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 Nic's affirmative case

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PostSubject: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Oct 22, 2008 11:19 am

QUOTE:

Carl Schurz once said,“Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.”

PREVIEW:

Good afternoon. My name is Nicolas Cuany and I will be the affirmative speaker for the following debate round. I would like to thank the judge, timer, and negative speaker for being here today. My value for this round will be happiness, and for the purpose of upholding my value I stand resolved When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism because idealism brings happiness. In this case I will demonstrate that my value of happiness dictates that we affirm the resolution.

DEFINITIONS:

In order to provide clarity and mutual understanding in today’s debate round, I will define some of the key terms that are found within the resolution and that I will be using extensively throughout the following round. First of all,
Idealism: is defined as "The system or theory that makes every thing to consist in ideas, and denies the existence of material bodies" by Webster's 1828 Dictionary.
Pragmatism: is defined as "character or conduct that emphasizes practicality" by Infoplease Dictionary.

VALUE AND CRITERION:

My value for this round, happiness, is defined by Cambridge Dictionary of American English as “causing pleasure or satisfaction.” Happiness is the highest value in the hierarchy of values because without happiness, everyone would be in a lonely state and nothing productive would get done.

BURDENS:

In today’s debate round, I, the affirmative speaker, have the privilege of proving the truth of the resolution, which states,“When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.” I must uphold the resolution through my three contentions for the purpose of achieving my value of happiness. If I fulfill my burdens, I should be granted the win.

THESIS STATEMENT: My thesis statement is: Valuing idealism enables us to support and value happiness


CONTENTION #1: We need to hold personal happiness as our ultimate goal:
A man who works saves up his money throughout his years, and once he has retired he has a lot of money to live happily and comfortably on. Another man who works saves up his money, but unlike the first man, once he has the opportunity to spend it on that Lotus Ellis he’s been looking at, he does. And when he gets to retirement, he doesn’t live nearly as happy as the first man. The second man took a more pragmatic way of living, and didn’t have the comforts that the first man had.


CONTENTION 2: We must act according to this ideal, not doing so would be unproductive for the individual: Helen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us”. This statement is true in a way that people who look at the closed door to long, and neglect to walk through the open door aren’t acting according to happiness and are therefor being unproductive to themselves.


CONTENTION 3: We must frame our decisions around what makes people happy:
Our founding fathers had an idea of freedom and took the risks to make it possible. They went through many struggles to get what made them personally happy, which was freedom of religion, debate, and being away from a kings rule. Although we’ve taken pragmatic ways to get where we are today, we kept the ideal of happiness.


REITERATION:

I, the affirmative speaker, have the privilege of affirming the resolution. Throughout my contentions, I have argued three main points: 1) We need to hold personal happiness as our ultimate goal 2) We must act according to this ideal, not doing so would be unproductive for the individual 3) We must frame our decisions around what will make us personally happy


CLOSING QUOTE:

I would like to close with a quote from Epictetus, who once proclaimed, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

VOTING ISSUES:

Thank you. I have fulfilled my burden and upheld the resolution. I now respectfully urge the judge to affirm the resolution. Thank you and I now stand ready for cross-examination and further points of clarification.


Last edited by NicRocks on Wed Nov 05, 2008 9:56 pm; edited 3 times in total
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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Nov 05, 2008 5:31 pm

All I have to say is that you might want to be careful when you talk about making ourselves happy. Because I think just like I did today, people will jump on that argument, but all in all a pretty well formatted case.

Swimmer Dude jocolor
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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Nov 05, 2008 9:52 pm

I edited my case sooo if people could post stuff about it that would help me alot!!!!

Thanks,

--Nicolas Cuany
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Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson


Number of posts : 42
Registration date : 2008-09-19

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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Nov 05, 2008 10:35 pm

I am just going to go through your entire case, bit by bit and comment on it, instead of commenting on the whole thing at once. So hopefully it will be clearer what I am referencing.

NicRocks wrote:
QUOTE:

Carl Schurz once said,“Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.”

This is an excellent opener, it really conveys the neccesity of Ideals. Just be careful not to mix up Ideals with Idealism.

NicRocks wrote:

PREVIEW:

Good afternoon. My name is Nicolas Cuany and I will be the affirmative speaker for the following debate round. I would like to thank the judge, timer, and negative speaker for being here today. My value for this round will be happiness, and for the purpose of upholding my value I stand resolved When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism because idealism brings happiness. In this case I will demonstrate that my value of happiness dictates that we affirm the resolution.
I would be very very careful of using the value of happiness. This opens you up to a value preeminence argument. I rather doubt many judges will find for happiness being preeminent over other values such as Justice, Morality, Responsibility, or Human Rights.
Unless you have a very strong argument for why Happiness should be valued above all other values, you might want to consider picking a different value. After all, they can simply ask "if an action makes a person happy, but violates the Human rights of another person, should they do it?"

NicRocks wrote:

DEFINITIONS:

In order to provide clarity and mutual understanding in today’s debate round, I will define some of the key terms that are found within the resolution and that I will be using extensively throughout the following round. First of all,
Idealism: is defined as "The system or theory that makes every thing to consist in ideas, and denies the existence of material bodies" by Webster's 1828 Dictionary.
Pragmatism: is defined as "character or conduct that emphasizes practicality" by Infoplease Dictionary.
Your definition of Idealism is a bit unusual ("denies the existence of material bodies")
and could allow the negative to substitute a different definition of Idealism. While I haven't seen you do an entire debate, unless your main argument hinges on this specific definition, you might want to consider making it a bit more standard.
Also, you'll probably want to add a definition for Conflict, and perhaps for organization purposes, moving the definition of Happiness up among the other definitions.

NicRocks wrote:

VALUE AND CRITERION:

My value for this round, happiness, is defined by Cambridge Dictionary of American English as “causing pleasure or satisfaction.” Happiness is the highest value in the hierarchy of values because without happiness, everyone would be in a lonely state and nothing productive would get done.

I really would recommend getting a different value. I simply don't see Happiness winning a value preeminece war unless you have an incredibly solid argument backing it up. Also, your opponent can argue that people can still get things done while valuing happiness below his value.


NicRocks wrote:

BURDENS:

In today’s debate round, I, the affirmative speaker, have the privilege of proving the truth of the resolution, which states,“When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.” I must uphold the resolution through my three contentions for the purpose of achieving my value of happiness. If I fulfill my burdens, I should be granted the win.

THESIS STATEMENT: My thesis statement is: Valuing idealism enables us to support and value happiness
This is a good way to forcast your argument. Also, the judge education part is solid.

NicRocks wrote:

CONTENTION #1: We need to hold personal happiness as our ultimate goal:
A man who works saves up his money throughout his years, and once he has retired he has a lot of money to live happily and comfortably on. Another man who works saves up his money, but unlike the first man, once he has the opportunity to spend it on that Lotus Ellis he’s been looking at, he does. And when he gets to retirement, he doesn’t live nearly as happy as the first man. The second man took a more pragmatic way of living, and didn’t have the comforts that the first man had.
I'll use Cross Ex questions for your Contentions, just so you can think about how you might defend your case:

"Since Pragmatism emphasizes practicality, which is focused on results, did the second man act pragmatically, since the results of his actions were poor?"

NicRocks wrote:

CONTENTION 2: We must act according to this ideal, not doing so would be unproductive for the individual: Helen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us”. This statement is true in a way that people who look at the closed door to long, and neglect to walk through the open door aren’t acting according to happiness and are therefor being unproductive to themselves.
"Would you agree that when people do not walk through that second door, they are not acting practically?"

NicRocks wrote:

CONTENTION 3: We must frame our decisions around what makes people happy:
Our founding fathers had an idea of freedom and took the risks to make it possible. They went through many struggles to get what made them personally happy, which was freedom of religion, debate, and being away from a kings rule. Although we’ve taken pragmatic ways to get where we are today, we kept the ideal of happiness.
"Would you agree that other values motivated the founding fathers to come to America"
if yes,
"Would you agree that the founding fathers may have valued other ideals such as religious freedom and Democracy above Happiness"
if no,
"Did the founding fathers ever sacrifice their pursuit of happiness for their pursuit of other goals such as Democracy"

NicRocks wrote:

REITERATION:

I, the affirmative speaker, have the privilege of affirming the resolution. Throughout my contentions, I have argued three main points: 1) We need to hold personal happiness as our ultimate goal 2) We must act according to this ideal, not doing so would be unproductive for the individual 3) We must frame our decisions around what will make us personally happy
This is a good recapping of your main points.

NicRocks wrote:

CLOSING QUOTE:

I would like to close with a quote from Epictetus, who once proclaimed, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
Good quote, just be careful since the "do what you have to do" part sounds a bit on the Pragmatic side.


NicRocks wrote:

VOTING ISSUES:

Thank you. I have fulfilled my burden and upheld the resolution. I now respectfully urge the judge to affirm the resolution. Thank you and I now stand ready for cross-examination and further points of clarification.
This is a good ending, and since you have educated the judge as to what fulfilling one's burdens means, they should understand what you are getting at here.





Hope that Helps!
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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyFri Nov 07, 2008 1:23 pm

thanks Samuel that helps a lot afro
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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Nov 12, 2008 9:27 am

Samuel basically broke it down for you, but I would also add that, although I love your quotes, if you could find one (for either the beginning or the end) which had idealism and your value all in one, I think that would help a cement the two together in the minds of your judges. I also love the quote from Helen Keller mixed in with your contentions, that really adds credibility to what you are saying, becuase it is Helen Keller.
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PostSubject: Re: Nic's affirmative case   Nic's affirmative case EmptyWed Nov 12, 2008 9:28 am

sorry, that was Kelsey. Embarassed
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