Carl's Affirmative Case

Imagine with me for a second that you are running a race. You are working towards the finish line. But what if the race officials decided that, since there were so many people running the race, it would be too crowded? So they moved of the finish line to a wider road. But the official did not have time to inform the runners, and so you were not informed. You would just keep on running, and never get to a destination thingy whatchamacallit.

The finish line, in this analogy, is an ideal that we work towards. The race officials made a pragmatic choice to do what worked at the time, robbing the runners of the ideal.

This is why my thesis is that my value, Human Rights, is best upheld by affirming the resolution, and that is why I stand resolved that in a conflict, Idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.

In order to provide mutual clarity in this debate, I will define my terms.
Firstly, Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition defines conflict as “difference: a disagreement or clash between ideas, principles, or people.”
Idealism is defined by The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus as “the pursuit of or belief in noble ideals, principles, and values.”
Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines value as “consider to be important or beneficial.”
Finally, pragmatism is defined by Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition as “a straightforward practical way of thinking about things or dealing with problems, concerned with results rather than with theories and principles.”
Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition defines my value, human rights as ‘freedom, justice, and equality: the rights that are considered by most societies to belong automatically to everyone, e.g. the rights to freedom, justice, and equality.”

Human Rights is the highest value in the high achy of values, because human rights our human rights must be upheld for us to work properly and freely.

Now that I have defined my terms, I would like to move on to my contentions.

Contention One- Pragmatism compromises our human rights. Today I would like to bring up the historical example of World War II. While the battle in the pacific raged, the US decided that people of Japanese decent were a threat to national security, and came up with a very practical solution to this “problem.” They imprisoned all Japanese-Americans in internment camps, and held them there until the end of the war, violating their Human Rights. While this could have made “national security,” it robed the Japanese-Americans to be able to obtain Human Rights, just like the race officials.
Contention Two- Idealism values our human rights. When Idealism is valued, so is our human rights. Idealism is Wal-mart’s secret to success. Wal-mart is not by any means perfect, but Wal-mart has learned to put idealism first. Though Wal-mart’s profits are great, their philosophy is still the same: people come first. Founder Sam Walton said Wal-mart’s purpose is, “to give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better life.” Wal-mart has succeeded by keeping this ideal as their main focus. Wal-mart has both given jobs to over two million people, and donated millions of dollars to charity. In 2002 President of Klinge and Associates Idea Marketing Consultants, Peter Klinge, said, “[Wal-Mart] understand[s] their customer, and market[s] their needs with consistent execution, and a simple formula and commitment to a vision to this retailer’s business. These are the reasons and forces behind Wal-mart’s success.” Wal-mart shows that idealism values our human rights.

Since pragmatism compromises our human rights, and Idealism values our human rights, I am resolved that my value, human rights is best upheld by affirming the resolution, and so I urge and affirmative ballot.

I now stand ready for cross examination and further points of clarification.

Please, feel free to comment.

I love this analogy but want you to make sure it is clear and making the point you want to make.

Quote :

Imagine with me for a second that you are running a race. You are working towards the finish line. But what if the race officials decided that, since there were so many people running the race, it would be too crowded? So they got rid of the finish line. You would just keep on running, and never get to a destination.

The finish line, in this analogy, is an ideal that we work towards. The race officials made a pragmatic choice to do what worked at the time, robbing the runners of the ideal.

This is why I believe that my value, Human Rights, is best upheld by affirming the resolution, and that is why I stand resolved that in a conflict, Idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.

Perhaps you can clarify by saying the race officials, after noticing a risk to the runner's safety decide to change the location of the finish line. Unfortunately these officials neglect to tell the runners and the runners keep running toward the original goal. What worked for these officials at the time stripped these runners from achieving their goal of winning or at least completing this race. The reason I make this suggestion is because I want this analogy to be grounded in a real life possibility. It would be highly unlikely that race officials would simply remove a finish line... a bit more likely that they would move one. Hope this makes sense.


Your historical example for contention 1 is great.

One more thing to include in this case is how important your value of HUMAN rights is. If we value human rights we must affirm this resolution. All decisions must be filtered through this ideal....
What works for one person or group of people may not uphold Human Rights for all. This will be an essential argument against pragmatic decisions. Therefore we must value Idealism above pragmatism.

Contention Two- Idealism values our human rights. When Idealism is valued, so is our human rights. When ideal such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as found in the declaration of independence, are valued, our human rights are as well. As President Jimmy Carter said, “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.” Though in many cases America did not uphold human rights, but in many cases it did, and that was because it followed the ideals upon which it was founded.

HELP, my old contention was not very good. I found out...

Maybe its just me but I dont see how your analogy ties to reality....

Carl, I am going to make a few suggestions that might appear "Picky" but they can make a big difference as your judge hears your case. I would like to suggest that you read through your case and try to change your sentences to more direct/concise sentences....A direct/concise sentence states your point more confidently.... Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Quote :

Imagine with me for a second that you are running a race. You are working towards the finish line.

Imagine that you are running a race and you are quickly approaching the finish line.

Quote :

This is why my thesis is that my value, Human Rights, is best upheld by affirming the resolution, and that is why I stand resolved that in a conflict, Idealism ought to be valued above pragmatism.

My thesis today is that we must affirm the resolution because doing so better allows us to uphold my value of Human Rights. Therefore I stand resolved....

Carl, I just thought of another analogy that might be suitable for your introduction... You could even tell it like a personal story, thus endearing your judge to your charming personality from the get go...

I'll tell it like I'm Carl!!!

Just the other day I was playing a game with my sister. She was holding a laundry basket as I tossed clean rolled up socks into it. She quickly realized that she could hinder my efforts by moving the basket around. Before I knew it she was running through the house challenging me to toss my socks into her moving target. As you can probably imagine, my basket shooting success decrease dramatically as she moved and evaded my throws.


(I'm sure you could get one of your sisters to help you turn this into a real and very true story!)

You would then develop your case to understand that more highly valuing idealism would be like shooting socks into a stable and non moving basket...vrs. randomly trying to shoot socks into a moving "pragmatic" basket.

This is just an idea! Use it or lose it.. or if someone else is reading this and would like to borrow this analogy feel free to do so!