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Comment by dgb23 | Hacker News Reader

This article reads like satire.

The prerogative of the young is to question the status quo in fundamental ways.

They aren’t yet restricted by responsibility and dependents. They haven’t become numb yet. Let them be sharp and radical.

Does the author prefer control and indoctrination?

Positive cultural change can’t happen if we force the young and the free into a box. All of the freedoms we have have been fought against the mainstream and against established power.

We will always need radical and critical ideas to move forward. We need young people to be able to say that our questions and subjects are fundamentally wrong.

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One of the points Yglesias makes is that judges prejudge certain arguments to be wrong. For instance, one judge says

> 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.

At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties. Repeating "Black Lives Matter" a thousand times is neither sharp nor radical, and it's funny to see people whose ideas are incredibly conventional think of themselves as a rebel.

> > […] 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 […]

Then why would you waste everyone's time, including yours, in being a judge? It's like being a figuring skating judge and saying "I hate the cold and so think this sport done in a cold environ is dumb so will give everyone a zero."

Well, no, most debate topics are not "is political take X good?" Policy questions could be affirmed by leftist positions and argued against from other leftist positions. I think the judge's stance is boring, but everyone seems to be missing that high school policy debate is not meant to make an actual policy decision. It's meant to teach students how to argue within a frame - which is how lots of arguments necessarily happen! You just don't like this judge's particular frame.

FYI this post was actually written by Maya the intern (Matt only writes the weekday posts).

> At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties

A single example chosen specifically because it is extreme isn’t the status quo, and Maoism isn’t (and is opposed to) liberalism.

There's liberalism as a political theory (with all its variations, from classical to Rawlsian), which is admirable and distinct from Maoism. But there's also the "liberalism" that's more accurately described as "the set of cultural, social, and political beliefs broadly held by the college educated, urban, professional class." And professing adherence to Maoism is entirely acceptable in that milieu, in a way that professing adherence to e.g. the Religious Right or Trumpism is not. (The fact that this judge's commitment to Maoism is purely symbolic verbal signaling and not linked to any actual activism is besides the point.)

Imagine a judge said he was a committed fascist who would judge students on that basis, regardless of the quality of their arguments. Would that be considered acceptable in the same way the Maoist judge is? Just last night I had dinner with a friend who was telling me about a family member's encounter with Maoist justice: he was murdered by being thrown down a well during the Cultural Revolution.

Or, take the other angle. Suppose you had a staffer on Fox News who spent his off hours writing racist screeds on white supremacist forums (this has actually happened IIRC). Would you take it as a single extreme example that's not worth thinking about, or would you take it as indicative of some deeply troubling aspects of the modern Right?

Then there's liberalism as a political tradition that advocates free markets, laissez-faire economics, civil liberties under the rule of law, and individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech.

In liberal democracy, an elected government cannot discriminate against specific individuals or groups when it administers justice, protects basic rights such as freedom of assembly and speech, provides for collective security, or distributes economic and social benefits.

What you called "liberalism" in the first part is probably libertarianism.

You wouldn't be from America, would you, where long-established English terms get corrupted?

Because it's a pretty standard political and social concept -> https://imgur.com/a/BdkeTf4

Not to mention -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Indeed I am. Thank you for the context. I wonder if we shouldn't describe these things with more granularity, like how "functional programming" may be used to mean "pure functional abstractions", "pattern matching", and many other things in varying combination.

> A single example chosen specifically because it is extreme isn’t the status quo,

This seems to be the lesson we're slow at learning.

A steady diet of extreme examples tends to shift one's perspective toward a bad position. The position is bad because it struggles to discern reality well - because bad inputs keep skewing the math.

This is the classic problem of education having to balance expression and practice. Bringing a gun to a swordfight is effective but if you're in a kendo class it's not especially helpful. Such is the effect of kritik within policy debate. People should learn kritik, I even agree with much of it, but you also want to learn how to argue actual topics. And especially as someone who often agrees with kritik, I would rather the kids exercise that skill here where it doesn't matter, than in the real world with real impacts.

Thank you for explaining this perspective. There’s for sure a balance here between playful education and actual, invested debate. I was leaning too much on the latter, but the former is just as valuable.

I think your comment was fair; you also want them to learn when to bring a gun! I also wholly agree with you that the article's case as presented is quite weak. I read it hoping to learn some kind of actual radicalization of policy debate was happening, not the same pro-K vs. anti-K retread we had 25 years ago but with artificial woke/anti-woke flavor. The author did not develop the ability to frame their arguments in a clear way so that even those who disagree can engage with the ideas therein. (Which itself is maybe the best argument against my defense of policy debate; well, that's also why I left it my senior year in favor of other events...)

They aren't challenging the status quo using this method at all.

As one of the debate examples given: the US should embrace a system of universal healthcare. Instead of actually engaging with the topic, they go all meta on it. Hence, no progress will ever be made.

I agree this is really nothing new.

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