Falwell's Baptist College Debate Team Very Active, Hope to Change World

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

Cut, Thrust and Christ
Why evangelicals are mastering the art of college debate.
By Susannah Meadows
Newsweek

"Feb. 6, 2006 issue - When you believe the end of the world is coming, you learn to talk fast. On a Friday afternoon the debate team from Liberty University, Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist Baptist college, is madly rehearsing for the tournament about to begin. This year's topic: should the United States increase diplomatic and economic pressure on China. They may just be practicing, but you wouldn't know it..."



"...Seventy-five percent of Liberty's debaters go on to be lawyers with an eye toward transforming society...."

Maybe we need young liberals to also be learning debate etc?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11078887/site/newsweek/

[calimary]

1. Damned straight we do!

Where are the think tanks training the young liberals and progressives of tomorrow - as we've seen grooming knuckle-draggers for bigger and better things?

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

2. Hehe!

knuckle-draggers

Great visual image that creates!

:rofl:

[calimary]

3. Well, that's pretty much what they ARE.

As a longtime elderly friend of mine would say - "another one of the great thirteenth-century minds of our time."

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

14. I agree! They ARE the American

Taliban, wanna go backwards in time and eliminate all them newfangled things, ceptin' the ones that they use.

;)

[BOSSHOG]

4. INCREDIBLE IRONY

I debated in High School and College a long, long, long time ago and you have to be able to successfully advocate both sides of an issue. That is so unfalwelllike. He wants his robots to hate nonstop in a fast clipped voice; probably holding the off button to an opponents microphone. Liberals will continue to do just fine and dandy. Liberals learn to think on their feet. "Conservatives" "learn" to hate in the name of Jesus Christ, damn any available factual data. Yes, it continues to suck to be a "conservative" in America today.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Agreed. Plus one doesn't win a debate by the sole employment

of a variety of logical fallacies such as argentum ad hominum, appeal to the emotion, threat, generalization, begging the question, etc. One has to defend one's position as well as attack the weakness of the other's premise.

I don't think the kids can do it as it isn't part of their mentality. They don't use critical thinking as a regular device in the classroom and in the church. I can't see a magical gift of debate appearing.

[Mythsaje]

6. It's rather difficult to increase diplomatic and economic pressure

on a country you're currently borrowing money from hand over fist.

Who are THEY trying to kid?

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

7. Their team is rated number 1. Part of that is cause they enter so

many debates, but they also beat the Harvard debate team last time.

According to the article.

It seems alarming to me cause with lies and debate skills they will find it still easier to manipulate public opinion.

[BOSSHOG]

8. Roger that!

falwell's goal is to turn loose a bunch of lying zealots who can talk in complete sentences and shout and scream at those who disagree ala limbaugh (he of the lack of education, and boy does it show.) In College debate you can not be a liberal or a conservative you have to be well versed in the subject manner. That's not falwell's goal. He hates America and its constitution so he is arming his soldiers to destroy our country, long after he is gone.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

13. Right. The only thing that ever impressed me about trained debaters,

except Kerry in the Pres debates, is their ability to move quickly and keep trying to come at you with the gotchas!

[DinahMoeHum]

9. Smells like PR bullshit: check the comments from Digby's blog. . .

Link:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_29_digbysblog_archive.html#113866390789843347

In a nutshell:
These fundies are waaaaaaay over-rated and are in for a rude awakening assuming they can even pass the LSAT's or make law school review, much less argue a case in court. A lawyer opposite them will shred them in 5 seconds.

Many of the posters are saying that what Liberty does primarily "policy debate", which is a completely different (and some say inferior) animal from, say, "Lincoln-Douglas" debate, or, "parliamentary" debate.


:evilgrin:

[xchrom]

10. for all that my fellow liberals here scoff --

to a certain extent these guys will be and have been already very successful.

perhaps not graduates of liberty -- our new chief justice and his sinister shadow scalito is what were looking at.

chicago university is also notoriously conservative and has been producing conservative intellectualls{?!} for many years -- i.e. leo strauss.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

12. Agreed. U of Chi gave us Milton Friedman in Econ as well as

Bettelheim in Psych, both conservatives.

I think these 2 were with U of Chicago, I'm reaching into the black hole I call my memory here.

;)

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

11. Per story: "...Liberty is competitive at all...levels..."

"...While the powerhouses like Harvard and Northwestern concentrate on nabbing the prestigious varsity titles, Liberty is competitive at all three levels—varsity, JV and novice. "They're tough. we're not afraid to debate Liberty," says Harvard coach Dallas Perkins Jr., whose varsity team was beaten by Falwell's last month..."