Political winds of high school debate

The California High School Speech and Debate Association (CHSSA) held its annual state championship last April, 2018, near Livermore.  As a high school debate coach I've been attending state tournaments (when students qualify) for about 14 years, and I've noticed a shift in the political expression of students.  This tournament in particular was different.

California is, numerically, a blue state, but CHSSA includes many school districts in red regions: in suburbs, non-urban coastal areas, and inland.  Through the W. Bush years the political commentary from debaters at state tournaments, and even at local tournaments in Southern California, tended to be conservative and relatively kind to Republican presidents.  There were frequent references to the wisdom of President Ronald Reagan.  I recall little criticism of W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The new crop of high school debaters is ready to question the official line in a bipartisan way. At this year's states I judged Extemporaneous Speech, in which students have thirty minutes to prepare a five to seven minute speech on political topics that often involve foreign policy.  The speeches were eye-opening.  Below is a list of three topics from the rounds I watched, followed by a sampling of student points.

Topic: Trump's strike on the Syrian military

Student point:          

The strike made no strategic sense beyond enhancing the President's image and was counterproductive by generating bad PR for the U.S.

Topic: President Trump's handling of the North Korean crisis.

Negation point:                  

There is no crisis.  North Korea has been firing missiles into the ocean for years without any crisis.  Trump is manufacturing the crisis for his own political benefit.

President Trump's use of the "Mother of All Bombs" (MOAB)

Negation point:  

Trump continues Obama's policy of drone strikes in Afghanistan and the Middle East that has killed hundreds of civilians and turned people in those regions against us.  On top of this, Trump dropped the MOAB- creating a high profile destructive act with no apparent strategic purpose beyond helping the President politically.

Granted this is a small sampling of students, but they are representative of a high achieving group that is sensitive to the relative persuasiveness of various arguments.  In previous years I heard very few arguments questioning the foundation of government spin, especially on questions of war and peace, even in pursuit of advantage in argument.  For students today, the prevailing wind is skeptical.

[Update, 6/24/18: I just returned from the 2018 National Speech and Debate tournament in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where I watched the final round of Lincoln-Douglas Debate (known for its complex values-based format) in which the resolution was, "U.S. targeted assassinations via drone strikes, by killing civilians, work against U.S. interests."  The Affirmative stated that killing civilians, whether intentionally or not, promotes terrorism by making the U.S. appear callous, warlike and hypocritical, considering how Americans would feel if a foreign power killed American civilians on our soil in pursuit of its enemies.  The Negation, who lost the round, seemed uncomfortable in negation, at one point conceding, "I understand that the U.S. government may not reveal truthful information about civilian casualties it causes...."]

What makes this seeming shift in students' political views especially interesting is that high school debate is often prep school for future politicians. Many presidents and other political leaders competed in high school debate (former Secretary of State John Kerry is said to have had a formidable "kill shot").  This batch of kids, whom we call Millennials (or, since 2011, iGens) has apparently either noticed on its own or picked up from its parents the idea that, even in the case of national security, or especially in that case, the government's actions and claims should be viewed skeptically.  

Could this trend in young people be part of an overall post-partisan trend that includes adults?  Listening to NPR's "Wait wait don't tell me!" on my way to the state tournament Saturday morning, I heard a harsh assessment of former President Obama's hands-off posture towards Trumpism, with a fair amount of outrage that instead of helping a troubled nation figure itself out, Obama allocated time to earn $400,000 for speaking to an investment group.  I don't recall the Clintons being reviled by NPR for the millions they squeezed from the 1%.  Is American political thought waking up?

It's an exhilarating idea, but I'm not sure that people who fear our military industrial complex as much as they fear North Korea should take much heart in this partial awakening.  Bear in mind that it won't be represented in the media.  None of the student positions detailed above has been aired on CBS, NBC or ABC network news, the organs of our state. Quite the reverse: the North Korean crisis is presented as a real thing, requiring breathless presentation of fast breaking events; the attack on Syria, we were told, made Trump look "presidential," not crazy; the MOAB was necessary because of a North Korean threat 3,000 miles from its target.

More hopefully, in Florida, after students at Stoneman Douglas High School were traumatized by a shooter who killed 17 of their classmates, several Stoneman debate team members appeared in national media and pre-empted the gun control discussion.  Unlike matters of foreign policy, which are theoretical to most people, gun control in this case is personal, and the Stoneman debate students used this to maximum effect to move the Florida legislature to enact gun control measures that no lobbying group or single politician could have done.

Judging by the trends in high school debate, the dominant attitude among young people entering government seems likely to remain skeptical.

The Ten Commandments are boilerplate

"Boilerplate" refers to "standardized pieces of text for use as clauses in contracts" (Webster).   Between the standardized clauses are blank lines where the user adds information that gives meaning to the contract.  For example, the boilerplate rental contract available at Staples provides legal text about the renting process, but only in areas that are common to all rental contracts, so that these sections can be repeated verbatim in all of them.  But the contract is incomplete until someone fills in the renter's name, the rent amount, the landlord's and renter's obligations, etc.  Boilerplate is a convenience designed to deliver the necessary framework for legal transactions, but just as the boilerplate at Staples is incomplete, so are the Ten Commandments, with blank lines needing to be filled in.  

This is easy to demonstrate with commandments 5-10, which prohibit (in this order) mistreatment of parents, murder, adultery, stealing, lying about your neighbor or coveting his/her possessions or spouse.  Are there any major religions that have doctrinal problems with any of that?  There don't appear to be.  Every religion or system for human behavior asserts these kinds of things, usually like the Ten Commandments do, in general terms without specific definitions or examples, making it boilerplate.

Commandments 1- 4 need some discussion.

1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shall not have any gods before me.

This is arguably a specifically Jewish (and by extension Christian and Muslim) commandment, as it applies only to the Judeo/Christian/Muslim god, commonly capitalized to suggest that "He" is the only such entity in the universe.  There are variants in the world's religions: Hindus believe there are millions of gods, but the chief god is Vishnu (who rules along with his feminine aspect, Parvathi).  The idea that your top god is the top god is common among religions and is thus boilerplate.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

The Judeo/Christian/Muslim god is invisible to "His" adherents, who know next to nothing about "His" thoughts, nature, ambitions, and certainly nothing of what "He" looks like.  Other religions might allow people to draw pictures and make statues of how they think their gods appear, but their doctrines do not assert that people are equal to gods, that we can understand a god the way we understand each other.  Therefore the intent of the restriction on artistic expression in the 2nd Commandment is common to all religions and is boilerplate.

3. Thou shalt not use the name of the Lord your God in vain.

The phrase "in vain" was translated from the Hebrew, shav, meaning "emptiness of speech, lying," and may have referred specifically to lying under oath.  In the modern conception, this commandment is taken to prohibit references to God in swearing or cussing, as I learned in middle-school when a friend punched me in the shoulder for saying "goddammit!," which my friend said was taking the Lord's name in vain.  Seriously, must one-tenth of humanity's foundational guidance be that you can't say "goddammit!"?  That's so silly it must be a human idea that God just puts up with.  Arbitrary human pretensions to understanding divine will of this sort are common to most religions, so Commandment 3 is boilerplate.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Recently on a road trip to Reno my wife and I saw a billboard outside a small town that claimed that all Christians who observe Sunday as the Sabbath will go to hell and be tormented forever because the actual Sabbath is Saturday.  There was no mention of whether Jews, who also consider the Sabbath to be Saturday, will get any benefit from this (in terms of treatment after they're dead).  Since the day of the week ordained for worship is a blank line in the 4th Commandment, it is boilerplate.

As noted, there is nothing wrong with boilerplate.  We certainly need to be told not to kill or rob or otherwise hurt each other.  But we do all the prohibited things frequently and without concern because we define the terms used in the Commandments to suit our needs.  Is it murder to kill in war, or to terminate a newly fertilized human egg?  Can people who are starving steal to feed their children?  Are there abusive parents who should be disobeyed?  The answers are concealed in blank lines in the boilerplate of the Ten Commandments.  

Nor is there anything to suggest how or if we should curb the human desires that lead to transgression of the Commandments.  Should we drug people who have such desires?  Or kill them?  Or give them therapy?  Such questions are not addressed.

Of course most people don't do critical studies of their religion's doctrine in the course of adopting it; they adopt it because their culture adopted it, and they disassociate themselves from other religious doctrines because other cultures adopted them.  Such people are susceptible to rhetoric leading to religious wars.

When it comes to war, we don't even have the boilerplate of a commandment.  War might be noble and divinely inspired; it might be stupid and a sign of our impending extinction.  We're given nothing on the question.

The Ten Commandments are important for providing general goals we can try to attain.  They are not very useful for immediate problems, unless you fill in the blanks.