Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:31 PM | July 30, 2023

Did you know that the new hotness in High School debate is to ignore the topic and attack America using critical theory arguments?

No, I am not kidding. I learned this from Matt Ygliesias’ Substack, where a guest writer describes the abandonment of reasoned argument in favor of spouting revolutionary BS.

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This is not a student-led revolt against The Man, but rather something that has been encouraged by the new generation of Marxist teachers who encourage students to spew out “kritiks,” which are essentially Maoist denunciations of The West that are intended to undermine the premise of a proposition to be debated.

The debate could be about the proposition: “The US should adopt universal healthcare.” One or both sides might abandon the topic entirely as irrelevant, because it assumes that the US has a legitimate political system and faces practical policy questions, when in fact it should all be burned to the ground and replaced by a Marxist utopia.

In a traditional debate round, students argue over a topic assigned by the tournament — for example, “The U.S. should adopt universal healthcare.” One side is expected to argue in favor of the motion (the affirmation side), and one against (the negation side). However, in recent years, many debaters have decided to flat-out ignore the assigned topic and instead hijack the round by proposing brand new (i.e., wholly unrelated to the original topic), debater-created resolutions that advocate complex social criticisms based on various theories — Marxism, anti-militarism, feminist international relations theory, neocolonialism, securitization, anthropocentrism, orientalism, racial positionality, Afro-Pessimism, disablism, queer ecology, and transfeminism. (To be clear, traditional feminism is out of fashion and seen as too essentialist.)

These critical theory1 arguments, known as kritiks, are usually wielded by the negation side to criticize the fundamental assumptions of their affirmation side opponents. Kritik advocates argue that the world is so systematically broken that discussing public policy proposals and reforms misses what really matters: the need to fundamentally revolutionize society in some way. For example, if the topic was “The U.S. should increase the federal minimum wage,” the affirmation side might provide some arguments supporting this policy. But then the negation side, instead of arguing that the government shouldn’t raise the minimum wage, might reject spending any time on the original resolution and counter-propose a Marxist kritik.

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It is the equivalent of being asked to choose between a Lexus and a Mercedes, and insisting that both are horrible alternatives to teleportation. The failure to provide teleportation as a choice exemplifies how oppressive the system is.

Students don’t come up with this on their own, and it doesn’t become a massive trend without institutional support. And indeed, if you look at what the judges and coaches tell us you can see why this is common now:

Below are quotes from written judge preferences from the 2023 Tournament of Champions across all four formats, which illustrate the high school debater to critical theory-loving judge pipeline (also note that “K” is an abbreviation for kritik):

  • “Love the K, this is where i spent more of the time in my debate and now coaching career, I think I have an understanding of generally every K, in college, I mostly read Afro-Pessimism/Gillespie, but other areas of literature I am familiar with cap, cybernetics, baudrillard, psychoanalysis, Moten/Afro-Optimism, Afro-Futurism, arguments in queer and gender studies, whatever the K is I should have somewhat a basic understanding of it.”
  • “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist… I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging… I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments… Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
  • “…I’ve almost exclusively read variations of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism… I find these arguments to be a valuable and fun tool in debate and am happy to evaluate these debates to the best of my ability.”
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I believe that many of my Democrat friends believe we are insane conspiracy theorists because they simply have no idea of what is actually going on in the schools and in the larger society. It certainly sounds insane, so is it really unforgivable that they think we are insane for pointing to it? Who in their 40s to 60s can really imagine that public schools are run by Maoists who are determined to destroy everything?

You have to admit that sounds crazy. As does the idea that teachers and librarians are pushing weirdo pornography in the schools.

A long time ago–when I was still lobbying the legislature against tax increases–I figured out that one of the brilliant moves the radical legislators made was making demands so outrageous, and passing laws so despicable that average people think you are crazy for pointing them out.

No sane person would do that, so obviously nobody in power is doing it.

Evil has a magic cloak of invisibility since it is so outside the realm of normal life. This is why parents who fight against the rot in public schools can so easily be slandered as wackadoodle: they appear to be fighting against an imagined enemy. After all, we remember our teachers as pretty nice and normal, if occasionally a bit dim.

The idea that a Marxist cabal now runs our schools and universities sounds paranoid.

Unfortunately, it is also true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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And now, the news as it really happened!

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Cute and interesting stuff I found around the web

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Prepare to cry

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