2.7 The Affirmative Rebuttal
The second affirmative speech in LD debate is only four minutes long. and there is a lot to do. Time becomes a challenge as the affirmative must address any challenges to its definitions, value, and contentions, as well as respond to the negative’s constructive arguments.
There is no need for an introduction to this speech, although judges will appreciate a sentence that indicates the order of the issues that will be covered. If there are disputes about the value, they should be addressed first. You need to convince the judge that the resolution should be evaluated according to the affirmative value, which means explaining why this value should determine whether the resolution should be adopted. This is something that the affirmative should think about in advance so that it has a ready response if the negative contests the value. In the Refugee Protocol debate the affirmative used the negative’s comments about the reasons for its ratification to suggest that it represented outdated values that Americans no longer prized over utility.
When your value is contested, you should try to show that under either theory of value you should win the debate. If you fail to do this and loses the value, you necessarily lose the debate. Arguing that you win under either standard gives you a chance to win even if you lose on the value. It is not uncommon for the negative to lose the value and still win the debate, as happened in the second sample debate. However, it is rare for the negative to win the value and still lose the debate.
The affirmative should usually deal with attacks on its case next. These must be refuted or else they will be dropped, and thus they have high priority. This is where close attention to the negative’s speech will be rewarded. Do your best to show why the negative’s counterarguments fail to defeat your contentions. In some cases, it is enough to explain that they do not directly undercut your contentions; in others, you will need to attack the negative’s reasoning and/or evidence. Then move on to the negative’s contentions and do your best to refute them.
The affirmatives in the sample debates used different strategies. In the cannabis debate, the affirmative began its discussion of the contentions by belittling the negative’s arguments as insufficient to defeat the resolution since it was impossible to show that they were entirely wrong. This is a good strategy if most of the evidence is on your side, since you can explain why the negative’s arguments do not mean the resolution should be rejected. For example, the affirmative recognized risk of harm to children but said that it was less than other risks that children faced. The affirmative also extended its argument on costs with a new point: if cannabis is illegal, there is no tax revenue, but if it is legal, the government can collect taxes. Note that the affirmative had no statistics on the extent that people substitute cannabis for alcohol but finessed the issue by claiming that it won the issue of safety as long as there was some substitution of cannabis for alcohol.
In the Refugee Protocol debate, the affirmative began its discussion began by showing how the negative’s approach accepted most of the affirmative arguments. The real debate was over whether the negative counterplan met the affirmative’s goals, and the issue that emerged was the extent of control lost through compliance with the Protocol. The affirmative had to show that this loss of control was significant, and it was difficult to do this since the counterplan achieved most of what the affirmative was seeking. The affirmative spent very little time on the negative’s contentions since there wasn’t much to say about the negative’s case–if the affirmative lost the value it became clear it would lose the debate. By the end of the rebuttal the focus of the debate was down to a couple of issues, which happens in some LD debates.
There is no need for any conclusion to this speech since the debate continues and both sides will still have opportunties to speak. You can reassert your support for the resolution, but there is no need to do anything else.
