Ought To & Can (A San Francisco Fable)

Part I: Ought To--Chapter 5

Neil stopped by his locker to get gum before Interscholastic Speech & Debate class. He generally carried all his schoolwork in his backpack, so gum storage was really all he used his locker for. He always turned his locker door inside when he had it open, so people wouldn't see the I AM A CHILD OF GOD poster he'd hung inside, out of obligation to his grandparents. Not that he was embarrassed to admit he was a child of God, but he didn't like implying that everyone else wasn't a child of God.

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ANAHEIM COLLEGE INVITATIONAL

FEB 4-5-6

The whiteboards of the debate rooms at both Sonoma Valley and Sloat-Bushnell had that note written on them. A large tournament, allowing a teen an excuse to be away from home for three days, by traveling to Southern California during the rainy Bay Area winter: everyone on both teams enthusiastically signed up.

But there was one catch: everyone competing at the tournament had to compete in one individual speaking event (like Extemp) and one debate event.

Neither Sabrina nor Neil ever had any interest in actual debating. They were content to just give their speech and be on their merry way.

Discussing it after class, May asked Sabrina why she was dreading having to compete in debate.

"Half the time you have to take a position you don't personally agree with. If I wanted to get into roleplaying I would've joined the Drama Club. Or the Furry Club."

"You'd make a good kangaroo," quipped May.

Neil summed it up to his parents like this: "If I believe in something, I guess I just think it's good for me and that's enough. Why bother trying to convince someone else? It's usually just a waste of time."

"Well, in a few months you'll be a missionary. Convincing other people about stuff is gonna be your job." Neil was shocked at his mother's sarcasm, but she certainly had a point.

There were three different debate events at this tournament, but since two of them (Policy and Public Forum) involve two-person teams and a mountain of preparation, Neil and Sabrina were forced to choose Lincoln-Douglas, where one person argues for the affirmative on some values-related resolution, and their opponent argues the negative. In this case, it was "Resolved: the common good ought to be valued over personal liberty."

"Ought to." Sabrina was familiar enough with past Lincoln-Douglas debate topics to know that they usually had the phrase "ought to" somewhere in there. She knew that the vague wording was so the debaters would be forced to define the terms for the sake of their argument, but why use the two most patronizing words in the English language?

And two of Fred Himmelschein's favorite words.

Fred was pleased to hear she was doing a debate event, and gave her lots of material to prepare for her affirmative and negative cases, from various legal books he had. And the Talmud. There was always something in the Talmud applicable to anything.

Neil tried to do some research, even going up to the library at Sonoma State University, but just stopped in the middle of it all. Why do you have to justify your own opinion by quoting someone else who's saying the exact same thing? Jesus didn't say "He that is without sin, cast the first stone. As Biff Ben-Maccabee said in the April issue of Jerusalem News & World Report, sinners who cast stones are..."