18. The Alternative Should Specify Their Agent and Consider Theory In Context

Figure 20: The negative must specify agents and feasible opportunity costs to put theory into action.

1. Returning debate to feasible comparison restores its purpose in citations, organizing topics into outlines, better research papers, effective persuasion, and balanced personal decisions. “Ignoring the policy implications of theory is often a sign of intellectual laziness […] Often, when the policy implications are considered, flaws in the theory (or at least in the presentation of the theory) are uncovered. Thus, focusing attention on policy implications should lead to better theorizing” (Feaver, 2001, p. 178). It is lazy to tell others to rethink how to stop war, while keeping one's hand clean of any problematic system. The best negative strategy is a specific counterplan or alternative approach to address the harm. Specific solvency turns are better than far-out net benefits and may carry a mindset value net benefit—such as reforming schools in a denormalized or anti-capitalist way. Alternative mindsets to solve a harm can be used when the case is not conceded, but answered with how the plan could make a harm worse. Critiques are like counterplans to consult Žižek and others to let the Holy Ž handle it, which forces us to debate for the authors, who would have to agree given consensus on case specifics. Modern critique logic-flow can lead to mental abuse teaching to reduce people to categories by essentializing them to hold them accountable for associations, such as with Western values. Theory becomes dangerous as it immunizes itself against contrary evidence, ignores the specific concerns of others as “false consciousness,” and treats violence as acceptable in servitude to an eschatology, like a promise of Nirvana after the Final Solution to reject all corrupt people, to avoid debates to sustain capitalism until its downfall. People base decisions on ethics in a situation but one cannot speculate which path is more ethical given unforeseen consequences.

2. The critique alternative should specify the framework and the agent it is calling on. "Without detailed ideas of methods and alternatives, most people will rely on the models with which they are most familiar, such as existing large-scale bureaucracies, decisions by elites and advice from experts" (Martin, 1990). "[W]e should not let the abstractly described best be the enemy of the better. We should not let speculation about a totally changed system, and a totally different way of thinking about human life and human affairs, replace step-by-step reform" (Rorty, 1998, p. 105). One can infer that critical theorists imply advocating that the general public and leaders facing this issue should base their approach on philosophic rethinking. The critic's best answer is that it is helpful to depart knowing deeper issues. Some justify adding any philosophy topic as it expands education, but such ad-hoc self-justifying logic can apply to anything, like saying we must first learn all sciences and majors. But we learn to deeply scrutinize neither issue, when instead of depth, we radicalize opposition to common sense policy in ways their authors would cringe at. Critics cannot make up framework tricks teaching the judge to think instead via the perspective of another debate on a related subject. This teaches manipulating discussions into political filibustering. Critical theorists would encourage readers to reconceptualize mainstream articles but still support the overall thesis. Debaters would not be able to dissuade a friend reading an article considering a plan to join the war draft or a plan to suicide answered by a suicide hotline that there is more valuable theory to read, and if everyone thought like that problems would be solved. Skepticizing a case author's mindset is not enough to ignore a risk. There's no reason why the judge needs to use a ballot to reject supporting the best plan to survive, then in-round discussion is better to enrich mindsets. Their own authors would reject applying their theories as an excuse based on a made up rule by early debaters to let the judge vote on just that if they endorse it as more meaningful activism. Evaluating a supposed outcome allows weighing only feasible opportunity costs and intrinsic harm in a decision paradigm. Their authors would want all sides to discuss theory then also to resolve the case issue, so their theory seems relevant if we enter that field.

3. Rejection without an institutional referent leaves in place the very mindsets it condemns. If the negative advocates changing how people think, then the permutation makes that change far more likely to succeed by speaking the language of institutional power to persuade via specific approaches and by refining a proposal that accounts for concerns via crowdsourced outlines. Calls to rethink fall on deaf ears when policymakers "are not listening for new ideas, but instead are looking for those approaches that support their preconceptions. […] [E]mpirical evidence suggests that once in government, policy-makers do not change their implicit theories about the world" (Smith 1997, p. 512). Nobel laureate Kahneman (2007) furthers, “psychology suggests that policymakers come to the debate predisposed to believe their hawkish advisors [...] In fact, a bias in favor of hawkish beliefs and preferences is built into the fabric of the human mind.” “While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and concerns of foreign-policy decisionmakers are quite different, so different that they constitute a distinctive problemsolving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign policy and the exercise of power than they really are.” (Ó Tuathail 1996). Bronner captures the defect of rejection without an institutional substitute: "Ideas of political emancipation will necessarily remain abstract without an institutional referent. […] [W]ithout a willingness to envision ideas in action, political theory loses its ability to fashion meaningful distinctions between institutions or to formulate the complex struggles facing the exploited." (Bronner, 1999, p. 303). Telling people to reject mainstream political mindsets leaves those mindsets in place by choking the space for comparing detailed solutions in context: "The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement […] [U]rgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society […] cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context [...] [T]he fate of the world hangs in the balance [...] [S]pace abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites.” (Boggs, 1997). Fear of cooption by the system is false systematizing: “alternatives has effects that ironically mirror those of cooptation itself [...] [O]pting out of the legal arena becomes self-defeating as it discounts [...] the blurring of boundaries between private and public spheres [...] [D]ivision of society into different spheres in fact have worked to subvert rather than support the progressive agenda.” (Lobel, 2007).