Think, Speak, Win: Discover the Art of Debate

respect for the dignity of life, strong valuation for freedom of choice, high likelihood of adequate hospital facilities, etc.)

to accede to their requests if they use violence, and so you exacerbate the global terrorist problem. So negotiation with terrorists doesn’t achieve a good outcome — in fact it achieves the exact opposite because now all terrorists will know that they can force you to negotiate if they start killing innocent people.

because they are not particularly law-abiding gentlemen to begin with, and have no reason to keep up their end of the bargain.

Remember to explain the significance of this mistake in terms of the reliability and trustworthiness of the other team’s case.

generalised claim derived only from a subset of another subset of cases. This is clearly ridiculous.

ideological demands that are often impossible to accede to. How, for example, do you appease the terrorist who hates Americans or Jews? Destroy the entire race? Thus, she argued, even if you could trust them, you still would not be able to come to a compromise with them.

The burden of proof must contain the checklist of criteria for evaluation — you must let the adjudicator and audience know how to fairly compare and contrast the two team’s cases.

neutral, objective standards that require minimal valuejudgments.

tautology is something that is made true by how the person defines it; it negates the possibility of any debate.

Clearly, this is not a thorough evaluation because smokers are still citizens with rights too, and their views must be considered.