrying paper cups from the nearby Starbucks, which does a brisk
business just before school. "Need my caffeine fix," explains a boy wearing a football practice jersey. Barry's not much of a
Starbucks guy, but today he walks in with a double latte, looking happy but a bit more worn than usual. "You should have seen me
last night. My legs were killing me by halfway through," he says, and you might think, what does he play? Fullback? Wideout?

plays a conservative southern senator, a middle-of-the-road western governor and a

liberal midwestern mayor in a web-based political simulation game called Conflix. Last night, you learn, was
Actually, neither: he

a LiveWired! session, a live-chat talk show hosted by the project directors (including Jeff and Gary the authors of this paper) and
older "mentors," playing Matt Drudge, Tom Brokaw, and Connie Chung. Two of Barry's characters were featured guests. "I couldn't
log in as two of my guys at once for the interview," he says. "So I logged in as one guy on my parents' computer upstairs, and as the
other in the den downstairs. It was tough, especially when I had to argue with myself." He rolls up his pants leg. "I scraped the crap
out of my shin, too. I rammed it into the desk by the stairway when I tried to jump the last few steps to get to the downstairs
keyboard." Briefly, you imagine him limping as an old man, thanks to an old internet injury. Peter walks in. His mayor has been
embroiled in controversy, having been accused of embezzlement. (Asked about it, he explained proudly, "I found a bug in the
software that allowed me to transfer negative money to my own account.") Financial anarchy ensued, as other characters caught on.
On LiveWired!, though, he had been blindsided by Drudge, who presented him with a soon-to-be-published account that he had
masterminded the fund-transferring scheme. Now, his character was likely to be subpoenaed, perhaps impeached. At the very least,
his power ranking was certain to suffer. "Did you hear that?" Peter asks wryly. "That was the sound of the other shoe dropping."
Barry, 17, and Peter, 16, are enrolled in two of Gary's classes: AP American History and a course simply called "Conflix." In many
ways, Conflix is the antithesis of the AP course. There are no exams, no textbook or long research papers. Certain kinds of cheating

there is no curriculum in the

traditional sense of the term, which means no two cohorts (or students) are likely to wind up with exactly the same
and deception are not only tolerated but actively encouraged. Most importantly,

experience. Which isn't to say that it's thoughtless, or that activity isn't well considered. Quite the opposite, in fact: we care a great

expend enormous energy towards making

support
their positions with evidence, learn research skills, employ clever strategies, and, in general, think
deeply about government and the American political system. It's just that we don't know exactly
deal about what

Barry, Peter, and

their

classmates

learn, and

their learning valuable. We expect them to work hard, communicate clearly, gain knowledge about relevant issues,

what those thoughts will be, or when and how they will come upon them. In fact, we hope they learn something that is very different
from what the standards and benchmarks say Barry and Peter should learn. We want them, in short, to think ironically about what
school (and society) says they need to know. We would not argue that games like Conflix should replace all traditional curricula.

Rather, we would like to hold up Conflix as a form of what we have come to call "ironist social studies curriculum." We use the term
"irony" (along with the terms "ironic" and "ironist") in the sense of "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually
occurs" (The American heritage dictionary of the English language, 2000). While the word "irony" is often associated with humor, we
are not implying that social studies curriculum should be treated as a joke. Rather, we use the term to mean a curriculum that
embraces surprise and contrast with what is expected. In schools, however, curriculum is most often oriented toward the expected,
in what Pinar terms a "traditionalist" approach. Objectives are taken for granted and therefore seldom questioned. Curricular
improvement is a technical matter, much like "adjusting an automobile engine part in order to make it function more effectively"
(Pinar, 1978). This approach can also be called an "essentialist" approach (Rorty, 1989), in that truth is understood to be stable,
definable, and acceptable on the basis of "common sense." In social studies terms, that often means emphasizing the transmission
of a specific cultural canon (e.g., "America stands for liberty"). A somewhat more nuanced approach could be called "metaphysical
inquiry": an approach that says, "right now we may not necessarily know what the truth is, but it exists and we can search for it."
Applied to curriculum design, this is similar to what Pinar (1978) calls the "conceptual-empiricist" approach, where social science
methods are used to determine which models are most effective. In terms of social studies, this approach often involves the process
of "searching" for a final definition of public concepts such as justice, liberty, and democratic citizenship; or an ultimately defensible
prioritization of competing values. In practice, however, a metaphysical inquiry approach can easily end up being essentialism in
disguise: just as a chemistry teacher may know exactly what her students will "discover" from their "experiments," social studies

These approaches have

not gone unchallenged. For several decades, critical theorists and other curriculum
"reconceptualists" (Pinar, 1978) have advocated an approach that attempts to see through
"conventional wisdom" and reveal the power structures and interests which have given rise to currently accepted
"truths." The problem with critical theory , some have pointed out, is that it doesn't help teachers
figure out what to do, once the prevailing orthodoxies have been cut down (Hlebowitsh,
1993). Furthermore, rejection of the status quo can itself become an orthodoxy. Most
importantly, in our view, critical theory fails to emphasize the fundamental power the act of
redescription, of creating new vocabularies, can have in creating a more just distribution of power.
teachers often decide well in advance what kinds of "truth" we are willing to accept as valid.

Err Aff on Theory

1. Time Skew
Err aff on theory because time skew is against me; I have four minutes to answer a sevenminute NC and preempt six minutes of NR responses. Always err aff otherwise the
negative can take advantage of the time skew by forcing me to cover bad theory.

AT: Speech order

Neg gets a 6- and 7-minute speech, that more than makes up for the speech order.

AT: Number of speeches

I get a 6 minute, 4 minute, and 3 minute speech that adds up to 13 minutes. They get a
6- and 7-minute speech also 13 minutes. Number of speeches doesnt matter; if anything
you should err aff here, because I only have 4 minutes to respond to 7 minutes, and 3
minutes to respond to 6 minutes.

AT: Preparation
They have infinite prep time before the round too, and, most negatives present negative
cases to counter aff cases. That means that I have to prep for all possible negative cases
too. Theres nothing unique here.

AT: No CX after 1AR

Theres no CX after the NR, either that means I dont get any clarification if they didnt
clarify enough, or if they brought up something new.

AT: They present first

Once the NC is presented, I have to debate them on their turf we both attack the
others case and attempt to outweigh with our value. I may present first, but they
present an equally prepared case. The only real difference is that I go first.

2AC Frontlines

Mindset Alts Bad

A Interpretation: Kritik alternatives must only be specific, solvent policy actions
implemented by a single actor. The alt must have a solvency advocate that
explains the implementation of the policy, and cannot fiat a rejection, mindset
shift, or (what they did)
B Violation
C Standards
1 Strat Skew Mindset alts skew my strategy because a) I dont know how the
shift is implemented so the neg can delink from solvency deficits and link turn
and b) I dont know what mindset replaces it, so the neg can sever out of
impact turns to the k. Preventing strat skew is key to fairness because debaters
must be able to leverage arguments and positions against opponents to access
the ballot. Strat skew also turns the K; if my opponent is vague and shifty then
they dont actually believe in the discourse and are being disingenuous.
2 Reciprocity without a concrete policy action alt with solvency, they can win
by only showing something bad about my advocacy or state of affairs, and then
claim utopian fiat through mindset shift. For example, I cant show that the
world of the alt is more capitalist if the alt is reject capitalism which destroys
my ability to turn the K, making the entire position functionally an a priori,
destroying fairness since winning any disadvantage to the aff is sufficient to
win but I cant prove a disadvantage to their world. The only way to solve this
would be to give the aff utopian fiat, in which case I fiat away all of their
disadvantages and all of my advantages, meaning I win on a post-fiat level and
outweigh the K.