I take part in the Lincoln-Douglas style of Debate for my school. For this style of debate, every two months the resolution that is being debated changes, and since there are tournaments at the rate of one a month, each resolution is debated twice. This next tournament is the final state tournament, and we have already debated the resolution once. It is “To better protect civil liberties, community standards ought to take precedence over conflicting national standards.” My question is, what the hell does this mean, and how can one possibly argue the Affirmative position, which is essencially (I think) arguing against federalism. As one of my opponents put it last tournament, “we fought a war to stop this,” meaning of course the Civil War. So, any thoughts on how to interpret the resolution or argue it. Arguments on either side are appreciated, but I have a much better grasp of the NEG arguement already, and have a few strong cases for it. Oh, and for reference, LD style debate is a value debate, so it isn’t based completely on evidence but more on logic and historical and philosophical references, and is not policy debate, so arguing just one example of this topic doesn’t work because then the NEG can tear down everything else and you’ll lose.
Thanks,
Adrian
Ah, now I remember why I did Student Congress. 
There’s really nothing wrong with arguing against federalism. If I understand the format correctly, there’s no reason to assume that the debate has to do with the US specifically, anyway. Were I on the affirmative side, I’d argue that local government is better able to “fine-tune” the law than national government. Basically, the idea is that the amount of bureaucracy and necessary all-inclusiveness involved in running a national government prevents the national government from accounting for the needs of a specific community.
The fact that it’s specifically about civil liberties, though, makes it kinda tricky. I suppose the argument would be that individual communities might be willing to extend civil liberties before it becomes accepted on a national scale, as is happening right now with gay marriage.
Some friends of mine that’re still in high school do LD; I wonder what they come up with. My (former) team competes two or three times a month, so they’ve had a bit more opportunity to work with this one.
Good luck!
I tend to take the negative view of this argument, too, but here are some arguable counterexamples. (Not to be argued here, though.)
The local government in Waco was pretty much willing to let the Branch Davidians exercise their right to freedom of religion, until the feds stepped in.
A lot of state and local governments have passed laws forbidding their officers to aid the FBI in enforcing some provisions of the Patriot Act, on the grounds that they violate civil liberties.
Medical marijuana laws could also be viewed as state governments’ attempts to safeguard their citizens’ rights from an overbearing national government.
IIRC, Obscenity laws in the US are designed to reflect “community standards” which allows different areas to allow different levels of smut.