Iowa City West NW
Hi my name's Nate Weimar and I debated at Iowa City West for four years. I acquired 9 bids to the TOC in my career (1 sophomore year, 2 junior year, 6 senior year) and made Quarters of the TOC as a junior and Doubles as a senior. I mostly did phil/theory debate. Something I found the wiki and Circuit Debater very useful for coming from a small school was finding different frameworks to read/try out so I'm going to post my phil cases here. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]
Contracts: Contracts says the only moral obligations you have are to do what you agreed to do in contracts with others.
This framework has a meta-ethic, which is a top level observation about how ethics should be formed. I.e. in the contracts framework it is anti-realism (as opposed to moral realism) which says that there are no objective moral facts, or things like "goodness". (Keep in mind the framework also has a card in it about how we can solve this dilemma to "salvage ethics"). This meta-ethic is useful in answering frameworks like Util or Kant that claim "pleasure is intrinsically good" or "ethics begins a priori" because those both presume there are some moral facts that we're able to find, which contracts indicts.
Contracts Framework: File:Contracts Framework .docx
January-February 2023 Contracts NC: File:JF2023 Contracts NC.docx
November-December 2022 Contracts AC: File:ND2022 Contracts AC.docx
Libertarianism: Libertarianism says freedom is good and people have rights (i.e. are entitled to be free) and that its bad to violate those rights. It says the government should be a "minimal state" which means the job of the government is to not infringe on freedom and if they do it must be to stop immediate freedom violations (e.g. they can hold someone back from attacking someone else).
This framework is strategic because it disagrees fundamentally with consequentialist frameworks like util and is really straight forward so you don't have to spend much time explaining your framework.
Libertarianism Framework: File:Libertarianism Framework.docx
January-February 2023 Libertarianism AC: File:JF2023 Libertarianism AC.docx
Ripstein: Ripstein is similar to Libertarianism or Kant but more robust and more selective in terms of what you have a "right" to. Ripstein just says you have the right to be independent (as opposed to a right to absolute freedom) which means you must be allowed to make your own choices but the government can do things like tax you. If you're interested in this framework I would recommend reading the book Force and Freedom by Arthur Ripstein, it goes in depth on a lot of issues relevant to a framework debate and is a pretty easy read.
Ripstein Framework:
September-October 2022 Ripstein AC:
January-February 2023 Ripstein NC:
Polls: This framework says the moral thing to do is just what the most people thing is the right thing to do (which we determine via public opinion polls). The meta-ethic of moral relativism is kind of interesting and strategic against a lot of other frameworks but is fairly difficult to defend.
November-December 2022 Polls AC:
Cosmopolitanism: I read this aff in one round and thought the framework was terrible, but maybe has potential? It's thesis is that our actions must be consistent with the idea that we are a global community but the contentions didn't really make sense and the framework is very disorganized.
November-December 2022 Cosmopolitanism AC:
File:ND2022 Cosmopolitanism AC.docx
Calc Indicts: These are arguments that say consequentialism fails. Here are the ones I cut that I put in every AC. (I would usually label them something dumb like "Consequentialism is Silly".
Camus: Camus is a kritik that any aff that reads a normative framework links to. It critiques ethics and trying to give life "meaning" via some framework of things you have to do to be "good". I would recommend reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus if you want to know more about the thesis of the K. (CW: the book talks about suicide a lot).
Negative K Version:
Non-T K Aff Version: