Observation One: Redefinitions

I apologize to CJM for the nerdiness of this post. It was unavoidable.

The FCN writers were all present at a large debate tournament in Southern California a couple of weeks back (the one that got one of us drunk on coke and the others roadsick -- as opposed to homesick) and we had the opportunity to sit in on some of the policy debate rounds. In the course of these surprisingly long events (you wouldn't believe the windbags they had ka-chooing behind the podium), we discovered something that many high caliber debaters missed: the duty to define the resolution is rarely, if ever, fulfilled.

That's right, team after team would walk into a round and completely renege their affirmative duty to define the terms of the resolution. As many of you know, this year's debate resolution is “Resolved: That the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should be significantly reformed or abolished.” Well, instead of defining all the terms the way they should, most teams just define so-called important terms like “NATO” or “the.” This results in a very skewed interpretation of the topic.

In the interest of setting a sound example and in order to give any of the debaters who count themselves among the faithful FCN few a late Christmas present, we are going to show you how definitions should really be done.

Here are the definitions we found after a few minutes of research:

Resolve: To separate (something) into constituent parts

That: something

The: beyond

North: cardinal point on the mariner's compass

Atlantic: the second largest ocean

Treaty: a formal agreement between two or more states

Organization: administrative personnel of such a structure

(NATO): (a musician who dresses like a Muslim woman)

Should: it is logically necessary to

Be: exist in actuality; have life or reality

Significantly: considerably

Reformed: produced by cracking

Or: and

Abolished: extirpate

When we add punctuation and articles, the defined resolution reads:

To separate something into constituent parts: beyond [the] cardinal point on the mariner's compass [and]the second largest ocean, a formal agreement between two or more states [or] the administrative personnel of such a structure (a musician who dresses like a Muslim woman), it is logically necessary to exist in actuality, have life or reality considerably produced by cracking and extirpat[ing].

With a resolution about cracking open an ocean to create dry land, why are were so many teams talking about Kosovo?

Alternate definition scenarios are welcome in the comment section.