EDS UI Newsletter Vol. XI

NEWSLETTER

EDS UI EDITION 11

Elevate YOURSELVES

November 2016

elevate yourselves November 2016 The Job of a Latter Speaker

page 3 (Magreta Adenta)

Don't You Think I Regulate Too Much?

page 6 (Gayatri Kancana)

How Did We Get Here?

page 8 (Aditya Padmanaba)

The Classic Concept of Capitalism and Socialism Snapshots of 2016

page 12 (Adfikri Kevin) page 14

editor's note

NEWSLETTER

EDSÂ UI EDITIONÂ 11

In its 11th edition EDS UI's Newsletter acknowledges the great stream of new debaters coming in. Thus, we aim to aid debaters to elevate their arguments (and later, their debating life) by bringing you some of the most basic recurring topics in debate that our writers had kindly breakdown into more sophisticated arguments. Enjoy reading! .This

month's issue is, sadly, how externals 2016

have to end our journey. Allow us to extend our gratitude for having been able to engage in such

Elevate YOURSELVES

November 2016

privilege to contribute to debate, as EDS UI, in the most blissful way.

Edition 11

November 2016

THE JOB OF A LATTER SPEAKER Written by Magreta Adenta Law, 2011

M

any are confused as to what is expected from the person speaking last in a debate.

Many said that this person should be the one that gives the best rebuttal, and that ’ s it. But being a latter speaker, especially a second speaker in BP style debate, is so much more than just giving the best rebuttal. It is also about reading the debate, analyzing the stage of both side ’ s explanation, and understanding the dynamic of the debate. Sounds difficult? Yes, it is difficult, but every speaker role has its own difficulty.

What I found problematic in many latter speaker is their perspective on their role and the mentality. So below are few principles that need to be understood by every latter speaker:

Have you been told by an adjudicator that you are repetitive? I have, not once, many times. A good debate is a debate that grows wider or deeper, and whose job it is to make it happen?

The latter speakers. This can happen only if you listen to both your teammates and opponents when they ’ re speaking. Listening to your teammates is important, so you know what they ’ ve said and what they ’ ve not so you know what to bring and what to not. Listening to your opponents is meant to fully understand their case and to respond it from various angle.

Many latter speakers are repetitive because they are stuck to what they ’ ve case built or the prepared rebuttal. But this is harmful. All prepared rebuttal and case building materials should have been brought by the earlier speaker, and not you. Latter speaker should be versatile, willing to let go the case of their previous speaker if no longer relevant, or should strengthen and develop it if necessary. But what is certain is that there ’ s no certainty on what should be brought by the latter speaker. They should find out what is needed as the debate goes, and that can happen only if you listen.

BE SELFLESS AND BE A GOOD TEAM PLAYER You can only be as good as your previous speaker ” this has been the mantra that kept me going for years. I have seen many latter speakers brought like seriously great rebuttal, only to be discounted by adjudicators because adjudicators claimed it was “ late ” . This is all rooted because of few things ( a ) because you ’ re afraid that you won ’ t have other rebuttal so you keep your rebuttal for yourself ( b ) you have this great rebuttal but you ’ re afraid that your teammates can ’ t deliver it as good as you or ( c ) you want to shine among your teammates. “

Reason ( a ) is very normal, I have been in that stage. However, that perspective is the root of stagnancy, it doesn ’ t challenge yourself to experiments on different rebuttal. But worse it put your team in a hard situation. Here ’ s the thing if your opponent brings an argument then you come up with a rebuttal but you keep it to yourself, what will probably happen is that your opponent will have easier time to strengthen that argument in their latter speaker. This left you in 2 possibilities either ( i ) you can then deliver your rebuttal during your speech but judges say it ’ s late or ( ii ) you bring that rebuttal, but it is no longer relevant because their argument has developed so well that it becomes so strong.

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LISTEN

It ’ s true that probably at first you may run out of rebuttal, but running out of rebuttal is less worse ( not that I ’ m saying it ’ s good ) than keeping your rebuttal until the end and having its worth discounted. If you remember the previous point that we ’ ve discussed, if you listen to your opponents, all its speakers, there ’ ll always be something new to be rebut.

Reason ( b ) is a little bit arrogant, and it ’ s bad on itself ( haha! ) . Debaters are known to be good talker, but not so much of good listener. The same thing applies when listening to your teammate. We first must recognize that we all have hearing capacity, and when we ’ re on stage most of the time we only partially - hear our teammates. Secondly, we must also recognize that there is various wording that can be used to deliver our points. Thirdly, we must remember that what matter is adjudicator ’ s understanding and not your satisfaction.

Understanding these 3 things is important, because as latter speaker we sometimes unnecessarily being over - protective with our point. Probably your teammate has delivered your point, with different wording that judge can understand, but because we partially hear them we think they haven ’ t.

If you fall in this category of reason, you should also think about whether you are understandable when you ’ re transferring your point to your teammates or not. Because sometime the problem is on you and not your teammate. You and your teammate should practice communicating during the debate, either through whisper, post - it, or sign. This communication should be agreed and understood by everyone in the team, and when you can communicate well you can trust your point being delivered by your teammates.

Reason ( c ) is way more dangerous. Debate is a team game, if this is your goal, go do a speech competition, debating is not for you! Bye.

November 2016

All in all, what you must remember is to pass on your rebuttal to your previous speakers. If they bring it well, then your team will be strong from the get go; if they bring it halfway, then you can continue it, half the effort full the worthy cause it won’t be late; or if they failed to bring it, you can self-reflect have you been communicating with your teammate effectively? These possibilities are better because it brings you closer to development, and small development is way better than stagnancy.

ALL ARGUMENTS HAVE FLAW When we face a strong opponent sometime we can ’ t find the flaw in their points. Maybe that ’ s true, but hey we ’ re not debating about whether the sun rises on the east or west, so nothing is given as true. Just remember, they also make things up ( not that they ’ re lying, but they make their own principle and conclusion ) so you can also do that.

Now done with building your perspective on how to be a good latter speaker, let ’ s look on the practical tips.

THINK OF YOUR OPPONENT’S CASE

I have been told from long time ago this is what I should do during case building, but only lately I understand the importance and meaning of this instruction. When you ’ re case building you should also figure out at least the stance and goal that your opponents will take. When you know what they will have as stance and goal, then you know few things:

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Edition 11

Edition 11

Point of concession ;

in a debate, sometimes you don ’ t fully oppose your opponent, and so you concede to some point. Noticing this from the start will allow you to have more time to focus finding explanation on why the point you don ’ t concede is not tolerable for example and save you more time from figuring an explanation to support something that in the end your opponent will concede as well.

November 2016

BALANCING OFFENSIVENESS AND DEFENSIVENESS

Battle of consequence ;

So, you can give a great offensive rebuttal? That is great! But you ’ re only half way of becoming a great latter speaker. A defense is just as important as an offense to your opponent ’ s case, and a good latter speaker know how to balance this two. How can you do this best? The easiest way is to always make a comparison after giving an offensive rebuttal. Always remember that in a debate you ’ re always debating about competing principle and alternative solutions to address the same problem.

It ’ s either your case or your opponent that will win, so you should compare. If you find your arguments can ’ t be compared with your opponent ’ s than most probably your case is irrelevant to the debate.

Because probably your teammates are overwhelmed already with preparing their speech, this becomes a latter speaker duty.

LINK BACK

when both sides are arguing different proposal both sides must have different outcome of that proposal. When you know your outcome and your opponent outcome from the start you can have bigger chance on winning the battle of consequence, because you can prepare a case why their consequences ( i ) have more harm ( ii ) redundant at best or ( iii ) principally flawed.

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This sounds simple, but many people forget to do this and ignore its importance.

Link back is important, because this is a RESPOND BEST AND WORST CASE way to make your rebuttal sounds relevant.

As a later speaker we should not focus only The biggest problem of a new latter why opponent ’ s case is principally and speaker is that they rebut every point their practically flawed, but we should assume that it can work. We should also respond why even opponent brings for the sake of responding, but if we look in the bigger if their case will work, the consequence that picture those rebuttal give minimum to no will happen is something that we cannot effect in helping their case. So a good afford both principally and practically. Not only this will better the dynamic of the debate, latter speaker should also know what to rebut and what to be left harmless, and to but this is also to complete your those point they rebut they should give a offensiveness.

And by the way, this is also commonly referred link back. An effective link back is when that link back shows which opponent ’ s to as an “ even - if rebuttal ” . point you attack and how that makes their case weaker, or when that link back shows which of your team point is getting stronger.

In conclusion , a latter speaker should not have a prepared speech and they should listen as to how the debate unfolds. Dare yourself to make speech after your teammates have finished their speeches and craft it to how the dynamic of the debate has gone.

Don’t You Think I Regulate Too Much? [trying to] answer why something is within government interest

Cue 1: In every policy debate, there is a part where you have to explain "why this is within the interest of the government", or anybody who makes the policy. Why is this body considered as the best to make policy? All your coach or adjudicator's constructive feedback might say, "elaborate more", "characterize more". While, well, the only characterization you might know is that this body supposed to govern us and it has a certain set of decision making process that yield better decision for society.

Cue 2: But wait, have you ever think, isn't that body-so-calledgovernment govern too much? Making policy too much, not to mention your family or household which is supposed to be "your territory", the area you can govern?

Seeing those cues, my writing will share how we can possibly deal with lack of elaboration in the mandatory argument points : "government interest" and "government knows best". Every motion and every policy needs different elaboration, characterization, and contextualization whatsoever. But this time, I would like to share some points on policies intervening family matters.

Now let's think about motions where government govern your family; like against tiger parenting; raising kids without gender; not teaching religions to kids; bridging parents consent to medical treatments; incentivize house husbands; setting an age standard to get married; setting the numbers of kids allowed to be had; regulating adultery; and many more.

If debate supposed to talk about something public, for we should respect people’s choice in private sphere, how then we defend such motions?

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Are family matters really private?

The answer might be “Not really”. As the basic unit of social structure, what happens in a family will affect the society. Functioned as the first “training school” for every child, it is within the government interest to make sure the newborns are “trained well” to be the member of a society.

Government cares about the bricks of which the society is comprised, and making a tough building will never be possible if we do not start from having a strong brick.

Who knows our families better?

The members live in the families, thus they should have known best about these units and how to best govern them. But as a body which lives outside of the sphere and having the ability to oversee what happens inside, government could have a clearer sight. Government also oversees the lives of many families and their relations to each other in a social structure. Government studies more family cases; listen to various actors, more experts and more family members when they make a policy.

Government makes something for a greater good, to make as much as actors feel good, now and then, not only to make parents feel good at the moment after punching their kids.

The thing is, feeling attracted to somebody; getting married; and give birth to child are something we all can do. It’s all equipped in our nature system. But to grow a happy family and to raise the kind and successful children, people need guidelines, not just guts. There come the government policies to provide regulations and guidelines of what to do and not to do, to make people do family governing methods which are most likely to be a successful P.S : - Explaining the decision making process is very important in making sure government does make a good policy to follow. Make sure we explained how the policy is thoroughly tailored.

Written by

Gayatri Kancana Social and Political Science, 2013

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- The context of a country might result into degree of self-governance demanded by society; and the degree of government-knows-best possibility. In rejecting one-child policy, it’s of course harder for Chinese society at that time to demand for self-governance.

How did we get here?

As the country who sees themselves as the beacon of democracy, it’s hard to say that the implementation is good.

In the last election, they have a candidate won the presidency by using fear-mongering rhetoric, a candidate lose the presidency although having the majority of the vote, and the most favorable politician (re: Bernie Sanders, according to a poll by Washington Post) this year didn’t even get a nomination. In every two years, the nation also decide which interest is going to block the law proposed by the president, or even be able to pass law without opposition, by being the majority inside The Congress. How does the nation of freedom, or so they say, can get to this point? The problem might actually lie in the system. And to fix these broken system is how to fix democracy: The First-Past-the-Post Voting and Single Seat District The United States is a federation of 52 states, comprised of smaller districts, each with their own needs and interests. This demands the government to have a congress made out of local representatives. Each district has one representative seat in Congress. To elect them, They use First-Past-the-Post voting (FPTP) method, in which one candidate who has the majority vote in the district election becomes the chosen representative.

The problems with this system are: It always leads to a two-party system. The nature of how people vote, is that they vote strategically. People would rather vote a candidate who doesn’t truly represent their interest, if they are more likely to win, rather than vote a candidate who represents their interest, but is less likely to win. In FPTP where only a single seat is at stake, Candidates from a small party are not going to be elected, because people would rather be safe by picking candidate from a dominant party that they relate to in a small way. After numerous cycle, small parties are going to be eliminated in the race, and the ones that left is two polarized parties. This phenomenon is called Duverger’s Law.

A two party system is harmful towards democracy, as it limits the choice of politically diverse society with many interests and demands, in which just having two options is not going to fulfill. With the help of media, the political discussion inside a two party system tends to be negative towards each other, which is the case in this year’s election. Many favors Trump mainly because they hated Hillary, and vice versa. This strong partisanship and fear of the opposite party enables politicians to not be scrutinized in their policies, because they can get away by using rhetoric that the other choice is much worse. Which contributes on how Trump was able to defeat Hillary, even when He didn’t have a sounding policy plan.

It is prone to gerrymandering. The amount of districts in each state is reflective towards its population. Every time the population increase/decrease, the amount of district is subject to change and the border is a subject of being redrawn. In 32 States, the one who gets the power to redraw the district line is the partisan State Legislature. What they could do, is for them to redraw the district line to increase the chance of their own party to win those district. This process of manipulating the border to include certain population in favor of certain political party is called gerrymandering. The process makes it hard for a party to win certain district, thus creating a bad representation of a congressmen in a state.

Closed Primary and Super-delegates Before coming up with candidates in the general election (where people vote the candidate). Each party hold their own primary election to determine whom they’re going to pick as their candidate. The way they do this is by holding primaries and caucuses in the state level, which is a kind of mini election to pick pledged delegates, which are going to vote for the actual nominee in the party’s convention.

The problems in this systems are: Most primaries are closed to public. Around half of primaries are closed primary.

That means that those who can vote in the primary is only a registered member of those party, and to register as a member is a long process that could take months. The problem is, the society may actually has an interest in pushing a certain politicians who recently running for nomination to be made candidate, but they can’t because they are not a registered party member. This is the case for Bernie Sanders supporters, when upon Bernie starts the campaign, they are not yet a member of the democratic party (also because Sanders is independent), so they can’t vote to nominate Sanders as Democratic Candidate in general election. This would mean that the primary might not be representative to the actual demand of the society, instead it is decided by the establishment.

The Super Delegates. A super delegate is a delegate in the democratic party who: has bigger votes than other delegates; and also is not pledged to choose the voted candidates in the convention. Super delegates are consist of the party’s leaders and powerful politicians. This is a tool for the Democrats establishment to have a control over the party to decide whom to be nominated, so it would align with their accordance. This system heavily favors politician who is powerful in the establishment and is very prone to corruption. One of the biggest contributor of Hillary’s edge over Sanders in democratic primary comes from the vote of super delegates. This is especially sad because according to some the polls, it is shown that Sanders is actually more favorable than Clinton, and predicted more likely to beat Trump in general election if nominated. This system in inherently undemocratic in nature and has proven to create under representation of societal demands.

The Electoral College Electoral College is the system used to elect the president and the vice president of the United States. They are elected not based on the majority of the popular vote, but the vote of 538 electors, which consist of 435 district representatives, 100 senators, and 3 electors from DC. In the election, people technically do not vote for the president, rather than vote for the party’s selected electors who pledged to give their electoral votes to the winning candidate of the state (Although not constitutionally bind to do so, and had happened 157 times throughout US history).

Candidate won the state when they won the majority vote of the state. The Candidate are then given the whole electors of the state. Those who own the majority of the electoral votes won the presidency.

The problems with this system are: A chance of Minority Rule. It is possible in the electoral college system, for a candidate to have the most vote of the people, but lost due to electoral votes. In fact, this has happened four times in US history (election of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016). This possibility undermine democracy itself, by not electing the most favorable candidate of the masses, thus being unrepresentative to the people. This is possible due to the fact that in 50 states, a candidate should only need a simple majority of vote in the state to win the entirety of the electoral votes of the state. It is also contributed by the fact that the number of electoral votes a state has do not necessarily proportional to the population. That means, losing even by a small margin in some state is very detrimental, while winning by a landslide in some state do not contribute that much. An election where the majority is not being favored, or in 2016 case is more than 65 million of people, is not a fair election.

Campaign will only be focused in swing states. Because now the objective of a candidate is to win states and not people. And due to the fact that some states value more than others, because of the disproportionality of the number of electors they have compares to the population. Candidates will only focus their campaign effort in swing states. Swing states; such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida, is a battleground states in which in recent election is swaying between voting Democrats or Republican. The candidates are less likely to campaign in states where they already likely to win or certain to lose. That means, there is states that is more listened than others.

Policies are made to suits the interest of certain states, just because it is more strategic to do so, which is unfair. That also means that states with less likeliness to be swayed will be abandoned during the campaign. If Democrats abandon campaign in southern red states, that is when it is more likely those red states to become even more polarized. This makes people in red states less exposed to progressive idea. This makes biased local media to become stronger in those states. This perpetuate the divisiveness in current political discourse in The US. The situation that US is currently facing is not caused by the politicians, instead, it is caused by the system that allows those kind of politicians to hold control of the government. A campaign to fix the system might be more crucial and should be prioritized, rather than campaign to fix the policy. US can’t wait for another election to have these recurring problem be perpetuated even worse by this vicious cycle. To fix the system, is the only way to make America great again.

Written by Aditya Padmanaba Economics, 2014

PAGE 11

THE CLASSIC CONCEPT OF

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

By Adfikri Kevin Marvel Social and Political Science, 2014 “Capitalism is evil. The United States is the leading capitalist country.

Therefore the United States is evil."

“Bernie Sanders is a socialist, he wants to make USA a communist state where everybody gets wealth equally.” If you have ever heard a statement along that line, then most likely you have encountered one of the victims with vast ignorance of what capitalism or socialism is about. The words themselves, "socialism" and "capitalism," are ambiguous in a way that has helped this vast ignorance to continue. [Ralph K. White, “‘Socialism’ and ‘Capitalism’: An International Misunderstanding,” Foreign Affairs , Vol. 44, No. 2 (Jan., 1966), pp. 217] We have to understand prior to dig deeper that neither one of them is an absolute truth. Capitalism and socialism have their own utopian (ahistorical) and realistic (historical) advocates, critics, and opponents.

[Martin J. Sklar “Thoughts on Capitalism and Socialism: Utopian and Realistic,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Vol. 2, No. 4, New Perspectives on Socialism II (Oct., 2003), pp. (363) 361-376]

In real history, capitalism and socialism (the same may be said about feudalism and capitalism, for example, or slavery and capitalism, or agro-peonage and capitalism) have not been mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, or arranged in some overriding pattern of linear succession, but symbiotic, intersecting, and interrelated, as well as (at the same time) in conflict and mutual modification. [Ibid., pp.

363] Therefore, it is not that they have adversarial relation with each other, it is more that they are cousins who are supposed to complement each other with their own tenets and advantages each of them offers on the table.

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Since the words themselves are the problem, then retrospecting the common understanding as to what those words mean in different settings would be beneficial, firstly let’s analyse capitalism and how it has been misunderstood by a certain group of people. In United States as an instance, to many Americans there is something quite baffling about how capitalism is perceived as something evil. In the first place, Americans seldom think of their society as "capitalist," to them it is a democratic society, or a free society, more than a capitalist society. And in the second place, when they do think of their economic system as capitalism (most of them prefer the term "free enterprise"), they seldom think of it as evil. [Ralph K White, “Socialism and Capitalism”, pp. 216] One possible explanation as to why that becomes the prevalent understanding of capitalism could be because of massive propaganda to discredit capitalism in the past by Communist propaganda. Back then, in the Soviet Union, Communist China and other countries with a near-monopoly of the means of communication, the idea has been systematically inculcated. [Ibid., pp. 216] However, despite some parts of the world really do think that way, the answer to whether or not capitalism is evil, is not as onesided as what you might have skeptically have supposed.

There are many millions, especially in Western Europe, Latin America and Japan, who do not see capitalism as essentially evil. To them it has connotations of high productivity and abundant opportunity for individual advancement (and perhaps also of continuing privileges for people like themselves), outweighing its negative connotations of exploitation and unfair distribution of wealth. [Ibid., pp.

218-219] Capitalism also should not be equated with the thinking of the various persons who may have advocated or favored it, to do so would be an obvious fallacy. Capitalism is a mode of production or property-production system. Not all who favor capitalism are capitalists, and not all who are capitalists favor capitalism. Yet this fallacy is virtually taken for granted as a valid proposition when treating of socialism. Over and over again, historians and just about all others see socialism as the politics, movements, writings, and thinkers, known as, or professing to be, socialist, or favoring socialism. [Martin J. Sklar,”Thoughts on Capitalism and Socialism”, pp. 374]

The same fallacy happens for socialism, when American people are asked about how capitalistic their economic system is, very rarely will you see they say either they have socialistic economy, or that they like it. Even after the fact that based on polls as well they like socialist policies such as but not limited to: current medicare, possible universal healthcare, universal education, etc. The reason for that misunderstanding is because in the minds of American people the primary meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry as opposed to the common meaning understood by other parts of the world which is government responsibility for social welfare.

[Ralph K White, “Socialism and Capitalism”, pp. 224] That misunderstanding is also what makes troubling acceptance towards the word “socialism” or gaffe when Bernie Sanders claimed he is a “democratic socialist”. The condition to how socialism is perceived obviously is different, but it should be noted too that in most of the world the word socialism is more unequivocally positive than the word capital ism is negative. Except in the United States, liberals tend to embrace the word “socialism” and proudly identify themselves with it.

Approval of the word has been found to predominate in literally every country for which survey evidence exists, including Great Britain, Germany and Japan as well as France, Italy, a number of Latin American countries and some in Africa and Asia. Among students, and in most of the developing countries in Africa and Asia, the predominance of approval is especially great. It follows, then, that when these people see the United States as being at the opposite pole from socialism, some degree of disapproval is implied.[ Ibid., pp. 219] In the United States, even liberals often dislike the word socialism and disclaim any association with it, emphasizing thereby their preference for free enterprise as opposed to government ownership and their unwillingness to go to the extreme which in their eyes the word socialism represents. [ibid., pp. 219] Conclusively, what this misunderstanding shows, is that the opposition against either capitalism or socialism is based on the feelings of those who imagine that the United States is an extremely capitalistic country or Bernie Sanders is an extremely socialist politician. It is not necessarily capitalism as such that they object to; most of them would probably object nearly as much to extreme socialism. What is more objectionable to them is the extremeness, as they conceive it, of what United States’ capitalism or Sanders’ socialism appear to be. [Ibid., pp. 223] This misunderstanding oftentimes makes “socialism” and “communism” used interchangeably in United States or likewise “capitalism” and “exploitation” becomes the connotation for capitalism. Socialism is capitalism’s cousin that prevents it from eating up and exploiting everyone, whilst capitalism is a mode of production as well as a virtue that enables people to advance themselves, and incentvize competition which incites economic growth if we let capitalism to exist in the market to a certain extent.

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BE OF 2016

NUDC 2016

SNAPSHOTS

FOUNDERS' TROPHY 2016 MEMBERS GATHERING 2016

NEWBIES 2016

JUST FOR FUN 2016

OF 2016 THE 5TH TRAP! "TAKE YOUR STEP, DON'T MIND THE GAP!"

GRADUATION 2016

Snapshots of 2016 EDS UI MOMENTS CAUGHT ON CAMERA

EXCURSION TO GOOGLE INDONESIA

TOTAL DEBATE COMPETITION

CAUSINDY BILATERAL DEBATE

CLIMATE WEEK DEBATE COMPETITION

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