Recently, a college debate team won the national cross exam championship and how it managed to do so is shocking. The team ignored the stated resolution and other rules of debate. I used to judge debate (high school and college) and in those days it was sufficient for the negative team merely to point out that the affirmative’s case was irrelevant to the resolution to win. That was one of the rules of debate, meant to keep a “level playing field” for both teams. Alas, the rule of law in debate is deteriorating just as the rule of law generally is.

In this piece, Peter Schiff discusses the that debate round and draws out some wider implications.