This semester I have been attending Bob Jones University. And more specifically I have been taking a debate class. One of the things about debate is that the topics are current issues. On this particular occasion the topic of choice was the United States involvement in the UN. It was very interesting to see how things developed and to have to research and delve into that topic. Our resolution for debate was Resolved: The United States should significantly reduce its involvement in the United Nations. For the most part it was proven that the UN has some excellent qualities as a world body, but there have been many questions come up as to its role and how it is to be used and what goals it will seek to accomplish. The part that gave the affirmative the greatest advantage was the fact that the UN needs substantial reform. It has had significan scandals and problems in the not so distant past and many of these have not been resolved. Some minor changes have been made, but there have also been some major ones suggested particularly by the United States. There has been much controversy over this. The method that most of the advocates of these changes choose is to withhold the US dues to the UN until the desired reforms are implemented into the UN. Our case as affirmative was very similar to that advocated by representatives in Congress. We however were a bit bolder in our enforcement to get these policies passed. We threatened to withhold all resources currently being given to the UN from the United States. Our plan held up very well since we could easily show that the reforms were needed. The one problem that we had though was that we did not show sufficient evidence to prove that the UN would pass the reforms if the dues were withheld. We had seen specific evidence in several articles, but had failed to copy them down. That was the one blow that finally brought our case down. With this evidence we could have carried the case through. Most of the other cases were killed due to the lack of planning on the part of the affirmative. All in all, this was an interesting topic and we were able to see some interesting ideas about it and how to deal with the problems that we saw. Most of my fellow students were just about sick of the topic by the time we were done. Post any comments or questions that you may have. Thanks.

 

Ben L.H.