• CON

    It's a shame he couldn't have thought to make a lot of...

    Assisted Suicide Laws should be Universal

    It's a shame he couldn't have thought to make a lot of these resonses earlier in the debate where we would've had more time to have substantive discussion over the resolution rather than just wait for the very last round to try and cheap his way through. Voters should keep in mind his new responses in the last round and my lack of ability to address them properly. What this debate comes down to is pretty simple: Pro mishandles the Kritik and doesn't take it nearly as seriously as he should've. His case is a moving target that lets him unfairly take both sides of the resolution while excluding me from any kind of responsive position substantively (If I say why we shouldn't let everyone have Assisted suicide, he just flips to no one, and vice versa). It's also hilarious because his response to not being a moving target is to quote specifically where he explicitly says he's a moving target from the very first round. And because he lacks any kind of sufficient offense that can weigh against the K, you negate. The K Debate: A lot of the K debate comes down to if I link and should it really be something that voters look to or am I just a sh*tty person for arguing for this. There's a major problem in trying to argue that the K doesn't link to Pro's case. In his attempt to argue that we should be giving everyone equality and not doing so is a violation of their human worth and all these other sorts of things that he's trying to extend out from his case, he kind of concedes that having these things violated is a pretty bad thing and it's not something we ought to be doing according to Pro. Pay attention kids because this is where he concedes the link to the K. If he's trying to argue that not giving everyone equality to ensure human worth is a harm to people (which is the entire point of his contention two and the general jist of his contention one, i.e. his whole case), then he's explicitly biting into the Turanli card of striving for a better, more ideal world that isn't the world we live in. That's the link. The better part is that his attempts to sever the link undermine his own case. If he's trying to argue that the K doesn't, in fact, link, and that he's not actually trying to strive for a better world and improve people's standings in the world, then why are we even thinking about affirming in the first place? His response to this? Whining about how every policy debate doesn't have to be about suffering. You're right there, but this one is. Thanks for letting me run a K :D He goes on to attack Nietzsche 1 with the same logic that I refuted last round. He doesn't respond to my defense of it. #shipspassing Then the tangent about how I'm a horrible person for advocating for Nietzsche. What my opponent fails to understand through his emotional appeal to "common sense" is that all of these "harms" to things like rape and torture and all these physical and psychological "harms", all of these things that he's arguing is bad is exactly what the K is calling into question. It's the entire flipping point of Nietzsche 2, which is saying that all of these things he says are "bad" are actually what make humanity great. Read through any and all of his rounds and you won't find a single response to this argument anywhere in his nonsensical understanding of the K. The entire point of the K is addressing why people not being equal is such a bad thing and he never questions this warrant. The entire point of the "Counter-K" is, basically, to call Nietzsche an a**hole. There's no response to the substance of the K. And that whole section about Nietzschean philosophy? How convenient he saves all of this for the last round where I have the least amount of time and space to respond to all of this...even if it's not explicitly stated in the rules, voters shouldn't even consider these new arguments just out of fairness, but I'll cover them briefly. His entire quoting of the harms principle is to say that the Harms principle is a thing, which doesn't do anything to say as why we ought to be reducing suffering over looking to Nietzsche. Says I make bare assertions and follows it up with his own bare assertion. #logic. His quoting of Kain's response to Nietzsche is without warrant as well. Half of it is him just wordedly saying that I don't agree with Nietzsche. The actual substance of the card is the "The point here is that it is legiitmate to treat suffering as if it can be reduced", but doesn't actually back this up with any kind of reason why this is true or ought to be true. Another bare assertion. Maybe he's just trying to use Kain 2 as a supplement to Kain to give it warrant. But Kane 2 doesn't even address the K: It's saying that having an all-powerful leader figure wouldn't actually solve for Nietzsche's framework because it doesn't actually reduce suffering, but that's never been the point of the K in the first place. So in short, his attempt to address the philosophy behind the K just doesn't really...address...anything...at all. But let's move over to Pro's side of the debate. Let's shed some light on exactly how unfair Pro's case is and how he misinterpret's his own ability to do things on the flow. Pro's Case: Pro's case is a clear example of what a moving target is. He gives himself two options for what he "can advocate for" in the debate: either giving everyone access to assisted suicide, or giving no one access to assisted suicide. Those are two pretty polar opposite positions, which makes the negative's job really hard for unfair reasons. If I start making responses for why giving everyone access to assisted suicide is a really bad thing, he can just negate literally the entirety of my rounds by saying "Okay, then no one gets it, affirm pls", and vice versa if I were to attack the other side. This means that we really don't ever get to discuss anything about assisted suicide in the first place, and instead I have to resort to running a K as the only real way I can address Pro's case without perpetually contradicting myself to try and respond to him. This problem wouldn't really be that bad if later in the debate he picked a stance to defend: that way we'd just miss out on a round or two and then we could...y'know....actually debate. But he continually makes it unclear what he'd actually defend. You can see it clearly in his responses ("As I said earlier, my argument may increase suffering if all people are banned from Assisted Suicide, which I explained is permissible under this resolution. People who have the right to Assisted Suicide may lose that right because of my resolution." from round 4). His whole defense for being able to take both sides is "I made it clear in round one, you didn't read definitions clear enough", but the mere fact that I'm calling him out on being unfair should be a clear thing that I actually did read. His putting it in Round One doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to call him out on bad debate practices. But let's actually examine his case closer to see if his claim to be able to do this actually holds up. His first contention is saying that equality is super important to a democracy and only giving it to some people isn't making things equal. Okay fair. His second contention, though, is where things get interesting. His second contention is saying that how with things not being equal the terminally ill are just worth less as humans and viewed as expendable. He even goes on to say "However if the right to Assisted Suicide is applicable to everyone, the human value of every person would remain the same." But is that actually true. As his own case says people who are eligible for assisted suicide are being bullied into taking it. If we make this eligible to everyone, doesn't this open up the potential for everyone to be bullied into assisted suicide? Wouldn't that say that everyone is expendible and everyone's worth is being devalued? Pro never addresses this anywhere within the debate. This means that if he wishes to have giving everyone the option as a choice, he can't really access contention two as offense. And let's consider the flipside again. Look at his contention one. Look at all those people who aren't terminally ill who are requesting the right to assisted suicide. He says that it's this loss of autonomy and dignity is what should be the decider of who ought to be able to request such things (said here "Anyone has the right to feel loss of autonomy and dignity and may wish to die. Preventing them from Assisted Suicide undermines their right to equality."). But that raises the question: wouldn't denying everyone the right to assisted suicide as you claim your case allows you to mean that everyone has a loss of autonomy and dignity since they can't actually make these decisions for themselves anymore? Again, there's no response to this from Pro. This means that if he want's to deny it to everyone, he can't actually access offense from contention one. Summary: The debate breaks down really easily and it's a fairly straight-forward negative vote. The K easily stands and is the first place you reject the resolution. No matter which side of the field he wants to hop, he's doing it because he wants to make everyone equal and it's this not being equal that undermines people's value, which is the link into the K that stands. Moreover, his case is a classic example of a moving target, even though he can't actually function as the moving target he wants to be.

    • https://www.debate.org/debates/Assisted-Suicide-Laws-should-be-Universal/1/