Lincoln-Douglas Debate And A Pandemic, A Minor Musing

When I was a fair to middling debate coach instead of a retired debate coach, I had the opportunity to work with a number of great Lincoln Douglas debaters. For the nine or ten folks who read this blog and are not familiar with high school Lincoln-Douglas debate, Lincoln-Douglas debaters argue resolutions such as Resolved: A just government ought to prioritize civil liberties over national security. The affirmative and the negative debater usually begin her case with a statement like "Today, I will be upholding the value of justice" or "In this round I will be valuing human dignity." Each debater then supported the premise with practical examples, utilitarian philosophers, gerontological philosophers, virtue ethicists, or postmodern cultural critics.

My debaters used scores, if not hundreds, of values over the course twenty debate seasons, but valuing civility never provided the success I thought it should.

We tried using the concept as defined by Stephen Carter who asserts civility is "the sum of the many sacrifices that we make for the sake of living our common life. Thus civility isn’t only good manners (although it is that) and it isn’t only how we think about and talk about others (although it is that, too). Civility resides, for example, in acts of charity, particularly when they are truly costly to us." Elsewhere Carter asserts, civility is“a set of sacrifices we make for the sake of our common journey with others, and out of respect for the very idea that there are others … who are every bit our equals before God.”

I believed that debaters could win a round by arguing valuing civility, as Carter defines it, allowed individuals to use their freedom responsibly, preserve the common good, and respect the dignity of others. It was not a successful argument.

Now, in the midst of a pandemic and a summer of protest, both peaceful and violent, I wonder how I could have been so naive to believe the argument could have worked. There are, I am certain, numerous citizens who perform "acts of charity . . .[that] are truly costly to [them.]" Those acts, however, are drowned out by customers who refuse to follow the posted policies about waiting to enter a hair salon or customers who who scream at a teenage barista who asks them to follow a mask policy or those who use the cover of a peaceful protest to begin looting neighborhoods.

The idea that there are others who are our equal and that co-existing with our fellow citizens requires sacrifices that may be costly didn't win many debate rounds when it was discussed in the abstract. It doesn't seem to be valued in the real world when its needed most. Both facts make me wonder what will happen when he idea of a "common journey" is totally replaced by "my way or the highway."