The 2005-2006 national high school debate topic is "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially decrease its authority either to detain without charge or to search without probable cause."

As my son is in high school debate, I now get to hear this topic opined over dinner. Anyone else out there suffering in this way?

Our topics were national health care, campaign finance reform, standardized presidential primaries and gun control. And I thought these were good ideas. Then.

When I debated in high school, one of our topics was whether the government's right to gather information was more important than the citizen's right to privacy. Back then, the major points related to crime and Russian spies. I wonder if kids today fear terrorists to a greater or lesser degree than we worried about the communists. After all, the terrorists have actually attacked our country and killed thousands, which the Russians never did, but the terrorists don't have the capacity to burn our entire nation to a cinder, as we believed the USSR could have. Does that make us more or less concerned?

Well, John, having survived one teenager (now in college), I laughed when I read your post. Rest assurred (sp?) that you teenager knows more then the rest of us do, and will impart that to you at every turn.

Is the goal of highschool debate still to figure out a link between the topic and thermonuclear apocalypse?

Ah, you have re-triggered memories. Yes, as my son now argues, each and every affirmative cases lives and dies on the advantage of avoiding nuclear war.

The ultimate measure of a sucessful "case" still hangs on that notion.

Since my small school didnt have debate, I was limited to debating with my folks for an additional hour or two of staying out with friends. Rarely did I win, but the few times I did (probably through attrition) the extra hour or so was extremely boring b/c everyone else had to be in... sigh. Now I get to hear it b/t my girlfriend and her little heathens/darlings. I guess it never ends.

Some of those debate topics sound like something you might find on the agenda for the annual meeting of the American Bar Association.

... and then there were the really squirrelly cases where the affirmative intentionally causes the war and claims this is actually a good thing...