Hello, My name is Courtney Gray and I am the affirmative speaker for today’s debate round. I would like to start my argument with a brief illustration that I hope will help us clearly understand what this resolution implies. Imagine if I were to ask you to walk across a 2”x 4” board that has been placed on the floor. You might think, no big deal I could do that without much problem. Now I’d like you to imagine moving this same board to the top of a 40 foot scaffold. You might hesitate before you walked across this board. You’d hesitate because you value your life. Valuing life forces us to determine if we have the skills, abilities and resources to safely cross the board. It is because I value life that I believe we must affirm the resolution which states: Resolved: When in conflict, idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism. Before I move on to build my case let me define a few of the key terms in this resolutions: All of my definitions come from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Idealism is the theory that the object of external perception, in itself or as perceived, consists of ideas. Conflict is a state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash. Pragmatism is defined as the doctrine which states that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences. LIFE is The physical, mental, and spiritual experiences that constitute existence.
Now that I’ve defined my terms let me go on to state the thesis of my case: Valuing Idealism allows us to more effectively uphold and value life.
C1: All conflict requires us to choose between ideas before we decide to act.
This resolution is asking us to value Idealism above Pragmatism. The fact that we must first understand what has caused the conflict, and how a conflict is defined by the conflicting ideals, is further confirmation that we need to affirm the resolution. Let me give you a practical example: two people disagree about which restaurant they’d like to visit. This is a conflict between who’s idea is the better idea. In order to judge and make a pragmatic decision (something that works for both parties) We will first need to analyze the ideas that form each persons beliefs. Person A wants to eat at a fast food restaurant, because he values quick, inexpensive food. Person B wants to eat at a nice sit down restaurant because he wants high quality food in a pleasant relaxing atmosphere. The conflict has been established and clearly there are two opposing belief systems here. In order to determine which restaurant these individuals should visit, we must understand their respective views. A pragmatist might say lets flip a coin and let chance make the decision. This might work to choose a restaurant, but lets raise the stakes a bit and make this a conflict that puts a persons life at stake. Do we take this decision lightly and allow it to random chance? I think not. This leads me to my 2nd contention.
C2: Life must be valued above expedient action if we are to truly reach more noble goals. Just like my introductory illustration represents, many decisions are not life and death decisions. Walking across a 2x4 board that is safely placed on the ground may not require much consideration. However when decisions do effect our lives: the length of life and ultimately the purpose of one’s life, than I believe we must evaluate the ideas that are in conflict before we make decisions about what might work. As we stand up on that 40 foot scaffold, making a decision to cross or not cross, we must evaluate the ideas that determine safety, our ability, and our personal motivation for crossing over, it would be highly unwise to simply act without considering what’s in our best interest. Our life and the quality of our future lives depend on our valuing idealism. I’d like to examine a recent event that will help me drive this point home. It is an example of failing to value idealism over pragmatism. Recently our government is facing a very difficult economic situation which is the result of a pragmatic decision that was made several years ago. Our leaders (both republican and democratic ) made what they believed were proper decisions to assist low income families gain the opportunity to own a home. Our country was faced with a problem that had no easy answer. It was indeed unfair that so many people could not afford to own their own home. The pragmatic solution was to offer low interest loans to help these people jump this hurdle. Today we are suffering the long term consequences of this action, with a 700 billion dollar government buyout of the lending institutions who are unable to shoulder this debt. I may be naively idealistic to say that if we had really sought to cover the many reasons for this unfair reality we may have done a better job of analyzing and formulating the best solutions for this problem. Instead we reacted in what many agree was a pragmatic bandaid to cover a much larger ideological problem. Would we be in a different place if we had valued idealism above pragmatism? Would we be in a different place if we had held onto what is best instead of what is convenient? I know it’s pure speculation but I’d like to submit that the answer is yes. Our expedient solution didn’t solve the problem even though it appeared to be a good idea at the time. Now we are left with a festering wound that no amount of bandaid will fix. We must deal with underlying issues and the prevailing ideas that have led to this corruption. We must be willing to do this before we respond pragmatically.
In conclusion I would like to summarize the main points of my case by saying That valuing Idealism above pragmatism allows us to more effectively uphold my value of life. When conflict forces us to choose between one ideal and another we must be willing to reflect and analyze on how these ideals best uphold and value life. Failure to do this, or focusing on what is easy or pragmatic will lead us down a perilous path. We must use our minds to remember our past mistakes, we must hold onto the ideals that have made our nation great, and we must not swerve from making the best decision for all concerned. Alfred North Whitehead once said: No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
