Unit 3: Values in LD Debate

Now that the structure of Lincoln-Douglas debate has been explained, it’s time to examine what distinguishes LD debate from other forms of debate: the inclusion of a value premise.

LD debating is named after the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who ran for Illinois Senator in 1858. Douglas was the incumbent, seeking his third six-year term; Lincoln was making his second run against Douglas, having lost his first Senate campaign in 1852. The voters were the members of the Illinois legislature, as citizens were not permitted to vote for Senators until 1914. Due to the high public interest in the election, the two candidates agreed to meet seven times at various locations in Illinois.

The format was far different than contemporary presidential debates. The first speaker spoke for an hour; the second for 90 minutes; the first then gave a 30-minute rebuttal. Since there was no amplified sound, most of the audience could not hear most of what was said, so they had to read transcripts that were published in the next day’s newspaper.

One of the key topics in the original LD debates was slavery, and the candidates offered different values to defend their positions. Douglas argued that democracy was the basic American value, and that citizens of new states should be permitted to decide whether or not slavery should be permitted, a position he called “popular sovereignty.” Lincoln argued that morality was the more important value, and that because slavery was morally wrong the people did not have the authority to legalize it. The debaters identified the different values behind their positions, so it became more than an exchange of the reasons for and against the expansion of slavery. Although Douglas won the Senate election 51-46, Lincoln’s valuation of slavery eventually became the fundamental principle behind the Thirteenth Amendment, which removed slavery from the realm of popular choice.

The first LD debate was very different than the recent debate over the components of an omnibus government budget bill that President Trump deemed the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Most media coverage of that debate focused on whether extensive tax cuts that benefited the wealthy most should be preferred to maintaining spending on health care and education. The proponents of the tax cuts seemed to assume that the most important values were utility (more disposable money = greater happiness) and liberty (less taxes = more freedom). Advocates of maintaining Medicaid and Medicare spending seemed to assume that these constituted protected rights to health care. However, the difference in values was rarely discussed in the media.

Had the bill been debated under LD rules, the Republicans would have had to justify why utility was a better value than protecting needy people from health risks. Perhaps this would have brought greater attention to the disparity in values between the Democrats and Republicans. But it did not happen, and as there was no strong challenge to the values of the governing party, the bill eventually passed by a very narrow margin. Americans thus missed the chance to debate the values that govern the Trump administration’s policy choices.

This book argues that values are always implicit in policy choices and that debates that avoid discussing values will always be incomplete and frustrating.  Two types of values are presented in this unit: consequentialist and deontological. Consequentialist values validate actions by their consequences; if the results are good, then the action was good. In the United States, two consequentialist goals stand out as having substantial public support: utility, and freedom or liberty. The first two chapters in this unit address these value systems. There are also two deontological values: Kantian justice and Rawlsian justice. They validate actions based on the reasons the actions were chosen, and are discussed in chapters three and four.

Readers should know that my approach differs from the approach to values that has been adopted by American high schools. The version of LD debate sanctioned by the Speech and Debate Association, which provides a manual for high school students,^[1] divides values into broadly stated categories (such as justice) and more specific criteria that can be either statement or concepts.^[2] The inclusion of a criterion adds unnecessary complexity into the short speeches involved in LD debate. Requiring debaters to clearly specify their value avoids endless quibbling over what criterion is better, allowing the debaters to show that their values are achieved by multiple criteria. In my opinion, explaining the value premise/criterion distinction turns many students off from L/D debate. Having taught my Debating Justice class at Touro University for over a decade, I have concluded that debaters–and their speeches–benefit from simplifying discussion of value premises as I have done.

In the LD debating described in this book, the value premise is essentially the major premise in the argument for the adoption or rejection of the proposal. Consider a debater who chooses utility as the value.  The form of each contention is: Utility is increased if X will occur, evidence shows that X will occur if the resolution is adopted; therefore, the adoption of the resolution will increase utility. To take a more specific example: utility will be increased if there is more economic activity, adopting the resolution will increase economic activity; therefore, adopting the resolution will increase utility.

For a deontological value, such as Kantian justice, the same structure holds. The form of each contention is: Kantian justice is achieved if actions meet deontological criteria, these criteria will be met if the resolution is adopted; therefore, adopting the resolution will achieve Kantian justice. A more concrete example: Kantian justice is achieved if the government acts in accordance with universal laws; banning torture accords with universal law; therefore, adopting the resolution will achieve Kantian justice.

After you read about the various values presented in this unit, you will be better prepared to formulate a value premise for the resolutions that you debate. Of course, it is difficult to synthesize any value system in a single value, but you can provide further explanation of your chosen value in your first speech. Incorporation of value premises will facilitate a more comprehensive discussion of policy choices than is commonly found in today’s mainstream media.